‘Forgot Your Protest?’ is a practice-based research project focused on the non-violent anti-communist protests of 1989. It explores how AI-driven content generation can reshape – and potentially distort – our collective memory of these pivotal events. Drawing on the oral testimony of participants in the democratic European uprisings, the project highlights both the remarkable power of digital reconstruction tools and the growing risks they pose to factual public memory.

Recent evidence suggests that generative models can dramatically escalate the formation of false memories and influence how societies understand their past. Left unchecked, these false memories can spread rapidly, undermining established historical facts and deepening social divisions. In its attempt to (re)animate memories in an increasingly fast-paced media landscape, ‘Forgot your protest?’ addresses issues of authenticity and the reliability of media content, the potential for the ideological manipulation of historical memory, and the broader risks associated with the misuse of digital technology.

• How does the changing media landscape with its new AI-driven content creation methods affect the ways in which protest is remembered?
• What specific risks do generative models introduce for the preservation and transmission of collective memory, and how do these risks manifest in public discourse?
• In what ways can generative AI tools be harnessed responsibly to re-activate or re-interpret 1989 testimonies for educational and commemorative purposes, without compromising accuracy?
• Can AI-based historical reconstructions exacerbate existing social polarization and frustration, or might they serve as a means to bridge generational gaps and reinvigorate interest in civic values?

The project combines historic-anthropological research methods (collecting and analysing oral testimonies) with hands-on media content creation (selecting, mastering and critically applying modern digital tools).

• Interviews with witnesses to and participants in the non-violent anti-communist protests of 1989
• Comparative analysis of dominant national narratives of those historical events and their visual representations in the media
• Video and image generation by applying open-source or source-available latent diffusion models to archival images, videos and transcripts from 1989
• Risk Assessment: Identifying instances where generated content diverges from documented facts or inadvertently reinforces misinformation

Public-facing video installation

• Multimodal exhibit: Curate AI-manipulated testimonies alongside original historical footage to highlight the tension between authentic and ‘synthetic’ memory
• Interactive components: Invite the public to explore how small edits to prompts in AI models can lead to significantly altered narratives, thus fostering critical media literacy

The project is supported by the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur.