The Machine Monologs

As the feminine avatar searches for proof of her humanity, she is confronted with a troubling realization. If the ability to create weapons and inflict harm is part of what defines humanity, she thinks of herself as either flawed or not human at all. The statement quotes from “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,”² where Ursula K. Le Guin expresses her sense of alienation from the “spear narrative”—“the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero”³—from which she deliberately distances herself: “That’s right they said. What you are is woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective.”⁴

In Eli Cortiñas’ solo exhibition, “The Machine Monologs—Part I: The Storm,” the humanoid feminine avatars appear self-aware and empathetic, not least because they are speaking. Cortiñas employs the format of a self-reflexive monologue to offer a glimpse into the characters’ inner lives—their fears, desires, and struggles. This format uses the concept of ‘voice’—singular and reflective of an individual’s core identity—as a central narrative device. By speculatively granting digital, non-human entities the ability to express themselves, Cortiñas asserts how autonomy and the capacity to think and act are connected to voice—how having a voice is tied to being perceived as a subject, a human being, a member of society endowed with rights. Against a backdrop of images of warfare that emphasize the destructive potential of technology, the voice of the avatars urges us to think through alternatives to the patriarchal fantasy of technological progress that, sooner or later, inevitably turns into totalitarianism.

Eli Cortiñas, “The Machine Monologs—Part I: The Storm,” multichannel video, 2024, Fotografiska, Berlin. Courtesy of the Artist.

The installation features five vertically oriented screens suspended from floor to ceiling on metal rods and a central projected video essay. There are few standing positions where viewers cannot see at least a portion of another video. It is a viewing experience that requires an associative approach to making sense of this densely layered montage. The interplay between the material adds layers of meaning that evolve as one shifts their position in the room, sees different combinations of images, and hears different voices side by side. This spatial arrangement reflects Cortiñas’s editing method, which is highly citational by default. She uses the currency of contemporary communication as a critical address, combining her own footage with images circulating online, downloadable audiovisual material, and textual quotations. And as her works link dislocated material with current discourses, they revitalize philosophical ideas by post-colonial and feminist thinkers.

In the work at the show’s entrance, the avatar speaks of the realities that sustain our “interconnected world,” highlighting the exploitation of natural resources and the West’s role in perpetuating inequality. But she also dreams. She imagines an “archipelago”—after the poet, philosopher, and essayist Édouard Glissant,⁵ who urges us to think through a particular geographic formation—that shifts the focus from the territorial, nation-state logic and exploitative structures of contemporary global capitalism to a network of relationships across borders.

Just before the video starts again, the avatar addresses the challenges of creating her monologue and reflects on the continuing adaptability of racial logic: “It’s been close to impossible to find avatars that correspond to the diverse world we are supposed to represent and be part of.” And with that, having quoted Le Guin and her critique of human culture as arising from tools for sticking, beating, and killing, the avatar moves on to yet another kind of human tool-making: race. This approach aligns with the influential suggestion by critical race and media scholars to examine race not merely in its relation to technology but as a form of technology in itself.⁶ It moves the focus from defining what race is to understanding how it operates, visualizing race as an “algorithm inherited from the age of Enlightenment,”⁷ and as “one of our most powerful tools—developed over hundreds of years, varying across time and place, codified in law and refined through custom.”⁸

The connection to the exhibition's centerpiece is evident from the first lines: “We are redesigned constantly by our tools and their uses.”⁹ The argument is that tools do not just extend human capabilities. They transform how we think, act, and perceive the world. In warfare, this means that the instruments of violence, such as weapons, drones, or autonomous systems, do not just enhance the power of combatants. They alter the nature of conflict, the ethical frameworks that govern war, and the societies that engage in it. Given that warfare represents a proving ground for AI and that military forces across the globe are allocating significant resources to weapons systems with enhanced autonomy, these concerns are especially pressing.

Later, the avatar argues that AI is an extension of state power, particularly in controlling borders and managing populations through technology. It draws on global examples, including situations at checkpoints for Palestinians, the barbed wire in Melilla, the border between Mexico and the United States, and the mass graves of the Mediterranean Sea. It is there where AI “touches the earth,” where it “touches the skin.” The human body and how it carries itself becomes the center of attention in the following scenes. Images of the fragmented body and, more importantly, of the anatomical body, or rather, the anatomized body, align with the spoken references to Frantz Fanon’s materialist politics. As Matthew Beaumont posits, Fanon reconstructs the “political anatomy” of the racialized and colonized body in presumably innocuous activities such as walking or breathing under the gaze of colonial powers.¹⁰

“Can humans, as long as so many of them are being oppressed, be truly free?” and “Are we machines less prone to repeat mistakes than humans? Or are we as much part of the collective amnesia?” are questions left unanswered. Yet, they urge us to give up on the belief that revolutionary politics is an inherent aspect of the machines that structure and enable networked communication. Instead, they suggest recognizing the historical development of these technologies, how they continue to be used, and for what—since “new tools coded in old biases is surprising only if we equate technological innovation with social progress.”¹¹ That technology is automatically one step ahead of society is a pervasive trope “The Machine Monologs” seeks to unsettle.

Johanna Hardt (she/her) is a curator and the editor and founder of High Pitch Magazine.