{"id":1027,"date":"2026-06-22T10:43:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2026-06-22T10:43:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:43:22","slug":"ruines-sans-referent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/?p=1027","title":{"rendered":"Ruines sans r\u00e9f\u00e9rent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nLe document, l’archive et l’effacement \u2014 s\u00e9rie Ukraine (2022)<\/p>\n

Un document de quoi ?<\/em><\/p>\n

J’ai commenc\u00e9 cette s\u00e9rie en 2022, dans les premi\u00e8res semaines de l’invasion \u00e0 grande \u00e9chelle, \u00e0 partir de photographies de destructions caus\u00e9es par l’arm\u00e9e russe. Le proc\u00e9d\u00e9 tient en trois op\u00e9rations : entra\u00eener un mod\u00e8le sur ces photographies de ruines ; g\u00e9n\u00e9rer \u00e0 partir de lui des images de destruction, d’abord tr\u00e8s brouill\u00e9es ; puis effacer, par une seconde intervention algorithmique, les zones devenues trop illisibles. Ce qui subsiste \u2014 un \u00e9difice \u00e9ventr\u00e9 qui \u00e9merge d’un fond presque vierge, cern\u00e9 de coul\u00e9es bleues, mang\u00e9 de blanc sur ses bords \u2014 n’est plus une photographie de guerre. C’est autre chose, dont le statut est pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment la question : un document de quoi ?<\/p>\n

Les images ont tous les signes du document : l’iconographie du sinistre, les murs effondr\u00e9s, l’embrasure noire d’une porte, les gravats, le poteau \u00e9lectrique rest\u00e9 debout. Elles convoquent ce que Barthes appelait l’\u00ab effet de r\u00e9el \u00bb, ce surcro\u00eet de pr\u00e9sence par lequel un d\u00e9tail atteste \u00ab nous y \u00e9tions \u00bb. Et pourtant aucun photon venu d’un lieu r\u00e9el n’a jamais touch\u00e9 ces images. Elles documentent une destruction qui a bien eu lieu \u2014 celle de l’Ukraine \u2014 sans documenter aucune destruction en particulier. Elles sont des ruines sans r\u00e9f\u00e9rent. La s\u00e9rie ne porte pas tant sur la guerre que sur ce qui arrive au document quand il traverse un mod\u00e8le g\u00e9n\u00e9ratif.<\/p>\n

Le document m\u00e9tabolis\u00e9<\/em><\/p>\n

La premi\u00e8re op\u00e9ration transforme la nature m\u00eame de l’archive. En entra\u00eenant un mod\u00e8le sur un corpus de photographies de destruction, je ne constitue pas une collection : je dissous des documents dans une disposition. Les images r\u00e9elles ne sont plus consultables comme telles ; elles ont \u00e9t\u00e9 m\u00e9tabolis\u00e9es en poids, s\u00e9diment\u00e9es dans la couche lente du mod\u00e8le \u2014 ce que j’appelle la bi-s\u00e9dimentation, o\u00f9 l’archive documentaire devient une capacit\u00e9 \u00e0 g\u00e9n\u00e9rer plut\u00f4t qu’un stock \u00e0 conserver.<\/p>\n

C’est exactement le renversement que pensait Derrida dans Mal d’archive : l’archive n’est jamais un simple d\u00e9p\u00f4t du pass\u00e9, elle est d’abord consignation, geste qui rassemble et, ce faisant, s\u00e9lectionne, exclut, d\u00e9truit. Il y a au c\u0153ur de l’archive une pulsion qui travaille contre elle, une anarchive. Le mod\u00e8le g\u00e9n\u00e9ratif porte cette logique \u00e0 son terme : il n’archive plus des images, il archive une tendance \u2014 \u00ab la destruction \u00bb comme cat\u00e9gorie latente, m\u00e9moire sans souvenirs. C’est ce que je nomme m\u00e9moire allog\u00e9n\u00e9tique, une m\u00e9moire de ruines venues d’ailleurs, qui n’appartiennent \u00e0 personne, et inconscient algorithmique, ce savoir tacite de la catastrophe que le r\u00e9seau a contract\u00e9 sans jamais l’avoir vue. L\u00e0 o\u00f9 Lev Manovich d\u00e9crivait la base de donn\u00e9es comme forme symbolique de notre \u00e9poque, le mod\u00e8le marque un pas de plus : non plus une base que l’on interroge, mais une disposition qui r\u00e9pond. L’archive a cess\u00e9 d’\u00eatre lisible pour devenir g\u00e9n\u00e9rative.<\/p>\n

