INTRODUCTION

This project aims to document and preserve the personal memories of five European women who lived through key historical events of the 20th century and fought for democratic freedoms across the continent.

Through a series of in-depth, one-on-one interviews, the project reconstructs meaningful moments from their lives and transforms them into Synthetic Memories—AI-generated visual representations that capture the emotional essence of personal recollections, especially those without photographic records.

Methodology

The project is developed in collaboration with Domestic Data Streamers, combining oral history and artificial intelligence. Each participant shares a personal memory, which is then recreated visually through a collaborative process involving detailed narration, AI image generation, and iterative feedback.

These synthetic images are not meant to be exact reproductions, but rather evocative interpretations of lived experiences.

From testimony to synthetic image

This approach opens a new field of reflection for memory studies. If photography has historically shaped the way societies remember the past, what happens when technology can generate images of events that were never visually documented? Can AI help make invisible memories visible, or does it risk introducing new forms of interpretation and distortion?

For EUROM, the project is not only a technological experiment but also an opportunity to examine how memory, ethics, and digital culture intersect in contemporary Europe.

The women behind the project

• Genoveva Munell — Genoveva’s memories trace her experience of anti-Franco resistance, from clandestine political activity and her involvement with the FRAP to her arrest, torture and imprisonment at the Via Laietana police headquarters and La Trinitat women’s prison in Barcelona.
• Lola Patau — Lola was four years old when she was forced to leave Spain. Her memories take us from Republican exile in Chile, after travelling aboard the Winnipeg in 1939, to her return to francoist Spain in 1962 and the experience of rebuilding her life under the dictatorship.
• Montse Clavé — Montse was 16 when she was arrested. Her memories span her experience of francoist repression as a teenager and the political and cultural ferment of May ’68 in Paris.
• Alma Masic — Alma’s memories take us into her childhood and youth during the Bosnian War, from the everyday experience of life under the Siege of Sarajevo to the lasting impact of war and displacement.
• Nora Buschmann — Nora grew up in East Berlin during the final decades of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Her memories move between the restricted geography of the Eastern Bloc, the relative openness she experienced in Hungary, and the extraordinary days surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.