Xenocene: A Manifesto in Motion

Using their own body and an AI image generator, performance and XR artist Claudix Vanesix speculates on stage about non-human life and cyborgism.

The prefix “xeno”, meaning “other” or “foreign”, signals a shift from anthropocentric reality towards a multiplicity of intelligences and forms of agency. Claudix Vanesix uses their own body, as well as texts, images and sounds from non-human species as input for the AI image generator Stable Diffusion. Vanesix combines recognition of these life forms with techno-critical activism. In this way, “Xenocene: A Manifesto in Motion“ exposes the supremacist fetishes embedded in projects such as bioengineering, cryptoeconomies, space colonization, and the race toward Artificial General Intelligence.

The performance questions human dominance over the interpretation of the world by contrasting human “reality” with the “xenoreality” produced by an AI system. Is the world people perceive the only one that exists? Or merely one perspective among many, entangled in a post-human ontology where non-human intelligences also claim agency?

Claudix Vanesix is a performance and XR artist from Peru based in France. Their work is critical of sexism and racism in the digital social life and reflects about its impact on the physical world. Claudix creates performance and Virtual Reality art that challenges the narrative of technological inevitability by mixing new technologies with ancestral traditions. HAU presented Claudix Vanexis for the first time in 2024 as part of the festival “Spy on Me. Enter AI” and has been working with the artist ever since.