La destruction sans r\u00e9f\u00e9rent<\/em><\/p>\n

La deuxi\u00e8me op\u00e9ration produit l’image, et avec elle la crise du document. Ce que le mod\u00e8le restitue, ce n’est aucune ruine dat\u00e9e : c’est une synth\u00e8se statistique de toutes celles qu’il a ing\u00e9r\u00e9es, une destruction en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral qui n’a ni lieu ni heure. Le brouillage initial \u2014 le bruit dont l’image \u00e9merge \u2014 est l’index honn\u00eate de cette non-r\u00e9f\u00e9rence : l’image avoue qu’elle ne renvoie \u00e0 aucun instant capt\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Ici se joue la perte de l’indice. La photographie tirait son autorit\u00e9 documentaire de l’indexicalit\u00e9 : une empreinte lumineuse du r\u00e9el, au sens de Peirce repris par Rosalind Krauss. L’image g\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9e rompt ce lien \u2014 elle a l’apparence de l’indice sans en avoir le fondement. Elle rel\u00e8ve de ce que les th\u00e9ories post-photographiques (Manovich, Mitchell) annon\u00e7aient : une image qui ressemble \u00e0 une photographie mais n’en partage plus l’ontologie. Et pourtant je ne crois pas qu’elle ne documente rien. Elle documente autrement : non l’\u00e9v\u00e9nement dans sa singularit\u00e9, mais sa r\u00e9manence achronique, la persistance d’une destruction soustraite \u00e0 la chronologie. C’est la ruine au sens o\u00f9 Walter Benjamin la pensait \u2014 non l’accident d’une histoire, mais la forme m\u00eame que prend l’histoire, l’all\u00e9gorie d’un temps qui ne se totalise pas, ce que contemple l’ange tourn\u00e9 vers l’amoncellement des d\u00e9combres.<\/p>\n

La photographie d’apr\u00e8s-coup \u2014 ce que David Campany a nomm\u00e9 late photography, l’image du lieu une fois l’\u00e9v\u00e9nement pass\u00e9, trace de la trace \u2014 trouve ici sa version paradoxale : un apr\u00e8s-coup sans coup, une sc\u00e8ne d’aftermath dont l’instant n’a jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 photographi\u00e9. La texture granuleuse, presque g\u00e9ologique, que prend la mati\u00e8re d\u00e9truite n’y est pas un d\u00e9faut : elle fait de la ruine r\u00e9cente une ruine imm\u00e9moriale, comme si la destruction avait toujours d\u00e9j\u00e0 eu lieu.<\/p>\n

L’effacement rendu visible<\/p>\n

La troisi\u00e8me op\u00e9ration est la plus singuli\u00e8re, et c’est elle qui fait basculer la s\u00e9rie du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l’\u0153uvre. Plut\u00f4t que de conserver la totalit\u00e9 de l’hallucination, j’efface \u2014 par une seconde IA \u2014 les zones devenues trop brouill\u00e9es. Ce qui reste de blanc dans l’image n’est donc pas un fond : c’est la trace de ce retrait, la forme visible de ce que la machine n’a pas pu r\u00e9soudre en image. L’effacement n’est pas masqu\u00e9 ; il est expos\u00e9 comme effacement.<\/p>\n

L’image porte alors sa propre lacune inscrite en elle. C’est, plastiquement, la le\u00e7on de Didi-Huberman : l’image n’est ni toute-puissante ni nulle, elle vaut \u00ab malgr\u00e9 tout \u00bb, justement parce qu’elle assume son manque au lieu de le combler. Le blanc qui d\u00e9vore les bords, les fragments orphelins qui flottent sans sol, les coul\u00e9es bleues qui contaminent le photographique d’une mati\u00e8re picturale : tout cela inscrit dans l’image l’aveu de sa fabrication et de sa d\u00e9faillance. L’image confesse qu’elle est un reste.<\/p>\n

Et c’est ici que l’archive r\u00e9v\u00e8le sa violence propre. Tout document est le produit d’un effacement \u2014 de tout ce qui n’a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 retenu, cadr\u00e9, conserv\u00e9. En rendant l’effacement visible, la s\u00e9rie ne montre pas seulement des ruines : elle montre l’archive en train de ruiner. Le blanc est l’anarchive devenue image. Il y faut entendre quelque chose du d\u00e9sastre selon Blanchot : non l’\u00e9v\u00e9nement repr\u00e9sentable, mais ce qui ruine jusqu’\u00e0 la possibilit\u00e9 de la repr\u00e9sentation, et n’en laisse para\u00eetre que le bord.<\/p>\n

