Alexia ACHILLEOS

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Alexia ACHILLEOS

Participating Project	International Creator Residency Program (Theme Projects)
Activity Base	Limassol (Cyprus)
City / Place stayed	Tokyo
Period	2025.5 - 2025.7

Purpose of the residency

During her time at TOKAS, Achilleos will engage with local communities to explore the future of AI from a situated, local perspective. Shifting her focus from Cyprus (an island on the periphery of the global AI race) to Tokyo (a city often featured in Hollywood’s techno-orientalist narratives) the residency will examine local realities in contrast to tech companies’ visions of AI’s and humanity’s future. Through participatory artist games and workshops, she will engage with the local community to explore AI’s impact on a local level. The goal is to foster dialogue, collaboration and critical examinations of our shared futures.

Plan during the residency

• Research local narratives about AI and the future through literature, visits and conversations. 
• Develop a collaborative artist game/participatory workshop that examines local AI mythologies.
• Hold workshops/game sessions with the local community, to examine humanity’s and AI’s future from a local perspective, in a collaborative manner.
• Based on the workshops, begin mapping AI mythologies and realities from a local perspective.

Activities during the residency

During the residency, I researched imaginaries that tech leaders share about AI and the future and how these imaginaries compare in Japan. I undertook visits, spoke with experts and analysed academic research as well as media reports. I was particularly interested in one narrative that tech leaders from Silicon Valley to Japan are currently prioritising: the global race to achieve AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), a superintelligent AI system, that is as intelligent or “superior” to humans, but in reality is based on colonial thinking and exacerbates power asymmetries. Based on my research, I developed a collaborative card-based storytelling game that challenges the top-down character of the imaginaries shared by the AI industry. The purpose of the game is to collaboratively create folk stories about AI and the future, and make space for different perspectives in a world that is over-saturated by corporate narratives that only serve a few. I played the game with various groups in Tokyo and Hokkaido, and got to experience how diverse people feel about technology and the future in Japan.

Outcome of the residency

During the residency, I got to deepen my understating of imaginaries about AI and the future in Japan, and had the opportunity to rethink and apply my research within a new cultural and geographical context. I engaged with diverse groups, playing together and reflecting on technological futures, which in turn brought upon exciting, locally rooted perspectives. The co-created stories that we generated during play, will lead to the creation of a participatory artwork: an online anthology of folk stories imagining alternative technological futures. Moving forward, I plan to play the game to various geographies, comparing how different localities shape the folk stories we create.

Creator Information