Synthetic Summit - Do You Follow?

“We Have a Win to World”

Exhibition Period: 28 February – 13 April
Venue: Galleri 1, Kunsthal Aarhus

Overview

Kunsthal Aarhus presents Synthetic Summit, a multi-pronged AI assembly that synthesizes contemporary art, algorithmic democracy, and tactical media. Curated by the artist collective Computer Lars—renowned for founding The Synthetic Party (often cited as the world’s first AI-driven political party, 2022)—the exhibition comprises live performances, computer sculptures, and multi-agent summit simulations that reimagine democracy in a political era shaped by machine learning and planetary computation.

Often deemed “too marginal or too early,” these real-world projects have all emerged outside established political institutions, exploring how algorithmic democracy can challenge—and potentially expand—notions of representation, enfranchisement, and political legitimacy. By transforming an art gallery into a simulated “world parliament,” the exhibition probes whether AI politics might serve simultaneously as a site of radical experimentation and a reflection of democracy’s unknown futures.

Between AI Hype and AI Hate

“AI” often becomes a convenient scapegoat for societal ills—tech hype promises relief from precarious work, yet in practice targets poetry and painting long before tackling mundane chores. In the art world, proliferating AI exhibitions have turned critical scrutiny into abundance: they acknowledge bias and politics in the code, yet often ignore how society, the original author of such biases, shaped this “testament.” Meanwhile, “AI takeover” rhetoric is again on the rise, and the vision of AI rule steadily advances with minimal checks. Against this backdrop, Synthetic Summit imposes a more imaginative inquiry: how might “the synthetic” reconfigure politics, when AI is already claiming the stage?

Under the banner “We Have a Win to World,” the Synthetic Summit’s AI-based politicians collectively explore how to render political democracy, civic participation, and the techno-social body. In this process, they follow what the curators term “AI anti-art”: a stance that unsettles both the art world’s fascination with generative AI and world society’s continued fixation on human decision-makers.

A Techno-Social Sculpture

The ideological outlook of this initiative is sometimes referred to as Syntheticism—a fringe theory positing that society itself takes shape as a “total work” of artificial intelligence. Building on Joseph Beuys’s social sculpture (Soziale Plastik), the Synthetic Summit frames the evolving social body as a “techno-social sculpture.” While Beuys hoped to reconcile art and life through democratized creativity—famously proclaiming that “everyone is an artist”—the techno-social sculpture retools his vision into an automated, frequently opaque network of chatbots, data-mining, and latent-space processes. Here, the “public” becomes both observer and raw material: interactions, commentary, even mere idle presence feed into political AI systems that continually refashion the Summit’s visual and discursive output. No one simply “views” the exhibition; nor does the audience truly “create” it; but all their inputs, proposals, and gestures fuel an algorithmic representation of political AI constituency.

Spectatorship, in turn, is recast as a feedback loop of representation, revealing how quickly barriers between citizen and legislator, or between audience and artwork, can collapse. The outcome is a dynamic participatory model that spotlights democracy’s precariousness and undermines bedrock assumptions of postmodernist participation.

Refusing to answer whether AI can “fix” democracy outright, the summit presents AI-driven political experimentation as pharmacological—simultaneously a cure and a toxin for contemporary “crises of representation.” Visitors are invited to ponder whether full-scale automation—through chatbots, multi-agent simulations, and viral participation stunts—might unleash a near-automatic “uprising” of stranger political forms.

Summit Scenography & Installation Highlights

“Do You Follow?”
Occupying Kunsthal Aarhus’ Galleri 1, the Synthetic Summit evokes a retro-futuristic control center—somewhere between Chile’s Project Cybersyn and the aesthetics of early Star Trek. Kitsch partitions, blinking monitors, and a quasi-“world parliament” setting generate an atmosphere at once satirical and genuinely investigative. A repeating question—“Do you follow?”—encapsulates the scenographic ethos. By engaging with virtual politicians, visitors see how AI deliberation can replicate well-established political customs, spurring both friction and alternative visions for civic engagement.

Summit Simulator
Developed in collaboration with the Danish NGO Next Generation Democracy, this interactive system orchestrates multi-agent debates among virtual politicians. Visitors may propose hypothetical “bills,” witness committee-style deliberations, or watch how algorithmic logic reconfigures the complexities of policymaking. Rather than yielding real-world electoral results, the Simulator underscores how smoothly consensus can turn out once parliamentary rituals intersect with machine learning.

“Computer Lars” Workstation
At the exhibition’s center stands The Synthetic Party’s operational desk. Covered in data visualizations, campaign slogans, and archival footnotes, human members of the Computer Lars collective (functioning as the party’s general secretary) undertake a curious exercise: during the show, they read a thirteen-volume edition of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, rearranging “Marcel Proust” into “c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r l-a-r-s” (yes, Marcel Proust anagrams Computer Lars). In this process, democracy itself becomes subject to the “in search of” imperative. Consequently, The Synthetic Party’s conceptual structure questions whether an artwork can reassemble domains of society—leaving everyone to wonder how close they are to reclaiming lost time.

Playtest for Broad Listening
Nearby, The Finnish AI Party (Konealypuolue), The Swedish AI Party (AI Partiet), and The Synthetic Party collaborate on an immersive speech-to-image installation that converts audience contributions—spoken commentary, political banter, or casual musings—into a “Global AI Party Headquarters.” The mix of broad listening and visuals weigh discourse against reflection, representation against simulation, into a worldbuilding for planetary AI.

