Survival Trilogy
Miriam Simun works at sites of collision: contradictions, un-realities, and that of rapidly evolving techno-ecosystems colliding with bodies—both human and nonhuman.
Artist BioSurvival Trilogy is an exploration of life and death in the technosphere. Adopting the role of the fieldworker/participant, artist Miriam Simun examines the survival of humans, non-humans and techno-eco-systems through a trilogy of investigations. Act I tells of individualism in the deserts of the American Southwest: hunting, butchering and eating one animal at a time with only a truck, a rifle and a knife. Act II, taking place on a commercial fishing vessel in the Arctic Sea, depicts the complexity and scale of a floating techno-industry that feeds a global seafood market. Act III explores two responses to the rapid decline of pollinators necessary for the bounty of agriculture on earth: the emergence of human-hand pollination in the fruit orchards of Southern China, and the imminent release of pollinating drone bees under development at Harvard University. Survival Trilogy culminates in a series of artworks taking the form of videos, sculptures and 2D work that interweaves the processes, ideologies and visceral experiences of these food system realities. And, a series of life and death dinners.
Miriam Simun
Cambridge, MA
Miriam Simun works at the intersection of ecology, technology and the body, spanning multiple formats including video, performance, installation, writing, and communal sensorial experiences. Trained as a sociologist, Simun spends time in communities of experts, ranging from biomedical engineers to breastfeeding mothers. Taking on the role of ‘artist-as-fieldworker,’ much of the process is rooted in research as lived experience, forefronting corporeal and sensorial ways of listening, learning and knowing. The resulting works are concerned with the collision of bodies (human and non) with rapidly evolving techno-ecosystems. If collision can be understood to be a form of disturbance (in the ecological sense), then in disturbance we move through damage to an opportunity for renewal. Simun’s work explores the vital role our sensorial experiences play in enabling, engaging and making renewal.
Simun’s work has been presented internationally, including Gropius Bau in Berlin, New Museum in New York, Himalayas Museum in Shanghai, Momenta Biennale in Montreal, The Contemporary in Baltimore, Bogota Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts inNew York, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Robert Rauschenberg Gallery in New York, and the Beall Center for Art + Technology in California. Simun is a recipient of awards from Creative Capital, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, as well as a 2022 La Becque Artist-in-Resident, 2021 Onassis Foundation fellow, a 2019 Gulbenkian / Carpintarias de São Lázaro Artist-in-Residence, a 2018 Visual Arts residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, a 2016 Artist Residency with OMI International Arts Center in New York, a 2015 Food Justice Residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and a 2014 Art Professionals in Athens residency in Greece. Simun’s work has been recognized internationally in publications including the BBC, The New York Times, The New Yorker, CBC, MTV, Forbes, Art21, and ARTNews. Simun is a graduate of the MIT Media Lab, ITP at NYU Tisch School for the Arts and the London School of Economics and Political Science.