Fotograf Zone – James Bridle

The book New Dark Age, released in 2018, was a certain warning about an uncertain future. Artist and writer James Bridle comes several years later, offering a somewhat more positive publication. He claims that the mentioned uncertainty which we live in, which is influenced and greatly permeated by technologies that almost no one understands deeply, can be understood as a departure point for further activity and thought. Admitting that humans are not at the center of everything shouldn’t be a paralyzing notion, but rather one that can help show new paths and questions. Among them, for example: what intelligence does artificial intelligence have today and what may change in the future? Or: what can we, humans, take into our hands in this regard, and along with other non-human beings such as plants or animals, create in a way that our world, both real and virtual, remains sympathetic and living?

James Bridle. Ways of Being. Beyond Human Intelligence. London: Penguin Books, 2022.␣ISBN: 9780241469651.

Tereza Špinková

is a theorist and curator. Currently she is studying for a doctorate at the Department of Environmental Studies at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, where she deals primarily with the relationship between human and non-human entities.

#44 Empathy

The ability to empathise with others is a construct that has only been around for a few centuries. This does not mean that such a skill did not exist until then. However, the concept of empathy creates a field in which this ability oscillates from understanding the other party to understanding the self. And because such a playground can be quite expansive, and the playing balls of empathy can be ping-ponged from one side to the other, we decided to dedicate an issue of the magazine to this field.