Dr. Nadim Samman | The Courtauld Institute of Art (original) (raw)
Books by Dr. Nadim Samman
Nadim Samman & Julian Charrière, As We Used to Float: Within Bikini Atoll, K. Verlag, Berlin, 2018
Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll... more Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Situated in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, between 1946 and 1958 its ‘paradise’ islands were subjected to twenty-three of the most powerful explosions in history—during Operation Crossroads, the U.S. nuclear testing program. Since then, their fate has been largely ignored. While toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, As We Used to Float 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. Through its vivid account of concrete bunkers on white sand beaches, the decaying "Ghost Fleet" of World War II battleships, irradiated coconuts, and more, As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our times.
Nadim Samman (ed.), Second Suns: Julian Charriere, Hatje Cantz, Berlin , 2018
Lead essay of the book Second Suns. The publication investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and ... more Lead essay of the book Second Suns. The publication investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and architecture of the Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) and Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). Visual content comprises four major photo series, sculptural and video works, and expedition documentation, featuring compelling images of ruined concrete bunkers, sunken battleships, apocalyptic sunsets and decaying infrastructure. Contributions by leading thinkers provide historic, geographic and intellectual context. Second Suns offers readers access to notorious geographical zones shrouded in fantasy and tragedy and provides the most comprehensive visual engagement with each site published to date.
Ondreicka & Samman (eds.), Rare Earth, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2015., 2015
‘Rare Earth’ challenges the rhetoric of immateriality associated with a post-internet cultural co... more ‘Rare Earth’ challenges the rhetoric of immateriality associated with a post-internet cultural condition, exploring how emergent (artistic) myths, identities and cosmologies issue from advanced applications of material scientific knowledge. It is the lead essay in the edited volume of the same name, featuring seventeen essays by artists, curators and scholars, published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna). The collection bridges the domains of Science Studies, Media Studies, Philosophy and Curatorial Theory while exploring the technologies and attendant cultural and ecological conditions associated with the exploitation of Rare Earth elements. Other contributors include Iain Ball, Erick Beltrán, Jane Bennett, Benjamin H. Bratton, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Erik Davis, John Durham Peters & Paul Feigelfeld, Mircea Eliade, Boris Groys, Marguerite Humeau, Timothy Morton & Emilija Skarnulyte, Boris Ondreička, The Otolith Group, Jussi Parikka, Matteo Pasquinelli, Nadim Samman, Charles Stankievech.
Carson Chan & Nadim Samman (eds.), Higher Atlas / Au-delà de l'Atlas -The Marrakech Biennale [4] in Context, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2012
Outing the curatorial stakes apparent in preparing the 4th Marrakech Biennale. Included in the fi... more Outing the curatorial stakes apparent in preparing the 4th Marrakech Biennale. Included in the first volume to offer a critical survey of the historiographic, social and infrastructural conditions underpinning the enterprise of exhibition making in North Africa (and, in particular, Morocco). Published bilingually in English and French, the essays provide context for the landmark 4th edition of the the Marrakech Biennale (curated by Chan and Samman) while proposing frameworks for future curatorial agendas within the region.
Papers by Dr. Nadim Samman
Afterall, Vol 50, Autumn/Winter , 2020
The article ventures first entries for an atlas of the monstrous throughout philosophical history... more The article ventures first entries for an atlas of the monstrous throughout philosophical history. Written in the rhetorical style of the Jena Romantics, the result is a reading against the grain of philosophy, with an eye on the radical particularity of imaginary places, creatures, alternative worlds, clearings in the woods, caves, rivers, and islands.
Dehlia Hannah (ed.), A Year Without a Winter, Columbia University Press, New York, 2018., 2018
Outlining a theory of curatorial fieldwork and site-specific exhibition making, through reference... more Outlining a theory of curatorial fieldwork and site-specific exhibition making, through reference to the author's projects 'Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition' (Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, 2014) and the 1st Antarctic Biennale (Antarctica, 2017). Published in Dehlia Hannah (ed.), A Year Without a Winter, Columbia Books on Architecture and City, New York, 2018: A transdisciplinary publication exploring how the arts and literature register and transform cultural awareness of environmental crises. This collection brings together science-fiction with architectural, literary and aesthetic theory to explore concepts of anthropogenic climate change, ecological sensitivity and alternative futures.
