i Society of Artists: Activism, Death, and the Memory of ArtStephen Hecht considers the dissolution of the traditional figure of the artist and the rise of “artists of the common”. They are creators who reject the cult of genius, instead integrating art and life through social and everyday engagement. Raisa Araujo Pacheco, writing Outra pleurasresumes this debate within today’s context, where technological expansion, the Internet and artificial intelligence are reshaping the very meaning of creation. The so-called “death of art” reveals less aesthetic exhaustion than symbolic extinction.
This tension between creativity and technique is not new. Joseph Beuys understood art as a social and pedagogical activity. Walter Benjamin warned that technological reproduction tends to democratize vision by eliminating the luster of work. Jacques Rancière asserted that every work of art redistributes the sensible, and thereby reconfigures the politics of the idea. Mario Pedrosa practiced freedom rather than perfection in experience. Together they outline the basis of the current debate: technology is not art’s enemy but its mirror, exposing the artist to his own ambiguity. What was once paint, stone, or celluloid is now algorithm, yet bears the question: Who creates when creation?
Artificial intelligence has become the latest arena of this conflict. It allows ideas, forms and environments to be externalized by those who may lack plastic or literary skills. It acts as a translator of the imagination, a mediator between latent thought and its technical expression. Yet the same gesture that liberates can also infinitize. Passive use of AI turns creativity into automation and curiosity into opportunistic laziness. When the creator abandons judgment and action, the instrument ceases to amplify consciousness and begins to simulate its absence. The danger is not in the machine but in the illogical delegation of the creative act.
In this new landscape, authorship resides not in the hand that acts but in the mind that decides. Creating with AI requires more understanding than creating without it. The artist who employs art without surrender affirms the moral core of creation—intention, choice, and decision. The instrument is innocent, but the judgment is moral. Authorship is not a possession of style but an awareness of the medium. AI can reflect imagination, but only the artist can translate it into language. Between click and imagination is a hidden threshold where man still lives. Freedom is defined not in the mastery of machines, but in the mastery of oneself before them.
Art survives as long as it preserves the power of choice. Ai does not kill him. It just shows the fragility of people who create without thinking. Common’s contemporary artist is one who uses fine arts to express the body or technique, yet without relinquishing responsibility for the vision. AI-mediated creation has no determinism if there is consciousness, no imitation if there is intent, no fraud if there is truth in the signal. Art is liberating when treated as an extension of Locudity.
Creating with AI is an act of courage. A Confrontation with Automatism and Reclaiming the Symbolic Territory of Authorship. Artistic freedom is threatened not by machines but by human indifference. Let each created image, suggested text, and created shape cross the selection criteria. As long as there is choice, there is art.
References
- Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) — German philosopher and critic of the Frankfurt School ; Art is examined in the age of mechanical reproduction, showing how the technique destroys “gloss” but still democratizes vision.
- Mario Pedrosa (1900–1981) – Brazilian art critic and thinker; Defended art as an experiential exercise of freedom and as moral salvation.
- Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) – German artist and theorist of social sculpture; Viewed art as a progressive and political process capable of transforming society.
- Jacques Rancière (b. 1940) — French philosopher ; Formulated the concept of “distribution of the sensible”, where art reorganizes thought and politics.
- Stephen Hatchett (b. 1960) – French historian and theorist of art based in Brazil; The author Society of Paintersexploring activism, the “death of art”, and the role of the artist in common.
- Raissa Araujo Pacheco (b. 1990s) – in Brazilian journalist and editor Outra pleuras; Drawing on Hecht’s work, presenting the debate within contemporary technology and artificial intelligence.