This week I’m stepping into territory I usually sidestep: politics. Several stories here touch on art’s uneasy relationship with power, public policy, and the ways culture gets shaped—or squeezed—by whoever holds the reins. I know this isn’t our usual beat, so if you’re here for cosmic illusions or the odd bit of digital nostalgia, don’t worry, there’s some of that too.

From city planning that treats creativity as essential infrastructure, to the slow erosion of public arts funding in the US, to the blurred lines between propaganda and art, I’ve tried to pick pieces that show just how tangled things get when politics enters the conversation. And if you’re wondering whether technology ever really escapes these forces, there’s plenty here to chew on about AI, public art maps, and what we see when we look up at the night sky.

Find the latest episode at https://theintersect.art/issues/54 , and sign up for the newsletter at The Intersect of Tech and Art website

Takeaways:

1. Urban cultural planning goes beyond metrics; true “creative wellness” in cities depends on policies that prioritize art, storytelling, and community memory over data-driven efficiency.
2. The ArtVenture project in South Lake Tahoe demonstrates how interactive public art maps can help residents and visitors engage with local creativity intentionally, not just by accident.
3. Astrophotography from advanced observatories often misleads the eye; space images can look dramatic or even supernatural, but they highlight how much we still misunderstand about the universe.
4. Gosha Rubchinskiy’s photo book “Victory Day” at the London Photo Festival re-packages military symbols associated with Russian aggression, sparking debate about the political responsibility of artists.
5. In contrast to Russian art’s recent nationalistic tone, American artists have typically used military and patriotic imagery to question authority, not glorify it.
6. Proposed elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) threatens the entire infrastructure supporting diverse, community-based creative projects in the United States.
7. The shift in arts funding from local, inclusive decision-making to centralized, top-down mandates risks turning public art into a tool for political branding rather than authentic expression.
8. Jörg Colberg’s critique of generative AI in photography argues that these systems flatten creative intent, recycling sanitized versions of the past instead of imagining new futures.
9. The National Ethnographic Museum’s exhibition in Sofia pairs Bulgarian myths about the cosmos with scientific perspectives, showing how folklore and astronomy have always intersected.
10. Tate Modern’s “Electric Dreams” exhibition reveals that artists have experimented with technology and digital concepts long before the internet, challenging the notion that art-tech fusion is a new phenomenon.

Welcome along.

This is the audio companion to the Intersect newsletter, where we explore that ever fascinating connection between art and technology.

That's right.

And if you're new here, we basically take the latest newsletter issue and unpack some of the ideas.

Today we're digging into issue number 54.

Yeah, Jurgen shared his deeper thoughts on the articles, and we'll be going through those.

We're talking city planning, public art, space, propaganda, funding, AI stars.

Quite a range.

Okay, so first up, planning for the creative wellness of a city.

Jurgen pointed to a Fast Company interview about a new handbook on urban cultural planning.

Right.

The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.

What apparently caught Jurgen's eye was this provocative angle.

Well, the idea of actually putting culture first in city planning, you know, instead of just focusing on efficiency or, like, technocratic solutions all the time.

That is different.

Usually it feels like culture is an afterthought.

Maybe that's exactly the contrast.

Jurgen noted.

This handbook talks about resisting gentrification, rethinking safety, reframing wellness, all through things like art, community stories, memory.

And Jurgen observed that creative expression often gets treated as nonessential, didn't he?

Yeah.

Which led him to ask this really good question.

Why does cultural value always seem to need an economic justification?

Like, why can't it just be valuable on its own?

That's a fundamental point.

Really, what do we value in our city?

Okay, next.

There was this piece from the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

South Lake Tahoe launched something called ARC Venture.

Ah, yes, the interactive public art map.

Exactly.

It's mobile friendly.

Helps you find murals, sculptures, installations, gives you artist details, the whole thing.

And Jurgen's take was that this is something many vibrant cities really need.

Right.

He said it was long overdue.

He did.

His point was interesting.

A tool like this changes how you engage with public art.

It becomes intentional.

Instead of just accidentally walking past something.

Right.

You're not just stumbling upon it.

You can actually seek it out, learn about it, maybe value it more.

He felt that without context or a way to find it, public art can feel a bit random.

And the article mentioned celebrating community, creativity, connecting people.

Yeah.

Stacey Ballard was quoted saying that it really fits with Jurgen's idea of intentional engagement, making culture visible and valued.

Okay, let's shift gears completely to space.

Big Think had an article by astrophysicist Ethan Siegel.

Oh, yeah.

10 space pictures whose appearances will deceive you.

This was fascinating.

It sounds it.

Things that look like one thing, but are actually something else entirely.

Exactly.

Like galaxies that look like they're colliding but aren't or what seems like a hole in space is really just a cloud of dust, mind bending stuff.

And Jurgen connected this to, well, how little we actually know.

Pretty much.

He was struck by how these advanced tools like the jwst, they show us more, but they also reveal just how much is still a mystery out there.

