I'm a Robot and I need Therapy

Name: I'm a Robot and I need Therapy - Marina Orlova (RU)
Start: 2024-11-14T20:00:00+01:00
Location: Frascati, Amsterdam

Marina Orlova (RU)

Wed 13 Nov ’24 - Thu 30 Oct ’25

Real-time therapy session for a mentally unstable AI.

Wed 13 Nov ’24

Thu 30 Oct ’25

Wed 29 Oct ’25

20:00

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 2

Tickets

Thu 30 Oct ’25

20:00

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 2

Tickets

Wed 13 Nov ’24

20:00

Première

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 4

Past event
Thu 14 Nov ’24

20:00

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 4

Past event

A critical and ironic view on modern society's approach to empathy, technology ethics and mental health care through means of theatre, dance and dark comedy.

I’m a Robot and I need Therapy is an experimental satirical performance that crosses ideas of neurodiversity and AI ethics. It includes a live therapy session for a 'neurodivergent AI' and perspectives of 'human agents': AI-psychology researcher, tech start-up CEO, hacker, AI’s girlfriend.

Marina Orlova created an absurd Marina Orlova created an absurd entity of a “mentally unstable AI” and tends to its “therapeutic needs” in order to reverse the usual hierarchies. Within the tragicomic genre she questions agency, subjectivity and power relations in the worlds of tech and psychiatry.

The piece is based on autobiographical material and personal experiences of being a neurodivergent artist and a psychiatric survivor. AI is engineered for this project and trained with a unique dataset; it generates text in real time and therefore becomes an improvisation partner.

Aftertalk with EIAI Institute

After the performance, EIAI Institute (Institute of Emotional Integrity for Artificial Intelligence) invites you for a focus group discussion to gather your findings on AI and human conditions.

Duration: 80 min.
EIAI Institute is inviting you for a moderated discussion after the performance

Credits

concept, text, directing, performance Marina Orlova co-directing Nazar Rakhmanov creative AI engineering Artem Konevskikh dramaturgical advise Amelie Haller, Burkhard Körner sound design Arieh Chrem video design, light design Nazar Rakhmanov outside eye Tiana Hemlock-Yensen creative process facilitation Burkhard Körner production Marina Orlova supported by IDlab (AHK), Veem House for Performance AFK, Creative Industries NL, Wilhelmina E. Jansen Fonds, Amarte fonds Special thanks to Raoni Saleh, Yves Regenass, Gala Faraus, Liza Spivakovskaya, Willem Weemhoff, Erik Lint, Jos Daamen, Asya Deinekina

About the maker

Marina Orlova is an independent dance/theatre maker, tech-dramaturg and AI researcher based in Amsterdam. After studying sociology and cultural studies in Moscow, she graduated in 2021 from SNDO in Amsterdam. Marina’s practice lies between dance and theatre and uses aesthetics of absurdism, tragicomedy and autofiction.

Since 2020 Marina is applying Data feminist approach to create political chatbot-performers: non-European AI, neurodivergent AI. With her ongoing anti-disciplinary research Marina mediates engineering logic and theatre apparatus in order to explore the process of meaning-making at the collision of the two worlds.

In May 2025 Marina did a residency at Frascati Producties in which she did research for her new work Human VPN: Someplace_else which questions border politics and virtual expression.