The Neverending Cure / Exhibition
May
28,
2025 
18:00
- 20:00
THE NEVERENDING CURE
Almost without our noticing, we have developed a certain trust in AI chatbots and their answers. We share our feelings, worries, and personal questions with GPT, Claude, or Gemini. These systems assist us tirelessly, but we often forget that they are “only” data-driven forecasting models. In the future, will this trust expand to encompass areas deeply interwoven with our physical existence – our biology?
The use of AI in medicine comes with big promises: AI is supposed to alleviate illness, reduce suffering, and extend our life span. Besides the immense technological potential, it is, however, important to reflect on social, ethical, and philosophical issues. What happens when sensitive health data are used to train medical AI models? None of the current systems are error-free. They hallucinate and tend to provide plausible diagnoses instead of admitting insecurities.
One such hallucination is at the center of kennedy+swan’s work THE NEVERENDING CURE. An AI model specialized in recognizing lung cancer in tissue scans is submitted to an experiment that is both playful and revealing. With the support of researchers from BIFOLD (Naima Elosegui Borras, Dennis Grinwald, Tom Neuhäuser), kennedy+swan exposed the algorithm to watercolors on glass – painted in the aesthetics of microscopic specimen.
What looks like fine structures of real lung tissue to the human eye is recognized by the AI application as potentially diseased tissue and diagnosed as such with astonishing confidence.
In their artistic research, kennedy+swan reflect on the blind spots of medical AI systems. These systems are built on datasets that are not neutral; instead they reflect societal dynamics complete with all their contradictions. Among other things, the duo explores the distinction between “healthy” and “sick” and raises the question: Should machines also be trained with “species-foreign” content to reliably differentiate between these two conditions? How far are we from a diagnostic AI that we can trust wholeheartedly?
The watercolors in lightboxes that resemble pneumotomies are supplemented by animated films that dive deeper into the microcosm of the painted tissue landscapes. From the AI analysis of the images, to an extra-corporal lung, we get closer to the feeling of opening the body to artificial intelligence. Already tomorrow, today’s challenges could provide crucial impulses to deliver eternal healing – fed by ever-new data that will liberate us, step by step, from our physical suffering forever: THE NEVERENDING CURE.
Art of Entanglement
kennedy+swan are the current fellows of the Art of Entanglement residency program hosted by BIFOLD and supported by the Schering Stiftung. A comprehensive solo exhibition showcasing new works will open on September 10, 2025 at the Schering Stiftung’s exhibition space in Berlin.
kennedy+swan
kennedy+swan (founded in 2013) comprises the work of the artists Bianca Kennedy and Swan Collective. When working together, they explore the future of non-human intelligence and its impact on plants, animals, machines, and humans. These utopias are liberated from human supremacy, illuminating the ecological benefits of hybrid life forms, and addressing the twisted relation-ship between humans and biotechnology. kennedy+swan exhibit internationally in galleries, museums, and festivals. Exhibitions include the Lyon Biennial, Gropius Bau Berlin, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, CCBB Rio de Janeiro, and Sundance Film Festival. They were selected for a Studio Quantum residency from the Goethe-Institut in Ireland in 2023. They live in Berlin.
Exhibition Opening - May 28, 2025
Program – Elinor Ostrom Lecture Hall [TU Berlin, Main Building, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin]
| 6:00 PM | Welcome by Prof. Dr. Klaus-Robert Müller, BIFOLD Co-Director |
| 6:05 PM | Talk on AI in Medicine by Prof. Dr. med. Frederick Klauschen, Director of Pathology, LMU Munich, Group Leader BIFOLD/Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin |
| 6:20 PM | Artist Talk with BIFOLD PhD researchers Dennis Grindwald, Naima Elosegui Borras, Tom Neuhäuser, and kennedy+swan Moderated by Nataša Vukajlović |
Exhibition opening and reception to follow in the UNI_VERSUM exhibition space.
The event will be held in English.
General Opening Times
The exhibition at UNI_VERSUM will be open from May 29 to June 27, 2025, Monday to Friday, from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM. Additionally, the exhibition will also be accessible during the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften on June 28, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
Free entry.