DIANE DRUBAY

"The future exists and will continue to exist, no matter what we do or fail to do. I only hope that art will be seen as a beacon, illuminating new forms of expression and new relationships between humans and more-than-humans,” says Diane Drubay. Her words carry a clear idea: art can be a guide in uncertain times and a way to imagine the future. 

For over fifteen years, Diane has been weaving a singular path, crossing borders between disciplines, geographies, and languages. As a visual artist, curator, and cultural strategist, she has dedicated her practice to creating spaces where art, technology, and ecological awareness come together to transform the ways we see, feel, and live in the present. Founder of We Are Museums, a living lab for cultural innovation, Diane has led projects that rethink the role of museums, advocating for collaboration, systems thinking, and radical imagination.

Her vision has left a mark across many latitudes: from hackathons to reinvent museums, to collaborations with institutions such as the Musée d’Orsay, HEK Basel, and Haus der Kunst München; from her active participation in the Tezos ecosystem, to the creation of alterHEN, an artist-led gallery exploring new cultural economies through digital art and NFTs.

But beyond her professional milestones, Diane’s work is rooted in a deep sensitivity toward life itself. Her research and projects are a continuous invitation to reconnect with nature, to rethink our relationships with the more-than-human, and to imagine futures where art is not only a mimetic element, but also a way of envisioning other forms and other places.

In this conversation, Diane shares her path, the questions that inspire her, and her way of weaving art with new ways of imagining, collaborating, and reflecting on the world around us.

The theoretical framework you pursue in your work is directly involved with digital arts. Regarding this, what are your thoughts on Artificial Intelligence? Considering its potential uses, its dangers, and the position it holds in the current temporality of the world, both in artistic production and in other contexts.

The question keeps coming back to me. I view AI as a natural part of human evolution on certain days. AI exists because humans created it, and humans belong to Earth, so AI also belongs to Earth. I believe technology integrates into our ecological development as a natural part of our evolutionary process.

However, the AI technology brings up multiple complex issues regarding the environment, military operations, politics, and workforce management. Its impact is not neutral. AI functions similarly to other tools: with proper handling and purposeful use, it can produce beneficial results. Artists can use AI as both a creative tool and a subject to critique the system that produced it. So many time, I have been in awe of artworks created with AI and how it expands the artist’s creativity and process, but the heaviness it brings as a technology always comes back to counterbalance it.

I think we must avoid reducing everything to the single term "AI." Machine learning models differ from generative algorithms because of their distinct operational methods and resulting effects. Artists who focus on local conscious applications of AI technology interest me the most when they use solar-powered servers and lightweight models. These choices matter. 

I run an interview on sustainability and AI for Right Click Save, bringing up great resources and new perspectives on the topic: https://www.rightclicksave.com/article/is-ai-art-sustainable 

Hito Steyerl introduces the concept of “mean images” (Mean Images, New Left Review, 2023), where she warns about the algorithmic production of images as documentary expressions of how society views itself, created through the large-scale chaotic capture and hijacking of data. In this sense, how can Artificial Intelligence be politicized and strategically projected through art, particularly from our position of identity?

The concept of “mean images” developed by Hito Steyerl shows that AI-generated images are not neutral and can be used to help manipulate and pollute our future with hidden biases, or worse. 

However, as with every tool, this machine can also be used for good. Going away from “mean images,” positive images and positive stories can be produced by artists with the desire to accelerate paradigm shifts. Developing new visual concepts based on care and kinship and refusal is also possible.

For instance, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg uses her projects “Pollinator Garden” and “The Substitute” (her digitally resurrected Northern White Rhino) to demonstrate her powerful artistic work. The artist uses AI to challenge human-centered systems, which have led to life endangerment instead of creating artificial life simulations. Through this approach, AI functions as a platform to present grief alongside care and multiple species responsibility.

The recent exhibition by Josèfa Ntjam at LAS Art Foundation in Venice presents a fantasy realm where AI-generated beings combine marine and cosmic characteristics. The oceanic imaginary produces these creatures, which establish a non-human space for kinship through the fusion of colonization history and memory and myth into speculative life forms. Through her work, Josèfa Ntjam demonstrates that AI training can incorporate ancestral wisdom together with cultural heritage and prospective environmental systems.

