speaker-james-merle-thomas-2.jpg

James Merle Thomas

Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Temple University
 http://www.tektiterevisited.com/

Dr. James Merle Thomas (US) is an interdisciplinary scholar and curator whose work examines the art, visual culture, and technology of the Cold War and contemporary periods. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art History at Temple University and Curator at the Philadelphia-based exhibition space Slought, where his major research projects include a forthcoming documentary film, Tektite Revisited (co-produced with filmmaker Meghan O'Hara); and a forthcoming book, NASA and the Aesthetics of Habitable. His research is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Air and Space Museum. Prior to earning his doctorate in Art History at Stanford University, Thomas worked as a curator and editor in the field of contemporary art, serving as Assistant Curator and Editor of Publications for the 2nd Seville Biennial (2006), the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008), and the 3rd Paris Triennial (2012). As co-founder of the research and performance group Quindar, Thomas served as a 2019 U.S. State Department Artist Envoy to Iceland and has held residencies at, among others, the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and Mass MoCA.

Social Links

All Sessions by James Merle Thomas

  • Day 1

    July 17, 2020

  • 15:30  - 17:00
    Tektite Revisited: NASA’s Forgotten Underwater Missions (working title) is an eighty-minute feature-length documentary that tells the story of the Tektite Program, an experimental underwater research station operated by NASA in the U.S. Virgin Islands between 1969-1970. A sensuous visual depiction of NASA’s manned spaceflight research in the Caribbean as an international “Space Race” came to a close, the film employs a vast collection of rarely-seen and newly-restored archival materials (16mm film, audio recordings, photographs, extensive government records), and revisits a series of unlikely missions led by America’s “aquanauts,” who lived underwater for weeks on end. Tektite Revisited uses the forgotten program as a case study for examining a Cold War-era cultural preoccupation with survival in extreme environments, and ultimately suggests the program’s role in a set of larger, global questions regarding humanity’s relationship to its home planet.
    Tektite Revisited
    Main Stage
    Day 1, Keynote Panel