electronic media artist
ALEXANDER HAHN
presents
2026, 06’:32”
S Y N O P S I S
«How Not to Drown» is a short experimental video that unfolds as a forensic reconstruction — assisted by AI — of a long-abandoned project from the 1970s and 1990s. The origins of the work reach further back than initially assumed: to a linoleum floor that, seen through a black-and-white video camera, appeared as an aerial view of an ocean, traversed by reflections of light.
At the centre of the project is a Vogue article found in Venice in the late 1970s, entitled Six mouvements pour vous sauver - Six Movements to Save You, instructions on how to avoid drowning. Over the years, its illustrations inspired drawings, watercolours, swimming experiments, underwater footage, and eventually an unfinished 3D animation featuring a rigged digital figure. Mythological, technological, and personal narratives overlap: Daedalus warning Icarus; software instructions controlling a digital skeleton; misunderstandings that transform survival movements into “water ballet”; and aging videotape signals that disintegrate and collapse during playback. In retrospect, the six instructions appear less as a swimming technique than as a modest guide to staying afloat: prepare the body, push off, stretch out, glide, move forward with care, relax—and recover.
Postscript: After completing the project, I attempted to restart my laptop. It remained unresponsive. It is currently in repair. The diagnosis: water damage.
E X H I B I T I O N S
• Reckless Abandon — world premiere, New Media Art Space at Baruch CUNY, New York (2026)
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