SUNFLOWERS WITHOUT DECAY

or: 27 Van Goghs vs. ChatGPT & VEO3 

AI-generated video (VEO3), AI-generated text (ChatGPT), 03:17 min, 2025

Boris Eldagsen turns the machine against itself. He raises van Gogh from the dead, hands him a mic, and lets him rage. What we get is a ghost trapped in the age of AI—a hostage video from the underworld of art history.

We turned the man into merchandise, then asked AI to remix the ruins. And here it is—remixed, exhausted, and pissed. Vincent’s voice isn’t real, but the exhaustion is.
We’ve flattened his suffering into a preset, a style pack, a downloadable vibe. The agony, the hunger, the paint-eating madness—it’s all been filtered, cleaned up, and sold back to us as a beautiful effect. This is van Gogh after being chewed up by history, museums, and merch tables. He’s not angry that we use his style—he’s angry that we think that’s enough.

Eldagsen gives us the best kind of fake: one that tells the truth. This isn’t just about art—it’s about what we’ve done to it.
It’s tragic, funny, and completely devastating.

The monologue was written with the help of ChatGPT, the video was generated with VEO3. Text-to-Video only, as Google doesn’t allow dialogue with Image-to-Video (yet). Extra sounds were provided by freesound.com and the video was edited (and AI-extended) in Adobe PremierePro.