Art Asia Pacific, 2019
Having crossed the wire between her quixotic persona and stylistic tropes from science-fiction, b... more Having crossed the wire between her quixotic persona and stylistic tropes from science-fiction, before developing an iconography of control (in Riddles), Humeau’s recent series of cosmological drawings and Venus sculptures register a more hopeful outlook. Expansive and visionary, the works invoke the optics of outsider art. In their conceptual scope and speculative range they appear to will the birth of other worlds, even laying out universal laws which govern them.
Immediations, Vol. 2, No. 2, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2009
Komar and Melamid are often described as ironic ‘jokers’. This assessment rings true but does not... more Komar and Melamid are often described as ironic ‘jokers’. This assessment rings true but does not encapsulate the intellectual density of their oeuvre. Behind the artists’ strategic comedy lurks conceptual rigor, critical engagement with Russian cultural history – from Gogol to Stalin, to Kabakov – and a keen sense of pathos. This article endeavors to measure the weight of their humor as it touches upon the idea of a ‘people’s art’ – probing its limits.
in Dehlia Hannah (ed.), Talking to Thunder: Julius von Bismarck, Hatje-Cantz, Berlin, 2019, pp. 51-55., 2019
A monographic essay on the German contemporary artist Julius von Bismarck, published in the edite... more A monographic essay on the German contemporary artist Julius von Bismarck, published in the edited volume 'Talking to Thunder'. Addressing Bismarck's account of being struck by lightning while asleep in his
automobile, the text explores the potential of this found work of autobiography-as an interpretive key to a recent body of work featuring thunderbolts, fire, and crashing waves.
Fabian Knecht: ANTIKÖRPER | ANTIBODY, 2018
A dialogue between Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman about the work of German artist Fabian Knecht. ... more A dialogue between Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman about the work of German artist Fabian Knecht. Born 1980 in Magdeburg, Knecht studied at the Universität der Kunste Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2014 he completed his master’s degree with Olafur Eliasson, at whose Institut für Raumexperimente he studied from 2009 to 2014. In 2012 he assisted in the studio of Matthew Barney in New York. With his works, which often appear unexpectedly in public space, Knecht breaks out of the exhibition context and into everyday life. He changes patterns of perception and action, transgresses art concepts and power structures, and questions social relations and norms by countering them with strong and provocative images.
Exhibition & Book Reviews by Dr. Nadim Samman
Third Text, Vol 25, Issue 2, 2011. 229-232, 2011
Review of Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Sovi... more Review of Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya
Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes, Chicago University Press, 2010
Third Text, Vol. 24, Issue 5, September, 2010, 623–637
Review: Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s, Haunch of Venison and Galerie Volker ... more Review: Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s, Haunch of Venison and Galerie Volker Diehl, London and Berlin, 2010.
Catalogue Essays by Dr. Nadim Samman
Nadim Samman (ed.), Makarevich & Elagina: Mushrooms of the Russian Avant-Garde, ARTiculate Art Fund, London, 2008
In their 2008 exhibition 'Mushrooms of the Russian Avant-Garde', pioneering conceptualist artists... more In their 2008 exhibition 'Mushrooms of the Russian Avant-Garde', pioneering conceptualist artists Igor Makarevich (b.1943) and Elena Elagina (b.1951) use the hallucinogenic magic mushroom as a metaphor for the irrationality that pervades modern culture, much in the same way it pervaded ancient mystical practices. This essay explores how their work makes the case for hallucination as a wellspring of modernism.
Jonny Niesche-Cracked Actor, Verlag fuer Moderne Kunst, Vienna, 2018., 2018
A critical essay on the Australian artist Jonny Niesche's aesthetic stance, taking in Minimalism,... more A critical essay on the Australian artist Jonny Niesche's aesthetic stance, taking in Minimalism, Bowie, Bachelard, the cosmos, and cosmetics. Published in the artist's monograph
Dorian Gaudin & Martin Roth, Diettrich&Schlechtriem, Berlin, 2016
For artists such as Martin Roth and Dorian Gaudin, a pressing task presents itself: to explore em... more For artists such as Martin Roth and Dorian Gaudin, a pressing task presents itself: to explore emerging travesties of spatial organization and material identity. Furthermore, while doing so, to investigate agency, authorship, and-ultimately-control.
