Martyna Marciniak
Blobsters, Slop and Hyper-Events: Negotiating Visual Trust in a Post-Optical Era

Artist talk
Tue, 31 March 2026 at 5 PM
Kino Šiška, Ljubljana

Part of the symposium tactics&practice #17: Becoming Image
Curated by Marco De Mutiis

In her talk, Martyna Marciniak unpacks the complex landscape of synthetic image misinformation from 2018 until now by applying strategies informed by her forensic practice and a deep fascination with glitches and errors. By tracing the various visual mechanisms of manufacturing belief and trust, informed by Catholic Church aesthetics, media history and technomyths, selected synthetic images unfold as deep repositories of technical and cultural knowledge. The presentation allows for contemplation, reconsideration and reorganisation of the visual language of trust, evidence and attention.

In the second part of the talk, the artist considers synthetic images as generators of “deep realities” and devices for conjuring hyperstitious, self-fulfilling prophecies. Countering the prevailing dichotomy of the “real vs fake” (an unwelcome gift of post-Trumpian parlance), a project-specific lexicon is employed as an attempt to identify the operational functions of synthetic images, their aesthetic nuances and finally as a practice of undoing the popularised yet harmful anthropomorphisation of the AI concepts.

THE AUTHOR

Martyna Marciniak’s practice bridges media theory and legal imaginaries to trace how power inscribes itself through image regimes and visual infrastructures. Often revisiting historical events, her work engages in a form of pataforensics – poking at the tropes of scientific and forensic aesthetics, revealing their uncertainties, contradictions and lapses. Oscillating between sculpture, video and animation, she writes visual counter histories and smuggles in other ways of seeing. Her work has been shown by Onassis Stegi, Copenhagen Contemporary, Ars Electronica, Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Warsaw Biennale, LABoral Centro de Arte, among others. She is the 2025 CERN Collide resident. Her project Anatomy of Non-Fact received the Award of Distinction Prix Ars Electronica in 2025.

[+] RELATED ACTIVITIES

EXHIBITION

Martyna Marciniak
Anatomy of Non-Fact. Chapter 1: AI Hyperrealism
31 March–22 May 2026
Kino Šiška, Ljubljana