Jasmin Höning // Bodies and AI in Art. Artistic Strategies for Disrupting the Dispositif of Control
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Research Associate
NameJasmin Höning
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Doctoral project
Working title: Bodies and AI in Art. Artistic Strategies for disrupting the Dispositif of Control
Subject area: Art History
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schankweiler, Prof. Dr. Carsten Junker
Abstract
This dissertation project examines contemporary artistic practices that reflect on and critically engage with the relationship between the body, control and artificial intelligence (AI). The starting point is the observation of a pronounced body-relatedness in current so-called “AI-art”. Through the use of AI in image production, facial recognition, and data analysis, bodies and body images are increasingly treated as data sets and operational images as part of AI systems. These systems are based on normative assumptions, reproduce power relations, and use and produce images that do not merely represent, but act – by classifying, evaluating, monitoring, optimising, and homogenising. This dissertation understands these processes as part of an expanded concept of control that encompasses aesthetic, epistemological, and sociopolitical dimensions.
The central thesis is that contemporary art not only addresses these forms of control, but actively disrupts, repurposes or reveals them through artistic strategies. The work asks what strategies are used in this process, where control mechanisms are reproduced, and under what conditions AI technologies can be transformed into tools of self-empowerment. It also examines how these works can be contextualised in the art history of the body(-images), what new aspects arise from the interrelation to AI, and what potential insights arise from the intertwining of art-historical and techno-critical discourses.
Methodologically, the dissertation follows a prismatic and interdisciplinary case study analysis, focusing on a specific artistic modus operandi in each case. The theoretical framework is based on Michel Foucault's concept of the control dispositif and its continuation into Gilles Deleuze's control society, complemented by more recent queer-feminist and postcolonial perspectives. Drawing on an understanding of the control dispositif as a network of discourses, institutions, laws and practices, AI technology is conceived as part of this network, which helps determine what is feasible, sayable and showable. Resilient artistic practices can therefore be found in a negotiation of what can be done, shown and said – but also in the unmasking of narratives, myths and fantasies surrounding AI. The aim is a systematic analysis of artistic strategies that reconfigure the body, AI and control and make them critically interrogable.
Curriculum Vitae
| Since April 2024 |
Doctoral student in the field of art history with Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schankweiler, TUD |
| 2021 - 2023 |
Research trainee |
| until 2021 |
Study of European Art History (major subject) as well as English Studies and Classical Archaeology (minor subjects) |
| 2018 - 2019 |
Research Assistant |
Publications
Patrizia Kränzlein. Linie – Fläche – Raum, hrsg. v. Kultur- und Sportamt Bietigheim-Bissingen und Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, 2023.
Die Suche nach „dem Absoluten, dem Klaren“. Wobbe Alkema, in: Avantgarde in den Niederlanden, hrsg. v. Kultur- und Sportamt Bietigheim-Bissingen und Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen 2022.
„Vom Wind gezeichnet, vom Licht gefärbt“. Job Hansen, in: Avantgarde in den Niederlanden, hrsg. v. Kultur- und Sportamt Bietigheim-Bissingen und Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen 2022.
Stille Muster in Bewegung. Zu Alum Lees Linolschnittserie Karomuster No.1 – No.100, in: Linolschnitt heute XII., hrsg. v. Kultur- und Sportamt Bietigheim-Bissingen und Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen 2022.
Abstrakte Kunst nach 1945 in Italien und Deutschland, in: Show & Tell. Studierende bieten Einblick in die Privatsammlung Erik Jayme, Ausst.-Kat., hrsg. v. M. Effinger und H. Keazor, Heidelberg University Publishing 2019.
Speeches
Conference contribution as part of the Ethics and Aesthetics of Artificial Images conference, Università Iuav di Venezia: ‘Towards Pluralisation? Artificial Body Images and Contemporary Art Practices’, 10 May 2025
Lecture as part of the event ‘THE ARTIST – Being an artist in times of “intelligent” technology’ DIE BÜHNE – The Theatre of TU Dresden: ‘Identity negotiations through self-representation in AI-generated art’, 12 October 2024
Conference contribution as part of the 5th TUDiSC Conference (Disrupting Scientific Boundaries), TU Dresden: ‘Reframing Faces – Artistic Strategies within the critique of AI training datasets’, 25 September 2024
Exhibition Opening Speech: 22 Years After – 22 Jahre Danach. Dieter Kränzlein und Frederick D. Bunsen, Kunstzentrum Karlskaserne Ludwigsburg, 17.09.2023.
Exhibition Opening Speech: Freier Fall und Ferner Stern. Zum 100. Geburtstag von Fred Stelzig, Städtische Galerie Bietigheim-Bissingen, 25.11.2022.