JONAS LUND | The Future of Life

17 Nov 2024-16 Nov 2025

Jonas Lund, The Future of Life, 2024, AI Animation

Overview

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is pleased to present Jonas Lund, 'The Future of Life' (2024), an AI animation in which the artist envisions an uncanny world where immortality is made possible through the power of artificial intelligence. This presentation is part of 'Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives', the gallery new digital programme, which will take place over the course of a year, and offer unique insights into new media artists using film, video animation, as well as their latest technological explorations, including blockchain and advanced technologies such as AI. The programme aims to showcase and contextualise diverse digital art practices, while introducing international artists and their distinctive approaches to the gallery’s audience.

'The Future of Life' (2024) imagines an uncanny world where one can live forever through the power of AI. Pushy corporate types from a commercial entity intone about their products that promise to “supercharge your life” and will “shape the world to our desires.” AI will make all the decisions for us so that we can enjoy immortality. Resembling a subverted reality TV show, the narrative unfolds as users of this speculative technology share their unsettling and thought-provoking experiences with it.

The latest in Lund’s series of documentary style videos made with generative AI, this work explores concepts of agency in a world in which we as individuals seem to be more and more reliant on technology provided by faceless tech corporations. 'The Future of Life' taps into our societal anxieties around AI and fear of what might happen should Big Tech go unchecked and unregulated, allowing corporations to exert their commercial interests to all aspects of contemporary life. Through the artistic use of the very AI technology that has become ubiquitous, Lund shows us a world where late capitalism is taken to extremes. The technology of AI is unseen – it seems only to exist somewhere in the ether. Here, Lund makes visible something that is normally invisible. The stilted, blurry figures, for all their ghoulishness, are quite comprehensible and real.

Just as 19th century audiences initially believed that the ‘camera never lies’, so to in the age of AI we are presented with a new and complex version of the real. It seems all too plausible that conversations like this are going on all the time in Big Tech. However, like much of Modernist art before it, Lund’s work ultimately raises more questions than answers.

Over the next 12 months, 'Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives' will introduce a new artist online each week. The first four featured artists will be Jonas Lund, Sara Sadik, Oliver Laric, and Lauren Lee McCarthy. Each artist will be highlighted on the gallery’s social media every Sunday, beginning on the 17th of November 2024, with weekly updates.

The online streams will be augmented by physical presentations of digital artworks in a private home setting at the gallery founder’s loft in Shoreditch. These installations will be accompanied by regular, invitation-only dinners and carefully curated exclusive viewings for art professionals, fostering deeper connections between artists, collectors, journalists, and museum curators.

As part of this initiative, prints of video stills by the artists will be made available for purchase on the gallery’s website. Furthermore, the gallery is pleased to announce a monthly giveaway, offering subscribers the opportunity to win a selected artist print. Each giveaway will be introduced in the monthly Full Moon newsletter, with the winner announced in the subsequent edition, scheduled for 15 December 2024.

For all sales enquiries, please contact Annka Kultys at
+44 74 555 61 887 (WhatsApp) or at [email protected] (email)

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