PRESS RELEASE

In a present shaped by artificial intelligence, automation and a belief in technological progress, the origin, authorship and truth claims of content are becoming increasingly uncertain. In her solo exhibition ghostwriter drowning, Jessica Tille explores media processes as carriers of knowledge and perception. In doing so, she asks how language, identity and the body are changing under these conditions.

Starting from ghostwriting and voice cloning, the artist turns her attention to processes that detach text and voice from any clear origin. She is interested in forms of copying, duplication and simulation, as well as their social effects. An important point of reference here is the logic of contemporary AI systems, whose texts are often synthesised from a multitude of sources and in this way blur distinctions between fact and fiction.
Jessica Tille translates such content into an installation of video, sound and objects. The starting point is perfume titles (Sub-line Figures), which play in a mantra-like way with self-perception and external perception. Using AI, the artist transforms them into sound and melody. In Common Scent (Eau de Cologne), the result appears like a trace of identity, a distorted acoustic profile of that which surrounds us in our capitalist present. Efficiency, (self-)optimisation and claims to truth become guiding motifs of the exhibition.
The work Taxonomy of Essence (Habitat of Self-Production) refers to writing and overwriting, as well as to the material from which meaning emerges. In the two video works I. Blue Teeth for Synchronization: Dental Floss and II. Euro Nymph Body Dubbing: Blue Dupe, the artist expands this setting into digital image spaces devoted to the search for the origin of language and meaning in a digital world. In the series Cooling Medium Deposit I–VIII, this dualism is articulated with material precision. On the one hand, the components used are actual heat sinks taken from computer technologies, whose function is to dissipate heat and keep systems stable. On the other hand, they carry microscopic cover slips printed with thermal images of parts of the body, as traces of human communication.

ghostwriter drowning investigates AI not only as a technical application, but as a cultural condition that is in the process of reshaping our perception and identity. At the same time, the exhibition engages with the promises of the future propagated by Silicon Valley, in which technological optimisation, economic interests and new forms of belief become intertwined. It therefore asks not only how language is produced today, but also what cultural consequences these shifts entail.