Topic Talk: Transhumanism: To Fear or to Follow?

What role can the performing arts play in questioning and celebrating the rise of AI? 

As a performing arts festival, but also as citizens inhabiting the world, we find ourselves questioning the ways in which we are integrating and implementing AI in our daily lives and creative practices. While these technologies promise new possibilities, they also raise urgent ethical, political, and social questions.  

In this Topic Talk, we invite artists, experts, and audiences to reflect on transhumanism in the performing arts: how are authorship and creativity shifting? Who benefits from these technologies? What does the idea of human “enhancement” mean for artists, audiences, and society? 

Join several Topic Talks throughout the festival at Stadsschouwburg, featuring artists, researchers, experts, and audiences. Let’s talk about resistance, the role of spectators in the field and beyond, art and power, ethics and AI, and more.

Topic talks are in-depth conversations on SPRING themes: current topics that matter. What trends do we see in the contemporary performing arts field and what do they mean for the world around us?