Graphic record of the route taken from Xiamen to Changting, Fujian 1937 (Anthropology Museum, XMU) 从厦门到福建长汀的路线图 (学人类学博物馆 XMU) 1937
How can a past be re-created while acknowledging the present? There is scant visual evidence for the University's journey; the route sktech; group photographs of faculty; and paintings of lectures in Changting. The drama of the hauling the books over the mountain is absent.
In Wandering Archive's recreation, documentary plates of the landscapes of today are peopled with characters generated by AI. The journey shown is a composite of today and AI's framing of 1937. In a doubly reflexive move, AI generates workers, placing labour at the centre of the depiction. The machine learning prompts confirm to the audience the constructed nature of the visual storytelling.
This model was a challenge for the XMU Anthropology Museum curators. As artwork, it inserted fictive elements into a documentive context. The work places interpretive demands on the audience. It was decided to turn the project over to ICI students.