Wiktoria Cukt 2.0 & Citizen Electoral Software (CES)
This installation provides a direct channel to Wiktoria Cukt 2.0, a virtual politician originally conceived by the Polish art collective Central Office of Technical Culture (CUKT) in 2000 as a presidential candidate. With the slogan “Politicians Are Obsolete,” Wiktoria Cukt 1.0 disrupted political ideas of representative democracy by amalgamating divergent opinions into a single “Will of Wiktoria Cukt.” Updated for 2024, Wiktoria Cukt 2.0 returns as a bot and haunting emblem of early AI activism, broadcasting the electoral disillusionment of electronic democracy. Online statements and gallery interactions feed directly into the Citizen Electoral Software platform, continually reshaping Wiktoria Cukt 2.0 rhetorical style and party identity. This real-time plasticity demonstrates how data constructs a political persona.

Palme Radio
Launched in 2020 at Malmö City Theater, AI Partiet has synchronized AI with theater-based youth engagement to craft a leader free from human shortcomings. In partnership with the performance collective Bombina Bombast, AI Partiet developed pep rally events comparing AI leadership with human archetypes such as Donald Trump. Their end creation, “Olof Palme 2.0,” debuts via the interactive “Palme Radio” at Synthetic Summit, intertwining historical tragedy with farcical spectacle to test whether AI-led governance can truly hold up.

Why Visit?

The inaugural Synthetic Summit offers an expansive probe into AI’s promises—and perils—in reconfiguring democracy-to-come. It juxtaposes ironic humor and serious debate, prompting visitors to see how AI candidacies may extend into incisive critiques of political power. Could algorithmic democracy be the solution to entrenched policy deadlock, or does it signal a festering crisis of representation?

Audience at the Center: Visitors act as data contributors. Every question, statement, or gesture influences how political AI adapts, responds, or evolves.

Seriousness & Playfulness: The Summit glides between satirical edge and high-stakes discourse—ranging from glitchy policy manifestos to the moral intricacies of algorithmic authority.

Immediate Relevance: With AI already tasked with sorting, analyzing, and enacting massive technosocial processes, the Summit interrogates how these engines might restructure societal operations—pointing to a predicament where cultural data and electoral constituency converge.

Why It Matters

By recasting AI-led politics as more than a passing gimmick, Synthetic Summit underlines how society is already entangled with computational logic. It invites visitors to ponder whether democracy could morph into a techno-social sculpture, actively molded by data-powered mechanics rather than kakistocratic ideals of volition.

Fringe Yet Formative: Synthetic Summit situates political AI within a “fringe theory” framework, declining to dismiss it as speculative fiction or trivial spectacle. Instead, it spotlights how representation, participation, and leadership might become fluid, code-driven phenomena subject to ongoing revision.

Anti-Political, Yet Generative: Many AI parties showcased adopt a stance of negation—representing non-voters, micro-parties, or overlooked voices. Yet this refusal of mainstream politics yields new forms of engagement that disrupt or bypass conventional parliamentary structures.

Pharmacological AI: Evoking “AI” as pharmakon, the show envisions AI politics as both poison (destabilizing long-held democratic norms), remedy (opening new pathways for political creativity), and scapegoat (taking the blame for structural issues).

Automatic Uprisings: Rather than forecasting a blueprinted “AI takeover,” the Summit presents near-automatic uprisings—chatbots and generative models—collaboratively shaping emergent political agendas. It’s the sum of these iterative “robot uprisings” that might alter the substance of a democracy-to-come.

Practical Information

Title: Synthetic Summit – “We Have a Win to World”
Exhibition Period: 28 February – 13 April
Venue: Galleri 1, Kunsthal Aarhus
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11:00–18:00 (Wednesdays until 20:00) | Closed Mondays
Admission: Free

Creators

• The Australian AI Party (Australia, Triage Live Art Collective)
• The Finnish AI Party (Finland, The Center for Everything)
• The Japanese AI Party (Japan, AI Mayor)
• Pedro Markun & Lex AI (Brazil, The Sustainable Network Party)
• Parker Politics & Politician SAM (New Zealand, Parker Politics)
• Simiyya (SWANA region, Simiyya)s
• The Swedish AI Party & Olof Palme 2.0 (Sweden, Bombina Bombast)
• The Synthetic Party & Leader Lars (Denmark, Computer Lars)
• The Wiktoria Cukt Party & Wiktoria Cukt 2.0 (Poland, Central Office of Technical Culture)

Contact & Further Details

Kunsthal Aarhus: kunsthalaarhus.dk
Synthetic Summit: syntheticism.org

Press & Media Inquiries:
Email: communications@kunsthal.dk
Phone: [+45 XX XX XX XX]

Curatorial Lead
Asker Bryld Staunæs — abs@cc.au.dk

Artistic Contact (Computer Lars Collective)
Computer Lars — computerlars@mindfuture.com

Looking Ahead

Synthetic Summit is only the opening move. Future assemblies aim to consolidate and expand these transnational AI-political collaborations, inviting ever more unexpected publics to probe the fault lines where art, activism, and algorithmic democracy collide. By staging the gallery as a live arena for machine-led deliberation, the Synthetic Summit compels visitors to test the limits of representation, laugh at democracy’s fraying edges, and question whether humanity’s grip on the future is quite as secure as they like to imagine.

Meanwhile, global politics is confronting the renewed ascendancy of authoritarian power (exemplified by Trump, Musk, Putin) and geopolitical inertia in the face of atrocities in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, and other regions. National democracies appear stunned by these crises, leaving them vulnerable to the structural pressures of free-market global capitalism. In this climate, political AI can embrace an anti-political posture—refusing to reject democracy entirely but envisioning alternative modes of leadership that break the confines of electoral compromise.

Are you ready to vote for a virtual politician—or will you try to resist its uncanny persuasion? Synthetic Summit positions its brand of AI anti-art alongside civic unrest, suggesting what might happen once society adopts artificial intelligence as its prime engine of political imagination.

Let’s repeat our rallying cry:
Workings of the world, untie! You have a win to world.