The S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Archive

Artificial intelligence is undeniably a global challenge. Every algorithm and dataset has a geography, and every model reflects particular histories, languages, values, and systems of knowledge. What presents as neutral is often shaped by dominant perspectives while other understandings of our world remain underrepresented and distorted.

From January 2025 to June 2026, the S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence initiative brought together artists, researchers, technologists, and cultural practitioners across Africa and Europe to explore how artificial intelligence might be questioned, challenged, and reimagined through emergent perspectives.

Hosted across five African countries through partnerships with B'sarya for Arts (Egypt), Gallery of Code (Nigeria), INTERFERENCE (Tunisia), Krithika Art Projects and the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Democratic Republic of Congo), and Market Photo Workshop (South Africa), the program accompanied nine artistic residencies rooted in specific local contexts while engaging with global technological questions. The program was developed within the framework of S+T+ARTS (Science, Technology and the Arts), an initiative supported by the European Commission that explores the role of artistic practice in shaping technological futures. Alongside the African host organizations, European partners including GLUON (Belgium), CHRONIQUES (France), Ars Electronica (Austria), and the AfricaMuseum (Belgium) contributed expertise, resources, and critical perspectives throughout the residencies. Rather than positioning innovation as a one-way transfer of knowledge, the project sought to foster reciprocal exchanges between contexts and disciplines.

The challenges were diverse and prompted critical questions:

How might AI systems become more culturally inclusive in a world where dominant models continue to marginalize African languages, aesthetics, and knowledge systems?

How do ancestral memory, oral traditions, and embodied forms of knowledge intersect, challenge and inform hegemonic technological paradigms?

What happens when artists use AI to revisit archives, rethink climate justice, imagine alternative educational models, reactivate precolonial technologies, or question inherited colonial infrastructures?

Rather than producing a single answer, the residencies generated a constellation of artistic responses. The formats spanned field research, podcasts, expert talks, workshops, public events, and exhibitions, and became entry points into broader reflections on algorithmic bias, ecological crises, cultural transmission, decolonial imaginaries, and the role of artistic practice in rethinking technological futures.

The S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Archive was born from a desire to keep these conversations in motion. Structured as a nine-chapter glossary, the publication traces a series of concepts that emerged and travelled, weaving together the references and reflections gathered throughout the program.

Part publication, part creative library, part living ecosystem, it invites readers to navigate between ideas rather than conclusions. Written and curated by Céline Delatte, editorial curator of the S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence, powered by AfricaMuseum and CHRONIQUES, the archive unfolds as a living creative library where artistic projects, critical reflections, and shared conversations continue beyond the duration of the program.

READ THE DIGITAL READER HERE