Noam Segal

In Place of a Missing Place, in the Special Issue Middle East Art: Memory, Tradition, and Revival, Arts, 2024.

This essay reflects on works chosen from the Sonnenfeld Collection at the Katzen Gallery at American University in Washington, DC—it originally accompanied an exhibition at that gallery in early 2021—to comment on the observations of several generations of Israeli artists on the land and its meaning for the culture and politics of Israel’s coming into existence and evolution during the first 70 years of its existence. Beginning with a pair of photographs of pioneers in the land in the fifteen years before statehood—and conceptually re-purposed by a contemporary Israeli artist in 2008—and moving through decade after decade of engagement with the landscape of Israel in both figurative and abstract modes, with and without humans present within these contexts, veering from brightly colored to virtually colorless images, including paintings and photographs, the essay traces a distance between earlier assertions of presence and the gradual emergence of questions regarding presence, absence, and identity. Israel, in its internal development, is both visually and thus verbally interwoven with the issue of its external relationship with its immediate neighbors and to the shifts between what comprises “internal” and “external”—”this” and “other”—as the context has metamorphosized from the 1930s to the 1950s to 1967 to 1993 to 2000 and to the present.

See more here.

CryptoPunks: Free to Claim, published by PHAIDON, edited by Yuga Labs and Zak Group, 2024.

A comprehensive monograph chronicling the phenomenal rise of CryptoPunks – one of the world’s first and most sought-after crypto collectibles and trailblazer for digital art and web3 culture.

CryptoPunks: Free to Claim explores the meteoric rise of a pre-eminent NFT collectible: what began as an experiment in digital ownership has become the catalyst for a digital art movement and a dynamic subculture synonymous with a new age of the internet.

Minted on the Ethereum blockchain in 2017, the CryptoPunks – 10,000 uniquely generated pixel characters – have produced more than $2.3 billion in cumulative sales and entered the permanent collections of major institutions including LACMA and Centre Pompidou, meanwhile fostering a passionate and decentralized online community.

All 10,000 CryptoPunks are presented in a special 400+ page catalogue raisonné within this book, with a comprehensive listing including Punk, number, type, colors, attributes and image hash. A timeline provides a zine-like assemblage of community member posts and tweets as they happened; while an extensive glossary defines more than 100 anonymously authored terms and ideas with guest contributions from Beeple, Emily Segal, Venkatesh Rao, and more.

With an in-depth interview between Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries) and CryptoPunks founders Matt Hall and John Watkinson, this cult and category-defining book features a kaleidoscopic collection of texts, interviews, and visual essays exploring this emerging world of web3 and digital culture at large – inspiring a first wave of visual books on this groundbreaking subject.

The book is for all levels of knowledge and features unique contributions from fascinating figures in tech, design, fashion, finance, and contemporary art including: Anika Meier, Alexis Ohanian, Mat Dryhurst, Noam Segal (Guggenheim), Philippe Bettinelli and Marcella Lista (Centre Pompidou), Michael Connor (Rhizome), Mindy Seu, Chris Lyons (a16z), Salome Asega (NEW INC), Simon Denny, Shumon Basar, Martina Tiefenthaler, Jack Butcher, Sean Bonner, 6529, among others.

On Neïl Beloufa’s Kempinski, e-flux Film, 2024.

In this science-fiction documentary, Neïl Beloufa takes us to a village in Mali where inhabitants are invited to express their visions of the future. They speak of their present, but also come up with futuristic accounts and visions, where men couple with cows, cars talk, and rockets spy on people’s lives.

Kempinski is the third installment of Uncomputables: On Cybernetics and Alien Intelligences, an online program of films and accompanying texts convened by Agnieszka Kurant as the thirteenth cycle of Artist Cinemas, a long-term, online series of film programs curated by artists for e-flux Film.

The film is presented alongside a text by Noam Segal. PDF of the text is also available here.

