We are delighted that Angelika Lepper’s talk on ‘Alexander Kluge’s Artificial Intelligence’ at the UNDERDOX halftime event, attended by just under 100 people, was so well received. She has therefore kindly provided us with her manuscript for publication, for which we are very grateful!
Primitive Diversity. Alexander Kluge and the subjunctive of images
Lecture by Angelika Lepper on 11 June 2026 at the Filmmuseum Munich
“Let’s start with a problem: “artificial intelligence.” The term has long since entered everyday language. It appears in almost every funding call, in every cultural section, in every strategy paper. It has become the buzzword of the moment, of the decade, probably of the century. And yet it is — and remains — a rather substantial lie.
In 2021, the media artist and theorist Francis Hunger gave a lecture with the programmatic title “Unhype AI.” His central argument: the term “intelligence” is an inaccurate and illegitimate anthropomorphization. It attributes qualities to the technology that it simply does not possess — and in doing so obscures what it actually does. Hunger proposes alternative terms instead: “automated pattern recognition,” “machine conditioning,” or “weighted network.” These may be less emotionally charged, but they are much closer to what is actually being described.
So what lies behind Hunger’s skepticism?”
[Translated by A.I.]