Ruine de la ruine<\/em><\/p>\n

Ces images sont doublement ruin\u00e9es : elles repr\u00e9sentent des ruines, et elles sont elles-m\u00eames des images ruin\u00e9es \u2014 fragment\u00e9es, effac\u00e9es, dissoutes dans le blanc. Le m\u00e9dium accomplit son sujet. C’est pourquoi la s\u00e9rie n’est pas un document de la guerre en Ukraine, mais un document de ce qu’il advient du document \u00e0 l’\u00e8re des mod\u00e8les g\u00e9n\u00e9ratifs : sa m\u00e9tabolisation en disposition, la perte de son indice, l’effacement qui le constitue. Une archive du d\u00e9sastre au sens fort \u2014 o\u00f9 l’archive elle-m\u00eame est expos\u00e9e dans son d\u00e9sastre.<\/p>\n

Reste alors une fid\u00e9lit\u00e9 paradoxale. Je ne suis pas fid\u00e8le \u00e0 l’apparence de l’\u00e9v\u00e9nement \u2014 je n’en restitue aucun instant vrai. Je suis fid\u00e8le \u00e0 sa disparition : au fait qu’une part de ce qui a \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9truit ne sera jamais document\u00e9, et que le document, l\u00e0 o\u00f9 il existe, est lui-m\u00eame fragile, partiel, vou\u00e9 au retrait. Ce n’est pas un parar\u00e9alisme consolant, un double rassurant du r\u00e9el ; c’est un r\u00e9el \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 du r\u00e9el qui tient le manque ouvert.<\/p>\n

La s\u00e9rie Ukraine forme ainsi la premi\u00e8re station d’un trajet. De la ruine m\u00e9tabolis\u00e9e et effac\u00e9e (le document qui se d\u00e9fait dans la machine) \u00e0 l’image de l’\u00e9v\u00e9nement jamais document\u00e9 (la s\u00e9rie Archive impossible, sur Gaza), une m\u00eame question se poursuit : que peut l’image quand le document fait d\u00e9faut, ou se d\u00e9fait ? Non pas combler l’absence par la simulation, mais en faire une iconologie \u2014 une pens\u00e9e de la lacune et de l’intervalle.<\/p>\n

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\/\/ ENGLISH \/\/<\/p>\n

Ruins Without a Referent<\/h1>\n

The Document, the Archive, and Erasure \u2014 Ukraine series (2022)<\/em><\/p>\n

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A Document of What?<\/h2>\n

I began this series in 2022, in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, working from photographs of destruction caused by the Russian army. The procedure rests on three operations: training a model on these photographs of ruins; generating from it images of destruction, at first heavily blurred; then erasing, through a second algorithmic intervention, the zones that had become too illegible. What remains \u2014 a gutted building emerging from an almost blank ground, ringed with washes of blue, eaten away by white at its edges \u2014 is no longer a war photograph. It is something else, whose status is precisely the question: a document of what?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The images bear every sign of the document: the iconography of catastrophe, collapsed walls, the black opening of a doorway, the rubble, the power-line pole left standing. They summon what Barthes called the “reality effect,”<\/strong> that surplus of presence by which a detail attests “we were there.” And yet no photon from any real place ever touched these images. They document a destruction that did indeed take place \u2014 that of Ukraine \u2014 without documenting any destruction in particular<\/em>. They are ruins without a referent. The series is not so much about the war as about what happens to the document when it passes through a generative model.<\/p>\n

The Metabolized Document<\/h2>\n

The first operation transforms the very nature of the archive. In training a model on a corpus of photographs of destruction, I do not constitute a collection: I dissolve documents into a disposition. The real images are no longer consultable as such; they have been metabolized into weights, sedimented in the slow layer of the model \u2014 what I call bi-sedimentation<\/strong>, where the documentary archive becomes a capacity to generate rather than a stock to preserve.<\/p>\n

This is exactly the reversal Derrida thought in Archive Fever<\/em>: the archive is never a simple deposit of the past, it is first of all consignation<\/em>, a gesture that gathers and, in so doing, selects, excludes, destroys. At the heart of the archive there is a drive that works against it, an anarchive<\/strong>. The generative model carries this logic to its limit: it no longer archives images, it archives a tendency<\/em> \u2014 “destruction” as a latent category, a memory without recollections. This is what I call allogenetic memory<\/strong>, a memory of ruins come from elsewhere, belonging to no one, and algorithmic unconscious<\/strong>, that tacit knowledge of catastrophe the network has contracted without ever having seen it. Where Lev Manovich described the database as the symbolic form of our age, the model marks a further step: no longer a database one queries, but a disposition that answers. The archive has ceased to be legible in order to become generative.<\/p>\n

