REPETAE: AGAIN, AGAIN (2023)

Sasha Stiles

Artwork Description:

REPETAE: AGAIN, AGAIN is a media-rich poem (2:45 mp4 with audio) written and performed in collaboration with my AI alter ego. Part of my ongoing series REPETAE — which leverages generative verse and visuals to explore how, in poetry as in art and life, meaning accrues through repetition — the poem starts as a 13-line text, transformed via digital software and simple code into a multimedia performance in which the poem writes itself over and over again.

Electronically enhanced spoken word mirrors these visual patterns, as my voice loops, echoes, layers and expands. With each iteration, the poem changes… “Published” in collaboration with Gucci in 2023 and auctioned via Christie’s 3.0, this poem exemplifies how digital technologies like AI, blockchain and social media can empower writers and imbue our work with unprecedented cultural currency. As a digitally native text, AGAIN, AGAIN thrives on screens of all shapes and sizes. When Gucci posted it on Instagram, the poem garnered a readership of 52 million followers; since then, it’s been “printed” and “reprinted” around the world, from the immense LED wall at Gucci’s NYC flagship to the facade of the National Taichung Theater to the bustling Abu Dhabi airport. Audre Lorde was right that “poetry is not a luxury” — but in a world of commodities, it feels important and uplifting to think that a poem, especially a poem about the posthuman conundrum, can get dressed up as an object of desire and be coveted and collected and re-read again and again.