The Song of the Land is Calling: Visual Project by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme; Words by Noam Segal, Flash Art Magazine, #341, Winter 2022-23 Issue, “Forms / Identities.”

The day-to-day reality in occupied Palestine is largely inaccessible to an international audience. It is challenging to form a deep, or even adequate, understanding of a situation that is not only physically distant and isolated but also suffers from a sort of media blockade. Mainstream media does not circulate images from Palestine or report on daily occurrences of harassment, breaking and entering, theft (of property, houses, animals, cars, and other objects), vandalism, incarceration, injury, and death. Early in their career, media artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme realized that images no longer exert the mental and emotional grip they used to have on viewers. This led them to shift their focus to sound as a primary material. Sound had always been a central motif in their work and a complement to complex images. Like many of their generation (born in the 1980s and coming of age in the ’90s and early aughts), they are profoundly influenced by electronic music and the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist culture that grew up around raves, festivals, and other collective experiences. As the audial aspect of their work has become even more layered and complex, this musical background has become more prominent in their artwork, as seen in recent exhibitions at MoMA, Dia Art Foundation, Migros Museum, and the 12th Berlin Biennial.

Images by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme.

Stepping Towards Something Like an Experience: The Wu Tsang’s Moby Dick, Flash Art Magazine, #339 Summer 2022 Issue.

An interview with Wu Tsang, discussing her multidisciplinary adaptation of Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s novel published in 1851. The project takes the form of four discrete parts: a feature film, MOBY DICK; Or, The Whale, recently presented in Venice; EXTRACTS, a film installation produced with the collective Moved By the Motion for the Whitney Biennial, which shows the process of making the movie; the sound installation Of Whales, part of the 59th Venice Biennale; and a forthcoming VR adaptation to be presented at Art Basel. Tsang talks about how these different approaches to the same material, experimenting with narrative strategies in films, and performances, reveals a multitude of possibilities and perspectives.

12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Still Present! Publication, 2022.

June 11 - September 18, 2022

Exhibition guide for Still Present!.

With texts by the curatorial team and Doreen Mende, Florian Sông Nguyễn, Forensic Architecture, Francoise Vergès, Huey Copeland, Joanna Warsza, Matteo Lucchetti, and many others.

Published by the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2022
English/German.

Graphic design: Martin Wecke and Fabian Maier-Bode
18 × 25 cm, 304 pages, 177 color images, softcover.

ISBN: 978-3-00-071963-9

Bracha L. Ettinger Exhibition Catalogue, Radicants Curatorial Cooperative, Paris, France, 2022.

The Bracha L. Ettinger exhibition is accompanied by a book, which brings together texts by Nicolas Bourriaud, the American art historian Amelia Jones (1961, Durham), the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924- 98, Paris), the curator Noam Segal, and the artist, poet, and chef Precious Okoyomon (1993, London) in conversation with Bracha L. Ettinger.

This book is edited by Noam Segal and published by Radicants. It is currently distributed in France by Les Presses du Réel and internationally by Idea Books. (N°ISBN: 9782493734044)"

In place of a missing place, exhibition catalogue, American University Museum, Washington, DC, 2022.

Systemic Errors of Collective Intelligence, a Conversation with Agnieszka Kurant, in Flash Art Magazine, #336 Fall 2021 Issue, “ULTRA BODIES ULTRA SPECIES”, pages 80-99.

An interview with Agnieszka Kurant, discussing the artist’s recent projects and conceptual practice. Kurant’s work reflects on complex mechanisms of invisible labor and concealed exploitations. She has developed an alternative way of producing artworks based on various forms of collective intelligence and collective agency, working with multitudes of human and nonhuman agents, to undermine the paradigm of individual, singular intelligence, and creativity understood as an individual process. Her timely practice asks questions about the nature of speculation, the widespread exploitation and enclosure of the commons, and the gross inequality perpetuated by a “data society.”

