21 May 2026
Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
Website
From May 18 to 22, the Faculty of Arts of Vytautas Magnus University presents the art and culture festival “VMU Culture Days”. This 10th anniversary program includes a film and meetings with creators, discussions, exhibitions, open lectures, interdisciplinary student projects, and a live music concert. The festival will bring together the academic community, cultural professionals, city residents, and everyone interested in culture and contemporary art.
On May 21, artist, filmmaker, and theorist Zach Blas will present the public lecture “Silicon Traces: Belief, Fantasy, and Xeno-Teloi in the Informatics of Domination” (in English). In this artist talk, Blas will focus on artworks from his ongoing Silicon Traces series (2017–present), a trilogy of moving image installations and related works that contend with the histories, philosophies, beliefs, fictions, and fantasies shaping Silicon Valley’s visions of the future as means to domination. He will discuss artworks Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 (2018), The Doors (2019), and CULTUS (2023) and will share his artistic methods for working with computer graphics and artificial intelligence. He will also discuss theoretical concepts developed while conducting this artistic research, including xeno-telos and metric mysticism.
This lecture, in the context of the festival, opens up another – future-oriented – perspective in which art and computer technology intertwine into new relations of power and opportunity.
Dr. Zach Blas’ visit to VMU is organized and funded by the Transform4Europe Visiting Professors Program.
Interview: “Between Carbon and Silicon: A Conversation with Renowned Artist Zach Blas About His Visit to VMU, Life in Contradiction, and the Pessimism of the AI Era”