Encountering Eldagsen’s work feels less like viewing and more like remembering something you never lived. The images do not “illustrate” concepts; they operate like visual triggers—activating emotional, symbolic, and subconscious responses in the viewer. As a curator, I find this dynamic especially compelling. His work resists consumption and asks for contemplation. It slows down the encounter, making space for interiority in a cultural moment dominated by speed and surface.

There’s also something deeply humane in the disorientation his images provoke. It is not technological spectacle that interests him, but psychological depth. And in that sense, his work returns photography—whether AI-generated or not—to one of its original functions: the excavation of time, trauma, and dream.

Toward a More Conscious Practice: Reflections on Ecological Prompting

Eldagsen’s practice, though not explicitly activist or environmental, has pushed me to reflect more critically on the wider implications of working with AI. The computational infrastructure behind generative tools is resource-intensive, and as these technologies become more accessible, we must begin to think about their ecological footprint—not only in terms of energy, but in terms of cognitive and cultural excess.

The ease of producing infinite variations comes with a risk: flooding the visual field with noise. For this reason, I believe we need to develop a more conscious approach to prompting—one that values precision, depth, and restraint. What I’ve come to call ecological prompting is not a methodology, but an attitude. It asks us to treat the act of creation not as a game of abundance, but as a gesture of responsibility.

Eldagsen, through both his artistic and educational work, contributes to this growing awareness. His commitment to exploring the unconscious dimensions of image-making—paired with his efforts to teach and demystify prompt-based creation—has made a lasting impact on how I think about AI and visual culture. His work is not simply about what machines can do, but about what we choose to do with them.

Vanessa Rusci,
curator of the magazine

Project

INTROSPECTIONS / PSEUDOMNESIA / PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT / NEVERENDING STORIES
Promptography & AI Video Loops, 2023–2024

About the project
Boris Eldagsen’s recent body of work marks a significant evolution in his long-standing investigation of the unconscious mind. Through AI-generated images and videos—what he terms promptography—he explores the psychological, symbolic, and existential dimensions of human experience. The resulting pieces are not meant to communicate a singular message, but rather to function as triggers for introspection, unlocking memories, emotions, and sensations unique to each viewer.

In INTROSPECTIONS, Eldagsen creates a series of individual and paired images designed as psychological impulses. These images are not read—they are felt. “Don’t ask what the artist is trying to say,” he urges. “Ask yourself: What does this picture awaken in me?” These works act as meditative surfaces, questioning the viewer’s inner architecture more than the external world.

With PSEUDOMNESIA, Eldagsen dives into the liminal space between memory and fabrication. Referencing the aesthetics of 20th-century family portraits and horror films, the works evoke a haunting sense of déjà vu. The images feel familiar—but the people never existed. It's an exploration of visual hallucination, of collective memory shaped by images we never lived through.

In the series PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, the absurdity of business jargon becomes a playground for Kafkaesque satire. AI-generated managers perform meaningless rituals of “reinvention,” “solutioneering,” and “rebranding,” in surreal spaces that mimic and mock contemporary corporate aesthetics. The result is a sharp critique of the language of productivity, revealing its emptiness in the age of artificial progress.

Finally, in NEVERENDING STORIES, Eldagsen animates his images into 4K video loops that feel like fragments of forgotten nightmares. Drawing from horror cinema, absurdist literature, and existential philosophy, the videos pull viewers into disorienting, Sisyphean loops. Each scene pulses with unease—half-memory, half-dream. Figures emerge and vanish, spaces unfold and collapse. It’s Tarkovsky meets Beckett, filtered through a digital subconscious.

“These works are not stories,” says Eldagsen. “They are starting points for inner journeys.”

Artist statement