Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf | Chantier IA
4-week individual residency
Breaking Language = Confusing the Machine
As a reader, Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf is engaged in an exploratory literary quest. He seeks out fragmented texts whose form is constantly reinvented, creating a charged space where matter, history, and ideas collide. For some time now, he has been fascinated by raw, unfiltered writing because it reinvents language and often disregards conventional text structures and linguistic norms—inevitably leading to disorientation. A sentence may shift meaning mid-reading, an object or character may change state or nature, the usual structure of language is tested, words are invented or misspelled, new expressions emerge, and the narrator’s address and posture remain ambiguous. It is a space of absolute freedom, where an intense desire for expression takes precedence over artistic or literary ambitions.
As an artist and writer, the core of his work consists of drawing connections between disparate elements by highlighting their similarities and differences, often employing irreverent or playful humor to animate a linguistic system. With storytelling giving way to cataloging, his literary aim is to offer readers a rich and exuberant semantic landscape.
As a language tool, AI has the ability to solve complex problems, merge diverse fields of knowledge, and make sense of disparate elements. The artist envisions an AI prone to slippage and poetry—capable of wordplay, improbable yet thoughtful free associations, nonsensical sentences whose structure and meaning remain ambiguous. This AI would serve as a tool providing him with raw material to edit, enabling the creation of literary works that are even more vibrant and unsettling for the reader, as well as the invention of novel and unexpected narrative or poetic situations.
đź“· Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf, Priorities and concordances (excerpt), 2025. Manuscript in progress.