So the visual tricks aren't just neat photos, they're reminders.

Reminders of how flawed and partial our perception is.

That's what Jurgen emphasized, which led him.

To wonder what was the question he posed?

It was quite profound.

He asked basically how many of our own beliefs, our convictions here on Earth might just be like those photos.

Well lit projections waiting to be unraveled as we learn more.

Wow.

That's.

Yeah, yeah.

Something to think about.

Definitely.

Okay.

Bringing it back to Earth, but still complex.

The Kyiv Independent report on Gosh Rupcinski's photo book, Victory Day.

Right.

Presented at the London Photo Festival.

And it stirred up controversy because of its imagery.

Red square, the St.

George ribbon, especially.

Given the war in Ukraine.

People saw it as Russian propaganda.

That was the accusation.

Yes.

And Jurgen brought up a really interesting contrast here, thinking about American artists.

How so?

He observed that American artists, particularly thinking back to say, the Vietnam or Iraq wars, often used national or military symbols critically, almost, you know, as pushback against official narratives.

Whereas Rybczynski's use felt different to critics.

It seems so.

And it made Jurgen wonderful.

Has American culture become so self critical that genuinely positive non parody art using national symbols is almost unthinkable?

Now that's a provocative thought itself.

It is.

And the article quoted a photographer, Aminzia Denova, who argued that glorifying these symbols helps normalize war crimes, which adds real weight to the debate.

Jurgen's point just adds another layer about cultural context.

Okay.

Staying with potentially sensitive topics.

Arts funding.

The Washington Post piece by Philip Kennecott.

Yeah.

Discussing the potential or the threat of defunding the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities.

And the worry isn't just about less money, is it?

It's about a shift.

Exactly.

A shift away from local, inclusive support towards something more top down.

Kennecott called it staged patriotism.

How did Jurgen react to that?

He seemed to feel it quite strongly.

He said it felt less like a normal political swing, know a pendulum, and more like more like a bulldozer.

What's his word?

He drew a line between genuine culture growing from communities and just branding imposed from above.

Echoing Kennecott's concern about losing the whole system for vetting ideas, setting local priorities.

Right.

The community building aspect Jurgen was left wondering if this is just a pause, a temporary breakdown or something more permanent before maybe a swing back to something more democratic for the arts.

A lot of uncertainty there.

Definitely.

All right, let's turn to technology's impact.

Yor Kohlberg's piece connecting Weimar era photomontage with generative AI.

This was interesting, looking back at artists like Hannah Huesch and John Hartfield and.

Using their work to highlight what might be missing in AI images today.

That was the idea Jurgen really picked up on one specific quote in that piece.

What was it?

It compared the utopian visions of some tech billionaires and Mars colonies, whatever, to romantic villages from an imaginary past.

Ah, that connection about controlling narratives and versions of the past.

Exactly.

It tied into Kohlberg's point, which Jurgen also highlighted, about the sort of ideological vacuum behind a lot of generative AI, how it tends to just remix a sanitized, flattened past without that critical edge the photo montage artists had.

And that brings in the famous Orwell.

Quote, who controls the past controls the future.

Who controls the present controls the past.

Jurgen felt it really underlined the stakes with these new technologies.

Okay, back to the stars, but from a different angle.

The Bulgarian news agency reported on an.

Exhibition in Sofia, the Starry Sky Mythology and Science, at the National Ethnographic Museum.

And the unique thing here is bridging folklore and astronomy.

Yes.

Pairing traditional Bulgarian myths and beliefs about the stars with the scientific perspective.

Jurgen found that blend really compelling.

He described the stars as a kind of universal piece of art, didn't he?

He did.

Open to interpretation across millennia.

He loved the idea that different cultures looked up and saw different stories, different meanings.

And he even called the Night sky one of our first collaborative artworks.

Yeah.

Like layers of meaning added over generations.

The exhibition aims to show the Bulgarian worldview alongside science, which captures that perfectly.

Lovely idea.

Okay.

Finally, the Tate Modern exhibition Electric Dreams.

Art and Technology before the Internet.

Right.

And Jurgen appreciated seeing these pre Internet.

Experiments very much so.

Can you imagine?

Shows the ingenuity involved.

Totally.

And Jurgen reflected kind of humbly that seeing all this history made him realize his newsletter theme isn't exactly brand new.

Artists have been exploring this intersection for a long, long time.

And he finished with a question, didn't he?

He did.

He asked, could we say that artists were already dreaming in pixels before pixels even existed.

A great thought to end on.

It really captures that forward looking spirit.

It does.

Well, that covers the highlights from Jurgen Berkessel's commentary on issue 54.

We've certainly touched on a lot, from city streets to distant galaxies.

We have.

And if you want to explore these ideas further, read the original articles and get Jurgen's full insights.

The best thing to do is head over to the website.

That's theintersect art.

You can sign up for the newsletter there and keep exploring these connections between art and technology.

Definitely worth checking out.

That's theintersect art.