SMITH
SMITH is an artist-researcher with degrees from the Sorbonne (in Philosophy), the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and Le Fresnoy–Studio National des Arts Contemporains, as well as a PhD in Art Studies and Practices from Université du Québec à Montréal. He experiments with and explores the connections between contemporary humanity and its liminal figures—spectres, mutants and hybrids—with collaborators including astronauts, shamans, engineers, designers, scientists, philosophers, performers and composers. His “indisciplinary” project-worlds are grounded in a process of self-experimentation that takes the form of investigations, in which the artist’s body becomes a platform for criticism, experimentation and curiosity, revealing new ways of connecting with the visible and invisible world.
SMITH pursues his artistic journey through the practice of spiritual technologies (cognitive trance, meditation, Amazonian medicine) combined with that of interstitial body-states (gender transition, experience of weightlessness, subcutaneous implanting of extraterrestrial materials), to find other ways of narrating our relationship to utter otherness, the beyond, that which traverses us, escapes us, eludes us and survives us. Since 2022, he has dedicated himself to a new transdisciplinary project, Dami.
SMITH is the author of numerous short films including Spectrographies, co-produced with the Centre Pompidou in 2013, TRAUM (2015) and Les Apocalyptiques (2019), podcasts (France Culture, 2020), choreographed pieces (TRAUM (Le cas Y), 2018) and performances, including collaborations with Lucien Raphmaj, Nadège Piton, François Chaignaud, Akira Rabelais, Gaspar Claus, Victoria Lukas and Matthieu Barbin. His works (exhibitions, films, performances, talks) have been regularly presented in solo exhibitions, in such venues as the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, the Palais de Tokyo and the Centre Pompidou, in several countries in Europe as well as in California, China, South Korea and Latin America (Chile, Uruguay, Mexico). [Source: VOX, 2023]
