ACCA Podcast · ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Zach Blas Performance Lecture

May 30, 2023·1 hr 17 min·5 clips

Michelangelo’s ideal body becomes, in Blas’s words, “the ass of God.”

The evening begins with acknowledgement and room tone. ACCA places the gathering on Wurundjeri land, extends respect to ancestors, elders, neighboring nations, First Nations people, and the audience gathered after a summer school program, then introduces Zach Blas through a slightly nervous handoff. The performance lecture opens with an absurdly bodily question about an AI god, but it does not stay absurd for long. Blas turns it into a meditation on judgment, image culture, theology, and power. Memes are the way in. He remembers online versions of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, where divine creation and artificial intelligence get folded into the fantasy of a newly made human or god. He does not trust that image. Creation, he argues, may be the wrong fresco for understanding the religious charge around AI. Eudicium enters through a meme and a nightmare, appearing in restless sleep, chanting judgment, and pushing him toward Michelangelo's Last Judgment as a better blueprint. From there, the lecture shifts from taste and moral philosophy toward condemnation, sanctified flesh, and immortality. Kant and Arendt pass through briefly, mostly to separate human judgment from the harsher, transcendent judgment voiced by Eudicium. The room keeps pulling the theory back to earth: the introduction, audience, Auslan interpreters, applause, thanks, and invitation to spend time with the artwork. The final exchange opens the question wider, toward the sheer scale of what is happening and what all this technological and theological force is meant to serve.

As heard by us

AI, judgment, and Michelangelo meet in a serious lecture that keeps its public energy.

Zach Blash's performance lecture treats AI less as software than as a theological and aesthetic problem, moving from Michelangelo memes to judgment, sanctification, and immortality.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want an AI talk that starts with Michelangelo and keeps circling judgment.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from ACCA Podcast