International Conference "The Artificial Mind: Art and Philosophy after AI"

International Conference

The Artificial Mind: Art and Philosophy after AI

24-25 September 2026

National Gallery of Art

22 Konstitucijos Ave. 

Vilnius, Lithuania

The title “Artificial Mind” references Claude Lévi-Strauss’ The Savage Mind (La Pensée sauvage (1962), a foundational work in anthropology, in which he argues that “savage” and “civilized” thought share the same epistemological architecture – differing not in structure but in mode of operations. While the “civilized” engineer works with purpose-built concepts and tools toward a specific end, the “savage” bricoleur thinks with whatever is at hand, constructing new meanings from fragments.

With the advent of AI and large language models (LLMs), we might speak of a new variation of thought – the Artificial Mind – that combines these principles. AI is typically figured as the apotheosis of engineering: a rational, systematic agent grounded in logic, computation, and algorithm. Yet what LLMs actually do resembles bricolage far more closely – repurposing and recombining existing anthropogenetic materials to produce outputs that are heterogeneous assemblages rather than engineered constructions in the strict sense. More fundamentally, the Artificial Mind points to the technicality of thought itself, which no longer appears as an autonomous, interior human faculty, but as an operational process structured by historically and materially situated practices. 

Unsurprisingly, AI has provoked philosophy – across both its analytic and continental branches – into responses, reflections, and reservations ranging from careful conceptual revision to outright alarm. Perception, judgement, agency – domains previously considered exclusive to human reasoning – are now contested terrain. Phenomenology asks how mediation by artificial neural networks alters the fundamental structures of experience; ethics becomes concerned with the conditions of moral formation when the environments that shape us become generative, while political philosophy – with what institutional settings are required when the very capacities of judgement become increasingly automated. 

The conference invites theoretical and empirical contributions on the tectonic transformations AI has introduced into the conceptual space of the post – at least insofar as it pertains to the human. Conceptually, this rethinking necessitates a shift from anthropology toward postanthropology – at once a postanthropocentric revision of disciplines confronted with a non-human form of thought, and a broader interrogation of the Anthropos as the presumed center of agency, knowledge, and meaning-making. 

This rethinking is not without tensions. The apparent radical alterity of the artificial mind remains deeply embedded in all-too-human systems – and is therefore inescapably implicated in their structures and mechanisms of exploitation, extraction, and control – capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, among others. As Luciana Parisi observes, AI is haunted by “the paradox of aesthetics and recursive algorithms that sustain the freedom of homo bioeconomicus through the prototype of the slave-machine” (2023). In this sense, AI occupies an ambivalent position: it destabilizes the human/non-human distinction that has historically underpinned oppressive regimes, while simultaneously intensifying and rearticulating them.

At the same time, the notion of the artificial points toward artifice – the domain of art – where meaning has long been produced through practices of bricolage: mediation, staging, and re/combination. AI- and algorithmic art render these operations not only explicit but scalable and programmable, thereby problematizing the status of artistic production: what does it mean to make art after AI? Confronted with the automation of its own conditions of possibility, will art remain a privileged site of meaning-making or become one modality of algorithmic recombination among many?  

Rather than a eulogy for the human or for art, the conference is envisioned as a platform of creative exchange between philosophical and artistic interventions – a collective attempt to think our posthuman or more-than-human future(s). In line with Yuk Hui’s programmatic vision, we want to foster artistic, conceptual, and technical practices that “maintain and reproduce biodiversity, noodiversity, and technodiversity” (2023) under the homogenizing conditions of automation. 

Contributions may address, but not limited to:

·      AI and the transformation of mind, thought, and cognition

·      Post/Phenomenology of AI and the mediation of embodiment

·      Art, technics, and creative practices in the age of AI and algorithms

·      Agency, subjectivity, and authorship in human-machine assemblages

·      Ethical, critical, and political perspectives on AI infrastructures

·      Alternative technological imaginaries and technocultures

·      Experimental, speculative, and situated approaches to AI

Proposals of up to 250 words should be sent to Denis Petrina ([email protected]) by August 15 2026. Please include the speaker’s name and institutional affiliation. Accepted presenters will be notified by August 25 2026. 

A thematic issue of “Athena: Philosophical Studies” is planned for 2027. Extended articles based on conference presentations will be considered for publication.  

Information about the journal: https://athena.lt/home

Conference fee: The conference is free of charge. However, travel and accommodation expenses are to be covered by participants. 

Working language: English

Format: The conference is an onsite event.

Conference organizer: Lithuanian Culture Research Institute

Conference partner: National Gallery of Art

Organizing committee: Danutė Bacevičiūtė, Laurynas Norus, Denis Petrina, Justas Petronis, Augustas Pinkevičius, Aistis Žekevičius, Audronė Žukauskaitė

Contact for enquiries: [email protected]