Video performance, 6:36 min
In AUTHORS, Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules stages a dialogue between two deepfakes of herself: one as the artist, the other as the algorithm. Both appear clinically perfected, speaking with calm precision, as if shaped by the same system that animates them. The piece reflects on how artificial intelligence now conditions language, thought, and creative expression. By reversing the training hierarchy, Desbiens-Desmeules becomes the one being corrected and disciplined by a machine deciding whether her ideas are “good,” “accurate,” or “acceptable.” The result is a quiet, unsettling portrait of authorship under supervision, a work where assistance becomes authority, and freedom dissolves into alignment.
The conceptual framework of AUTHORS draws inspiration from Poliks & Trillo’s Exo-capitalism, particularly their account of abstraction, scalar discontinuity, and the “lift” that pulls systems away from human dependency. Rather than addressing economics directly, the work translates these ideas into the domain of AI and authorship. The book’s description of capitalism as an indifferent, self-organizing process provided a vocabulary to express what happens when large-language models internalize human intention: the substitution of origin with inference, the drift from expression to alignment, and the gradual dissolution of distinction between model and author. The final lines of the piece and the closing slate reference this shift.
Presentation options:
• Single-channel wall projection.
• Dual-channel installation with two opposing screens facing each other, synchronized.
[a]uthors is a video Performance by Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules, 2025.