The Technological Republic
The research project proposes to investigate the hidden infrastructures that sustain contemporary artificial intelligence systems, focusing on the material, human, and geographic realities behind technologies often presented as immaterial or autonomous. Rather than treating AI as a purely technical innovation, the project approaches it as part of a global assembly line connecting energy use, resource extraction, data processing, and automated decision-making.
The project will focus on two interconnected sites within this system. One is the Philippines, which has become a global hub for data annotation, where workers contribute to the training of AI systems through repetitive and largely invisible tasks. The other is Palantir, a company whose AI tools are used by governments and institutions to automate and predict decisions. Although these positions appear distant, the research considers them as structurally linked within the same technological economy.
Through planned field visits, interviews, and on-site recordings in places such as Manila and Denver, the project seeks to connect AI technologies to the physical locations and people that sustain them. Video, sound, and spatial recording methods, alongside experimental uses of AI-generated imagery, will be explored to examine how labour, infrastructure, and power leave their traces in this data economy.
The project will lead to the development of artistic methods and installation forms that can bring these questions into a public space. Rather than aiming for fixed outcomes, the project remains open, allowing its forms and results to evolve in response to the research process itself.
Results
The research will be disseminated through a series of high-visibility public presentations, exhibitions, and events accompanying each stage of its development. Two major solo exhibitions constitute the first public
outputs of the project: at BPS22, Charleroi (January 2027), and at Dallas Contemporary, United States
(November 2026). These exhibitions will present first iterations of works developed at the start of the project
and make the research accessible to diverse international audiences. The exhibition at BPS22 will mark the
first major retrospective of my work in Belgium, while the Dallas Contemporary exhibition will represent my first institutional solo presentation in the United States.
Both exhibitions will be accompanied by an extensive public programme, including artist talks, panel discussions, conferences, workshops, and guided visits led by the artist, ensuring direct engagement with the research questions and methods. These moments will function as spaces for knowledge exchange between artistic, academic, and non-specialist audiences.
Additional dissemination will take place through selected group exhibitions, where further research outcomes will be exhibited and tested in different curatorial and institutional contexts. In parallel, I will participate in Chambre d’amis, an experimental conference format developed by Harlan Levey Projects in the United States, presenting the research to curators, critics, patrons, and the general public within a non-institutional exhibition setting.
In 2027, a monographic publication produced in collaboration with Dallas Contemporary and BPS22 will
assemble critical texts and visual documentation related to the research.
