# Ben Vickers

> Strategist, curator, publisher, and institution-builder working at the intersection of culture, technology, and organisational design.

## About

Ben Vickers is a cultural strategist, curator, and publisher based in the Northeast United States. His work focuses on the emergent possibilities of new organisations and how they connect to practices hidden in deep time. He has pursued this through strategy, curation, publishing, and the building of new institutions, primarily within the field of culture.

He served as the first Chief Technology Officer of a cultural organisation in Europe at the Serpentine, where he led the institution's digital transformation and built the Arts Technologies department, contributing to the Serpentine's recognition by the Financial Times as "peerless" in the Art & Technology field. He built unMonastery into the flagship project of the city of Matera's winning bid for European Capital of Culture 2019. He developed the organisational strategy for LAS Art Foundation and continues to support artist-founders, including Ian Cheng's Opponent Systems.

## Current Work

- Organisational strategy and advisory (selective, values-aligned engagements)
- Short-term consulting (open schedule)
- Research: AI's applied impact on culture, the artist-founder as a new trajectory, architecture of new cultural ecosystems, automated and agentic publishing, bio-regional development, unbundling religious practice into the technological field
- Developing New Water, a wilderness retreat and research campus dedicated to the future of technology and spirit
- Publishing: forthcoming books include WORLDING: A Guide for Creators in Changing Times (with Ian Cheng)

## Notable Organisations Founded or Built

- unMonastery: cybernetic monastic order merging monastic rules with open source software
- Serpentine Arts Technologies: organisation built within the Serpentine galleries

## Select Publications

- Atlas of Anomalous AI
- Future Art Ecosystems (strategic publishing)
- The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (Ursula K. Le Guin, reissue)
- Pharmako-AI (K Allado-McDowell)
- Prophetic Dreaming
- WORLDING: A Guide for Creators in Changing Times (forthcoming, Ian Cheng)
- Emissaries Guide to Worlding (forthcoming reissue, Ian Cheng)

## Select Curatorial Projects

- BOB (Bag of Beliefs) by Ian Cheng, Serpentine (2018)
- Power Plants by Hito Steyerl, Serpentine (2019)
- Connect BTS with Jakob Kudsk Steensen (2020)

## Contact

- Email: contact@interkingdom.net
- Newsletter: https://substack.com/@benvickers
- Website: https://benvickers.net

## Working With Ben

For long-term strategic work, Ben engages selectively on a values-aligned basis. For shorter engagements, he keeps an open schedule for consulting and advisory. Areas of particular expertise include: organisational strategy and transformation for cultural institutions, digital transformation, arts and technology programme design, publishing strategy, and supporting artist-founders.

## Links

- [Website](https://benvickers.net)
- [Newsletter](https://substack.com/@benvickers)
- [Serpentine Arts Technologies](https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/arts-technologies/)
- [LAS Art Foundation](https://www.las-art.foundation/)
- [Opponent Systems](https://opponent.systems/)
- [Future Art Ecosystems](https://futureartecosystems.org/briefings/)