Images:

1. Agnieszka Kurant, Chemical Garden, 2021. Detail. Sodium silicate, copper, nickel, cobalt, chromium, manganese, iron and zinc salts. Collaboration with Dr. Magdalena Osial. Photography by Anna Zagrodzka. Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles; and Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź.

2. Agnieszka Kurant, The End of Signature, 2021. Animated LED and neon sculptures. Collaboration with Katie Lewis, Divya Shanmugam, Jose Javier Gonzalez Ortiz, and Prof. John Guttag. Installation view at MIT List Visual Arts Center and Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Commissioned with MIT Percent-for-Art Funds. Courtesy of the artist.

3. Agnieszka Kurant, A.A.I. 7, A.A.I. 8, A.A.I. 9, 2015. Termite mounds built by coolnies of living termites out of colored sand, gold and crystals. Collaboration with Dr. Paul Bardunias. Exhibition view of “Errorism” at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Sao Paulo / Rio de Janeiro.

4. Agnieszka Kurant, Post-Fordite, 2020. Fossilized automotive paint, epoxy resin, iron, powdered stone. Collaboration with Krzysztof Smaga. Photography by Krzysztof Smaga. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.

5. Agnieszka Kurant, Errorism, 2021. Hologram, 3D animation, artificial intelligence algorithms GPT3, GPT2. Collaboration with Ziv Epstein (MIT Media Lab) and Holly Grimm. Photography by Anna Zagrodzka. Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles; and Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź.

6. Agnieszka Kurant, Adjacent Possible, 2021. Research material for the project, human signs at Arco cave, 26,000-20,000 years old. Collaboration with Genevieve von Petzinger, Prof. LeRon Shults, and DPhil. Justin Lane. Photography by Dillon von Petzinger. Courtesy of Genevieve von Petzinger.

7. Agnieszka Kurant, Cyber Key to Dreams, 2021. Work in progress, images generated with artificial intelligence neural networks. Collaboration with Adam Haar Horowitz, Pat Pataranutaporn, and Eyal Perry, MIT Media Lab. Courtesy of the artist.

Heat Signature, interview with artist Tali Keren, Mafteakh Online Academic Journal, 2021 (Hebrew). Also see here.

Images: Installation views of the exhibition. Photography by Roy Rochlin. Courtesy of the artist.

We were never 100% human, Alisa Baremboym, CURA, Issue 36: FUTURA, April 2021.

This article introduces Alisa Baremboym’s recent work as "enabling objects" that expand on the notion of the body as a shelter and as the architecture to shelter the self. Drawing from her own personal experiences as an immigrant fleeing from Moscow, the artist works through concepts that describe a kind of metabolic movement of bodies between state bodies/ borders, if we consider that bodies are living cells.

Images:
1. Alisa Baremboym, UNIT 2: Thyroid: Growth & Development, 2018. Photo: Roman März. Courtesy: the artist, 47 Canal, New York, and Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf/Berlin.
2. Alisa Baremboym, Between States: Membrane Perception (installation view), 2018. Photo: Roman März. Courtesy: the artist and Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf/Berlin.
3. Alisa Baremboym, Chromosome Absorption, 2018. Photo: Roman März Courtesy: the artist and Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf/Berlin.
4. Alisa Baremboym, UNIT 4: Pineal Gland: Cyclical Cognition, 2018. Photo: Roman März Courtesy: the artist and Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf/Berlin.
5. Alisa Baremboym, Somatosensory cortex (teeth), 2020 Courtesy: the artist.

Prediction in the Era of Digital Stupidity: Hito Steyerl, Flash Art Magazine, Issue: #334, Spring 2021, “THE AGE OF LOVE”.

At the core of Hito Steyerl’s practice is a deep interest in the relationship between machine learning, authoritarianism, and prediction. This article surveys the artist’s latest works, a comprehensive commentary on global power relations, prediction “science” and networked surveillance, all contributing to what Steyerl’s defines as the era of “digital stupidity”.

