Technological wanderings
The quest for immortality, cryogenics, personal development, resource depletion, pyropictomania (or the pleasure derived from images of energy dissipation)... From the American West to the Atlantic coast, against a backdrop of climate catastrophe, we meet the authors of two books devoted to the technological turning point we are currently experiencing. How do these writings, connected to the visual arts and imbued with displacement, capture this turning point?
This meeting takes as its starting point two books that approach technology through the lens of displacement. The first, L’Être Plus, itinéraire pour devenir soi-même (Being More: A Journey to Becoming Yourself) by Stéphanie Solinas (Seuil, Fiction & Cie, 2023), is a road trip through Silicon Valley, where a frantic race against time and human obsolescence is underway. The author takes us on a journey through the world of the “augmented” human, between spirituality, artificial intelligence, and the quest for immortality.
The second, Les images pyromanes, théorie-fiction des IA génératives (UV éditions, 2025) by Pierre Cassou-Noguès and Gwenola Wagon—a philosopher and an artist—examines the aesthetic and political implications of generative AI through a series of speculative tales in which a pair of real estate agents imagine reality using the platform, a generative image AI.
Visual artist, author, and researcher, Stéphanie Solinas develops a multifaceted body of work at the intersection of photography, books, and installation. Exploring the thought process involved in the very act of “seeing,” and the interweaving of the visible and the invisible, the rational and belief, and the dynamics between oneself and others, her field of investigation spans from the 19th to the 21st century, from the birth of photography to artificial intelligence. Her work has been exhibited at SFMOMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum in the US, FOAM in Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume, Rencontres d'Arles, and Musée national Eugène-Delacroix in France.
Since 2014, Stéphanie Solinas has been conducting a series of identity mapping operations, between materialism and transcendence, which she anchors in three chosen locations: Iceland, Italy, and the west coast of the United States.
Philosopher and writer Pierre Cassou-Noguès is a professor in the philosophy department at Paris VIII University and a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France. His work is characterized by a theoretical use of fiction, which he employs to question contemporary technologies and confront philosophical concepts with the environmental crisis. His publications include Les cauchemars cybernétiques de Norbert Wiener (Seuil, 2014), La bienveillance des machines (Seuil, 2022) and, with Gwenola Wagon, Les images pyromanes. Théories fictions des IA génératives (UV-éditions, 2025). He has also collaborated with Gwenola Wagon on several films and installations.
Gwenola Wagon is an artist and researcher. She teaches at École des Arts de la Sorbonne at Paris 1 University. Through installations, films, performances, and books, she imagines alternative and paradoxical narratives to reflect on the contemporary digital world. In collaboration with artist Stéphane Degoutin, she co-directed World Brain, La Maison qui vous veut du bien (The House That Wants You Well) and the book Psychanalyse de l’aéroport international (Psychoanalysis of the International Airport), as well as numerous other pieces. She published the book Planète B (Planet B, 369 éditions) and directed the video Chroniques du soleil noir (Chronicles of the Black Sun) in partnership with the Paris Observatory for the exhibition Prendre le soleil (Sunbathing) at Hangar Y.
Photo credits: Portrait of Stéphanie Solinas © François Bellabas / Portrait of Pierre Cassou-Noguès © Droits réservés / Portrait of Gwenola Wagon © Droits réservés
