Jol Thoms (b. Toronto) is an
artist, sound designer, and researcher based in London, UK . His transdisciplinary fieldwork
and critical audio/visual practices interrogate the Wests troubled
relationships with Nature, Technology, and Cosmos by signalling beyond the purely
measurable and quantifiable, and by thinking, feeling, and sensing with more-than-human worlds. His compositions, lecture-performances, and educational experimentations emerge
from site-based fieldwork in remote ‘landscape-laboratories’ situated at the
forefront and intersection of experimental physics and environmental stewardship where cosmic and planetary bodies become entangled as vast posthuman sensing arrays.
Thoms is the founder of the ongoing lunar sound ritual Radio Amnion: Sonic Transmissions
of Care in Oceanic Space. Since June 2021, R.A. continues to commission and send artists
voices and soundings 2.5 kms deep in/to the Pacific Ocean during each full moon.
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).
© All images are copyright Jol Thoms. Texts copyright Jol Thoms and the respective authors.