The project will focus on artistic intelligence (A/I) - a concept around which Budde has been developing practice-based research and theory for nearly ten years. This refers to the knowledge and skills that emerge in artistic practice—through perception, physical work, experimentation, creation, collaborative work, and performance, for example. It is less about classical Artificial Intelligence (AI), even though there may be points of contact. “Artistic Intelligence, or A/I, does not bury its head in the sand but seeks ways of creative coexistence and possibilities for a solidarity-based, collective artistic practice,” explains Budde. “The basic assumption is that creativity is a fundamental characteristic of human existence and that every person carries within them a rich potential for the joy of discovery, inventiveness, and the courage to face everyday life. Alan Turing, a brilliant queer mathematician, described the intelligence of machines as ‘deadly accurate’ as early as 1950. What defines humans is their wonderful ability to make mistakes, to be foolish, to laugh about it, to learn from it, and to try again—together with others.” In this context, Budde will critically examine familiar categories and norms—for example, regarding the body, technology, gender, knowledge, and culture - and seeks new perspectives in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Julius Heinicke, Professor of Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim; cultural researcher Dr. Daniel Gad; and local cultural institutions, including the Hildesheim Cathedral Museum, the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum, and the City Archives. Budde emphasizes: “Technologies and our relationships with them are complex matters. We must learn what technologies, media, and machines are in order to perceive these complexities. This complexity is central to creative provocation through artistic intelligence, or A/I. There are no messages to disseminate, only constant—and often joyful - learning, wondering, and making suggestions.”

Two block seminars with Budde are planned at the University of Hildesheim. The first focuses on the question of how humans, machines, and nature are interconnected and which social rules, power relations, and cultural-political decisions shape these relationships. These questions will be discussed using examples from art, theory, and the history of technology, including references to works and approaches by queer, feminist, and Indigenous authors and artists. The second block seminar deals with the concept of anarcheology (a portmanteau of anarchy and archeology coined by the queer philosopher Michel Foucault) as well as questions of truth-telling and its applicability to artistic production that poses critical questions of power—including to itself. This is explored through practical examples and theoretical discourses. 

In addition to the seminars, Budde will lead a performance installation as part of an artistic research project - a participatory, multilingual live photo-music-video performance featuring German-Canadian artists. This is an artistic intervention game that playfully invites community members to engage with media history, cultural policy, and public self-representation, and to critically examine how colonial perspectives and inequalities continue to operate today in images, museums, archives, and cultural decisions. The result will be presented as a performance installation and collaborative exhibition. Participants in the block seminars are also invited to contribute to this artistic research project, engaging practically and creatively with the themes of the courses.

Antje Budde is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. She works as a queer-feminist multimedia scholar and artist, founds creative collectives and experimental labs, and publishes in both academic and artistic formats. Her workshops and performances focus, among other things, on agency and transferable skills through artistic practice, on multimodal and embodied learning (i.e., learning with the body, space, materials, and media), on collective artistic production and social collaboration, as well as on critical creativity and productive reflection on failure. Ideas regarding artistic intelligence have been experimentally developed in her Digital Dramaturgy Labs since 2016. This includes a live online performance in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Hildesheim titled “Collective/Collecting Intelligence” (2021). 

Further information on the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy is available here: UNESCO Chair - University of Hildesheim