How to lose control and call it creativity
AI Café with Błażej Kotowski
Friday 14th November 2025, 16:00–18:00
servus.at clubraum, c/o 1.OG Stadtwerkstatt, Kirchengasse 4, 4040 Linz
This talk looks at how the language of “responsible,” “trustworthy,” and even “creative” AI is often used to soften and legitimize extractive infrastructures. I’ll discuss how narratives of creativity and ethics are mobilized to make technological systems appear open, empowering, and human-centred, all while keeping the same corporate logics intact. Stemming from my perspective as an artist and researcher, I’ll share examples from creative AI and academia, and consider how we might reclaim creativity from the narratives that instrumentalise it.
Bio: Błażej Kotowski is a researcher and artist whose work explores how emerging technologies shape modes of creation, perception, and relation. He is pursuing a PhD at the Music Technology Group, where he examines how AI architectures mediate creative processes and enable new forms of sonic expression. Through speculative and practice-based approaches, he develops sound works, installations, and generative systems that engage with the material and affective dimensions of computation. His work has been presented at festivals and venues including Ars Electronica, the Seoul Mediacity Biennale, AMRO, and +RAIN.
(Photo: Violetta Wakolbinger)
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About AI Café series
The AI Café is part of the cooperation project “Critical digitization for art and culture / Theater Phoenix x servus.at”, in which database-supported, automated, and algorithmic processes in theater operations are being explored. The project combines a critical examination of AI systems with their actual application in daily workflows. Part of the project, “KI Café” – a public event series in which different experiences and approaches to AI in cultural production are collected and discussed.