Artistic use of AI enables us to understand that algorithms contain inherent values that we can reshape.

What are your thoughts regarding the future? The relationship between technology, crisis, and the implications of art within this dynamic.

The future exists and will continue to exist whatever we do or do not. I just hope art will be seen as a beacon for new expressions and relationships between humans and more-than-humans.

6. Your work has shown a close relationship with fantasy, science fiction, futurism, and world-building, among other themes. It often seems oriented towards nature or a kind of utopian archaeology. Do you consciously think about these conceptual elements when developing your research?

As an artist, I aim to create a sense of awe while depicting an unsettling landscape or vision of a possible future. Even if my artwork never includes a human figure, its subject is always the result of human activities on a landscape that is already post-natural. The hues and subjects of my compositions can be seen as utopian, but the topic never really is. But it is not dystopian either. It just highlights what is or how it will become, just like a scientist putting data on the table. I consider myself a historian of a future to come, documenting what will be with photographs and videos.

Globally, it may seem contradictory to think about utopianism today, as Deborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro suggest (The Ends of the World, 2017). In their reading of the global crisis, time appears to have qualitatively decomposed into anachrony; it seems the present has no escape except through a kind of temporal stagnation. However, in Ernst Bloch’s view (The Principle of Hope, 2007), the mechanism he establishes regarding the utopian function of hope can serve as a praxis to catalyze the present experience and actively imagine the future. Based on that premise, how do you work with the concept of utopia, and what are your thoughts on it? Can utopianism counterbalance the experience of global crisis?

The time for utopia or dystopia is over; there are too many extremes in everyday life to think in such binary terms. I would lean more toward Symbiotopia, where mutual support and interdependence are seen as a way of life and a direction for the future. Kinship and care could counterbalance the global crisis to my mind. As well as accepting that good things take time and slowness is still a movement. 

In that regard, how is your process of research and curatorship, from initial conceptualization to the final projection?

It depends. Sometimes, it's a moment of pause that makes me see things differently.  Like my series on clouds, which came about from watching clouds during my train journeys, then wanting to know more, and then discovering the situation in which cumulus clouds find themselves due to global warming. Then comes a long period of research, reading, and interviews, where I try to untangle these complex systems that often hide fairly simple and powerful ideas. 

Other times, I discover a work or an artist and it inspires a whole new series of questions. In that case, I don't seek the help of scientists to find answers, but prefer to gather different perspectives on the same question to create an exhibition. 

Generally speaking, interdisciplinary research combining ecology, philosophy, scientific discoveries, and reading essays or science fiction novels often gives rise to new questions and desires. Ultimately, whether in my art or my curation, what is important is to invite the visitor to feel, imagine, see, and act differently.

What is the most difficult part of the process?

The hardest part is stopping during the research phase. I could easily spend my whole life reading and learning.

To conclude, I would like to ask you about your inspirations and references: Who or what are your main sources of inspiration? Which albums or music do you find relevant and influential? What artists inspire you?

Sigur Rós is always my go-to-music when I need to be in a creative mode. Their sonic landscapes give me enough space and rhythm to wonder and then land where I need, a space between fragility and force, just like the sunlight passing through tree branches. I also appreciate the fact you can listen to Sigur Rós music for hours, without an order, a beginning or an end. It is the perfect companion in a long journey, without imposing any emotions or ideas, it supports you so you can better open your wings. It is also what I like in some artworks, where they offer and invite, without imposing or directing. It is up to you to feel and think, and make your own conclusions or not. It is also the best way to share ecological awareness, without any pressure, just by beeing.

In terms of books, the stories of Robert Silverberg and J.G. Ballard strongly inspired me as they explore interiority and transformation alongside worlds that collapse from ecological and psychological stress. Through their speculative works they present reflective visions that depict the present through dreamlike and disturbing futures. Recently, I literally adored “Bodies of Water” by Astrida Neimanis and just finished “Medium Hot” by Hito Steyerl.