THE HALLUCINATING ARCHIVE

As centers of power and knowledge radically shift in the era of AI, “archive fever” appears to be transforming into a totalizing hallucination—one that operates through data harvesting and generative simulation rather than the archival traditions of collection and curation.

Some data scientists argue that while “hallucination” has become the go-to term, in popular and scientific literature, for generative AI falsehoods, other terms like “confabulation” or “fabrication” are more appropriate, since the psychological term “hallucination” is rooted in perception of things not present. “The Hallucinating Archive” starts from the thought that the term “hallucination” exactly captures what generative LLMs do in relation to the archives they are trained on, not just in those moments where their outputs are unfaithful to an original document or to a reader’s notion of the truth, but in all cases, all the time. For the generative AI model, the original is never present, and the model’s job is to produce a realistic impression of the original from its trace. The result is no less a hallucination when it happens to resemble a familiar reality.

Visual artists and educators David Rueter, Marissa Lee Benedict, and Christopher Meerdo are co-organizing "The Hallucinating Archive": an emergent working group that will document, collate, commission, and share the work of artists, designers, researchers, and academics respond to data 'embeddings,' LLM training logics, and accelerated information economies.

With the intention of creating a future index that is at once a repository and a publishing platform, "The Hallucinating Archive" probes the technological paradigms rewriting frameworks of evidence, documentation methods, and constructions of collective memory. What happens to files, records, or indexical images—the "shape of evidence"—when they become abstracted sedimentations in the "mind" of an AI model? Is hallucination the activation of the archive, or the result of its eradication? What are the LLM’s wishes, what are the archive’s wishes, that arrive to us as images of their own fulfillment?

MIND MAP

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The Hallucinating Archive: Interpolation, Extrapolation

11.00-13.00, Wednesday, June 18

Led by Christopher Meerdo

This hands-on workshop explores how generative AI models—particularly diffusion systems—can interpolate and extrapolate from training data to construct speculative images and machine-hallucinated truths. Framed around the concept of The Hallucinating Archive, the session moves between the philosophical, political, and technical dimensions of working with leaks, custom datasets, and fine-tuned models.

Using ComfyUI and other open-source tools, participants will be guided through hands-on workflows for red-teaming AI systems, manipulating outputs, and beginning custom model training. Christopher Meerdo will share examples from his own practice, which includes working with leaked government documents, machine learning systems, and speculative imaging processes to interrogate state power and archival control.

Rooted in strategic adoption, this workshop balances critical inquiry with accessible technical skill-building. It is open to all skill levels, encouraging artists, theorists, and technologists alike to experiment with AI not as passive users, but as informed and critical co-creators.

Lunch with vegan options is provided after the session (please RSVP to marissa@terminal.institute to confirm a meal).

The Hallucinating Archive: After the Index

14.30-16.00, Wednesday, June 18

with Alena Alexandrova, Mirjam Kooiman (Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam), and Winke Wiegersma (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision)

As photography transitions from a medium of evidentiary record to a resource for training synthetic vision systems, what becomes of the image's truth-claim within the context of archives and museums?

This discussion brings together curators and cultural practitioners to examine the shifting role of indexicality in contemporary photographic practice. How might curators respond to the proliferation of AI-generated imagery—images untethered from referents yet built from archival residue—and what ethical, political, and aesthetic considerations arise when these hallucinated images are allowed into the space of the museum or returned to the archive?

Framing the archive not only as a site of memory but as an active engine of machine cognition, this discussion explores curatorial responsibility in an era when institutional repositories are increasingly mined as data sets and the boundary between documentation and speculation collapses. The Hallucinating Archive: After the Index asks how collective memory, visual culture, and cultural authority are transformed when archives no longer merely preserve history but begin to simulate it.

Alena Alexandrova is a cultural theorist and writer based in Amsterdam. She teaches at the
Fine Arts and Photography departments, Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Currently she is writing a
book Anarchic Infrastructures in a dialogue with a constellation of art practices that engage
in an anarcheology, and working on a photography project situated between theory and practice. Her writing practice probes the modulation of theory into speculative forms and fiction. She has published numerous texts in academic and artistic contexts, and regularly contributes to art publications and catalogues. She curated exhibitions and symposia in Amsterdam and Paris. She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam.

Mirjam Kooiman is Head of Artistic Programming at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam, overseeing Foam’s exhibition programme and magazine. She has curated over 40 exhibitions, among which Missing Mirror – Photography Through the Lens of AI (2024) — an exhibition that formed a starting point for a line of research questioning what it means to be a photography museum today.

Winke Wiegersma is a digital curator and artistic researcher. She currently works at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the national media archive, and oversees a range of research projects related to born-digital heritage and digital culture. Previously, she served as the Curator of Digital Programs at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam.

The Hallucinating Archive: Working Session

11.00-13.00 / 14.30-16.00, Thursday, June 19

By invitation. Please be in touch if you would like to be invited to participate in this in-person session (marissa@terminal.institute).

The Hallucinating Archive: Agents in the Archive

15.00-16.30, Saturday, June 21

Led by David Rueter

Large language models now operate with a degree of autonomy that, until recently, existed only in science fiction. How are these self-governing interpretive technologies transforming archives, archival research methods, and our understanding of why something is selected for preservation? Led by David Rueter, this workshop will examine how large language models search and interpret archival content. Drawing on his background as artist and software engineer, Rueter will demonstrate the technical mechanisms at work, while unpacking the political and philosophical directives, dispositions, and proclivities embedded in these models and agents.

All events are located at:

Willem Parelstraat 17, 1018KZ Amsterdam

All events co-organized by Marissa Lee Benedict, Christopher Meerdo, and David Rueter.

Restrooms are available by request (in a personal residence), and accessible by elevator.

Please contact us directly with any additional inquiries at info@terminal.institute.