Sonic Acts 2020: Nadim Samman – As We Used to Float / Iroojrilik

Sonic Acts Podcast

SONIC ACTS ACADEMY 2020 Nadim Samman – As We Used to Float / Iroojrilik 23 February 2020 – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Curator Nadim Samman gives a performative lecture that takes to the psychology and aesthetic of the sea, drawing on his explorer’s path through art as co-founder of the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 1st Antarctic Biennale in 2017. His work has carried him from Moscow to Marrakech to Lima, uncovering the secrets of remote art and the mutual exchange that evolves from that act. Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float: Within Bikini Atoll (2018, co-written with artist Julian Charrière), explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, the book develops broader reflections on place and subjectivity. These spring from a series of narrative immersions, variously, taking on the psychological and aesthetic parameters of ultra-deep scuba diving, the abject poetics of sea craft and the stakes of subaquatic image-making. As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our time. This performative lecture combines reading from the book with a screening of Julian Charrière’s video work, Iroojrilik (2018). Nadim Samman is a curator and art historian based in Berlin. He read Philosophy at University College London before receiving his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He co-founded the 1st Antarctic Biennale in 2017 and the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015. In 2016 he curated the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, and in 2012, the 4th Marrakech Biennale (with Carson Chan). Other major projects include Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition (a unique site-specific exhibition on the remote Pacific island of Isla del Coco) and Rare Earth (at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna). In 2019 he won the International Awards for Art Criticism’s first prize.