Manthia Diawara’s essay film, AI: African Intelligence, explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession within traditional fishing villages of the Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of new technological frontiers known as Artificial Intelligence. Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines towards a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms. Could Africa be the context of emergence for such improbable algorithms?

Manthia Diawara will join in a conversation prior to the screening of the film.