MEETINGS: "Future Fragments: Fluid Intelligence, or the Photographic Image Today". A Lecture by Krzysztof Pijarski

Future Fragments is an initiative bringing together art, technology, and theoretical reflection to explore the nature of intelligence, agency, and creativity. We approach them not as fixed attributes of individuals, but as complex phenomena that emerge through relationships and evolve through interactions between organisms, systems, and environments. Rather than positioning technology in opposition to nature, we see it as another layer of the global ecosystem. We examine how the development of technology and intelligence—in both human and non-human forms—is changing our understanding of their roles and mutual influence. Future Fragments is a dynamic, decentralized platform that creates a space where voices, ideas, and people from diverse fields can come together. The lectures, discussions, workshops, presentations, and publications organized as part of Future Fragments are open to everyone interested in our rapidly changing present and emerging future—including researchers, artists, practitioners, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of what is happening at the intersection of technology and culture.

In a fascinating text from 1989, Jeff Wall writes about the "echo of water" in analog photography. He refers to the fact that developing a captured photographic image requires water, which represents "liquid intelligence" in this thought experiment. In his view, the collision of natural forms with the camera apparatus becomes a reflection of the entire "technological and ecological dilemma" of humanity facing nature, a confrontation with the incalculable. From Wall's perspective, the digitization of photography signified the expansion of its "dry" aspect—an optical, technological intelligence; a calculating lens and eye performing a cool separation of what is depicted. This gesture, counterintuitive from today’s standpoint—given that we have come to regard the digital image as fluid and malleable—allows us to conceptualize the arrival of artificial intelligence systems as the return of liquid intelligence; not only to the photographic image as an artifact, but to the camera apparatus as image infrastructure, complete with its technological and ecological dilemmas.

For more information, visit: futurefragments.online

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Series of events accompanying Warsaw Gallery Weekend MEETINGS, co-financed by the City of Warsaw and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage with the support of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts.