AI:African Intelligence is Manthia Diawara's latest essay film and explores the points of contact between rituals of African possession cults, as found in traditional fishing villages on Senegal’s Atlantic coast, and the emergence of new technologies in artificial intelligence.

The film screening will be followed by a short Q&A with the artist moderated by Monika Szewczyk.

Born in Mali, West Africa, Manthia Diawara is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University in New York and Abu Dhabi. He has published extensively in The New York Times Magazine, LA Times, Libération, Mediapart, October and Artforum and presented films in Berlin International Film Festival, Bienal de São Paulo, Biennale de Dakar, Biennale de Lubumbashi, Centre Pompidou, documenta, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Lumiar Cité, Museu de Serralves, HKW- Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Manifesta, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Pan-African Film & TV Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), Serpentine Galleries and Sharjah Biennial. Among his written and filmic essays on politics, poetics, art and cinema is a recently completed trilogy featuring intimate conversations with paradigm-defining (and defying) activist-intellectuals: Édouard Glissant. One World in Relation (2010), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2016) and Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023). His recent films AI:African Intelligence (2022) and A Letter from Yene (2022) open a new trajectory of research into the perspectival possibilities offered by the traditions and current transformations under way in West Africa.

During the academic year 2022/2023 Monika Szewczyk is leading the seminar making hi-stories as the Visiting Research Fellow of the QuiS program, designed for Fine Arts and Curatorial Studies students of Städelschule and Goethe University. She has been recently appointed the Audain Chief Curator at The Polygon Gallery, situated on unceded territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Tsleil-Waututh, and xwməθkwəýəm Nations (aka Vancouver, Canada). She first worked with Manthia Diawara as curator for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel towards the premiere of An Opera of the World (2017).

Organized by Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule in cooperation with DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main and made possible by generous support from Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst as part of the Förderprogramm QuiS.

More information and tickets on the website of the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum