Julie Martin
LLA-CREATIS – Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès
Julie Martin is lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts/Design at University Toulouse Jean Jaurès. Her research focuses on the (in)visibility of mechanisms of domination, their links to image technologies, and the visual forms that oppose them, whether referred to as counter-visuality (Nicholas Mirzoeff) or oppositional gaze (bell hooks). These visual tactics can be deployed in explicitly artistic contexts or in more vernacular spheres linked to the protest uses of digital technologies. Her doctoral thesis, defended in 2019, focused on documentary practices in the field of art in the era of fluid images. She was a fellow at the German Center for Art History as part of the annual theme “Arts and New Media” (2019-2020). She is the co-author of Contre-visualités. Écarts tactiques dans l’art contemporain written with Sara Alonso Gomez (2022). She co-founded Lorelei Editions and directs the Frictions collection, which brings together essays on the links between art and politics. She is also an exhibition curator and art critic (Aica-France).
Articles of Julie Martin
Jouer contre l’IA : Pratiques artistiques et contrefactualisation
Images generated by artificial intelligence are often designed to imitate photography, creating the illusion of a direct connection to reality. Yet, several contemporary artists have begun to explore alternative potentials of these technologies by embracing the fictional dimension inherent in AI-generated images. Through careful manipulation of prompts, artists such as Seumboy Vrainom :€ and Mayara Ferrão produce visual fictions that give voice to marginalized histories, highlight invisibilized figures, and imagine possible pasts that were never documented. These practices can be understood as acts of counterfactualization, aiming to expose the biases and power structures embedded in historical archives and the datasets used to train AI.
Beyond prompt manipulation, artists like Minne Atairu and Nora Al-Badri interrogate and subvert our shared collections of representations, particularly those assembled by museums through processes structured by spoliation and colonial extraction by intervening directly in the creation of AI training dataset. Such approaches embody what Vilém Flusser described as the capacity to “play against the apparatus”: redirecting technical devices from their normative uses to generate new creative and critical perspectives. Rather than rejecting these technologies, these artists engage with them as fields of contestation, transforming instruments that might perpetuate domination into tools for critique and political reappropriation.