The Rhine as Liquid Archive: Towards New Mythologies with Slow AI
Hosts:
Persijn Broersen, Margit Lukács, Nat Muller, Varvara Pekhota, Andy Dockett, Ruben Beck, Mariana Fernandez Mora, Inte Gloerich
Date and Place:
11/12/2025 | Studio Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács
This workshop is part of an ongoing collaboration between several artistic and research projects. Where the River Sings is a project by in which science, mythology, ecology, technology, and non-human voices come together. Intrigued by the book Mythologie du Rhin (1862), they explore how new myths of the Rhine can overcome this book’s misogynistic perspective, instead centring more-than-human, queer, and feminist perspectives. As part of the Climate Imaginaries at Sea research project, Andy Dockett, Varvara Pekhota, and Ruben Beck (Visual Methodogies Collective at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) collaborated with the artists and with writer Nat Muller by developing a small AI story generator (or ‘Troubadour’) that links Rhine mythology and history with contemporary ecological data and non-human perspectives. The outcomes will be brought together in a publication (made possible by Stichting Stokroos) featuring contributions from writers/scholars in the fields of climate science fiction, science, history, and journalism. Together with Slow AI researchers Mariana Fernandez Mora and Inte Gloerich (also at the Visual Methodologies Collective), the format of the session was developed in the style of a ‘material playground’ that invites participants to develop new modes of engagement with and explore the affordances of AI technology without the need for efficient processes or to reach particular outcomes.
During the session, we explored how new myths of the Rhine—in which rivers speak, trees pass judgment, and humans are in constant hybrid transformations with phantoms and other animals—offer an alternative perspective on the relationship between humans and nature, and how a DIY, small AI that is intentionally built to be contemplative and poetic rather than conclusive and concise could help inspire different forms of imagination.
The session was part of a longer collaboration in which the organisers developed a local, slow-AI-driven story generator to explore how making different data available to an AI and playing with its settings affect the kinds of output it produces. Specifically, this ‘AI Troubadour’ links a curated selection of Rhine mythology and history with contemporary ecological data, critical theory, and non-human perspectives.
Selections of these data sources were printed out for participants to browse, annotate, and to discuss in small groups what different mythologies they evoke. Based on these engagements with the data, each group formulated a question for the AI Troubadour. This poetic techno-oracle served as the hybrid voice of the Rhine—part fortune teller, part archive, part guide—acting as a spokesperson for the river: a fluid, responsive interface through which the stories, knowledge, and hidden logics of the Rhine can be accessed, explored, and reimagined. The answers is gave always led to more questions and reflections, and inspired collaborative mythologising in the group. For example, it invited us to
"meet where the whispers of the past converge with the secrets of the present.
It is in this sacred confluence that the veil between lore and legend lifts,
and the mysteries of the Lorelei are revealed to those who seek them."
But it also asked who takes care as humans
"are the ones who now control my flow, harnessing me for their own needs,
while I try to restore myself within the interstices of their demands."
The Troubadour was not just a tool, but a companion, a fellow traveler to those imagining ecological futures—offering a fictional, mythological, place-based counterpoint to large-scale, general AI systems. It defamiliarised what is usually taken for granted, and made physically apparent what is often assumed to be immaterial. In the process, participants reflected on what they expect when engaging with AI – attempting to move from prompting AI to being prompted by it, or from rejecting AI outright to “co-opting” and “hijacking” it for one’s own needs.
Credits
Photography by Matija Stojanovic (https://www.instagram.com/matija.stoja/).
Climate Imaginaries at Sea is part of the Art Route NWA-project ‘Bit by bit, or not at all’ within the scheme ‘Small Projects’ which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This project was made possible with the support of Centre of Expertise for Creative Innovation CoECI (www.coeci.nl).
Slow AI is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the grant NWA.1418.24.036 in the Innovative projects within routes scheme and is part of the AI Squared consortium (www.aisquared.nl).