In her post-doctoral research, Janine Armin examines contemporary art and writing in connection to (ancient) language systems as AI prehistory. Nested within the Slow AI and Climate Imaginaries research groups, this investigation is developed within the Visual Methodologies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Janine seeks to connect Language Systems as Pre-History of AI to various case studies in collaboration with artists and thinkers. For instance, she will support the research phase of a small AI language model through storytelling, editing, and research into the ecology of the figure of the troubadour, popularly known as the roaming ‘musician’, a body of sound which appears to already be reflected in the AI-hardware aesthetics. She is particularly interested in how AI perceives a figure as without history, and how that is revealed or obscured through aesthetics. She does this by asking: what is the cover story, another story or back story of this figure? 

Aside from the research itself, Janine will organise a series of workshops and conversations that engage with curators, artists, and musicians in interdisciplinary conversations around critical issues in their practices. Her research will culminate in a publication.

Janine Armin (she/her) is a writer, editor, and organiser whose research explores artistic practices rooted in anticolonial, nonlinear methodologies. She is a post-doc researcher in the Visual Methodologies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, and defends her PhD at the University of Amsterdam in May 2026, having received her MA (cum laude) from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in 2012. She has held leadership roles in publication departments for biennials and art institutions, and is head of publications for Sonsbeek 2026. Recent curatorial projects include Coming Home Late: Jo Baer in the Land of the Giants at Highlanes, Drogheda and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2023 - 2024), and she is author of Sung Hwan Kim: A Record of Drifting Across the Sea (Afterall One Work, 2025). Recent co-edited books include Unlearning Routines of the Possible (with Annette Krauss, Minor Compositions, 2025) and The Constituent Museum Cookbook (with Denise Bowler, Whitworth Museum, 2023). Her writing appears in various publications, most recently as a chapbook for the Proxy Columns series (Hartwig Art Foundation, 2026).