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 assembled as a forensic reconstruction of an abandoned image. Responding to «Reckless Abandon», an open call by The New Media Artspace at Baruch College, CUNY, I returned to unfinished material from the 1970s and 1990s, and using AI as part of the process, the work reveals that its origins lie earlier than expected: in black-and-white video experiments where a linoleum floor, seen through a camera, became an aerial ocean crossed by flashes of sunlight.
The project revolves around a VOGUE magazine article encountered in Venice in the late 1970s, titled «Six Movements to Save You». Its illustrated instructions for drownproofing became a persistent image, resurfacing over time in drawings, watercolors, floating experiments, water imagery, and eventually in an unfinished 3D animation based on a rigged digital figure.
Mythological, technological, and personal narratives begin to overlap: Daedalus warning Icarus, software instructions governing animated bodies, mistranslations turning survival movements into “water ballet,” and old videotape signals deteriorating and collapsing during playback.
Looking back, the six instructions seem less like a swimming technique than a small manual for staying afloat: prepare the body, push off, extend, glide, move gently forward, 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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