In 2023, Albert Coers asked the artificial dialogue partner ChatGPT the question: ‘Who is Albert Coers?’, in various languages and stating different fields of activity. The answers are astonishingly far from the ‘truth’, yet plausible, always different, opening up alternative biographies instead of biographical facts: in addition to different places and years of birth, they mention academies where Coers never studied, scholarships, prizes, residencies he never received, institutions where he never exhibited, books he never published ...
However, Coers did not have these beautiful CVs for long: in 2024, an entry about him appeared on Wikipedia, which has served as a source ever since. This made the dialogues boring. One reason to publish the first answers in an artist's book, appropriately enough published by Salon Verlag, Cologne, as a reference to the city that frequently appears in the texts. The analogue medium underlines the seriousness of the claimed biographies. It captures a state in which there were still many possible biographies.
The answers are accompanied by an essay on the process, digital intelligence and the possibility of alternative biographies.