In a dystopian future, humans have had to block out the sun in order to survive on Earth. Drought is extreme and the planet is gradually turning into a scorching desert where the survivors, installed in the basements of the great observatories, live in perpetual darkness. To compensate for the image of a sun they can no longer see, they instruct an artificial intelligence program to reconstruct it. The AI is supervised by a young woman whose mental images are particularly vivid.

Drawing on the photo-novel structure of Chris Marker's film La Jetée (1962), Chronicles of the Dark Sun work on a science fiction narrative in which, as in Marker's film, an algorithm is tasked with reconstructing the past using an image from the protagonist's childhood. By recycling photographs from personal albums, advertising images and scientific snapshots, all of which are reprocessed by an AI, the film examines our relationship with technology in a disturbing and ironic way. This work is an uncanny fable that makes us think about the deformation of reality in AI as well as the unsustainability of our way of inhabiting the planet.

Credits

• Production and editing: Gwenola Wagon
• Concept: Pierre Cassou-Noguès and Gwenola Wagon
• Text: Pierre Cassou-Noguès
• Graphics and credits: Nuno da Luz
• Assistant editor: Cécile Bicler
• Original music, sound design and mixing: Kerwin Rolland
• Guitar performance: Marie Solies
• Adaptation of the Lugubre Gondole by Franz Liszt
• With: Cécile Bicler, Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Gurwann Tran Van Gie 
• Photographs of memories: Bernard Wagon
• Images transformed with Gen2.
• Produced with the support of Hangar Y, in partnership with l’Observatoire de Paris-PSL, for the " Prendre le Soleil" exhibition (December 2023 - April 2024)
• Acknowledgements Aurélie Baron, Luce Lebart and Marta Ponsa, Vincent Coudé du Foresto, Miguel Montargès and Observatoire de Paris-PSL

Diffusion

« Prendre le soleil », décembre 2023-avril 2024,  Hangar Y (Meudon) ; Dialogues avec l’IA, Galerie Analix Forever, Genève,  mai-juin 2024 ;  Genossin Sonne Comrade Sun, Kunsthalle Wien and Wiener Festwochen, Freie Republik Wien, Vienne, 16 mai- 1er septembre 2024 ; Exposition Paysages Ultimes – 2024, IMAGES/VENTENAC, Ventenac, 2024 ; Projection 29th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, 27 octobre, 1 novembre 2024 ;  Speculative Archives – AI films, Harvard University, US, Carpenter Center, Curator Antonio Somaini, Boston, 30 octobre 2024 , Tous les détails du monde, Colloque international La Fabrique du détail, La Fémis, Paris, 8 novembre 2024 ; Rencontres internationales Paris / Berlin, Séance d'ouverture, Auditorium Forum des images, Paris, 18 novembre 2024 et Cinéma Pathé Les Fauvettes, Paris, 23 novembre 2024 ; Chiayi International Art Documentary Festival Chiayi City 14 mars - 30 mars 2025 ; Solar biennale #2, Mudac, Musée cantonal de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains Lausanne, 21 mars - 21 septembre 2025 ; Fixing Futures, Transformation and future, Museum Giersch of the Goethe University (MGGU), Frankfurt, 5 avril 2025 - 31 aout 2025