Kaleidoscope, Summer 2016
Short introduction to the work of the French artist Marguerite Humeau
Artand, Australia, 2013. pp.-75-78..pdf
Introduction to the Dutch artist Atelier Van Lieshout
Nadim Samman & Julian Charrière, As We Used to Float: Within Bikini Atoll, K. Verlag, Berlin, 2018
Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll... more Straddling the genres of travelogue and critical essay, As We Used to Float explores Bikini Atoll as a space of fantasy and trauma. Situated in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean, between 1946 and 1958 its ‘paradise’ islands were subjected to twenty-three of the most powerful explosions in history—during Operation Crossroads, the U.S. nuclear testing program. Since then, their fate has been largely ignored. While toggling between a personal account of a sea journey, above and below water, and a critical investigation of postcolonial geography, As We Used to Float 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. Through its vivid account of concrete bunkers on white sand beaches, the decaying "Ghost Fleet" of World War II battleships, irradiated coconuts, and more, As We Used to Float is a sea-story for our times.
Nadim Samman (ed.), Second Suns: Julian Charriere, Hatje Cantz, Berlin , 2018
Lead essay of the book Second Suns. The publication investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and ... more Lead essay of the book Second Suns. The publication investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and architecture of the Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) and Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). Visual content comprises four major photo series, sculptural and video works, and expedition documentation, featuring compelling images of ruined concrete bunkers, sunken battleships, apocalyptic sunsets and decaying infrastructure. Contributions by leading thinkers provide historic, geographic and intellectual context. Second Suns offers readers access to notorious geographical zones shrouded in fantasy and tragedy and provides the most comprehensive visual engagement with each site published to date.
Ondreicka & Samman (eds.), Rare Earth, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2015., 2015
‘Rare Earth’ challenges the rhetoric of immateriality associated with a post-internet cultural co... more ‘Rare Earth’ challenges the rhetoric of immateriality associated with a post-internet cultural condition, exploring how emergent (artistic) myths, identities and cosmologies issue from advanced applications of material scientific knowledge. It is the lead essay in the edited volume of the same name, featuring seventeen essays by artists, curators and scholars, published to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna). The collection bridges the domains of Science Studies, Media Studies, Philosophy and Curatorial Theory while exploring the technologies and attendant cultural and ecological conditions associated with the exploitation of Rare Earth elements. Other contributors include Iain Ball, Erick Beltrán, Jane Bennett, Benjamin H. Bratton, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Erik Davis, John Durham Peters & Paul Feigelfeld, Mircea Eliade, Boris Groys, Marguerite Humeau, Timothy Morton & Emilija Skarnulyte, Boris Ondreička, The Otolith Group, Jussi Parikka, Matteo Pasquinelli, Nadim Samman, Charles Stankievech.
Carson Chan & Nadim Samman (eds.), Higher Atlas / Au-delà de l'Atlas -The Marrakech Biennale [4] in Context, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2012
Outing the curatorial stakes apparent in preparing the 4th Marrakech Biennale. Included in the fi... more Outing the curatorial stakes apparent in preparing the 4th Marrakech Biennale. Included in the first volume to offer a critical survey of the historiographic, social and infrastructural conditions underpinning the enterprise of exhibition making in North Africa (and, in particular, Morocco). Published bilingually in English and French, the essays provide context for the landmark 4th edition of the the Marrakech Biennale (curated by Chan and Samman) while proposing frameworks for future curatorial agendas within the region.
Afterall, Vol 50, Autumn/Winter , 2020
The article ventures first entries for an atlas of the monstrous throughout philosophical history... more The article ventures first entries for an atlas of the monstrous throughout philosophical history. Written in the rhetorical style of the Jena Romantics, the result is a reading against the grain of philosophy, with an eye on the radical particularity of imaginary places, creatures, alternative worlds, clearings in the woods, caves, rivers, and islands.
Dehlia Hannah (ed.), A Year Without a Winter, Columbia University Press, New York, 2018., 2018
Outlining a theory of curatorial fieldwork and site-specific exhibition making, through reference... more Outlining a theory of curatorial fieldwork and site-specific exhibition making, through reference to the author's projects 'Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition' (Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, 2014) and the 1st Antarctic Biennale (Antarctica, 2017). Published in Dehlia Hannah (ed.), A Year Without a Winter, Columbia Books on Architecture and City, New York, 2018: A transdisciplinary publication exploring how the arts and literature register and transform cultural awareness of environmental crises. This collection brings together science-fiction with architectural, literary and aesthetic theory to explore concepts of anthropogenic climate change, ecological sensitivity and alternative futures.
