Inside Aspen’s Bold New Festival

Terence Trouillot The inaugural AIR festival takes its name from Sara Imari Walker’s book Life as No One Knows It (2024), yet its conceptual ethos also seems to be intertwined with Paul Chan’s 2024 essay for the journal October – ‘Machina Aesthetica: Impressions on Art in and out of the Machine Age’ – in which he discusses creating his AI self. Could you speak to the intellectual foundations of the program, and how these inquiries into life, artificial intelligence and consciousness shaped your ambitions for AIR?

Nicola Lees Sara’s book, which asks us to rethink the definition of life itself, is a major influence on the inaugural AIR. She argues that the rapid acceleration of technologies is causing a shift from a ‘biosphere’ to a ‘technosphere’, and that this is one of the most profound ecological and evolutionary transformations in Earth’s history.

Redefining life and the boundaries that shape our sense of self has also long been central to Paul Chan’s artistic practice. But Chan is equally preoccupied with death. In a follow-up essay to ‘Machina Aesthetica’ titled ‘Ars :: Longa’ that he wrote for October 2025, he explores the unusual ways artists have sought to defy mortality. It’s a theme underpinning his conceptual approach to artificial intelligence and the construction of the false self. Now, at AIR, he will publicly test out some of his ideas by engaging in an on-stage dialogue with his ‘synthetic self-portrait,’ titled Paul', for the first time. He has been programming this AI version of himself for the past several years, exploring not only the limits of self-knowledge but also whether it’s possible to design a ‘synth’ that possesses a subconscious. 

AIR represents a commitment to supporting artistic exploration and uncharted ideas. It’s also an investment in the possibilities of what a contemporary museum can be and become. This is critical, because the coming decade of technological change will likely prove to be among the most intense in human history.   

TT The AIR Retreat is a closed-door, artist-led gathering of approximately thirty thinkers – conceived with Paul Chan, Aria Dean, Zoë Hitzig, Evan Calder Williams – that explores the limits and possibilities of new technological tools and emergent architectures of consciousness. What kinds of conversations or provocations do you hope will come out of this more private, focused format, especially in relation to the public-facing festival that surrounds it?

NL The AIR Retreat will support dialogue around developments in the relationship between artistic practice and artificial intelligence. This is especially timely given the rise of new entities exercising agency in creative processes once thought to define the uniqueness of humanity. Often, smaller, more intimate gatherings can allow for a depth, vulnerability, and creative tension that isn’t always possible on a public stage. With artists shaping its structure, the retreat invites rigorous, even divisive conversations. We hope the retreat becomes a space where new thinking takes shape, and expect the conversations to impact the festival itself, as it takes place immediately after the retreat – allowing the ideas to circulate in a vibrant public setting. 

TT How do the retreat and public programs reflect or revise the region’s cultural and intellectual history and the legacy of experimental discourse, particularly that of the Aspen Institute (with which AAM has deep ties) and more notably the Aspen International Design Conference? What does it mean to stage this kind of ambitious convening in Aspen today?

NL Aspen’s history of intellectual and artistic gathering is truly astounding. The International Design Conference, which ran from 1951 to 2004, hosted people like Issey Miyake, Steve Jobs, Susan Sontag, Billie Holiday and Gaetano Pesce. The museum itself, founded by artists, was borne from Aspen’s history as a place for gatherings of this kind. AIR builds on the legacy of the conference, and takes place across Aspen’s thriving cultural ecosystem, which includes the Aspen Institute and its IDEAS Festival, Anderson Ranch and Aspen Music Festival, to name a few. 

We’re excited to be collaborating with many of these organizations, and many beyond Aspen, including Serpentine Gallery, LUMA, and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, whose director Courtney Martin will conduct a dialogue titled ‘Off-Modernism’ with artist Aria Dean. For the first edition of AIR, the participation of creative visionaries like Werner Herzog, Matthew Barney, Thelma Golden, Maya Lin, Andrea Fraser and Jaron Lanier will take different forms, but all the projects address the demands of our current moment, one that requires not only multidisciplinary thinking, but deep sensitivity and intuition as well. 

TT As a non-collecting institution, the Aspen Art Museum has long invested in convening ideas and experiences rather than acquiring objects. How do you see AIR – both retreat and festival – functioning as an alternative model of collecting, one rooted in commissioning new work, cultivating relationships and creating a living archive of process rather than product?

NL The legacy of our museum lies in the ideas, creative innovations and relationships we’ve nurtured. This may be true for all museums, but certainly, it’s a priority for us in the absence of a physical collection. Since I arrived in 2020, my focus has been on building enduring connections with artists and across institutions, schools and the wider community of the valley here in the Rockies. One early project was Precious Okoyomon’s garden on the museum’s rooftop, which evolved as Precious visited and made edits throughout its two-year run. This process mirrored natural life cycles – adapting, expanding and pruning in response to the seasons. AIR, and our wider museum programs, are about taking risks by investing in what may come, rather than what we know already exists. 

TT With a program that features performances, keynote talks and public events across the week-long festival, what are the presentations you are personally most looking forward to? And how do these events translate the more private thinking of the retreat into something that engages a broader public?

NL It’s impossible to choose! Some are more contemplative and specialized – like Mimi Park’s sprawling installation at Aspen Center for Physics, which will include 60 physicists from around the world in residence – while others include international performers, like Andre 3000, whose improvisational flute performance of New Blue Sun (2023) will be staged at the Wheeler Opera House. I’m also excited for Jota Mombaça, who will be presenting The Muted Saints. It’s an opera about a transition from human to geological existence and will unfold across the campus of Aspen Center for Environmental Studies on the edge of Hallam Lake. 

TT Bringing together artists, scientists, technologists, and thinkers on this scale requires tremendous patience and considerable financial and institutional support – a $20 million, decade-long initiative, as it were. How do you articulate the value of AIR to funders and partners, and what is ultimately at stake – for the Aspen Art Museum and for the field more broadly – in realizing a program like this at this particular moment?

NL Data played a fundamental role in our early-stage considerations of what AIR should be, and why it should be that now. We commissioned a study by journalist Charlotte Burns, whose research showed that most contemporary artists want more community, and better support of their initiatives. AIR provides a bold response – asking artists to lead, and institutions to follow. We don’t see this as a risk. The greater risk would be for museums not to invest in the people and ideas at the forefront of cultural change. Locally, Aspen Art Museum is the only museum on Colorado’s Western Slope, meaning we are the first museum many young people experience. At this pivotal point in history, we want them, and all our visitors, to leave our museum not only moved, but transformed and empowered by their encounters with art.

 _{Main image: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, On Blue, 2022. Courtesy: the artist.}