Single-channel video, Super 8 transferred to 2K digital with AI-generated imagery, 14’30” 2025

In the early twentieth century, alongside the expansion of global supply chains and the exploitation of tropical resources, industrial cinema emerged in the guise of an “operational manual.” The moving image operated much like a factory assembly line, where image and language served as reciprocal forms, guiding labor and driving production.

As eras shift, today’s AI-generated imagery operates through prompt engineering, constructing reality from vast troves of existing data. Acting as operational commands, these prompts re-forge the industrialized link between image and language. However, the uncertainties that arise when reality is reassembled turn back into a “noise” that disrupts historical memory. The destiny of the image remains unaltered: within the endless cycle of operations and commands, it is continuously generated, and continuously disrupted.
 

Useful Cinema, Installation view at Thailand Biennale, Phuket, 2025

Useful Cinema, Film still