States of Exception: The Chamber
A forum for public debate on the social, ethical, and political questions that AI has made newly urgent.
Each Sitting is ticketed individually. Purchase a Day Pass to attend all Sittings.
| Dates | Sat 5 Dec 2026 |
| Times | 2pm–6pm |
| Space | Lancaster Rooms, New Wing |
| Price | Sittings: £7 (General) / £5 (Concessions) Day Pass: £15 (General) / £10 (Concessions) |
Residencies
What do you think is at stake for the economy, the state, culture and the environment? Welcome to The Chamber, where in each sitting, speakers debate a central question, you can have your say, and an AI clerk holds court. Once everyone has spoken, it's time to vote.
Attend all three debates with a Day Pass.
2pm - 3pm
Sitting I: Creativity
Is creativity uniquely human?
Author Joanne Harris OBE and AI Filmmaker Omar Karim debate whether creativity is uniquely human.
Art has long been understood as an expression of human intention, imagination and experience, yet it has often emerged through relationships between cultures, materials, technologies and environments. Each new medium, from the camera to the synthesiser and the computer, has challenged ideas of authorship and originality.
Generative AI presses this question further. For some, creativity depends on human intention, consciousness and experience: models trained on humankind’s cultural production do not create but recombine, laundering the work of others. For others, creativity has never belonged exclusively to human minds, and gen AI is another participant in a history of more-than-human creation.
3.30pm - 4.30pm
Sitting II: Work
Should productivity remain work’s governing measure?
Artist duo !Mediengruppe Bitnik and two members of Middle Temple (one of London’s Inns of Court) debate what labour means in the face of a rapidly expanding AI workforce.
Productivity has governed work since the industrial age: the conversion of hours into outputs, of labour into figures to compare and price. Yet much of what work involves – judgment, care, relationships – resists this metric.
AI destabilises this measure further. When machines have the potential to out-produce any human, the question arises of what work is for, and what it means for it to be productive. For some, productivity remains the clearest route to higher wages and living standards, and AI could make work more productive than ever; for others, productivity captures what work produces, but not what it means.
5pm - 6pm
Sitting III: Nature
Can the benefits of AI justify its ecological footprint?
Environmental justice technologist Joycelyn Longdon and sustainability & AI leader Katie Neck debate whether the benefits of AI outweigh its ecological footprint.
Frontier AI depends on a material infrastructure of data centres, energy, water, land and critical minerals. As governments and companies race to secure AI leadership, these demands continue to grow. At the same time, ecological degradation is increasingly recognised as a threat to economic resilience and national security.
AI’s advocates point to economic growth, scientific discovery and national competitiveness; its critics ask whether promised benefits can outweigh present costs. This Chamber puts the question to two speakers for debate.
The Chamber is part of n-Space’s ‘States of Exception’ series on art, technology and governance. n-Space is curated by Linda Rocco for Somerset House Studios and supported by the Rothschild Foundation.
Biographies
Joanne Harris OBE
Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL) is the author of more than 20 novels, including Chocolat (1999), which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche. Her books are published in over 50 countries. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and was Chair of the Society of Authors for four years. She is a prominent advocate for authors’ rights.
Joycelyn Longdon
Joycelyn Longdon is an award-winning environmental justice technologist, communicator and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores justice-led conservation technologies and biodiversity monitoring with local forest communities in Ghana, including the use of bioacoustics. Joycelyn was 2022’s winner of the Emerging Designer London Design Medal, and was featured in British Vogue’s December 2023 ‘Forces for Change’ Issue. She is the founder of ASASE Innovation Studio, a research and storytelling agency developing alternative technology futures rooted in relationships with people and planet. Her debut book, Natural Connection, was published in 2025.
Katie Neck
Katie Neck is a sustainability and AI leader and founder of Sustained Futures. She spent six seasons at McLaren F1, leading R&D partnerships in machine learning and AI, before establishing the team’s first sustainability function following the climate risks exposed by the 2019 Japanese Grand Prix cancellation. She later held director-level roles at Capgemini Invent and has advised S&P 100 clients on AI and data-driven sustainability strategy across financial services, aerospace and defence. Through Sustained Futures, she has helped upskill more than 6,000 people worldwide. She is an Ambassador to Anthropic, an advisor to The King’s Trust and winner of the 2024 Barclays Outstanding Entrepreneur Award.
!Mediengruppe Bitnik
!Mediengruppe Bitnik (read - the not Mediengruppe Bitnik) are contemporary artists working on, and with, the Internet. Their practice expands from the digital to physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms. In the past they have been known to subvert surveillance cameras, bug an opera house to broadcast its performances outside, send a parcel containing a camera to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and physically glitch a building. In 2014, they sent a bot called «Random Darknet Shopper» on a three-month shopping spree in the Darknets where it randomly bought items like keys, cigarettes, trainers and Ecstasy and had them sent directly to the gallery space. Their work has been exhibited internationally, and they have received awards including the Swiss Art Award and an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica. The duo are Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo, based in Berlin
The Middle Temple
Arguing for the proposition are two members of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, one of London's four Inns of Court, where barristers have trained in advocacy for centuries. Between them they bring experience across law, legal publishing, engineering, mediation and business, including advocacy for the Inn's mooting team.
Omar Karim
Omar Karim is an award-winning creative director, AI filmmaker and founder of Brainclub 5000, a studio exploring AI and emerging technologies in film, art and culture. With more than 18 years’ experience across advertising, directing, art and fashion, he has created work for brands including Meta, Google, Sony, Nike, Burberry and ASICS. His projects span commercial production and experimental cinema, exploring not just what artificial intelligence can make, but what it might allow us to imagine for the first time.
Part of:
n-Space is curated by Linda Rocco for Somerset House Studios and supported by the Rothschild Foundation.
