Looking for Pokémons

Curated by Arnold Braho at MAAB Gallery in Milan, The Cool Couple’s exhibition “Territorial Machines: Extracting Nature” was on view until 22 November 2024. The Cool Couple is a Milan-based artist duo founded in late 2012 by Niccolò Benetton (1986) and Simone Santilli (1987). Their multidisciplinary research focuses on the friction points in the processes of producing, sharing and consuming images.

As part of their research on wildlife conservation in South Africa and colonial biases still intertwined within the Western idea of nature, The Cool Couple presented Territorial Machines, a work composed of a series of photographs taken during various trips to South Africa as part of a residency at the Nirox Foundation, supported by the Italian Council Funds. Works like A Gentleman’s Sport and Non ti scordar di me successfully convey the intrinsic controversies in South African contemporary landscape and socio-economic system. The “animal world,” as the Cool Couple calls it, is shown as subjugated, controlled for trade and commodification. Privatized lands and captivity are praised as legitimate practices by those in charge of adopting the “territorial machines,” that according to Deleuze and Guattari’s theory are the devices for social subjection through privatization of land and subsequent property-logics. 

In her Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism, Ariella Azoulay locates the origins of photography in the “new world” at the earlier phases of European colonialism, and has studied photographs alongside early accounts of imperial expeditions. It’s no news that photographs are no discrete items when it comes to matters of power relations between the photographer and the photographed. In my perspective, this project by The Cool Couple gives a perfect input to discuss the “ghosts of Italian colonialism”—to quote a title of a conversation between Leone Contini and Marta Federici, also featured on Nero, in search for a definition of the state of the art within the discourse and deconstruction of the Italian colonial past. Indeed, this conversation tackles on the need to critically narrate that colonial and fascist past through dedicated museums and pedagogies, which have never been here  institutionally, shedding light on the conceptual stasis that is causing Italian culture and art in Italy to sometimes be out of context and unpositioned in regards to decoloniality and beyond. 

As I walked through the exhibition rooms, I could observe a series of daguerreotype-like prints framed and closed in a museum display case. At first, they look like vernacular colonial photos, classic shots taken by white men who planned photographic sessions to produce and circulate visual proofs of black people’s enslavement, through the exoticization of the Other. The seized images were of their enslavement, the camera an instrument of captivity and categorization. Giving a closer look to the framed photos, though, it clearly emerges that those images are powered by AI, yet another “no discrete item” raising questions of ownership. The captions mention a “Pokémon in the African jungle,” ironically anticipating a performative ambiguity lingering over a good number of AI-based images that unambiguously reiterate and accelerate the logics of colonial patterns relying on creating a legitimacy over white people captivating black people through photography. The potential of any new technology,AI in this case, serves to reaffirm their supremacy: a crime rendered imperceptible, natural, by the claim of l’art pour l’art, a beautiful device incurring the risk of being dangerously superficial If photoworks are ontologically superficial, “images are significant surfaces”  as Vilém Flusser states in his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography. From analogue and physical to digital and screen-mediated photographs, we are confronted with the bidimensional nature of photographic images, surfaces produced through chemical reactions, sensors, or AIs. 

Nowadays photographs are ubiquitous over different supports, such as the screens they are mediated through. There are channels for indicative photographs, such as reportage magazines or scientific publications, channels for artistic photographs, and political and commercial advertising photographs, but all of them convey in social media platforms such as Instagram, or on the web as a whole. Artists take photographs and assemble images in projects, having their eye on specific channels of the distribution apparatus and “encode their images as a function of this channel.” On the other hand, they all merge their photographs in the same virtual spatiality of Instagram, for example, thus allowing them to vanish into the algorithm and ignoring the fact that the channel determines the significance of the photographs. Some other times, artists produce images only for the sake of circulation and visibility in the virtual world. A photograph does not stand out as a spatial object being it flat, and it is essential to consider its relation with the spaces that it inhabits or travels through and its means of staging to our gaze. 

The act of placing AI-generated images derived from black archives into frames and displaying them in museum cases, as exemplified by The Cool Couple’s exhibition at MAAB Gallery, is not a neutral choice; rather, it represents a disconcerting disconnection from one’s own positionality and social responsibility, deeply rooted in art history and visual culture education, which has traditionally conditioned us to engage with artworks through processes of decontextualization and isolation. In doing so, we often strip these works of their original cultural, historical, and social contexts, reducing them to mere objects of aesthetic contemplation.

