Human error (2024-ongoing)
NARRATIVE INTRODUCTION
I don’t know much about my father’s side, and I can’t really change that—after all, I’m the only one still alive. When the full-scale invasion began, I felt an urgent need to learn more about my family history. During one of my trips home, I discovered a few photographs from their time in Khabarovsk, Siberia.
As a child, I never realized this was Soviet repression. I saw their exile almost like a planned journey—maybe because no one spoke openly about it. In 1939, my family’s hometown of Shatsk, once part of Poland, was annexed by the USSR. Soon after, the Soviets deported many families: political and religious dissidents, wealthier peasants who opposed collectivization, their families and many more. Between 1944 and 1953, an estimated 210,000 Ukrainians from western Ukraine were sent to Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East, regions where survival was often threatened by the harsh climate.
My great-grandparents refused to join the Kolhosp and surrender their assets and property, so they ended up in Sita, Khabarovsk region, nearly 10 000 kilometers from home. They traveled there in a cargo train, a journey that took about a month. They never spoke much about what job they had there—most likely they were forced to fell trees, work in mines, build factories, and lay roads. All I know for sure is that my great-grandmother swore never to work for the Soviets again. After returning to Ukraine, she supported herself by selling homemade alcohol (horilka) and renting out rooms in her home.
My family’s story in Siberia ended relatively well: everyone survived and returned to Ukraine after nine years, in 1958. However, they had to rebuild in a new town, as their original home had been seized by the Soviets and they were forbidden to come back. Altogether, I’ve discovered only 15 surviving images from my father’s side (excluding those of him as an adult). One of these shows my relatives at the start of constructing their new home, with a note reading: “We are building a house. With God’s help, we will finish.”
I wondered how best to handle all this information and turned to artificial intelligence as a collaborator—partly because AI can’t be hurt by my family’s trauma, but also because I have more void to fill than information. I trained my own models in Stable Diffusion using the few family photos I had, along with reference images from other Ukrainians of the same era—sourced online and at flea markets. The results varied: at times I saw faces I didn’t recognize, other times just digital glitches. Yet the more I looked at these images, the closer they felt. I experienced a cognitive dissonance, knowing these people had never existed, yet almost believing they could be my relatives.
Still, imagining or recreating faces wasn’t enough. I wanted to share the emotional core of memories—both the ones I had and the ones I wished I’d had. So I trained new models to generate what I call “pure memories.” I realized I often recall certain childhood events only because there’s a photo in my album depicting them. That made me wonder: What if I start believing these AI-generated memories are real? Can I alter them? How much randomness should I allow?
For the NYC exhibition, I prepared a video, two printed images, and an interactive tactile object. I projected the video onto a bedsheet my grandmother gave me, replicating how I used to watch diafilms as a child.
I invited viewers to immerse themselves in my memories through a multi-sensory experience, engaging hearing, sight, and touch.
INSTALLATION SHOTS
N1 by Collective Ethos in NYC, September 2024 with the support of ICP.
pictures by Sara Sepulcri
