Sofy Yuditskaya: Those Who Were Living

A series of compelling videos where we creatively utilize advanced AI technology to generate vivid representations of extinct animals set against the backdrop of disappearing landscapes in the Arctic, Amazon, and Kerala. Once we and our ecosystems have all vanished, it may very well be that only the AIs will retain the capacity to dream of a past long gone. Barthes’ famous proposal asserts that photography is fundamentally characterized by the presence of death. To Barthes, a photograph effectively arrests time, and while the world continues its relentless march of life, the photograph turns into an embodiment of an emanation from beyond the pale. In our project titled “Those Who Were Living,” we extend this thought-provoking concept to a curated series of striking photographs, but we also choose to insert, much like Durer’s Rhinoceros, an image he meticulously drew from mere descriptions, depicting animals that have already disappeared, alongside those currently teetering on the brink of extinction (as evidenced by their presence on the endangered species list). We bring forth these creatures, which can only be glimpsed in the deranged fantasies of dying sailors navigating through the Arctic and in other remote regions of the world that are primarily visited by the so-called “explorers” (or more accurately, the exploiters) of capitalism and the mercantile classes, who were there predominantly to extract from the environment whatever possible gains they could acquire. The title draws inspiration from T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound’s profound work, "The Wasteland."