Is AI the Biggest Gatekeeper?
Part of the (In)Justice Series & UMN Conversations at Northrop
Thursday, April 23, 3:30-5 p.m.
In-person / Livestream
Free Event, Registration Requested
In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms, who gets seen and who gets erased? From racial bias in image generators like DALL·E and Midjourney to opaque algorithms on platforms like Spotify, TikTok and Instagram, AI systems are quietly curating our cultural landscape. This means the algorithm — not us — is most frequently the one deciding whose art is visible, whose stories are elevated and which creators get left behind. This event explores how artificial intelligence is shaping the future of art, culture and representation, often in ways that reinforce historical bias and gatekeeping.
Our panelists—Maria Cristina Tavera (Founder and Director, Serpentina Arts) and chaun webster (poet and author), moderated by Michael Gallope (Professor and Chair, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota)—will unpack the rise of digital redlining in the arts, exposing how automated systems restrict access and opportunity for marginalized artists. We will also highlight creative resistance: how artists are hacking the algorithm, reclaiming space, and building new pathways to visibility and justice. Together, we will ask: what are the consequences of bias in generative AI? Can algorithms be reimagined for equity? And what does it mean to make art in a world where machines mediate meaning?
Presented in partnership with the University of Minnesota Data Science and AI Hub.
The 2025-27 (In)Justice Series on Data & Power presented by the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota critically examines data: how it’s collected, who controls it and what it reveals (or conceals) about power, identity and justice. Supported by the MnDRIVE Human in the Data Initiative.
Institute for Advanced Study (In)Justice Series events are professionally CART captioned and are available in person at the Best Buy Theater at Northrop or online via Zoom. Some accommodation requests may take us time to arrange, so please make requests for this event by Thursday, April 9. If you are registering after this date, please still reach out to us so we can explore available options. Contact Carolina Maranon-Cobos at gust0952@umn.edu.
Michael Gallope is Professor and Chair of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, where he is also affiliate faculty in the Department of American Studies, the Program in Religious Studies, the School of Music, and the Program in Moving Image, Media, and Sound. He is the author of two books, Deep Refrains: Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Musician as Philosopher: New York's Vernacular Avant-Garde, 1958-78 (University of Chicago Press, 2024). As a practicing musician he has worked in a variety of genres that span a range of experimental music, rock, and electronic dance music and currently plays with the minimal-ambient band IE.
Minneapolis-based artist, Maria Cristina (Tina) Tavera is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the constructions of racial, ethnic, gender, national and cultural identity via numerous mediums including printmaking, installation, and public art. The artwork focuses on Latinidad within the United States by examining cultural signifiers determined by our society on how people define themselves and their cultures in everyday life. Tavera holds a Master of Leadership with emphasis in the Arts from the Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota. She has received numerous fellowships and grants: ‘23 U.S. Latinx Artist Fellowship, ‘20 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, Bush Leadership Fellowship, Shannon Leadership Institute, Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies program, Forecast Public Art, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), and Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME). Tavera has exhibited nationally and internationally, and artwork can be found in the collections of the City of Minneapolis Public Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Fargo Plains Museum, Oglethorpe Museum, Tweed Museum of Art, Minnesota History Center, and the Biblioteca Central de Cantabria, Santander, Spain.
chaun webster is a poet whose work is attempting to put pressure on the spatial and temporal limitations of writing, of the english language, as a way to demonstrate its incapacity for describing blackness outside of a regime of death and dying. Without Terminus: untraining an archive, webster’s first book of narrative nonfiction is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in June 2026.
UMN Conversations at Northrop is a collection of lectures, panel discussions, and other conversations focused on important and timely issues presented in collaboration among numerous University of Minnesota departments and held at Northrop.
