Generative AI companies rely on datasets that contain billions of photographs collected from across the internet. These photographs are of people—perhaps of you, or I, or people we love—many of whom will never know that their likeness is included in these datasets and being used to generate images, videos, text, or filters for selfies. Engaging the formats of masquerade, open-ended group brainstorm, and social contract, beck haberstroh’s We are already gathered aims to transform this data back into lived relationships and explore what happens when we reclaim these alienated representations of ourselves. 

Biography

beck haberstroh is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator. They work in community to stage performances, photographs and gatherings that center play and subvert power. In 2022, haberstroh presented a public artwork in the City of San Diego’s Park Social Initiative with collaborator Katie Giritlian and co-authored the book Camera of Possibilities: A Workbook for a Carrier Bag Theory of Photography (Brooklyn, NY: Paper Cameras Press) with Mira Dayal. They have participated in residencies and fellowships at SOMA, Mexico City (2022); BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2019); and Outpost Artist Resources, Queens, NY (2018). Their work has been shown in group exhibitions at venues, including the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego; Small Editions, Brooklyn; Gymnasium, Brooklyn;  Babycastles, New York; Knockdown Center, Brooklyn; Flux Factory, Queens; California State University Long Beach, Long Beach; and the Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY. Their writing has been published by HereIn, Syllabus Project, imaginedTheatres and SCREEN_. haberstroh holds a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego.