Poetics of Encryption

A critical appraisal of art’s entanglement in technological encryption

“We are all inside this thing—but how?” This book explores 21st-century art’s reckonings with the technosphere. Outlining the concept of encryption that underlies this infrastructural condition, Samman explores motifs of confinement, capture and burial, as well as access and exclusion from secured domains. Poetics of Encryption excavates the art of our times in relation to these motifs, as it quests through caves, cables, codes, satellites and icons. Toggling between enlightened concern and occult dreaming, it surveys a counterintuitive aesthetic of the interface.

Nadim Samman (born 1980) is Curator for the Digital Sphere at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. In 2019 he was First Prize recipient of the International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC). Major curatorial projects included the 4th Marrakech Biennale (2012), the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art (2015) and the 1st Antarctic Biennale (2017).