In a contemporary landscape dominated by techno-capitalism, where achieving an inclusive global art world remains a formidable challenge, we witness the emergence of new forms of fascism fueled by societal numbness and apathy. Amidst this troubling backdrop, the proliferation of information, meanings, and images necessitates a heightened sense of responsiveness and responsibility from artists, curators, and audiences alike. It becomes crucial to critically engage with the implications of how artworks are presented and to consider the narratives they embody. This engagement is vital in fostering a deeper awareness of cultural histories and advocating for a more equitable and inclusive representation within the realm of contemporary art.

In the exhibition, curator Arnold Braho observes that “some of the images were produced through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), with the aim of reconstructing an archaeology of domestication, particularly of the wild.” The unsettling portrayal of men’s faces—deformed, serious, and disquieting—serves to amplify this thematic exploration. Along the front wall, a series of painterly and fantastical visualizations of nature and animals crafted using AI attempts to forge a connection between the land, and a racially informed context surrounding the privatization of wilderness. This representation reflects the journey from the captivity of animals and humans to the extraction of soil, suggesting layers of exploitation inherent in the intersection of race and land.

Just to add another dimension to this discourse, as Azoulay asserts “Two fatal instruments: the camera and the gun,”  then AI should also be considered among these transformative yet destructive tools. Despite the artists’ intention to reconstruct rather than deconstruct this “archaeology of domestication,” a critical friction arises in the curatorial statement: it fails to address the colonial domestication of humans. This omission is significant, especially considering that the artists engage with themes of violence and oppression, replicating images that evoke silent trauma without adequate justification or critique: who are these images representing? Who feels represented, truly? This neglect raises important questions about narrative ownership and  ethical responsibilities of artists and curators in representing historical injustices, underscoring a need for a more nuanced engagement with the colonial legacies that continue to shape our understanding of domestication and exploitation.

One might wish that The Cool Couple’s point was not to unconsciously reiterate colonial logics of captivity and enslavement to heighten the thrill of the violent, but to “decipher an opaque reality” in the context of structures of privatization of South African wildlife. As in this case, art stands as the litmus paper of a country, that is Italy, that still has a long way to go before decolonizing its present and future being. The Cool Couple captures this very Italian immobility in confronting a colonial and fascist past. They do embody this status, incapable of questioning their own positionality as white men in a land they don’t belong to. For a medium such as photography (and promptography) capable of generating a range of narrative possibilities, artists have a responsibility in using it and cannot go without acknowledging its ontology, conditions of production and how it came to be, and how it continues to affect and have value for those who receive it. Photography is a currency evoking a long relationship to capitalist and imperialist structures of imaging and valuing. 

Emerging during the rise of mass production and consumerism, photography has been commodified, serving commercial interests through advertising and branding, which highlights its role in promoting consumer culture. Moreover, its historical use by imperial powers to document and assert control over colonized peoples reflects a narrative of dominance, often resulting in the objectification and stereotyping of marginalized cultures. This dynamic raises vital questions about ownership and authenticity in representation, as those in privileged positions frequently dictate how images are produced and broadcast. 

Through the act of documenting and constructing a manifesto for the liberation of nature and animals from human control, the “cool” duo have ventured into a territory profoundly influenced by a colonial past that has not yet faded from contemporary consciousness. It is perhaps the romanticized image of wild nature as a fantastical realm populated by mysterious creatures that has inspired the two artists to draw parallels with the iconic Japanese Pokémon saga, where imaginary beings can be captured, trained, and pitted against each other for entertainment. In Pokémon, the allure lies in the thrill of the hunt and the relationship between trainers and their Pokémons (Pocket Monsters), which mirrors the dynamics of control, commodification, and exploitation prevalent in both nature and global culture.

However, this new visual archive created by the artists is far from an imaginative and liberatory one; instead, it is steeped in nuanced complexities and limitations rooted in positionality. The Pokémon phenomenon, often celebrated for promoting imagination and adventure, also perpetuates a narrative that commodifies nature, reinforcing the notion of ownership over living beings. In this context, the parallels drawn by the artists are not merely playful but expose the darker undercurrents of human-animal relationships—where creatures are reduced to mere objects for human amusement or extraction, much like the historical exploitation of wildlife and lands.

Thus, while the artists’ intentions may stem from a desire to liberate and advocate for the rights of nature and animals, their engagement with such themes must critically acknowledge and interrogate the legacies of colonialism inherent in these representations. Positionality plays a decisive role in how these narratives are interpreted and enacted. When drawing upon elements of popular culture like Pokémon, the artists must reflect on the responsibility that comes with such representation and strive to avoid perpetuating cycles of domination and control. Ultimately, the discourse surrounding liberation must be situated within a broader context that honors the complexities of cultural histories and the enduring impacts of colonial ideologies.