Video screens shine gently from the floor, looped recordings with salt lakes, steppe villas and decaying nuclear testing places. There is a enormous hand -woven textile map, made by craftsmen in Kazakhstan. Gobelin faces 12 significant places in Kazakhstan and the surrounding area, each of which corresponds to one of the flickering films below. This is Poshuman Matter: The Map of Nomadizing Reimaginings #3The latest enormous -scale installation by a photographer and multimedia artist Almagul Menlibayeva.
Menlibayeva’s approach to artificial intelligence is not rooted in the fascination with technologically advanced innovation. It is rather part of a deeper settlement – with history, loss and systems that shape the way of remembering or erasing history. It is involved in AI not as a neutral tool, but as the area of power, ideology and potential transformation. “Perhaps my interest in artificial intelligence is rooted in the traumatic history of Kazakh nomads,” he says, remembering how collectivization from the Soviet time dismantled the way of life of her ancestors under the guise of technological progress.
Born in Kazakhstan and educated in the Soviet artistic system, the early training of Menlibayeva in the field of folk textiles and Russian futurism is observable in its layered hybrid works, which have been concentrated in photography and multi -channel video installations for many years. From 2022, she expanded her practice with artificial intelligence, marking the key evolution in decades of involvement in historical topics, cultural survival and ecological trauma. In this media, MenliBayeva criticizes the persistent effects of Soviet rule in Central Asia – from ecological degradation to cultural removal – at the same time enlivening the native and nomadic stories long replaced by the Empire. Thanks to artificial intelligence, she found a way to confront and re -assess these stories.
AI realism: Actar 2022 He was the first Menlibayeva project to include artificial intelligence. This is a visceral example of how it uses artificial intelligence to build counteracting. Created in response to bloody January protests in Kazakhstan – mass demonstrations, which were rapidly suppressed by the state, and then censored in the national media – the project constructs a synthetic landscape of memory from collective trauma. During the protests, the Kazakh government imposed almost complete internet blackout, plunging the nation into an information vacuum.
In the face of this blockade, Menlibayeva began to collect stories with protests from friends and social media, extracting key phrases in Kazakh and Russia, as well as voice messages sent via stationary lines and mobile networks. These fragments of true speech have become a raw material AI realism: Actar 2022. “The situation itself pushed me, because when these political events took place, the internet was closed throughout the country,” he recalls. “I used sounds of voice messages, the words of these people, to generate images of this work.”
The Menlibayeva process often begins analogue, with her own photos or videos – and even embroidered motifs passed on since older generations. These materials are transformed using stable diffusion, middle and embarrassment. Tools, including Deforum, runway and Kaiber AI, are used for video -related work, but not without friction. “My first stage is to find the right prompt. Then I choose the most suitable platform based on how well it works for this particular idea. Each platform has its strengths, restrictions and prejudices, so I adapt its approach accordingly,” he says.
While some celebrate the democratic potential of AI, Menlibayeva remains cautious. “AI is a complex tool with democratizing potential, as well as the risk of strengthening new hierarchies,” he warns, noting that “AI systems are often controlled by large corporations that affect access and power.”
So why apply them at all? Menlibayeva does not believe that AI is creating something really fresh, only what the data allows. But by putting your own images, myths and archives, it perceives this as opening a dialogue between algorithmic systems and human history. “AI works both as a tool and a distorted mirror, reflecting hidden codes, preferences and limitations of its creators: data, culture and power,” he says. “I consciously engage in these prejudices, embedding my personal mythologies in the process.”
For Menlibayeva, “humanization of artificial intelligence” does not mean teaching machines imitating empathy. Instead, it means embedding human stories, memories and resistance to their logic. In its art, AI becomes a way to regain state archives, historical books and dominant media. “That is why, as an artist, I try not to listen to this logic, but to transform it. Humanization AI is not the task of programmers, he is the task of artists,” he says.