Art Asia Pacific, 2019
Having crossed the wire between her quixotic persona and stylistic tropes from science-fiction, b... more Having crossed the wire between her quixotic persona and stylistic tropes from science-fiction, before developing an iconography of control (in Riddles), Humeau’s recent series of cosmological drawings and Venus sculptures register a more hopeful outlook. Expansive and visionary, the works invoke the optics of outsider art. In their conceptual scope and speculative range they appear to will the birth of other worlds, even laying out universal laws which govern them.
Immediations, Vol. 2, No. 2, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2009
Komar and Melamid are often described as ironic ‘jokers’. This assessment rings true but does not... more Komar and Melamid are often described as ironic ‘jokers’. This assessment rings true but does not encapsulate the intellectual density of their oeuvre. Behind the artists’ strategic comedy lurks conceptual rigor, critical engagement with Russian cultural history – from Gogol to Stalin, to Kabakov – and a keen sense of pathos. This article endeavors to measure the weight of their humor as it touches upon the idea of a ‘people’s art’ – probing its limits.
in Dehlia Hannah (ed.), Talking to Thunder: Julius von Bismarck, Hatje-Cantz, Berlin, 2019, pp. 51-55., 2019
A monographic essay on the German contemporary artist Julius von Bismarck, published in the edite... more A monographic essay on the German contemporary artist Julius von Bismarck, published in the edited volume 'Talking to Thunder'. Addressing Bismarck's account of being struck by lightning while asleep in his
automobile, the text explores the potential of this found work of autobiography-as an interpretive key to a recent body of work featuring thunderbolts, fire, and crashing waves.
Fabian Knecht: ANTIKÖRPER | ANTIBODY, 2018
A dialogue between Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman about the work of German artist Fabian Knecht. ... more A dialogue between Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman about the work of German artist Fabian Knecht. Born 1980 in Magdeburg, Knecht studied at the Universität der Kunste Berlin and at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2014 he completed his master’s degree with Olafur Eliasson, at whose Institut für Raumexperimente he studied from 2009 to 2014. In 2012 he assisted in the studio of Matthew Barney in New York. With his works, which often appear unexpectedly in public space, Knecht breaks out of the exhibition context and into everyday life. He changes patterns of perception and action, transgresses art concepts and power structures, and questions social relations and norms by countering them with strong and provocative images.
Third Text, Vol 25, Issue 2, 2011. 229-232, 2011
Review of Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Sovi... more Review of Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya
Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes, Chicago University Press, 2010
Third Text, Vol. 24, Issue 5, September, 2010, 623–637
Review: Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s, Haunch of Venison and Galerie Volker ... more Review: Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s, Haunch of Venison and Galerie Volker Diehl, London and Berlin, 2010.
Nadim Samman (ed.), Makarevich & Elagina: Mushrooms of the Russian Avant-Garde, ARTiculate Art Fund, London, 2008
In their 2008 exhibition 'Mushrooms of the Russian Avant-Garde', pioneering conceptualist artists... more In their 2008 exhibition 'Mushrooms of the Russian Avant-Garde', pioneering conceptualist artists Igor Makarevich (b.1943) and Elena Elagina (b.1951) use the hallucinogenic magic mushroom as a metaphor for the irrationality that pervades modern culture, much in the same way it pervaded ancient mystical practices. This essay explores how their work makes the case for hallucination as a wellspring of modernism.
Jonny Niesche-Cracked Actor, Verlag fuer Moderne Kunst, Vienna, 2018., 2018
A critical essay on the Australian artist Jonny Niesche's aesthetic stance, taking in Minimalism,... more A critical essay on the Australian artist Jonny Niesche's aesthetic stance, taking in Minimalism, Bowie, Bachelard, the cosmos, and cosmetics. Published in the artist's monograph
Dorian Gaudin & Martin Roth, Diettrich&Schlechtriem, Berlin, 2016
For artists such as Martin Roth and Dorian Gaudin, a pressing task presents itself: to explore em... more For artists such as Martin Roth and Dorian Gaudin, a pressing task presents itself: to explore emerging travesties of spatial organization and material identity. Furthermore, while doing so, to investigate agency, authorship, and-ultimately-control.
Kaleidoscope, Summer 2016
Short introduction to the work of the French artist Marguerite Humeau
Artand, Australia, 2013. pp.-75-78..pdf
Introduction to the Dutch artist Atelier Van Lieshout