Agnieszka Kurant 

Agnieszka Kurant, a Polish artist based in New York, explores the intersections between art and geopolitics, between biological systems and geological processes, between digital economics and computational social sciences. By collaborating with specialists from these different fields, she creates constantly evolving biological, geological and digital assemblages, emerging from complex systems of human and non-human agency.  

In her practice, Agnieszka Kurant highlights the energetic materialities that lie hidden behind artificial intelligence technologies, such as the capitalisation of emotions and affects, the exploitation of invisible labour and the extractivist policies of the mining industries. Kurant’s work reveals the systemic inequalities underlying cognitive capitalism. 

The works produced and selected by Mudam Luxembourg for the exhibition dedicated to the artist, ‘Risk Landscape’ (2024-2025), show the key points of his practice: firstly, a critique of modern individuality, which Kurant expresses in his exploration of collective intelligences; secondly, a questioning of the ontological separations between the biological, the geological and the digital; and thirdly, a challenge to the predictive systems of surveillance capitalism and the linearity of neoliberal time. 

Collective intelligences

Agnieszka Kurant explores creativity as a collective phenomenon, challenging the modern myth of the individuality of the author. Her works reflect the idea that everything that exists is the result of the intertwined agentivities of collective intelligences. The paradigms of individualism and personal autonomy, so useful to neoliberal ideology, are overturned in favour of the collective personalities and polyphonic subjectivities – that is, plural and hybrid – summoned up by the artist. His artistic practice includes references to notions of emergence (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela), plasticity (Catherine Malabou), intra-action (Karen Barad), the posthuman (Rosi Braidotti) and the ecology of the mind (Gregory Bateson).  

In his works, Kurant creates conditions or parameters so that unpredictable forms can emerge or crystallise from a multitude of organisms. To create the sculptures in the ‘A.A.I. series’ (2014-2017), for example, the artist mobilises the social organisation of termite colonies. Negative zinc prints, cast in abandoned habitats, reveal the specificity and complexity of the internal systems of these colonies, made up of thousands of specimens. The work questions the notion of individual authorship, but also the role of unconscious workers – whether termites or humans – in a system that exploits collective intelligence to generate profit. The title refers to Artificial Artificial Intelligence, a concept introduced to describe the employment of thousands of ghost workers by crowdsourcing platforms. 

Indeed, machine learning algorithms are collective intelligences based on the monitoring of digital footprints, involving both the exploitation (of unconscious labour and ghost labour) and the voluntary participation of millions of people in order to capture, quantify and monetise the value of social capital. The painting ‘Conversions’ (beginning 2019) addresses these issues by linking social change to physical mutations in molecular materiality. Kurant uses AIs to harvest the digital fingerprints of human emotions expressed on social networks in relation to protest movements. By linking these AIs to liquid crystals on the surface of the canvas, the work transforms social energy into thermal and electrical energy, changing the shapes and colours of this futuristic abstract painting in perpetual evolution. Embodying both the collective energy of crowds and the impact of digital dynamics on reality, the work questions the global exploitation of digital footprints and the implications of an algorithmic society, where even protests are harvested and converted into economic value.  

Collective intelligences 
 
Agnieszka Kurant explores creativity as a collective phenomenon, challenging the modern myth of the individuality of the author. Her works reflect the idea that everything that exists is the result of the intertwined agentivities of collective intelligences. The paradigms of individualism and personal autonomy, so useful to neoliberal ideology, are overturned in favour of the collective personalities and polyphonic subjectivities – that is, plural and hybrid – summoned up by the artist. His artistic practice includes references to notions of emergence (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela), plasticity (Catherine Malabou), intra-action (Karen Barad), the posthuman (Rosi Braidotti) and the ecology of the mind (Gregory Bateson).  

In his works, Kurant creates conditions or parameters so that unpredictable forms can emerge or crystallise from a multitude of organisms. To create the sculptures in the ‘A.A.I. series’ (2014-2017), for example, the artist mobilises the social organisation of termite colonies. Negative zinc prints, cast in abandoned habitats, reveal the specificity and complexity of the internal systems of these colonies, made up of thousands of specimens. The work questions the notion of individual authorship, but also the role of unconscious workers – whether termites or humans – in a system that exploits collective intelligence to generate profit. The title refers to Artificial Artificial Intelligence, a concept introduced to describe the employment of thousands of ghost workers by crowdsourcing platforms. 
 
