For creatives, AI offers more than simply a new tool: It creates a set of new, ever-evolving capabilities and powers that we can harness for good or ill. AI is both exhilarating and frightening, catalytic and enervating. Our new ability to make instant AI videos collapses what was once an almost unbridgeable divide between vision and execution, idea and final product. Madison Avenue graphics and Hollywood-level special effects can be produced with ease, in seconds. We can generate our own “deep fakes” with famous figures throughout history, chronicle ourselves and our friends in fantastic futures, parody the news, or seek to subvert and confuse. 

We all know that power without purpose, speed of execution without meaning or intention, can only produce more noise and turbulence – or much worse. As our AI technology evolves at lightning speed, creatives need to keep learning, developing their repertoire and their ability to use the latest tools in innovative and benevolent ways. What’s here is already incredible and shocking. Who knows what’s coming next?! 

Among the flood of AI content, director Ari Kuschnir’s short films have stood out as wonderful examples of how AI, as a medium for video production, can be used for the good. In videos that show Trump drinking ayahuasca and attaining enlightenment, or MAGA members getting hexed by an ancient curse and trapped in Alligator Alcatraz, or space aliens arriving on Earth with a message of love and being ignored, Kuschnir has treated this new emergent medium as an opportunity to dispense cultural healing and offer ongoing reflections on where we are going as a civilization. His videos have gone massively viral. He premiered a work at last years’ TED conference, to great acclaim. 

In traditional societies, art possesses a sacred function: It draws communities together in ritual and play. In this hands-on workshop, we will explore how the medium of short AI videos can be used to open new spaces of cultural dialogue and renewal, performing the elevated function of traditional art. We will look at relevant moments in the history of modern art and agitprop, exploring how our identity is shaped by the media we consume. And more than examining all of this: We will work together to make our own AI videos, learning the technical aspects of AI video production while we also investigate the kind of discernment required to make work that serves our current situation. 

Supporting the philosophical and even spiritual exploration of AI during the workshop will be Daniel Pinchbeck, bestselling author of Breaking Open the Head and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and director of Liminal News, and Schuyler Brown, a former brand strategist and trendspotter focused on emergence, somatic spirituality, and esoteric practices (check out her Art of Emergence website). Daniel’s past work has focused on prophecies of indigenous cultures like the Maya and Hopi, as well as Judeo-Christian ideas of the Apocalypse and Jungian approaches to our mythological moment. These tropes often feature in Ari’s videos, where Schuyler is a frequent collaborator. 

We draw from a tradition where the artist holds a sacred function: to see clearly, to speak truthfully, to offer what the moment requires. You’ll master the technical workflows of AI video production, but the real work is discernment—knowing what needs to be said, why it matters, and how to say it with integrity and precision.