Metahaven’s work between design, filmmaking, textile, installation, and writing has been thoroughly linked with the internet and its geopolitics, pairing research with experimental, exuberant aesthetics.

The collective, founded in 2007 by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, in recent years has been focusing on the foundational role of poetry in both its cinematic and visual, but also its literary and cognitive senses. Their recent work uses poetry to form a linkage between art and science, like in the film work “Capture” (2022-), or as a way to question the mapping between language and feeling, like in “The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)” (2024). This film is based on a poetry collection by Eugene Ostashevsky. Metahaven recently co-authored “Latent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans” (2026) with Nina Beguš, Gašper Beguš, and Riccardo Petrini. This project combines an exploration of the unobserved vector space of neural network language models with a reinterpretation of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake.” Metahaven’s talk at Beaux-Arts will focus on the polyvalence of art and design, and will home in on poetry as an everyday art form that can challenge the predictability of the language we use.

The event is organised in partnership with École nationale supérieure d'arts de Paris Cergy.

Metahaven is an Amsterdam-based artist collective whose work comprises filmmaking, design, and writing. A central research topic in their work is the foundational role of poetry in an age of AI. In this framework, they recently published Latent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans with Nina Beguš, Gašper Beguš, and Riccardo Petrini, which combines an exploration of the inner latent space of neural network models with a reinterpretation of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Metahaven’s film works include The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) (2024), Chaos Theory (2021), Hometown (2018), and Information Skies (2016, nominated for the European Film Awards). Metahaven have presented solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; ICA London; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Asakusa, Tokyo; Izolyatsia, Kyiv; e-flux, New York, and State of Concept Athens, among others. They have participated in group exhibitions at Artists Space, New York; the Gwangju Biennale; the Sharjah Biennial; Ghost:2561, Bangkok, and many others. Their films have been screened at IFFR, Docs Against Gravity, CPH:DOX, the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others. As designers, Metahaven have worked or are working with Balenciaga; Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture, Almaty; Valiz, Amsterdam; Sternberg Press, London, and many others. They have created activist design for Sea Shepherd (2016), Independent Diplomat (2014), WikiLeaks (2010). Their work is in several international museum and private collections, including the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Sharjah Art Foundation, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Victoria & Albert Museum, M HKA, and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Metahaven are artistic advisors at Rijksakademie, affiliate researchers at Antikythera, and heads of department at the Geo-Design MA at DAE. 
 

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