Indeed, machine learning algorithms are collective intelligences based on the monitoring of digital footprints, involving both the exploitation (of unconscious labour and ghost labour) and the voluntary participation of millions of people in order to capture, quantify and monetise the value of social capital. The painting ‘Conversions’ (beginning 2019) addresses these issues by linking social change to physical mutations in molecular materiality. Kurant uses AIs to harvest the digital fingerprints of human emotions expressed on social networks in relation to protest movements. By linking these AIs to liquid crystals on the surface of the canvas, the work transforms social energy into thermal and electrical energy, changing the shapes and colours of this futuristic abstract painting in perpetual evolution. Embodying both the collective energy of crowds and the impact of digital dynamics on reality, the work questions the global exploitation of digital footprints and the implications of an algorithmic society, where even protests are harvested and converted into economic value.  

Speculative narratives about the future 
 
In her work, Agnieszka Kurant questions the contemporary obsession with algorithmic risk prediction and the elimination of errors that characterise cognitive capitalism. Predictive analysis and risk management strategies monetise the future and convert it into an exploitable commodity. ‘Lottocracy’ (2024) questions notions of chance and governance in the context of the speculative economy. This lottery machine draws balls that reveal improbable but very real statistics, such as the risk of death by shark attack, the probability of having a dream that comes true, or the possibility that an artist will receive no income from his or her work. The title of the work refers to the political concept of ‘lottocracy’, which aims to replace parliamentary elections with the drawing of lots. While playing with chance and playfulness, the work invites us to reflect deeply on the structural inequality generated by the management of risk for profit.  
 
Kurant’s works show us the horror of an error-free world aimed at commodifying the future. They also reveal that no algorithm – and therefore no data it can produce – is neutral, because the Internet is a largely privatised place. On the other hand, they highlight the fact that evolution, artistic creativity and scientific discoveries are often the result of unforeseeable errors or mutations, and that these accidents cannot be entirely calculated. The neoliberal idea of a perfectly controllable world, where the margins of error are reduced to zero, therefore appears to be a technological dystopia. As shown in ‘Risk Management’ (2020), a map tracing a thousand years of inexplicable collective phenomena around the world, systemic errors are irreducible in complex, living systems. The title, borrowed from the financial strategies of risk minimisation, contrasts ironically with the content of the work, which catalogues events such as laughter epidemics, collective delirium, asteroid panics and UFO sightings. How can these irrational phenomena be predicted when their spread is beyond algorithmic prediction? 
 
Installed in Luxembourg, an iconic location for speculative economics and financial fictions, Kurant’s works have a particular resonance. To get to the Mudam pavilion, which is hosting the artist’s exhibition, you cross a glass footbridge overlooking the remains of the old Vauban ramparts and the ruins of Fort Thüngen; past and present blend together in the architecture designed by Ieoh Ming Pei. Here, the installation ‘Future (Invention)’ (2024) offers translations of the word ‘future’ in fourteen languages (including Aymara, Maori, Darija, Malagasy and Yopno) that spatially conceive of the future in a way that is radically different from the linear and progressive Western vision, where the future is envisaged before us. For other cultures, the future may lie behind, below or above, reflecting perspectives where present, past and future are intertwined. By integrating these different conceptions, Kurant demonstrates that our understanding of time is a powerful tool for reconfiguring dominant narratives.  

Indeed, the artist’s bio-geo-technological processes bear witness to evolutions that never follow a predictable path. Radically relational, his works seem to suggest that creating the future is a collective matter, and that it is up to us to produce alternative narratives in order to construct future worlds that are very different from those proposed by the speculative forecasts of late capitalism. 

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Head image : Vue de l’exposition / Exhibition view Agnieszka Kurant, Risk Landscape, 07.06.2024 – 05.01.2025, Mudam Luxembourg. Photo : Mareike Tocha © Mudam Luxembourg.

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