Episode 7
Listen to the penultimate episode of Season 2 of The ICA Podcast! Featuring an in-depth profile of Romanian interdisciplinary artist nomi blum and her immersive installation, Fragments of Encounters.
The work was first performed in Cape Town at the 2019 Infecting the City public art festival, but the source material for Fragments of Encounters began to take shape many years before -- emerging out of everyday encounters, initially in blum's home city of Bucharest, and later in Paris, Cape Town and Johannesburg, with people of different ages, backgrounds, nationalities and languages that the artist recorded and archived over time. This montage of fragmented conversations comes to life in this episode as we step into the experimental performance space, and rich written and aural archive that gives the work its resonance, shape and texture.
Listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, on our website; or wherever you find podcasts.
nomi blum is a migrant interdisciplinary artist with a research based practice. She works mainly with archival material, objects and residues, a collection of recorded oral narratives that recreate a mixture of cultures and identities. This personal archive in a constant state of expansion and becoming is both a geography of her encounters and a mnemonic instrument. Her practice is installation-performance based, a series of open-ended propositions from within a fragmented and deliberate chaotic system(s) where memory and meaning can be negotiated.
About The ICA Podcast
The Podcast – launched in July 2020 – emerged out of the ICA's 2019 publication Acts of Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa and extends the work begun by the book through conversations with the creators and curators of Live Art. The role of the Podcast has been particularly important in this time of the pandemic, when live performance has been difficult and sometimes impossible, but the intimacy and expansiveness of listening remains critical.
Season 1 looked at the body of work of 8 diverse artists. In Season 2, we're doing things a bit differently by offering each episode as a deep dive into a single performance:
We the Not-Not People! -Things done, not told. Inscribed, not written by Donna Kukama
Things We Lost in the Rainbow by Athi-Patra Ruga
Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations by Kopano Maroga
Qash-Qash by Nomcebisi Moyikwa
Yet to be Determined by Gavin Krastin
Fragments of Encounters by nomi blum
Body of Evidence by Jay Pather
Looking ahead
In Episode 8, we’ll be speaking to curator, academic and Director of the ICA, Jay Pather about his 2009 work, Body of Evidence.
Join us then!
nomi blum, Fragments of Encounters, 2019 Infecting the City public art festival. Photos by Rob Keith, Xolani Tulumani and nomi blum.