¡Harken! : A Lost Truth or a Return to a myth?

¡Harken! is a transfiguration of the flawed and fragmented pieces of history written about Juan Rodriguez – a mixed-race Atlantic Creole who arrived in 1613 from Santo Domingo as a fur trader for the Dutch. In Harken!, Rodriguez’s ghost, wanting desperately to be a real person, asks ChatGPT to tell him more about his life.

The AI responds with hallucinations; distortions based on second hand accounts written by colonizers and chroniclers and accepted as “history.” Using generative AI, audience prompts, face-swapping, and image generation, Harken! audiences help Rodriguez re-write his story by ‘feeding’ the AI new information, generating new images and landscapes in the process.

Join creator and theater maker Flako Jimenez in conversation with Adaora Udoji as they navigate the storytelling of Rodriquez amidst the layers of versions of the story while applying the new tools of technology. Does that lead to excavation of a lost truth or a return to a myth?

Host or Publisher Media Art Xploration Inc