Principal Investigators

Tahani Nadim

© Tal Adler

CARMAH members’ portraits were captured in March 2017, on the ‘New55 PN’ – a new handmade instant film for large format, 4”x5” cameras. This film was launched through crowdfunding in 2014 as a reinvention of the discontinued, legendary ‘Type 55’ by Polaroid. Since the sixties, Polaroid’s unique ‘Type 55’ starred in many artists’ and professional photographers’ projects. ‘Type 55’ provided both an instant print and a superb negative from which more (and larger) prints could be made. Like so many photographic material in the last 10-15 years, ‘Type 55’ was discontinued in 2009. Tal Adler decided to use the ‘New55 PN’ not only for its beautiful quality but also to reflect, and participate in, the revival of (photographic) heritage.

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I am a Junior Professor of Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the Department for European Ethnology in a joint appointment between the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum for Natural History) Berlin. My research is concerned with the structures and infrastructures of data collections and attendant practices, experiences and orderings. It is also concerned with establishing and maintaining productive conversations across disciplines, institutions and ways of knowing. I have carried out ethnographic research at genetic sequence databases and worked on institutional Open Access strategies. During my time as an International Museum Fellow at the Museum für Naturkunde I produced the exhibition Tote Wespen fliegen länger/Dead wasps fly further (March 2015) together with the visual artist Åsa Sonjasdotter and founded the slightly clandestine Bureau for troubles (ongoing). As part of my research programme (“Data natures”) at CARMAH I am setting up multi-sited ethnographic inquiries into the data practices in natural history museums. These include, but are not limited, to various digitisation efforts as well as data-centred citizen science activities. Through this research I intend to problematise the contestational nature of data and how they participate in making certain versions of nature, of nation and of governance viable and doable.

Publications

Tahani Nadim (2021): The datafication of nature: data formations and new scales in natural history. In: Special Issue. Towards an Anthropology of Data, 2021, Vol. 27, Issue S1, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, p. 62-75.

Tahani Nadim (2021). Database. In: Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio and Kristin Veel (eds.): Uncertain Archives. Critical Keywords for Big Data. London: The MIT Press

Tahani Nadim (2020). System Box (Tray) with Wasp. In: Susanne Bauer, Martina Schlünder, Maria Rentetzi (eds.). BOXES: A Field Guide., pp 109-123, Mattering Press,
free to download at https://www.matteringpress.org/books/boxes

Tahani Nadim (2020). Data Flow. [Contribution to Anthropocene River Journey project] access via https://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/contribution/data-flow

Nadim, Tahani; Wagner, Neli; Breljak, Anja; Schwinghammer, Christian: «Influencing the Machine?» Ein Gespräch über Bots, Kunst und das Erzählen von Geschichten in Zeiten technologischer Beeinflussung. In: Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft. Heft 21: Künstliche Intelligenzen, Jg. 11 (2019), Nr. 2, S. 75–85

Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (eds.) (2018). The Influencing Machine. Berlin: nGbK.

Tahani Nadim (2018). Introduction: The Influencing Machine. In: Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (eds.). The Influencing Machine. Berlin: nGbK

Tahani Nadim (2018). The sourball of every revolution: who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning. In: Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (eds.). The Influencing Machine. Berlin: nGbK

Tahani Nadim (2018). „c u soon humans need sleep now so many conversations today thx”. In: Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (eds.). The Influencing Machine. Berlin: nGbK

Tahani Nadim (2018). “IBM Watson is the Donald Trump of the AI industry”. In: Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (eds.). The Influencing Machine. Berlin: nGbK

Tahani Nadim (2018). (The end of) labour. In: Tahani Nadim and Neli Wagner (eds.). The Influencing Machine. Berlin: nGbK

Tahani Nadim (2018). Friends with books. In: Samuel Moore (ed.) The Commons and Care. pp 26-33. Manchester: Mattering Press.

Tahani Nadim (2018). Haunting seedy connections. In: Celia Lury, Rachel Fensham, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Sybille Lammes, Angela Last, Mike Michael and Emma Uprichard (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, pp 239-247. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.