The Past (is) Tense HT

In this work, the artist uses AI to speculate layered pasts rooted in the socio-political context of the present. The artist works with architectural structures symbolic of the diverse cultural influences of India’s past. Cut out parts of these are juxtaposed with AI imagined erasures of this diverse richness to hint at the present’s tense narratives around these themes. The past is always moulded in the politics of the present. Could technologies of today then, the same ones used for percolating these narratives, be used for perceiving these pasts in alternate ways? Is this an act of encroachment, hybridization, erasure or simply forced speculation?