Images: Hito Steyerl, SocialSim, 2020. Film still. Courtesy of the artist; Andrew Kreps, New York; and Esther Schipper, Berlin. (c) VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2021. Film still (c) Hito Steyerl.

Justice and injury: interview with Adelita Husni Bey, in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 2021.

Images:
1. Blue still with 3 figures. Source: Chiron, video still, 2018, 4K video, 18:13 min. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Laveronica.
2. Exhibition view. Souce: Chiron, 2018, 4K video, 18:13 min with 26 translucent banners, 114 x 460 cm each. Installation view at RedCat, Los Angeles. Photo: Brica Wilcox.
3. Still with street-view. Source: Chiron, video still, 2018, 4K video, 18:13 min. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Laveronica.

Guy Yanai artist monograph, Eds: Aurore Chauve and Guy Yanai, Yundler Brondino Verlag, Marseille, 2020.

No Names, No Titles; No Further Explanation, in Curating Under Pressure: International Perspectives on Negotiating Conflict and Upholding Integrity. Eds: Janet Marstine and Svetlana Mintcheva, Routledge Press, New York, 2020.

On the Edge of Otherness: Encounters in Anri Sala's Exhibition, in Anri Sala AS YOU GO Exhibition catalogue by Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, 2019.

Cover image: Take Over, 2017, Courtesy of Esther Schipper, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City, / New York.

Exilic Glamour: Alice Channer, Flash Art Magazine, #329 Feb-Mar, 2020.

Image: Mechanoreceptor, Icicles (red, red) (triple spring, triple strip), 2018. Detail. Lost Wax Cast and PVC-Dipped Aluminium, Titanium, Electropolished Stainless Steel, Stainless Steel Wire, Sheet Stainless Steel, PVC Coated Stainless Steel Cables, Fixings Dimensions slightly variable.

Photography by Lewis Ronald.

Courtesy of the artist and Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin.

Shir Moran – "Parking Lot Whisper" Jessica Rabbit: The Flat Image as Collective Id, Alon Segev Gallery, 2019.

Image: installation view of Parking Lot Whisper, courtesy of Alon Segev Gallery.

Between States, in Alisa Baremboym exhibition booklet, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin, 2019.

Image: Alisa Baremboym, Between States: Membrane Perception, 2018; Archival inkjet pigment print on silk gauze; 335 x 717 cm.

Alice Channer's Isms', in Alice Channer exhibition catalogue, Konrad Fisher Galerie, Düsseldorf, 2019.

Image is courtesy of Konrad Fisher Galerie, Düsseldorf.

Interpassivities, Jesper Just, BAM Next Wave Festival, New York, 2018.

Images are courtesy of Perrotin, and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, from Jesper Just’s Interpassivities, 2017, with The Royal Danish Ballet.

Last image is courtesy of Brooklyn Academy of Music, Inc.

Dust, Crash Test exhibition catalogue, MOCO La Panacée, Montpellier, 2018.

Image: Case study I, 2017; Copper (Cu), silver (Ag), sodium chloride (NaCl), polyethylene (PE), acetic acid (CH3COOH), calcium carbonate (CaCO3), amethyst flower quartz, anigozanthos, lichen; oxidation and crystallization processes. Courtesy of Bianca Bondi.

One? Thing? After? Another? in Pope.L exhibition catalogue, MOCO La Panacée, Montpellier, 2018.

Image is courtesy of La Panacée MOCO Montpellier Contemporain; photo by Aurélien Mole.

Everybody talks about the weather . . . We Don't, in Performa Magazine, 2018.

Exhibition views by Mark Waldhauser.

Interview with Jesper Just, Interpassivities in Mousse Magazine, 2017.

Also see here.

Images are courtesy of Perrotin, and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, from Jesper Just’s Interpassivities, 2017, with The Royal Danish Ballet.

On the Exterritorial Potential, in Atlantica Journal for Art and Thought, 2017.

Also see here.

