Artist Kader Attia traces his life and art between Algeria and France, and the talk centers on his core idea of repair, the idea that the wound and its repair are forever linked, seen in colonial history, injured bodies, and non-Western art that doesn't mimic reality but moves you from within. He connects this to today's digital world, arguing that technology and neoliberalism colonise our attention and inner reality, and comparing shamans to data scientists as both accessing invisible "traces." In conversation with Xue Tan, he warns against the seductive-but-scary ambivalence of history (futurism's ties to fascism) and closes by defending the art space as a sacred, communal sanctuary where we can reclaim our own reality.
“The wound and the repair are linked forever in a loop process. You cannot think repair without thinking wound. The injury is always there.”
— Kader Attia
