How to deal with an extreme conspiracy theory?

Directly, I knew I did not want to make a documentary work but to use my newly gained ‘authority’ as a documentary photographer from my previous project Palimpsest. I then re-enacted experiments pictured and shared by flat-earthers, asked random people or friends for portraits, created artifacts that belong to them, used the same photographic gear they use, made photographic montage, etc… But some hints of their fakeness remain visible. The idea was to create a reasonable doubt in the spectator’s mind and to question the project.

Pictures determine and impregnate the field of our experience. Whatever their origins, they have become the instruments of knowledge, of argumentation and influence. With the coming of Artificial Intelligence in the game, there is no doubt that we have to learn now more than ever how to analyze them.

Philippe Braquenier is part of »Guest Room: Daniel Boetker-Smith & Tanvi Mishra«.

Check out his Artist Feature “Earth Not a Globe”.