Event | The Other AI: Automated Intimacies
*Image Credit: @jorisvdeinden
Event | The Other AI: Automated Intimacies
Date: 13 May 2025
Time: 13:00-22:00
Location: V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam (& Online)
Organizers: Misha Kavka (and Diego Semerene), on behalf of the Queer Analysis research group, ASCA, University of Amsterdam
Contact: m.kavka@uva.nl
Registration: https://v2.nl/*
Registration deadline: 9 May 2025
Credits: 1 ECTS (For attendance, readings and preparation of discussion questions)
*Please note that attendance is free for pre-registered ReMA students and PhD candidates
‘The Other AI: Automated Intimacies’ is a research project strand of the Queer Analysis Research Group, holding its first one-day symposium at the V2 Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, the Netherlands on Tuesday, May 13, 2025. The event combines queer and trans theory with psychoanalytic perspectives in relation to the automation of intimate relations and the exteriorisation of desire. Can automation—and its failures–bring something new, or invite new interpretations of old habits and fixations? Is repetition not an opening? We bring together scholars and artists in a series of talks and workshops to open up a non-normative space for thinking about the technological mediations of intimacy, especially those forms that seem to replace, replicate or extend subjectivity through AI, VR, robotics, apps or other technified forms of the libidinal drive. The event will take place in person from 13:00 to 22:00, with the 19:00-22:00 time slot streamed online via V2. For tickets to attend ‘The Other AI’ in person or online go to: https://v2.nl/.
Speakers
Ciano Aydin (University of Twente)
Ilker Bahar (University of Amsterdam)
Rex Collins (independent artist)
Bethany Crawford (University of Amsterdam)
Laura Dima (independent artist)
Maaike van der Horst (University of Twente)
Misha Kavka (University of Amsterdam)
Shaka McGlotten (State University of New York, Purchase)
Veerle van Wijngaarden (University of Amsterdam)
- Students from a Dutch institution can attend the event free or charge but registration before May 9th is mandatory: email Misha Kavka kavka@uva.nl to register. Include your name, institutional affiliation and program, student number and institutional email address, and say whether you would like to receive 1 ECTS via the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA).
PROGRAMME (provisional)
Session One (13h-15h): academic presentations
Ilker Bahar – on Queer Intimacies in Social VR
Maaike van der Horst – on Lacan and Technology
Veerle van Wijngaarden – on the Radical Edge of Psychoanalysis
Session Two (15:30-17:30): artistic presentations
Bethany Crawford – on training AI Replica to ‘be’ Bethany Crawford
Laura Dima (with Maaike van der Horst) – Sensing sculptures powered by biometric data
Rex Collins – queer intimacy/performance
Session Three (19h-22h): public lectures
Ciano Aydin, “The Quest for Wholeness: The End of Desire in the Age of AI”
Shaka McGlotten, “Haunting the Algorithm”
Misha Kavka, “The Other AI / the AI Other: The Subject of Virtual Companionship”
Speakers’ bios
Ciano Aydin is Full Professor of Philosophy of Technology in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente, where he leads the Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations research line. He also serves as Vice Dean of Education at the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS). His research centers on existential technology, exploring how emerging technologies shape human identity, affect our freedom and responsibility, and influence various dimensions of life. Recently he published Extimate Technology with Routledge (2021/2023). Currently, he is completing a book that examines the promise of AI through a Lacanian lens, focusing on how data-, algorithm-, and AI-driven environments shape human desire and subjectivity, with Tinder as a central case study.
Ilker Bahar is a PhD candidate in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is currently conducting digital ethnographic research on the social VR platform VRChat, exploring how VR and immersive technologies are reshaping identity, intimacy, and sexuality—particularly for LGBTQI+ communities. His work is grounded in queer theory, science and technology studies, and critical media studies. His broader research interests include gender and sexuality, mediated intimacy, virtual reality, avatarial embodiment and aesthetics, and internet cultures.
Misha Kavka is Professor of Cross-Media Culture at the University of Amsterdam and co-founder of the research group Queer Analysis at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. She has published widely on gender, sexuality, celebrity and affect in relation to television, film and media technologies. She is the author of Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy (2008) and Reality TV (2012), and the co-editor of volumes and special issues on reality television, gothic culture, feminist theory and psychoanalytic criticism. She is also the co-author of Doing Media Research (Sage 2025).
Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY. An anthropologist and artist, McGlotten’s interdisciplinary research explores the intersections of black study, queer theory, digital media, and contemporary art. Their work investigates emerging networked intimacies, messy computational entanglements, and their impacts on queer of color lifeworlds. They are the author of Dragging: Or, In the Drag of a Queer Life (Routledge, 2021) and Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Other Sociality (SUNY Press, 2013)/ They are also the co-editor of two edited collections, Black Genders and Sexualities (with Dana-ain Davis) and Zombies and Sexuality (with Steve Jones).
to be continued …