Still from Toute la data du monde (Evelyn Kreutzer, 2025)
Videographic Memory Studies
Over the last decade, I have been establishing an extensive account and practice of “videographic memory studies,” meaning videographic approaches to memory, audiovisual archives, and historiography. As part of that larger endeavor, my current research considers how contemporary AI-generated and -impacted media culture impacts our understanding of audiovisual memory and history, and how videographic methods might investigate this intersection. In connection with this project, I produced the video essay Toute la data du monde (2025, not yet publicly released), which uses AI-generated footage to re-imagine Alain Resnais’ famous essay film Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) in light of the current state of AI and its impact on collective memory, knowledge, and information storage.
Image credit: The Lou Effect
I presented different parts of this work at the Future of Reality: From Locarno to LA conference, which I co-organized, the Cut/generate. Montage and AI conference at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (April 2025), at the Ethics and Aesthetics of Artificial Images conference at luav University of Venice & VIU Venice International University (May 2025), as well as the Jeu de Paume, Paris (April 2025), as part of the screening event Les Chambres Obscures de L'IA #3, co-curated by Johannes Binotto, Evelyn Kreutzer, and Kevin B. Lee at the invitation of Alice Leroy and Antonio Somaini.
My newest sub-project is the documentary film AI Plays Itself (currently in development), which revisits Thom Andersen's famous essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself and re-considers its portrayal of L.A. as a film location and cinematic myth in the age of AI. Through interviews with local creatives, original footage of the changing sites of cinematic production in the city, as well as essayistic explorations of AI-generated imagery, the film examines how algorithmic visions reproduce, distort, and reimagine the audiovisual histories on which they are trained. Please watch a teaser for the project here: