A Conversation with Nadim Samman
Moderated by Rogan Kersh, Academic Director, NYU Florence
This talk surveys recent developments in contemporary art concerned with online culture, AI, and more, drawing on the metaphor of the ‘black hole’ to describe how ‘total datafication’ warps cultural spacetime. Black holes are engines of chaos: intense unpredictability; hybridisation without limit; the scrambling of what, where, and when. As we shall see, super-dense digital archives (like the Internet) and super-dense computational processes (like Machine Learning) are reshaping our imagination today.
Featured Biographies
Nadim Samman
ART CURATOR AND CRITIC
Nadim Samman read Philosophy at University College London before receiving his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was Co-Director of Import Projects e.V. in Berlin from 2012 to 2019 and, concurrently, Curator at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (2013-2015). He curated the 4th Marrakech Biennale (with Carson Chan) in 2012, and the 5thMoscow Biennale for Young Art in 2016. He co-founded and co-curated the 1st Antarctic Biennale (2017) and the Antarctic Pavilion (Venice, 2015-2017). Widely published, in 2019 he was First Prize recipient of the International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC). His recent book Poetics of Encryption: Art and the Technocene is published by Hatje-Cantz (Berlin, 2023) and Luiss University Press (Rome, 2025). Nadim is currently Director of Autotelic Foundation (London) and Curator-at-large, Langen Foundation (Düsseldorf). In 2025 he curates the Vienna Digital Cultures festival.