I'm a Robot and I need Therapy

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

To wishlist

coming soon
Thu 30 Oct ’25

20:00

Frascati, Amsterdam

Frascati 2

To wishlist

coming soon
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 psychiatric system through means of theatre, dance and dark comedy. I’m a Robot and I need Therapy is a piece that brings together topics of Artificial Intelligence and mental health in the medium of performance. Crossing the ideas of neurodiversity and responsible AI, it is working with the absurd idea of a “mentally unstable AI” and its “therapeutic needs”.

I’m a Robot and I need Therapy is an experimental performance that crosses ideas of neurodiversity and data feminism and offers a critical and ironic view on modern society’s approach to technology, ethics, empathy and the mental health care system. It includes a live therapy session for a “mentally unstable AI” and perspectives of “human agents”: AI-therapist, tech start-up CEO, hacker, AI’s girlfriend. Within the tragicomic genre it questions agency, subjectivity and power relations and draws parallels with the field of psychiatry, 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 moderated discussion. In an exchange with you as an audience, they are holding a focus group discussion to gather your findings on AI and human psychology.

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.