Lecture/Artist Talk – Mark von Schlegell
A Brief History of the Artificial Authors of the World

In Mark von Schlegell’s science fiction novels, artificial intelligences display consciousness and self-hood as ambiguous as any human’s. They devour human literature. In this lecture the writer/artist presents his quasi-fictional theory of the „Realometer“ and his own practice to show how his idea of literature’s ability to tunnel transformative imagination into the real can, in the current context, more than ever see itself as tied to the book, to the archive, and to independent art-making in other media.

Mark von Schlegell is an American/Irish writer and artist based in Cologne. An art critic since 1990s, author of the Semiotext(e) science fiction novels Venusia, Mercury Station, and Sundogz, and numerous imaginative fictions, essays, and fictocritical texts, he continues to develop an idiosyncratic „contemporary writing“ practice, collaborating with artists on various imaginative projects, scripting films, exhibitions, comics, stories, music and installations worldwide. Mark is also an exhibiting artist, regularly showing objects, installations, paintings and drawings, represented by Jan Kaps, Cologne. He has a Ph. D. in English and U.S. literature from New York University and has taught literature, art, and writing at NYU, CalArts, and the Städelschule Frankfurt