12:00
Birkbeck, University of London
June 22
Birkbeck Central
When: — Venue: Birkbeck Central
Birkbeck Central, Centre for Creative AI
Monday, June 22 • 7 PM - 8:30 PM
by Donatella Della Ratta, in collaboration with The Void (Tommaso Campagna & Jordi Viader Guerrero)
Generative AI creates speculative visuals that, while not based on factual events, remain plausible, constructing realities that have yet to unfold. Situated within the domain of possibility rather than empirical certainty, these visuals introduce a new form of 'synthetic realism'. By reshaping both past and present through their world-building potential, these seemingly innocuous images—detached from tangible references, historical ties, lineage, or context—wield a quiet yet profound violence against history and factuality. The lecture performance examines 'speculative violence,' a developing mode of the image’s existence that oscillates between overt destruction and subtle, almost imperceptible effects. Blending text with visuals—including found footage, social media threads, and AI-generated media—the piece takes the audience on an unsettling journey through the violence of the not-yet-realized, traversing landscapes from Palestine to Trump’s America, and implicating oblivious cows.
Donatella Della Ratta is a scholar, performer, and curator specializing in networked technologies and generative AI. Currently Associate Professor of Communication at John Cabot University, she is a former Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. From 2007 to 2013 she served as the Arab world community manager for the Silicon Valley-based international organization Creative Commons. She has curated several international art and film programs, including Syria Off Frame in collaboration with the Luciano Benetton Foundation, Venice, 2015. She is co-founder and board member of SyriaUntold, recipient of the Digital Communities Award at Ars Electronica 2014, and a member of the advisory board of the Cinema Futures initiative at Locarno International Film Festival.
In 2025, GEN_, the documentary she has co-authored with Gianluca Matarrese, was selected in the international world doc competition at Sundance Film Festival.
Donatella's research on Generative AI and speculative violence earned her the Italian Council award 2024-25 from Italy's Ministry of Culture. Her next monograph Speculative Violence will be out in Fall 2026 with Haymarket Books (in Engish.) and Einaudi Maverick (in Italian). Her performance lecture on the topic, Ask me for those unborn promises that are unlikely to happen in the natural, has been featured at Aksioma, Ljubljana; Disruption Lab, Berlin; Locarno Film Festival, Locarno; Romaeuropa Festival, Rome; Framer Framed, Amsterdam.
Contact name: Matthew Barrington
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