reTOUCHER (2025)

Can free Ai software be a tool for historical ethnographic tampering? Can we generate jokes and produce decolonial moments of retributive slapstick from the colonial archives?

The original film from 1901 by Gabriel Veyre is titled ‘Indo-Chine: enfants annamites ramassant des sapèques devant la pagode des dames' depicts two women (the wife and daughter of Governor-General Paul Dourmer) patronisingly tossing coins at local Annamese children like thowing breadcrumbs at pigeons. The film is listed as item 1274 in the lumiere Film catalogue.

The clip has been extended with ‘Artlist.io’ an Ai software and its associated voluntary standard overlay of community standards for non-violence and obscenity. It reverts a colonial cinematic narrative by having the children ‘playfully thowing coins back at the women and chasing after them into the building.’

(this short film is composed of discrete scenes and imagery that has been partially animated with Openart.Ai - and the various glitches and visual anomalies of early Ai formats. The use of geenrative Ai has profound and often unseen socioeconomic and environmental implications that are seriously considered when using these and other agentic technologies)