8 Sept 2026
S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy]
What does thinking or imaging look like when it’s optimised for scroll, repetition, and affect? When thinking itself becomes “scrollified” how do repetition, optimisation, and affect rewire imagination, compress attention, and turn imaging itself into something endlessly refreshed, looped, and platform-shaped?
In this episode, London-based British-Nigerian interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Dian Joy discusses their research-driven practice exploring subjectivity in the age of networked media and how images circulate and shape identity, desire, and perception. Drawing on film theory and Alexander Galloway’s ideas about the cinematic encounter, we ask what changes when images shift from singular cinematic events to an ambient algorithmic barrage.
We discuss the research underpinning Dian’s new film work, Krumville, including a LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation algorithm) trained on screenshots from her social media feeds, and years of diarised, affective experiences that are reconfigured into a fictional town structured by hyperlink logic and the condensed language of short-form media. The conversation explores AI as a tool for rendering implicit cultural patterns and biases visible at scale, while interrogating authorship, virality and the changing conditions of media literacy in an age of dual-screen attention.
RELATED LINKS
https://dianjoy.me (https://dianjoy.me/)
https://www.instagram.com/dian__joy (https://www.instagram.com/dian__joy)
The Hoping Mechanism (https://dianjoy.me/The-Hoping-Mechanism)
Krumville (https://www.andfestival.org.uk/events/krumville-dian-joy/) premiering at AND Festival 2026
Alexander Galloway: Interface Effect (https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-interface-effect--9780745662527)
Gilbert Simondon’s idea of the pre-individual is developed primarily in his major work Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816680023/individuation-in-light-of-notions-of-form-and-information/) (L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique / L’individuation psychique et collective)
José Esteban Muñoz defined unconscious futurity in his book Cruising Utopia (https://nyupress.org/9781479874569/cruising-utopia-10th-anniversary-edition/) as a collective, not-yet-conscious realm of potentiality.
Günther Anders’s Promethean Shame is written about in an article titled Günther Anders’s “Promethean Shame”: Technological Ressentiment and Surveillance (https://research.library.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1106&context=phil_babich)
Carly Busta’s essay Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content (https://www.documentjournal.com/2024/05/technical-images-film01-angelicism-art-showtime-true-detective-shein/)
Jenna Bliss’s work True Entertainment in the group exhibition Genuine Fake Premium Economy (https://www.ica.art/exhibitions/genuine-fake-premium-economy) at the ICA
COLOPHON
Host: Rebecca Edwards
Guest: Dian Joy
Recording: Rebecca Edwards
Music: Gašper Torkar
Editing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin Janša
Audio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš Kramar
Becoming Image podcast series
Curated by: Rebecca Edwards
Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša
Produced by: Marcela Okretič
Production:
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026
Part of:
tactics&practice#17: Becoming Image
Curated by Marco De Mutiis
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana
The post S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy] (https://aksioma.org/postajanje-podoba-ep2) appeared first on Aksioma (https://aksioma.org).
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