Fantastic Turks: The Necessary Retrieve Edition (2024 – ongoing)

Trading cards. Ongoing series.

In her 2004 essay on the intersection of science-fiction and racial fantasy, Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor explains how the “Magical Negro” trope reinforces and sustains racial hierarchies that ultimately benefit white people. In this context, what specific idea does the “Terrible Turk” trope reinforce, and similarly, what dynamic does it sustain?

Fantastic Turks: The Necessary Retrieve Edition dives deeper into the trope of the “Terrible Turk” by utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, which learn from the data they are fed. When prompts include the words “Turk” or “Turkish,” the AI generates outputs riddled with grotesque ethnic stereotypes and bizarre, unsettling portrayals. This realization becomes the core of the series. By allowing the machine to freely “reimagine” new character from existing works of fiction, the project explores the machine’s learned biases, shaped by the vast corpus of Western art and literature it had been trained on.

The project is based on an earlier performance and NetArt project titled, Fantastic Turks. The Necessary Retrieve edition was commissioned and produced for my solo exhibition, “Necessary Retrieve,” curated by Elif Carrier at OnCurating Project space in Zurich, Switzerland (2004). The series is ongoing.

Essay by Nnedi Okorafor:
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/stephen-kings-super-duper-magical-negroes/