S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy]

What does thinking or imaging look like when it’s optimised for scroll, repetition, and affect? When thinking itself becomes “scrollified” how do repetition, optimisation, and affect rewire imagination, compress attention, and turn imaging itself into something endlessly refreshed, looped, and platform-shaped? In this episode, London-based British-Nigerian interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Dian Joy discusses their research-driven practice exploring subjectivity in the age of networked media and how images circulate and shape identity, desire, and perception. Drawing on film theory and Alexander Galloway’s ideas about the cinematic encounter, we ask what changes when images shift from singular cinematic events to an ambient algorithmic barrage. We discuss the research underpinning Dian’s new film work, Krumville, including a LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation algorithm) trained on screenshots from her social media feeds, and years of diarised, affective experiences that are reconfigured into a fictional town structured by hyperlink logic and the condensed language of short-form media. The conversation explores AI as a tool for rendering implicit cultural patterns and biases visible at scale, while interrogating authorship, virality and the changing conditions of media literacy in an age of dual-screen attention. RELATED LINKS https://dianjoy.me https://www.instagram.com/dian__joy The Hoping Mechanism Krumville premiering at AND Festival 2026  Alexander Galloway: Interface Effect  Gilbert Simondon’s idea of the pre-individual is developed primarily in his major work Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique / L’individuation psychique et collective)  José Esteban Muñoz defined unconscious futurity in his book Cruising Utopia as a collective, not-yet-conscious realm of potentiality.  Günther Anders’s Promethean Shame is written about in an article titled Günther Anders’s “Promethean Shame”: Technological Ressentiment and Surveillance Carly Busta’s essay Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content Jenna Bliss’s work True Entertainment in the group exhibition Genuine Fake Premium Economy at the ICA COLOPHON Host: Rebecca Edwards Guest: Dian Joy Recording: Rebecca Edwards Music: Gašper Torkar Editing: Rebecca Edwards, Janez Fakin Janša Audio post-production: Oskar Kandare, Staš Kramar Becoming Image podcast series Curated by: Rebecca Edwards Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša Produced by: Marcela Okretič Production: Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2026 Part of: tactics&practice#17: Becoming Image Curated by Marco De Mutiis Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana The post S6 [Becoming Image] E2: Brainrot as Theory [w/Dian Joy] appeared first on Aksioma.