LORAs as an Archive, A Living Archive by Evans Akanyijuka

LORAs as an Archive, A Living Archive by Evans Akanyijuka

As part of the Afropean Intelligence Residency Program.
Challenge “ZaZi: An African Educational AI Model”

The selected project
LoRAs as an Archive, A Living Archive

LORAs as an Archive, A Living Archive is an interactive art project that explores how memory and possibility can be reactivated by transforming archives into a living immersive installation through the use of LoRas. Through co-curation sessions of photographs from an archive, customised LoRA models are trained on the selected photographs. Once trained, the models themselves become generative repositories that embody memory.

The models are then used to create an immersive, interactive experience, allowing audiences to engage directly with the archive through motion sensors, generating visuals that reshape and expand it in real time. This project seeks to unfreeze the possibilities within each photograph, forming a living archive where memory, technology, and imagination coexist.

Host institution
Fak’ugesi, Johannesburg (ZA)
European partner
CHRONIQUES, Marseille (FR)

The artist
Evans Akanyijuka

Evans Akanyijuka is a digital artist currently based in Kampala, Uganda. His practice unfolds at the intersection of different media including collage, photography, and emerging technologies. He uses these forms as both an archive and inquiry into memory, heritage, and identity through bodies of work such as “the battle of kagogo”. Through these explorations Evans hopes that his work uncovers the layered and often fragmented ways in which we understand ourselves and each other.

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& Check-out the other selected projects for the Afropean Intelligence Residency Program:

+ Challenge 1: Intercultural AI: Weaving Worlds through Art and Algorithms | “Untangler: Worlds Reimagined” – Peace Olatunji
+ Challenge 1bis: “Decoding Egwu: reclaiming indigenous intelligence through AI, dance and Igbo” – Emmanuel Ndefo & Dan Xu
+ Challenge 3: Plural Computation | “The Affogbolo’s Home” – Pierre-Christophe Gam
+ Challenge 4: Psychogeography and the Influence of AI | “Bursting the last bubble” – Tamer Elshabrawy
+ Challenge 5: Archives & Memory | “Adorned memory: Reimagining Egyptian Indigenous Archives Through Jewellery” – Khanya Mthethwa
+ Challenge 6: ZaZi: An African Educational AI Model | “LORAS AS AN ARCHIVE – A LIVING ARCHIVE” – Evans Akanyijuka
+ Challenge 7: Beyond Borders: AI, Climate, and Resource Justice in Africa | “Cry To The Water” – Chipo Mapondera
+ Challenge 9: Provenance and Social Memory | “TERRITOIRE TISSé: Art Royal Kuba entre tradition et (R)évolution” – Melisa Kayowa
+ Challenge 10: Futurism and Geolocation | “Mobility as Memory: a decolonial AI cartography of Kinshasa” – Chinedum Muotto

+ Afropean Intelligence is bringing together 10 cultural organizations across Africa and Europe: