The Post-Truth Museum
film_still_post-truth-museum_2.tiff | Credits: Nora Al-Badri
film_still_post-truth-museum_3.tiff | Credits: Nora Al-Badri
film_still_post-truth-museum.tiff | Credits: Nora Al-Badri
The_Post_Truth_Museum_cc__KW_Institute_for_Contemporary_Art.jpg | Credits: Nora Al-Badri
In this work Al-Badri employs various AI techniques to place unlikely words in the mouths of three European museum directors as well as reanimating ancient inspired masks. Her deepfakes represent museums themselves through the leaders of the Prussian Heritage Foundation (Berlin), the Louvre (Paris), and the British Museum (London). In this post-truth situation, Al-Badri’s talking heads admit “the truth about imperial plunder—confessing their crimes, speaking about healing, restitution, shame, or art as critical knowledge.” The deepfake directors are interspersed with reanimated objects in the form of talking masks, as well as synthetic moving images of speculative future museum sites that blur nature and the built environment.
The Post-Truth Museum presents a world in which the institutional complicity with imperialism is recognized, and the untapped potential of the museum is realized. The script for this video also includes statements by engaged thinkers, in tones ranging from sensitive to furious.
During the production period of the videos, two out of the three directors had to step down after being charged with money laundering in an antiquities trafficking case (Jean-Luc Martinez from the Louvre) and the theft of around 2,000 artefacts from a staff curator (Hartwig Fischer from the British Museum). This is also included in the work.
The artist was inspired to develop the work after attending an internal workshop at the Humboldtforum in Berlin on 'Art and Trauma'. For Al-Badri, it was an attempt to create a work that couldn’t be exhibited at the Humboldtforum or, if it were, would create an undeniable cognitive dissonance for the museum's staff and audience. As a result, the work was purchased by the Humboldtforum before it was completed and has to this day never been exhibited there.
In this work Al-Badri employs various AI techniques to place unlikely words in the mouths of three European museum directors as well as reanimating ancient inspired masks. Her deepfakes represent museums themselves through the leaders of the Prussian Heritage Foundation (Berlin), the Louvre (Paris), and the British Museum (London). In this post-truth situation, Al-Badri’s talking heads admit “the truth about imperial plunder—confessing their crimes, speaking about healing, restitution, shame, or art as critical knowledge.” The deepfake directors are interspersed with reanimated objects in the form of talking masks, as well as synthetic moving images of speculative future museum sites that blur nature and the built environment.
The Post-Truth Museum presents a world in which the institutional complicity with imperialism is recognized, and the untapped potential of the museum is realized. The script for this video also includes statements by engaged thinkers, in tones ranging from sensitive to furious.
During the production period of the videos, two out of the three directors had to step down after being charged with money laundering in an antiquities trafficking case (Jean-Luc Martinez from the Louvre) and the theft of around 2,000 artefacts from a staff curator (Hartwig Fischer from the British Museum). This is also included in the work.
The artist was inspired to develop the work after attending an internal workshop at the Humboldtforum in Berlin on 'Art and Trauma'. For Al-Badri, it was an attempt to create a work that couldn’t be exhibited at the Humboldtforum or, if it were, would create an undeniable cognitive dissonance for the museum's staff and audience. As a result, the work was purchased by the Humboldtforum before it was completed and has to this day never been exhibited there.
Artist: Nora Al-Badri
With texts from:
Al-Ani, Ayad: ”Museums as Time Machines in a Post-Truth Universe: Multi-Vocal and -Polar Responses“
Azoulay, Ariella: “Un-Documented – Unlearning Imperial Plunder”
Dhawan, Nikita: “Untitled”
Castro Varela, María Do Mar: “It Must Be Said And Crimes Must Be Confessed”
Moradi, Fazil: “The Babylonian Gate of Ishtar and the Processional Way”
With quotes from: Berlin Postkolonial; Césaire, Aimé; Opoku, Kwame; Rassool, Ciraj; Savoy, Bénédicte; W.E.B. Du Bois; Zimmerer, Jürgen; Engineers: Alberto Pennino, Sergey Prokudin, Irem Kaftan
Cut: Alfonso Moral Rodriguez
Sound: Ed Davenport
Special Thanks to ETH AI Center Zurich, Ibou Diop, Eboa Itondo, Mikala Hyldig Dal
Nora Al-Badri (DE) is a a German-Iraqi conceptual media artist. Her works are research-based, paradisciplinary, and decolonial. She lives and works in Berlin. She graduated in political sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main and is a lecturer at the Eidgenössische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich. Her practice focuses on the politics and the emancipatory potential of new technologies such as machine intelligence or data sculpting. She has exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museums' Applied Arts Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, Design Biennal Istanbul, ZKM Karlsruhe, KW Contemporary Berlin, Transmediale, Jeu de Paume, Ars Electronica amongst others.
Nora Al-Badri (DE) is a a German-Iraqi conceptual media artist. Her works are research-based, paradisciplinary, and decolonial. She lives and works in Berlin. She graduated in political sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main and is a lecturer at the Eidgenössische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich. Her practice focuses on the politics and the emancipatory potential of new technologies such as machine intelligence or data sculpting. She has exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museums' Applied Arts Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, Design Biennal Istanbul, ZKM Karlsruhe, KW Contemporary Berlin, Transmediale, Jeu de Paume, Ars Electronica amongst others.
The Post-Truth Museum addresses timely questions within postcolonial debates regarding the restitution of plundered artefacts in Western museums and institutions. Using various AI techniques, including deepfake technology, Al-Badri explores the issue through a series of disarmingly honest ‘official’ statements delivered by ventriloquized European museum directors (the leaders of the Prussian Heritage Foundation (Berlin), the Louvre (Paris), and the British Museum (London) counterbalanced with perspectives from the reanimated objects themselves. The somber, yet somehow absurd and synthetic quality of these institutional confessions serves to amplify the often hollow, complicit nature and cognitive dissonance entangled within such institutional performances.
The Post-Truth Museum addresses timely questions within postcolonial debates regarding the restitution of plundered artefacts in Western museums and institutions. Using various AI techniques, including deepfake technology, Al-Badri explores the issue through a series of disarmingly honest ‘official’ statements delivered by ventriloquized European museum directors (the leaders of the Prussian Heritage Foundation (Berlin), the Louvre (Paris), and the British Museum (London) counterbalanced with perspectives from the reanimated objects themselves. The somber, yet somehow absurd and synthetic quality of these institutional confessions serves to amplify the often hollow, complicit nature and cognitive dissonance entangled within such institutional performances.