The research exhibition Archival Intelligence examines the roles of today’s all-pervasive digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence extracting data from archives and museums for profit.
The AI corporations are trained on datasets derived from colonially-built institutional archives (“We are neck-deep in digital oil”), suggesting an ominous nexus between institutional archives and corporate AI. Archival Intelligence critically intervenes with exhibitory and performative situations for participatory storytelling exploring the poetic and artistic counter-co-opting of AI. Experimenting with deep learning techniques, alternative, open source, and self-built datasets engaging ideas of memory in the Global South, the exhibition is presented in conjunction with an artistic research gathering and performances. The exhibition hosts four acoustically interconnected setups, Dhvāni, Oralitorium, Land without Food and Land Escapes, all based on various research methods of entering the black and white boxes of AI and archives, respectively, including repurposing and datafiction.
This event is a closing contribution of Chattopadhyay’s MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship “Connecting Resonances” (2023 – 2026) at KMD UiB. It is presented in a solo public exhibition at Lydgalleriet, Bergen on 22 May to 7 June 2026, opening on 22 May 2026. A related 2-day seminar “Archival Intelligence: Epistemic Shifts from Sound to Listening” weaved around the exhibition, will take place at the Bergen Assembly on 23 – 24 May (10 am – 5 pm) along with a live performance at the Bergen Senter for Elektronisk Kunst on 23 May.