Seminar

If intelligence has always been a contested site—attributed, withheld, performed, disputed—misinformation and disinformation reveal the political stakes of that contest in their sharpest form. The seventh seminar in the Vera List Center’s Matter of Intelligence series, presented in partnership with Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) as part of its Uncertain Intelligences research program, explores uncertainty in the context of contemporary cultural, political, and technological transformations. The program approaches uncertainty as a productive point of departure for reflecting on existing structures of truth and credibility, their impact on forms of knowledge and reality, and whose uncertainty counts as honest doubt and whose counts as bad faith? 

HKW’s Uncertain Intelligences fellows Nora Al-Badri and manuel arturo abreu, alongside other speakers, consider how artistic practice might engage these conditions by holding complexity, sustaining uncertainty without surrendering to it, and refusing false clarity without collapsing into relativism. 

Matter of Intelligence Seminar Series
Through modes of shared study, rehearsal, and iterative dialogue with invited artists, thinkers, and the public, the VLC Seminar Series develops and presents artistic and scholarly research centered on the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Focus Theme, Matter of Intelligence. Comprising twelve sessions convened from September 2025 through May 2027—the Seminar Series is conceived as an open curriculum and a site for collective inquiry. Each seminar is paired with a curated reader on the Matter of Intelligence Are.na channel, grounding the dialogue and opening new paths for exploration.