ArchiveExhibition

SASHA STILES

24 Feb-18 Mar 2023
PV 23 Feb 2023, 6-8pm

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY

London E2 9EQ

Overview

Press preview in presence of the artist: Thursday 23 February 2023, 5pm
Opening reception in presence of the artist: Thursday 23 February 2023, 6–8pm

In her essay Towards A Poetics of Artificial Superintelligence, the writer, editor, and curator Nora N. Khan attempts to chart a linguistic course through the future movements and mutations of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. She argues that to fully come to terms with what is coming, we need a new nonanthropocentric language for AI: novel metaphors for grappling with the planetary-scale changes that it will surely bring. To this end, she suggests an expanded poetics for conceptualizing AI that ranges from describing it as a ‘star system,’ to ‘search party’ and ‘hurricane’, suggesting a force that is cosmic, awe-inspiring, wildly unpredictable, and collaborative – perhaps all at once. Speaking to this need for a poetic reorientation of AI in her own way, the poet, artist, and AI researcher Sasha Stiles merges the long-lasting worldmaking processes of poetry with new AI-powered language tools to produce new linguistic worlds.

Binary Odes at Annka Kultys Gallery, Sasha Stiles’ first solo show in the UK, spans the gallery’s irl space in East London, and its newly augured virtual reality gallery, Annka Kultys Phygital. Within these joint presentations, viewers encounter the multimedia array of language play that constitutes Stiles’ groundbreaking practice. Understanding poetry as a technological vessel or carrier bag for the broad spectrum of human experience across time and space, the artist entangles multiple formats and resource materials – from original poetry to classical aphorism, AI-generated text, handcrafted words, and binary code – to weave multidimensional worlds rooted in storytelling. In Binary Odes, poetry becomes code, and vice versa – scaffolding a multi-authored cultural feedback loop in which ancient narratives are reconfigured as affective linguistic landscapes, capable of reorienting us towards an increasingly posthuman future.

ARTIST INFORMATION

Sasha Stiles a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist and AI researcher working at the intersection of text and technology. Stiles’ work considers what it means to be human in an increasingly posthuman era, while exploring the future possibilities of more-than human storytelling through language and image.
Stiles has been recognized as a leading figure in the emergent fields of generative literature and language art. Her work merges poetry, art, code, web3, and AI-generated art, coupled with moving image, painting, and drawing, to create dynamic multimedia projects that speculate on poetry as code, and code as poetry. By working across space and time – combining the first human records of oral storytelling with collaborative human-AI writing processes – Stiles expands poetry’s potential as a world-making practice. By bringing a multilayered, polyphonic intelligence to binary code, Stiles opens up the possibility for a more-than-human poetics.

Stiles has exhibited her work internationally including Kunsthalle Zurich, Annka Kultys Gallery, SuperRare Gallery, CHRISTIE’S, and Art Basel Miami Beach. Stiles has also given talks at events and institutions including Art Basel (Switzerland), the Brooklyn Museum, SXSW, Digilogue Istanbul, Parsons The New School, NFT NYC and NFT London. Stiles is also co- founder of theVERSEverse, an acclaimed crypto literary collective that works toward an expanded understanding of poetry as art, code, and limitless language.

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is a hybrid commercial art project that merges physical and digital experiences. Founded by Annka Kultys in 2015/2022, the East London-based gallery has rapidly become a leading art space for artists (particularly millennials), who engage with technology (and more recently decentralised technology) in both traditional and digital media. Through a robust program of exhibitions that showcase these artists alongside a commitment to promoting the hybrid “phygital” approach, Kultys aims to shape the discourse on contemporary art and technology while pushing the boundaries of what is achievable within both physical and digital gallery spaces.

SASHA STILES

24 Feb-18 Mar 2023 PV 23 Feb 2023, 6-8pm

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Sasha Stiles

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24 Feb-18 Mar 2023
PV 23 Feb 2023, 6-8pm