Destruction Without a Referent<\/h2>\n

The second operation produces the image, and with it the crisis of the document. What the model returns is no dated ruin: it is a statistical synthesis of all the ruins it has ingested, a destruction in general<\/em> that has neither place nor hour. The initial blur \u2014 the noise out of which the image emerges \u2014 is the honest index of this non-reference: the image confesses that it refers to no captured instant.<\/p>\n

Here the index is lost. Photography drew its documentary authority from indexicality: a luminous imprint of the real, in the sense of Peirce taken up by Rosalind Krauss. The generated image breaks this bond \u2014 it has the appearance of the index without its foundation. It belongs to what the post-photographic theories (Manovich, Mitchell) announced: an image that resembles a photograph but no longer shares its ontology. And yet I do not believe it documents nothing<\/em>. It documents otherwise: not the event in its singularity, but its achronic remanence<\/strong>, the persistence of a destruction withdrawn from chronology. This is the ruin in the sense Walter Benjamin gave it \u2014 not the accident of a history, but the very form history takes, the allegory of a time that does not totalize itself, what the angel, turned toward the mounting wreckage, contemplates.<\/p>\n

The photography of the aftermath \u2014 what David Campany named late photography<\/em>, the image of the site once the event has passed, trace of the trace \u2014 finds here its paradoxical version: an aftermath without the blow, a scene of aftermath whose instant was never photographed. The granular, almost geological texture that the destroyed matter takes on is not a flaw: it makes the recent ruin an immemorial ruin, as if the destruction had always already taken place.<\/p>\n

Erasure Made Visible<\/h2>\n

The third operation is the most singular, and it is what tips the series over into the work itself. Rather than keeping the hallucination in its entirety, I erase \u2014 by means of a second AI \u2014 the zones that had become too blurred. What remains of white in the image is therefore not a ground: it is the trace of that withdrawal<\/strong>, the visible form of what the machine could not resolve into an image. The erasure is not masked; it is exposed as<\/em> erasure.<\/p>\n

The image then carries its own lacuna inscribed within it. This is, plastically, Didi-Huberman’s lesson: the image is neither all-powerful nor null, it holds “in spite of all,”<\/strong> precisely because it assumes its lack instead of filling it. The white that devours the edges, the orphaned fragments floating without ground, the washes of blue that contaminate the photographic with a pictorial matter: all of this inscribes within the image the avowal of its fabrication and of its failure. The image confesses that it is a remainder.<\/p>\n

And it is here that the archive reveals its own violence. Every document is the product of an erasure \u2014 of all that was not retained, framed, preserved. In making erasure visible, the series does not only show ruins: it shows the archive in the act of ruining<\/em>. The white is the anarchive become image. One should hear in it something of the disaster according to Blanchot: not the representable event, but that which ruins even the possibility of representation, and lets only its edge appear.<\/p>\n

Ruin of the Ruin<\/h2>\n

These images are doubly ruined: they represent ruins, and they are themselves ruined images \u2014 fragmented, erased, dissolved into white. The medium accomplishes its subject. This is why the series is not a document of the war in Ukraine, but a document of what becomes of the document in the age of generative models: its metabolization into a disposition, the loss of its index, the erasure that constitutes it. An archive of disaster<\/strong> in the strong sense \u2014 where the archive itself is exposed in its disaster.<\/p>\n

What remains, then, is a paradoxical fidelity. I am not faithful to the appearance of the event \u2014 I restore no true instant of it. I am faithful to its disappearance<\/em>: to the fact that part of what was destroyed will never be documented, and that the document, where it exists, is itself fragile, partial, destined to withdraw. This is not a consoling pararealism<\/strong>, a reassuring double of the real; it is a real alongside the real that holds the lack open.<\/p>\n

The Ukraine series thus forms the first station of a trajectory. From the ruin metabolized and erased<\/em> (the document that comes undone within the machine) to the image of the event never documented<\/em> (the series Impossible Archive<\/em>, on Gaza), one and the same question continues: what can the image do when the document is lacking, or comes undone? Not to fill the absence with simulation, but to make of it an iconology \u2014 a thinking of the lacuna and of the interval.<\/p>\n

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Le document, l’archive et l’effacement \u2014 s\u00e9rie Ukraine (2022) Un document de quoi ? J’ai commenc\u00e9 cette s\u00e9rie en 2022, dans les premi\u00e8res semaines de l’invasion \u00e0 grande \u00e9chelle, \u00e0 partir de photographies de destructions caus\u00e9es par l’arm\u00e9e russe. Le proc\u00e9d\u00e9 tient en trois op\u00e9rations : entra\u00eener un mod\u00e8le sur ces photographies de ruines ; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,184,135,163,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-imagination-artificielle","category-intelligence-artificielle","category-photographie","category-une"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035,"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/databaz.org\/xtrm-art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}