Adam Seid Tahir (they/them) is a choreographer and creative technologist. Their two roles involve crafting performative work and designing/developing websites. These practices also merge and expand into writing texts, making video installations, 3D animation and crafting sensor-based instruments.
Adam uses speculative imagination as a tool of resistance and centers their work around creating loud and immersive black queer fiction. They are interested in mythological figures, daydreaming and crafting affective machines. These interests often intersect through water, where they take the shape of sirens, waterfalls and submerged transatlantic communication cables.
In their latest works Adam keeps returning to the practice of braiding hair. Both its traditional meaning with its ancestral social traditions and through the expanded idea of braiding as a method for working together. In the latter notion Adam has recently collaborated with Amina Seid Tahir and the collective EMBRACE (consisting of Lydia Östberg Diakité, Meleat Fredriksson and themself).
They have presented their work in contexts including: Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2023 (BE), New Sh*t @ Dansehallerne 2022 (DK), Emergentia 2022 (CH), Batard 2022 (BE), My Wild Flag 2021 (SE) and Dubrovnik Summer Festival 2020 (HR). They have worked with other artists including: Bambam Frost, Pontus Pettersson, Frederic Gies, Theo Clinkard, Samlingen, Meleat Fredriksson, Lydia Östberg Diakité, Amina Seid Tahir, Paloma Madrid, Eleanor Bauer, Zoë Poluch and Michael Keegan-Dolan. They have studied courses and programs including: Decolonial strategies within art and activism @ Uniarts (SE), Aesthetics @ LTU (SE), Programming for Artists @ Konstfack (SE), Ballet Junior de Geneve (CH) and Royal Swedish Ballet School (SE).
Contact: adamseidtahir@gmail.com
WHAT DOES THE SITE RESIDENCY ENABLE YOU TO DO?
The residency at SITE enables me to have a geographic location where I can center my working. An anchor for the currents. A place where research, production, reflection and practice can synthesize.
It enables me to take part of other artists’ work and workings. And through that learn, discover and develop my practice further.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT?
Currently I’m trying to find ways of healing collectively. I’m in the process of excavation. Digging down and forwards into my ancestral archeology. Speaking with family, digging, reading books, digging, diving into the cracks of the interwebs, digging. Searching for ways of healing that resonate with the history that I carry.
So far I’ve been working with percussion and water. Water as both a material with many healing properties and a landscape my ancestors have traveled over in hopes of a better future. A landscape that is also filled with trauma.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO FURTHER DEVELOP DURING YOUR RESIDENCY AT SITE?
I hope to continue developing the work I’m doing through meeting the other artists at SITE. Finding more concrete ways to establish my practice choreographically.
I also hope to develop my ability to produce work, specifically in relation to applying for grants, contacting venues etc.
I’d also like to find better ways of speaking and writing about my work. Maybe in a way that conveys it in a more unified manner than it feels while working on it? Haha or maybe I don’t want that… Maybe perfecting a 100 story tall elevator pitch? Because fuck elevator pitches in 5 story buildings! Or finding a way to communicate my work in a way that teaches me more about the work? Yeah, something like that…