The Algorithmic Sovereign
| Dates | Sat 2 May 2026 |
| Times | 3–4.30pm |
| Space | Lancaster Rooms |
| Price | Tickets available Wed 1 April |
Residencies
From the street to the stock market, algorithms are rewriting the rules of everyday life. Their rapid, largely unregulated intrusion into public services and personal spaces materialises new forms of social control at unprecedented scale. In this conversation, Max Haiven, Dr. Seeta Peña Gangadharan and Damien Roach explore how algorithmic systems enforce, speculate, and aestheticise power. Through the lens of security, finance, and art, they discuss how algorithmic sovereignty establishes new regimes of truth about what can be measured and known, and where possibilities for resistance might emerge.
Biographies
Damien Roach
Damien Roach is a London-based artist, designer, musician, and lecturer. His projects span art, design and creative direction, publishing, sound/music and audiovisual. His RCA PhD research project ‘Acid Realism’ is focused on AI, machine vision, and non-human planetarity. In 2023 under the name patten, he released the first album made entirely from text-to-audio AI samples. Recent solo projects include ‘Grounding’ at SXSW London, ‘SEED’ commissioned by Daata, immersive AV performances at London’s ICA and Tate Modern, curating the cross-platform exhibition ‘Real Time’, re-scoring Boyle Family’s 1969 film ‘Beyond Image’ for Roberts Institute of Art & Flat Time House, design for clients ranging from Caribou to Disney, and publishing ‘3049’ - a journal exploring non-dystopic future visions. He has exhibited internationally, including at the 51st Venice Biennale, ‘Learn to Read’ at Tate Modern, ‘Art Now’ at Tate Britain, ’Housewarming’ at Swiss Institute NYC, and solo presentations at institutions including DRAF (London), Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (Switzerland), Arnolfini (Bristol), Gasworks (London) and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein (Germany).
Dr. Seeta Peña Gangadharan
Dr. Seeta Peña Gangadharan is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Her work focuses on inclusion, exclusion, and marginalization, as well as questions around democracy, social justice, and technological governance. She currently co-leads two projects: Our Data Bodies, which examines the impact of data collection and data-driven technologies on members of marginalized communities in the United States, and Justice, Equity, and Technology, which explores the impacts of data-driven technologies and infrastructures on European civil society. She is also Affiliated Fellow of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and Affiliate Fellow of Data & Society Research Institute.
Max Haiven
Max Haiven is a propagandist for an impossible country. He uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. He works as an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018).
His writing has been published widely for both academic and non-academic readers on topics including the imagination, (anti-)capitalism, social movements, art and financialization. Max has produced several research-driven podcasts about themes including financialization and anxiety (2020-21), conspiracy theories and cultures (2021-22), Amazon and science fiction (2023-4), capitalism and play (2024), social movements and psychology (2024) and games and (anti)fascism (2025). He also makes and thinks about games. He is currently working on a book for The MIT Press titled The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st Century Fascism and a board game, Billionaires and Guillotines, published by Pluto Press in late 2025.
Image credit: Damien Roach, ‘Sensing’, (2026), computer, LCD screens, carbon steel support structure, subwoofer, portable broadband router, internet connectivity, real-time meteorological data (lightning strikes), locally-run energy-efficient real time generative AI system, steel alloy electron micrograph custom AI diffusion model, software, sound, infrasonic frequencies, light, time, electricity.