Future Mythologies: Achilles

Nathaniel Stern

Anne Spalter

Achilles wants to be more than his story.

Future Mythologies is a collaboration between Anne Spalter and Nathaniel Stern for theVERSEverse’s GenText series. It’s a series of 12 poems written in collaboration with text-based AIs, incorporated into videos produced with the help of text-to-image AI. Each explores a character from Greek mythology, with a sci-fi twist. Written and performed by Stern, sound and images by Spalter.

Achilles

It’s a myth. It’s all a myth. It’s mythic.
I denote, I connote, and I take what I need.
Let’s Fucking Gooooo!
I am here to liberate the monument from the museum;
to vandalize your history and be praised for it.
I’ll write a hundred-page poem about how I will break every window in your house.
I’ll make a short film about how we lost Earth’s love.
I’ll paint us all out of the story. We’ll be a tragic footnote in the autobiography of Mars.