“Burn After Reading”

Tracing my ancestry has been a challenge, and a sense of uprootedness part of my lifelong identity. Through animated collages comprised of family photographs and cultural icons, this work imagines a few possibilities regarding how my ancestors ended up in Iran.

With all footage and sound in place, this video was close to completion 29 months ago (April 2024). But due to the horrors unfolding across the globe, and the tragic connection of the Palestinian experience with that of the Armenians, it became extremely difficult to create new work.

As with the last work, I’ve chosen to incorporate the imperfections in AI-generated material, this time to symbolize the unfathomable horrors experienced by the victims, and the human survival instinct that produces blurred or fractured memories.

“Burn After Reading” is the second video in which I’ve used generative AI. However, considering the debates regarding the existential risk from uncontrolled artificial intelligence, and other factors, including environmental destruction, I am rethinking the use of AI in the last and third video of this trilogy.

a video by Alysse Stepanian (images animated by generative AI)
2026. 06:30 mins. color. stereo
sound design by Philip Mantione in collaboration with Alysse Stepanian
words in Armenian, subtitled in English