Image: Blockade | Exterritory: Maayan Amir & Ruti Sela.

Astonish Me—Noam Segal on Tayler Ashby Hawkins, on Widewalls, May 1, 2017.

Also see here.

Images by Taylor Ashby Hawkins; courtesy of the artist.

Wherever you go there you are, an interview with Rashid Johnson, in Keen—On Magazine, 2016.

Also see here.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

You are under arrest for crossing an imaginary line on a giant rock flying through space, Lihi Turjeman's Center of Gravity, Sommer Contemporary Art, 2016.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Protest in Liminal Spaces, interview with Noor Abed, in Keen — On Magazine, September 2016.

Also see here.

Image: Performance documentation, Where To, The Annual Performance Festival, 2011, Hamar Norway. Kunstbanken Hedmark Kunstsenter. Photo by Horsfjord Nilsen. Courtesy of the artist.

Walter Benjamin: Exilic Archives, exhibition catalogue, Tel Aviv Museum, 2016.

Image is courtesy of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Representations of Time in the Performance Justitia, Justitia, Wolverhampton University, London, 2016.

Encounters in Anri Sala's exhibition No Names No Title, Tel Aviv Museum, 2015.

Image: From the exhibition catalogue No Names No Title. Design and Production: Nadav Shalev. English version: Tamar Fox. Printing: A.R. Printing Ltd.

At Home in a Hotel, a conversation with Guy Yanai, in Bomb Magazine, New York, 2014.

Possibility of Communion, in Soft Corps exhibition catalogue, BOSI Contemporary, 2014.

Image is courtesy of the artist.

Garden of Living Wrecks, about the work of Sigal Primor, exhibition catalogue, Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv, 2014.

Images are courtesy of Chelouche Gallery.

The Concept of Stage in Michal Helfman's Work, Change exhibition catalogue, CCA Tel Aviv, 2014

Baldy Heights, Freddy Kislev, exhibition catalogue, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, 2013.

Image is courtesy of the artist and the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.

Revising the Qualities of Objet-Hood, Erev Rav Online Magazine, June 2013.

Also see here.

Image: Joao Gusmao, Pedro Paive.

The Nest, About the Work of Nathaniel Mellors, Art and Education Online Magazine, 2013.

Images are courtesy of the artist.

Staging Reality, About the Work of Mia Habib | Heads Publication TRAP, Norway, 2012.

Image is courtesy of Mia Habib Productions and Sweet & Tender Norway.

Earth is Not a Purpose, About the Work of Orly Maiberg, Erev Rav Online Magazine, May 2012.

Also see here.

Image: Orly Maiberg, Raft.

The New Actual Regime, the Seen, the Unseen and Un-Dividable, Erev Rav Online Magazine, May 2012.

Also see here.

Image: Martha Rosler, Bringing the War Home.

The Epistemology of Visibility, Political Imagination and Contemporary Art, Maakaf Magazine, 2011.

Also see here.

Size Matters: Diana Al-Hadid, Jodie Carey, Mika Rottenberg, Issue 04, Programma Magazine, Summer 2011.

Ofri Cnaani, The Sota Project, Rothschild 69, 2011.

Image is courtesy of the artist and Sternthal Books.

Soul Searching, About the Work of Einat Amir, Erev Rav Online Magazine, February 2011.

Also see here.

Image: Einat Amir, Enough About You.

A Working Machine Must Not Want to Play the Fiddle, Guy Bar Amotz exhibition catalogue, Rothschild 69, 2011.

Image is courtesy of the artist; photo is by Ben Harris.

Neo-Barabrism exhibition catalogue, Rothschild 69, Tel Aviv, 2011.

Image is courtesy of Rothschild 69.

The Eye of the Storm, Issue 02, Programma Magazine, Summer 2010.

A Viewer in Search of Meaning, Erev Rav Online Magazine, February 2010.

Also see here.

Image: Ofri Canaani, The Sota Project, production still, video installation, 2009.