The Age of AgentfullessnessÂ
(2025)
Presentation at the Decentralised Creativity and Agential Systems in Music conference.
Conference schedule here.
November 17-18, 2025
Ghent, Belgium
ABSTRACT
The paradoxical notion of ‘agentfullessness’ attempts to encapsulate a kind of agency that is both deployed and retracted, where intentionality is both manifest and thwarted. It is an apt vehicle to discuss practices that aspire to circumvent or even erase their points of origin. This presentation will ground its critique on the examination of various precursors that resolutely explored acentric strategies. These proto-pseudo-algorithmic experiments offer lasting lessons based on the contradictions that they excelled in, the paradoxes that they fostered, the absurdities that they mined. From the spinning emptiness of Ken Friedman’s Zen for Record (1966), to the sensory deprivation of Adrian Piper’s Untitled Performance at Max’s Kansas City (1970), to Sturtevant’s copycat recreations, to Lee Lozano’s steadfast refusals, these are thought experiments rendered as performances and objects and then thrust onto the public sphere. Yes, to a certain degree, they’ve been commodified and canonized, but have we fully digested them yet? They can function as especially useful models of how to undo words using language as a vehicle. Could they serve as templates for ULMs (Unlearning Language Models)? Could they serve as cues with which we can better approach the AI vortex? Is the aim to dismantle the once mighty ‘I’ the solution? Perhaps the decentering of human-centric creativity is itself anthropocentric in the sense that it assumes that humans are at the center to begin with. That solipsistic logic is arguably how we got into trouble in the first place. Perhaps they merely offer tools for resistance and slowing down, and maybe that’s enough. In “Games of Art” Dick Higgins mentions striving to be in a state of invitingness. He found the term “clumsy but clear”, I think he downplayed its fittingness. Presence and radical openness (bell hooks) is implicit in the notion of invitingness. Laudable? Yes. Revolutionary? Perhaps. Here I invite you to avoid the temptation to tabula rasa the past and instead dwell in the interesting correspondences that run across seemingly disparate disciplines and paradigms.