Letter from the Editor – Issue 15

In a recent New York Times article, the authors lament the use of so-called “synthetic data” — data that is itself created by artificial intelligence — to further train AI programs. Making clear the ouroborosian horror of the technology, +972 Magazine published an exposé in early April revealing “Lavender,” the Artificial Intelligence program that the Israeli army has trained to identify supposed Hamas militants in its prosecution of a genocide against Palestinians. Once Lavender reached a successful identification rate of 90%, “authenticated” by human beings, it was then fed its own data back to itself to begin generating bombing targets with little regard for accuracy, human verification, or civilian casualties (or, perhaps, with high regard for civilian casualties, since Lavender quickly came to the conclusion that striking a militant’s home or apartment building, and anyone in it, was the lowest cost and most effective strategy for a confirmed kill).  

Synthetic data reminds me of what in Marxian terms is called “false consciousness.” In an 1893 letter to the German historian Franz Mehring, Engels clarified his and Marx’s overemphasis on economic forces in an individual’s development, a position first claimed in their arguments with the idealism of the Young Hegelians. Sketching out a theory of consciousness, Engels wrote to Mehring:

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought.

What Engels calls false consciousness is, of course, just consciousness. We can only ever see our world through the thick miasma of the prejudices, misunderstandings, arguments, and bad ideas of the past. “Synthetic data” is qualitatively indistinct from “authentic” data; for better and for worse, it is all we have.

It is the second of May and I am writing this in a New York City hotel room, so this all has me wondering just what those reporters for liberal and progressive outlets must be thinking as they lavished praise on the NYPD for their raid on Columbia University, or persist in making demeaning, specious claims about supposed outside agitators, or ridiculously try to displace protestors’ anger onto Chinese or Russian propaganda. Has anyone in jackboots and riot gear ever been on the right side of history? Has anyone who has claimed outside agitation not been lying for gain? In all those stories that CNN and the New York Times’ journalists were weaned on — the images that structured their notion of activism, of civil rights campaigns, of just and peaceful protest — were the ones with the pepper spray and zip ties ever the good guys? The straitjacket of invisibilized ideology, the cynical knots that human belief ties itself into to keep its story straight to itself, can only astound.

In much better news, Cornelia Magazine is proud to celebrate its fifth birthday with our fifteenth issue! At BICA, we never planned to start a magazine; a print publication was the natural product of a writing workshop held by Lindsay Preston Zappas, artist and founding publisher of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA, for short), in the summer of 2019. But the mutual needs of artists, writers, and institutions in our region to make their work visible made the necessity of such a crazy sounding endeavor clear.

In this issue, super-hyphenate Alexa Wajed reflects on the work and career of artist Phyllis Thompson through her recent exhibition at Buffalo Arts Studio; my colleague at Alfred University, Kelsey Sucena, writes about Playthings, on view this spring in the school’s Fosdick-Nelson Gallery; and Gabriella Victoria digs into the recent resurgence of spiritual themes in visual art. North of the border, curator and researcher Warren Harper explores sustainable curatorial strategies in the exhibition Erratic Behavior at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, and Ashley Culver continues her coverage of Toronto’s alternative spaces with a look at The Public Studio, an activist design firm with a storefront gallery. 

We want to thank our readers, our sponsoring advertisers, and the artists and writers who make Cornelia possible. You will also notice a redesigned cover for this issue, thanks to designer Mark Yappueying, who has been with us since day one. The clean copy and great photos are thanks to copy editor Emily Mangione and BICA gallery assistant wavy. We’re also excited to introduce Camille Jolicoeur to the Cornelia team for the summer. Camille will be helping to expand the magazine’s footprint in Ontario. You should check out her own collaborative publishing project Class Favourite, which recently produced a second issue.

Nando Alvarez-Perez
Editor-in-Chief

Published by

The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art

Editor-in-Chief

Nando Alvarez-Perez

Executive Director

Emily Ebba Reynolds

Copy Editor

Emily E. Mangione

Design

Mark Yappueying

Production Assistant & Photo Editor

wavy

Contributing Writers
Ashley Culver
Warren Harper
Alexa Joan
Kelsey Sucena
Gabriella Victoria