Artificial Archive: SCRYING INTIMACIES
Screenshot_2025-04-09_142229.png | Credits: Rodell Warner
Rodell_Warner--Artificial_Archive-Scrying_Intimacies-Hallucination_1--Frame_1111--3000x5000_px--color_corrected.jpg | Credits: Rodell Warner
Rodell_Warner--Artificial_Archive-Scrying_Intimacies-Hallucination_1--Frame_2498--3000x5000_px--color_corrected.jpg | Credits: Rodell Warner
Rodell_Warner--Artificial_Archive-Scrying_Intimacies-Hallucination_3--Frame_0384--3000x5000_px.jpg | Credits: Rodell Warner
Rodell_Warner--Artificial_Archive-Scrying_Intimacies-Hallucination_2--Frame_1152--3000x5000_px--color_corrected.jpg | Credits: Rodell Warner
My video series titled SCRYING INTIMACIES is a part of a larger project, Artificial Archive. Artificial Archive is a set of computational images that responds to the gaps and omissions in the early photographic record of the Caribbean, and the limited and biased views it offers us of the lives of the people of the Caribbean in the mid-to-late 19th century, by speculating on what the photographic archive could have looked like if the African and Asian people of the Caribbean—the ex-enslaved and the indentured—had access to photography, and could record their lives from their own perspectives rather than being mainly recorded through the gaze of those with colonial interests. Most of what we see in the early photographic records show these people laboring, almost never at rest, or enjoying intimacy, appearing resourced, etc.
Artificial Archive goes further by taking liberties in its depictions of these people, responding to questions such as “What would the photographic record have looked like if these people had been the beneficiaries of their centuries of labor?”. The work employs this kind of generative speculation as a method for getting around the imaginative limits suggested by the existing photographic archive, as it leads us to imagine these people only in the contexts it makes available to us.
The great power of photography comes from our readiness to accept its depictions are complete and true. Artificial Archive, by presenting images that look like photographs, makes subversive use of this power. Even when the viewer is aware that the Artificial Archive image is a computational image, the vision of the past that it presents is still able to do its work of expanding, in the mind of the viewer, the contexts within which the people of history are imagined, which can have tremendous implications for what is possible for the viewer in their own life.
My video series titled SCRYING INTIMACIES is a part of a larger project, Artificial Archive. Artificial Archive is a set of computational images that responds to the gaps and omissions in the early photographic record of the Caribbean, and the limited and biased views it offers us of the lives of the people of the Caribbean in the mid-to-late 19th century, by speculating on what the photographic archive could have looked like if the African and Asian people of the Caribbean—the ex-enslaved and the indentured—had access to photography, and could record their lives from their own perspectives rather than being mainly recorded through the gaze of those with colonial interests. Most of what we see in the early photographic records show these people laboring, almost never at rest, or enjoying intimacy, appearing resourced, etc.
Artificial Archive goes further by taking liberties in its depictions of these people, responding to questions such as “What would the photographic record have looked like if these people had been the beneficiaries of their centuries of labor?”. The work employs this kind of generative speculation as a method for getting around the imaginative limits suggested by the existing photographic archive, as it leads us to imagine these people only in the contexts it makes available to us.
The great power of photography comes from our readiness to accept its depictions are complete and true. Artificial Archive, by presenting images that look like photographs, makes subversive use of this power. Even when the viewer is aware that the Artificial Archive image is a computational image, the vision of the past that it presents is still able to do its work of expanding, in the mind of the viewer, the contexts within which the people of history are imagined, which can have tremendous implications for what is possible for the viewer in their own life.
rodellwarner.com/Artificial-Archive
www.rodellwarner.com/scrying-intimacies
Rodell Warner (TT) is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography. Rooted in the exploration of race, nature, and technologies of representation, Rodell's artworks draw on personal and institutional archives to rethink the past, and on digital processes to index emancipatory futures. In 2025 Rodell's web-based moving image installation World Is Turning debuted at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and his first solo museum exhibition Rodell Warner + Audubon + His Journals opened at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. Rodell works online via the Caribbean.
Rodell Warner (TT) is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography. Rooted in the exploration of race, nature, and technologies of representation, Rodell's artworks draw on personal and institutional archives to rethink the past, and on digital processes to index emancipatory futures. In 2025 Rodell's web-based moving image installation World Is Turning debuted at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and his first solo museum exhibition Rodell Warner + Audubon + His Journals opened at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. Rodell works online via the Caribbean.
Rodell Warner uses AI to reveal and attend to archival omissions, restore the record, and prompt images and memories of what could have been. By generating a speculative photographic archive from mid-to-late 19th-century Caribbean history, the artist offers a powerful counterpoint to the era's official photographic records. Photography has here a unique relationship to truth: an image (always taken and always constructed) establishes itself as an evidential record and forms the basis of belief. The unique prompts Warner uses, such as "What would the photographic record have looked like if these people had been the beneficiaries of their centuries of labor?", create alternative imaginaries. These speculate on what the photographic archive could have looked like if the African and Asian people of the Caribbean had access to photography and could record their lives from their own perspectives. This project addresses the interiority and liberation of these people from limited historic representations and under-imagined lives.
Rodell Warner uses AI to reveal and attend to archival omissions, restore the record, and prompt images and memories of what could have been. By generating a speculative photographic archive from mid-to-late 19th-century Caribbean history, the artist offers a powerful counterpoint to the era's official photographic records. Photography has here a unique relationship to truth: an image (always taken and always constructed) establishes itself as an evidential record and forms the basis of belief. The unique prompts Warner uses, such as "What would the photographic record have looked like if these people had been the beneficiaries of their centuries of labor?", create alternative imaginaries. These speculate on what the photographic archive could have looked like if the African and Asian people of the Caribbean had access to photography and could record their lives from their own perspectives. This project addresses the interiority and liberation of these people from limited historic representations and under-imagined lives.