Part 1:

Nina Fischer / Annika Haas
AI and the Archive

Artistic creation relies on archives. So does AI. Building on this idea, this seminar will explore the ever-changing relationship between archives and the arts. How is this relationship being challenged by the growing number of AI applications whose generative qualities are widely informed by the processing of digitised human(-made) archives?

Starting with a broad definition of archives, ranging from cultural and historical institutions to personal data clutter, we will first examine the role that archives and AI-generated/processed content play in our artistic processes. Secondly, we will engage with theories on sampling and authorship; examine the archive as an institution of knowledge, power, exclusion and appropriation, and discuss the built-in discrimination as well as the highly precarious labour and extractivism underlying AI applications and their infrastructures.

How do we look at archives differently once they appear as a resource for AI, or as a result of their creation? What will become of the vast quantity of AI-generated (moving) images and texts? Does the archive still matter in an age of rapidly produced artefacts? Alongside readings and the study of artistic works, the seminar will involve short writing and research exercises that invite participants to consider AI applications and artefacts through an archival lens.

Schedule:
Wednesdays, 2–6 p.m.

Sessions with Annika Haas:

• 22 October 2025
• 12 November 2025
• 26 November 2025
• 10 December 2025

Part 2: 

Nina Fischer / Tabea Marschall
Seen / Unseen. Collection, Archive, Inscription

Collections and archives shape what we see – and what remains invisible.
While archives are often comprehensive, invisible, and fragmentary, collections appear selective, visible, and curated. Both are forms of historiography: they decide what is considered relevant, contemporary, or worth remembering – and what disappears.

In this seminar, we will take the Julia Stoschek Collection as an example of a contemporary art collection that can also be understood as a “living archive”: a site of collecting, preserving, and re-activating. We will discuss questions of accessibility, representation, and canonisation: Who is collected, who is absent? What do we expect from collections – as resources, as mirrors, as spaces of resonance?

Drawing on theoretical perspectives (including Hélène Cixous, Donna Haraway, Hal Foster), participants will develop their own filmic responses – in dialogue with works from the collection or in confrontation with its blind spots. The aim is to make one’s own voice visible and to understand archives/collections not as neutral spaces, but as structures into which one can inscribe oneself.

“To enter the archive is to be caught up in a vast web of words, voices, and traces of lives.”
(Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives, 1989)

Literature: 

ARNS, Inke; BIRKENSTOCK, Eva; BÖNISCH, Dominik; HUNGER, Francis (eds.):Training The Archive

VON BISMARCK, Beatrice (ed.): Archives on Show – Revoicing, Shapeshifting, Displacing – A Curatorial Glossary

Block Sessions with Tabea Marschall, Friday & Saturday, half-day

• 28–29 November 2025, 11:00–15:00
• 12–13 December 2025, 11:00–15:00
• plus an additional date for the final presentations

The seminar parts may also be attended individually.

Schein:
Künstlerisch-gestalterisch / Kunst- und Medienwissenschaft (2 SWS)

Participants:
Max. 20

Language:
German / English

Registration:
Through the Fachklasse or in advance via email to the tutor:
stratos.bichakis@udk-berlin.de