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ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION assembles works that counter the epistemes of Western technoscience, from across the SWANA region and its diasporic time-spaces. These works call forth ancestral intelligences, inheriting forms of worldmaking surfaced from the lacunae of omissive datasets and archives of dispossession. They traverse algorithmic dream divination; develop tools for upending classificatory protocols; evade technologies of capture; and conjure precolonial deities through radio transmissions. They invoke alternate temporalities, rejecting the consignment of non-Western technologies to the dustbins of media history.
ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION is curated by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The program will be presented in-person at e-flux, on October 21st starting at 7 pm, for more information visit e-flux.com. The screening will be followed by a discussion between artist Nouf Aljowaysir and the curator. The full ANCESTRAL INTELLIGENCES program will be available online on artearchive.org from October 21 - 31, 2025. This program expands on the screening Ancestral Intelligences, hosted at Cambridge University by Cambridge Film & Screen and Cambridge Visual Culture. Ancestral Intelligences was curated by Mashinka Hakopian in conversation with Kareem Estefan.
How do we disappear in the digital age? this is a project that works with the facial recognition technologies in smart devices and its historical background in the colonial practices. The work questions the use of technology and its tendency to typecast. In the video he features a woman’s face captured by a camera screen, which appears to confuse the facial recognition system so that a sequence of ethnographic masks interrupts the frame. This work recalls colonial mechanisms of racial classifications and the construction of historical narratives.
About the Filmmaker
Yazan Khalili is a visual artist, architect, and cultural activist. Khalili's photography is detailed, reflective and full of intent. Using photography and the written word, Khalili unpacks historically constructed landscapes. Borrowing from cinematic language, images become frames where the spectator embodies the progression of time and narratives. He weaves together parallel stories over the years, forming both questions and paradoxes concerning scenery and the act of gazing, all of which are refracted through the prism of intimate politics and alienating poetics. In particular, he focuses on the effect of geographical distance on our rendering of territory, and its ability to heighten or arrest our political and sentimental attachments.Born 1981. Works in and out of Palestine, currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he is a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. He is an architect, visual artist, and cultural producer. His works have been exhibited in several major exhibitions, including among others: Documenta fifteen 2022, KW, Berlin 2020, MoCA Toronto 2020, New Photography, MoMA 2018, Jerusalem Lives, Palestinian Museum, 2017, Post-Peace, Kunstverein Stuttgart 2017, Shanghai Biennial 2016, Sharjah Biennial 2013. In 2020 he co-founded Radio Alhara, and in 2019 he co-founded The Question of Funding collective.
- Year2015
- Runtime7:30
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryPalestine
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorYazan Khalili
- FilmmakerYazan Khalili
ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION assembles works that counter the epistemes of Western technoscience, from across the SWANA region and its diasporic time-spaces. These works call forth ancestral intelligences, inheriting forms of worldmaking surfaced from the lacunae of omissive datasets and archives of dispossession. They traverse algorithmic dream divination; develop tools for upending classificatory protocols; evade technologies of capture; and conjure precolonial deities through radio transmissions. They invoke alternate temporalities, rejecting the consignment of non-Western technologies to the dustbins of media history.
ANCESTRAL COMPUTATION is curated by Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and is co-presented by ArteEast and e-flux. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. The program will be presented in-person at e-flux, on October 21st starting at 7 pm, for more information visit e-flux.com. The screening will be followed by a discussion between artist Nouf Aljowaysir and the curator. The full ANCESTRAL INTELLIGENCES program will be available online on artearchive.org from October 21 - 31, 2025. This program expands on the screening Ancestral Intelligences, hosted at Cambridge University by Cambridge Film & Screen and Cambridge Visual Culture. Ancestral Intelligences was curated by Mashinka Hakopian in conversation with Kareem Estefan.
How do we disappear in the digital age? this is a project that works with the facial recognition technologies in smart devices and its historical background in the colonial practices. The work questions the use of technology and its tendency to typecast. In the video he features a woman’s face captured by a camera screen, which appears to confuse the facial recognition system so that a sequence of ethnographic masks interrupts the frame. This work recalls colonial mechanisms of racial classifications and the construction of historical narratives.
About the Filmmaker
Yazan Khalili is a visual artist, architect, and cultural activist. Khalili's photography is detailed, reflective and full of intent. Using photography and the written word, Khalili unpacks historically constructed landscapes. Borrowing from cinematic language, images become frames where the spectator embodies the progression of time and narratives. He weaves together parallel stories over the years, forming both questions and paradoxes concerning scenery and the act of gazing, all of which are refracted through the prism of intimate politics and alienating poetics. In particular, he focuses on the effect of geographical distance on our rendering of territory, and its ability to heighten or arrest our political and sentimental attachments.Born 1981. Works in and out of Palestine, currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he is a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam. He is an architect, visual artist, and cultural producer. His works have been exhibited in several major exhibitions, including among others: Documenta fifteen 2022, KW, Berlin 2020, MoCA Toronto 2020, New Photography, MoMA 2018, Jerusalem Lives, Palestinian Museum, 2017, Post-Peace, Kunstverein Stuttgart 2017, Shanghai Biennial 2016, Sharjah Biennial 2013. In 2020 he co-founded Radio Alhara, and in 2019 he co-founded The Question of Funding collective.
- Year2015
- Runtime7:30
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryPalestine
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
- DirectorYazan Khalili
- FilmmakerYazan Khalili