The Future of Sex: AI, Desire, and the Flesh

IKSK Colloquium – The Future of Sex: AI, Desire, and the Flesh

with Anna Ivanova and Dr. Chang Gao

📅 Date: Thursday, June 5, 2025

🕢 Time: 19:30

📍 Location: IKSK-Berlin @iksk.berlin, Holzmarkt 25, Haus 2 / 4th Floor

🗣 Language: English

On June 5 2025, IKSK hosted a provocative colloquium exploring the intersection of technology, intimacy, and the body. Multimedia artist and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Chang Gao presented her talk:

Desire Beyond Flesh: Combating AI Bias through Supernormal Stimuli

Drawing from her internationally exhibited art practice and interdisciplinary research, Dr. Gao examined how bodily affect, eroticism, and multisensory interfaces can challenge the limitations of anthropocentric AI systems. Her work traverses psychology, philosophy, politics, and sexuality—reimagining desire as a subversive force resisting cultural hegemony and algorithmic repression, from Chinese censorship to biases embedded in artificial intelligence.

The evening sparked an enriching, multi-perspective discussion, with contributions from guests on themes such as:

• The capitalist production of desire (@patriziologie)

• Real-time generative systems and embodied physiological interaction (@tratutati)

• The technological stage of Gao’s current project

• Desire, hegemonic norms, and surveillance (@wieland.tobi)

• Feminist desire and eroticism’s subversion of patriarchal logics (@stefanie.rinke)

• Pornography, generative AI, and emotional companionship (exchange with @nearbirdy)

Participants reflected on the role of art and philosophy in addressing systemic discrimination, surveillance, and the politics of intimacy—turning the colloquium into a shared space of solidarity, curiosity, and critical engagement.

Dr. Gao, who holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art (London) and is currently a postdoctoral researcher, creates immersive works spanning robotics, AR, bioelectric systems, real-time AI, and sculpture—merging science, sensuality, and social critique.

This session was part of IKSK’s ongoing series on radical futures, embodied knowledge, and transdisciplinary perspectives.

📸 Photo credits: @vanessa_gravenor, @willfullymarks, and @mathildeterheijne

Stay tuned for upcoming colloquia, exhibitions, and workshops.