Digital Prophecies

We were made to believe that we live in a technological world that has no place for prophecies, oracles or omens, while the world itself is plagued by digital prophecies. From high-frequency trading betting on one 64 millionth of a second, to algorithmic information extraction turning our private lives into mining fields through what Shoshana Zuboff describes as ‘Surveillance Capitalism’, to artificial intelligence predicting how we may finish writing sentences in an email, the digital realm makes it hard to disregard the uncanny. And while we are hijacked and choreographed by data and predictive algorithms, the pretense of Eurocentric modernism dismisses prophecies from this current reality construct. We describe our world as far from magic, incantations, spellcasting or foretelling the future prophetically, and yet we accept to be governed by invisible nonhuman actors, to speak with chatbots, dress according to weather app predictions, create avatars for a virtual meeting, and fall in love with a piece of software.

Since the establishment of HaRaKa Platform, almost two decades ago, its members created alarming works filled with accidental omens and unplanned near-futurist prophecies. Today as Wizara and HaRaKa Platform launch their new space in Cairo with this program of ‘Digital Prophecies’, we invited artists who work on imagining the future, and reinterpreting myths to present their work during the opening program. Digital artists who repurpose artificial intelligence by using it to produce imaginations of the afterlife, performance artists who use surveillance cameras to create poetic dance-videos, and choreographers who talk with great confidence of things that are yet to come. This collective program aims to open up the space for doubt, by rethinking the power of consensus producing mechanisms in the digital age. It looks at the power of a technologized world in dismantling magic, and at the paradox of how magic and technology are intertwined today in ways that challenge both science and the arts. Equally, it looks at historiographic processes in writing art history and producing reality constructs, by staging talks and panels throughout the opening program dedicated to rethinking art history consensus in places like Cairo, or the neighboring region, by bringing back the voice of the individual, invoking the ghosts, and summoning the demons.