-1 Séances #5: Desire&Technology Reading Group

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–1 Digital Lab’s Desire&Technology reading group continues. This edition: The Extractive Logic(s) of AI.

Which processes of appropriation and exploitation are involved in the production of surplus-value behind AI technologies? How can we conceptualise these processes? Are we speaking of a new mode of production or is it simply business-as-usual? In the final public session of –1 Séances: Desire&amp;Technology, a six-part reading and discussion series by –1 Digital Lab, the reading group will explore how data extractivism underpins our current technologies and what this means for a critique of contemporary capitalism.The talk by guest speaker Claudio Celis will begin with a brief history of data extractivism, tracing how this phenomenon has developed and mutated across different stages such as the rise of the attention economy, the development of machine vision, and the explosive massification of generative AI models. It will then focus on the specific notion of data extractivism and reflect on the conceptual differencesbetween extraction and exploitation. We will examine the issue of the hidden labour behind AI (both data work and user labour) as a way to illustrate the exploitation/extraction debate. Finally, the talk will present and unpack three different diagnoses of the present: technofeudalism, rentier capitalism, and cybernetic capitalism.

About Claudio Celis BuenoClaudio Celis Bueno is an assistant professor in new Media and Digital Cultures at the Unviersity of Amsterdam. He is the author of The Attention Economy: Labour, Time, and Power in Cognitive Capitalism. He co-coordinates the research project AIsymmetries, and is the director of the research group AI &amp; Cultural Production.

About -1 Digital Lab &amp; –1 Séances<a href="https://nieuweinstituut.nl/projects/minus-one" title="https://nieuweinstituut.nl/projects/minus-one" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">–1 Digital Lab</a> is an experimental space and research studio for digital culture located in the basement of the Nieuwe Instituut. In 2026, –1 Digital Lab is exploring the provocative intersection of technology with desire, including through offering a hospitable space for attending to key theoretical perspectives outside of academic settings. We regard theory as a form of practice in that it can help us grasp our present and collectively orient ourselves in a rapidly changing and increasingly technified world.

Photo credit: 1. Roel Backaert. Graphic Design by Maria Mombers.

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-1 Séances #5: Desire&Technology Reading Group

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-1 Séances #5: Desire&Technology Reading Group

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