Home

Atif Akin
Tepoto Sud morph Moruroa, 2017

Tidalectics

TBA21–Academy

Commissions

Installation view: Tidalectics, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, 2017 | Photo: Jorit Aust | TBA21

Poster and animation
Poster: 68 x 98 cm, color print; Animation: 2 min 40 sec
Commissioned by TBA21–Academy, London

In his work emerging from a TBA21-Academy expedition, led by Ute Meta Bauer to the Tuamotus in French Polynesia, Atif Akin reflects on the creation of new mythologies analogical to radioactive deformations of code and matter resulting from the 193 nuclear tests that took place in this island archipelago. Tepoto Sud morph Moruroa (2017) consists of a poster presenting his research next to a computergenerated 3D rendering of the atolls Moruroa and Tepoto Sud in the Tuamotus archipelago continuously morphing into one another, the first of which was subjected to nuclear tests and the latter was visited by TBA21–Academy in 2016. The atmospheric and subterranean nuclear explosions on Moruroa left radioactive residues in water and on land, not only affecting the local population and numerous animal and plant species, but presumably also being the cause of a crack below the lagoon of the atoll. Using an equation developed by mathematician Felix Klein in the late 19th century to model ocean swells and waves, Akin transforms the animation in a way analogous to how radiation mutates matter. By placing the digitized geological structures in constant correlational transposition between creation and degeneration, the project confounds science and fiction and participates in the creation of new myths in the face of changing ecological conditions.

*1979 in Bandırma, Turkey | Living and working in New York, USA

http://atifakin.info

ARTIST'S WEBSITE

http://atifakin.info

Atif Akin reflects on the contemporary condition of mobility through the lens of architecture, museology, genealogy, genetics, and code on the occassion of Olafur Eliasson's project Green light–An artistic workshop at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in 2016.

Atıf Akın is an artist and designer living in New York. His work examines science, nature, mobility, and politics through an (a)historical and contemporary lens. Through a series of activities made up of research, documentation and design, Akın’s work considers transdisciplinary issues, through a technoscientific lens, in aesthetic and political contexts. Over the past ten years, he has been teaching in İstanbul, Europe, and the US. Currently he is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University. He has lectured at the New School, SVA, City College, Northeastern University, CUNY Graduate Center, and Northwestern University.

Akın has a private studio in New York, and works and exhibits actively in the US, as well as Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. He was the recipient of the 2015 apexart Franchise Program award in New York, and the organizer of Apricots from Damascus, on behalf of apexart, and co-produced and hosted by SALT in İstanbul. His project took part in the public programming of Olafur Eliasson’s Green light project, hosted by TBA21 in Vienna. With the same institution, he embarked on an expedition to research nuclear test sites in French Polynesia. Part of his ongoing long term research-driven art project on nuclear mobility and archaeology, Mutant Space, is exhibited at the 2016 Design Biennial in the Archaeology Museum of İstanbul.

RELATED PROGRAM