Onassis ONX in New York hosts “They Make You Write Your Poems”
Curated by Giulia Colletti for the American Academy in Rome
Bringing together nine works, the exhibition reflects on the relationship between embodied experience and machine cognition, considering poetry as a technology that can hold its ground beyond the closed surfaces through which knowledge is increasingly processed and conveyed.
The title draws from Adrienne Rich’s 1961 poem “Artificial Intelligence,” dedicated to the General Problem Solver, an early artificial intelligence program. More than six decades later, the exhibition returns to the questions raised by Rich as AI increasingly participates in the environments in which we speak, think, and relate. How might artists interrogate this condition, and what possibilities can poetry offer for exchange, interpretation, and collective authorship?
Across interactive installations, computational objects, sound, and moving image, the participating artists approach machines as systems to question, reimagine, and engage in conversation. Their works connect contemporary technologies with earlier experiments in language, noise, automatic writing, and performance, opening up alternative ways of encountering computation.
Ben Grosser’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto as Redaction Poetry” dismantles the rhetoric of technological progress through erasure. Metahaven’s experimental essay film “The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)” explores feeling, language, and translation, while Riccardo Petrini and Lucia Rebolino’s “Pretty Deceitful Noise” makes the processes of machine listening audible.
Allison Parrish’s “Solar-Powered Alba Generator” uses sunlight to generate poems, binding computation to the energy available in its immediate environment. Yafira Martinez’s “The Soft Computer,” “Ribbon Logic,” and “Pocket Oracle of Time” offer tactile, poetic encounters with computational systems. Roberto Fassone’s “And We Thought,” with project design by Sineglossa, turns AI hallucination into a source of artistic production, while Melanie Hoff’s “Dance Poem Revolution” invites visitors to compose poetry through movement.
The program includes an artist conversation with Melanie Hoff, Yafira Martinez, Allison Parrish, Riccardo Petrini, and Lucia Rebolino, moderated by Giulia Colletti, followed by a screening of Metahaven’s “The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object)” and a reception.
Hosted at Onassis ONX’s New York studio, the event reflects the platform’s ongoing engagement with artists exploring how advanced technologies shape language, culture, and human connection.
The American Academy in Rome advances the arts and humanities by supporting individuals engaged in creative practice and rigorous research projects. Its work aims to sustain cultural and intellectual vitality, drive the next generation of ideas, and demonstrate the necessity of art and scholarship for understanding and addressing the challenges facing the world today.
