Jol Thoms
Jol Thoms (born Toronto) is an artist and researcher based in London, UK, where he is a lecturer on the MA Art & Ecology at Goldsmiths University and a faculty member of Critical Ecologies. His audio-visual compositions, lecture-performances, and educational experimentations emerge from site-based fieldwork in remote ‘landscape-laboratories’ situated at the forefront of experimental physics and environmental stewardship where planetary bodies become vast posthuman sensing arrays. His critical practice addresses our troubled relationships with nature, technology, and the cosmos by signalling beyond the purely measurable and quantifiable, and by thinking, feeling, and sensing with more-than-human worlds. He is the founder of Radio Amnion: Sonic Transmissions of Care in Oceanic Space and acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. He was a participant in the Anthropocene Campus’ I & II at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014/16), won the MERU Art*Science Award.
Thoms was a participant in the Anthropocene Campus’ I & II at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014/16), won the MERU Art*Science Award (2016), and was a Fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude (2016-17). He received an honors BA from the University of Toronto in 2009, a meisterschüler in Contemporary Fine Art from the Städelschule in Frankfurt aM, Germany (2013), and received a PhD from The University of Westminster in Creative Media (2021). Thoms collaboratively developed and led an experimental arts pedagogy ‘IAK’ with artist-architect Tomás Saraceno at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany (2014-16). As a composer and sound designer he has collaborated with Alva Noto and Libita Sibungu. He is currently Studio Lecturer in Goldsmiths’ MA Art & Ecology where he is also a member of Critical Ecologies.
Thoms has recently participated in: The Measure of the World - RADIUS Centre for Art and Ecology, Delft; Unknown Unknowns: An Introduction to Mysteries - 23rd Triennale de Milano (2022); Drift: Art and Dark Matter – Agnes Etherigton Art Centre, CA (2021)/Belkin Gallery, UBC, Vancouver (2021)/Art Museum, U of Toronto (2022); Who Wants to Live Forever? – with Deep Field Projects – Kunsthall Trondheim (2020); Logics of Sense 1: Investigations – Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga (2019); Istanbul Experimental Film Festival, Kadikoy Sinemasi, Istanbul (2019); Blind Faith: Between the Cognitive and the Visceral in Contemporary Art - Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2018); Open Codes: Living in Digital Worlds -ZKM, Karlsruhe (2017-2018).