Like Moths to Light by Gala Hernández López + Cognitive Warfare w/ Virginia Mahieu

  • Screening + Discussion
  • Cinema
  • Thursday 21.05 — 11:50 - 13:05

In Like Moths to Light, a woman talks to us from inside a machine that records her brain activity. She describes a mental labyrinth composed of an old amusement park called Dreamland, 19th-century dream photography, contemporary experiments in mental decoding using AI, and Prophetic, a start-up whose goal is to control dreams. But what do our dreams see when they look at us? 

Departing from Gala Hernandez Lopez short film, Virginia Mahieu will elaborate on her research into the societal impact of neurotechnology combining neuroscience and foresight to ensure that governance frameworks are up to scratch to serve a brain-healthy future. 

 

Virginia Mahieu

Centre for Future Generations - Belgium

Virginia Mahieu is the Neurotechnology Director at the Centre for Future Generations (CFG), an independent Brussels-based think tank. She leads work analysing emerging trends in neurotechnologies, their ethical, societal, and legal implications, and how to ensure that neurotech develops responsibly and in line with European values. She previously worked in the Policy Foresight Unit of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) as a strategic foresight practitioner, with a focus on emerging technologies, behavioural insights, and scenario planning. Virginia holds a PhD in sensory neuroscience from the University of Sussex, and a PGC in EU Policymaking from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. 

Gala Hernandez Lopez (Remote Speaker)

Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker, producer and researcher, founder of the Spanish production company 6980 Films. Her interdisciplinary practice combines film, video installation and writing, articulating theoretical research and formal experimentation. Her work delves into techno-social entanglements and new forms of subjectivity shaped by computational capitalism. Examining the imaginaries and narratives circulating within virtual communities as well as the futurabilities inspired by disruptive technologies, she treats them as shared fictions that permeate our intimacy as well as our collective unconscious. At the heart of her practice lies an ecofeminist sensibility that produces poetic, oneiric, research-driven artworks blending materialist critique, speculative fiction, and documentary elements.