Julian Charrière and Nadim Samman's 'As We Used to Float' Explores Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands

The book 'As We Used to Float' (Italian edition 'Noi che galleggiavamo', Edizioni MAMbo, 2019) documents a month-long expedition by artist Julian Charrière and curator Nadim Samman to the Marshall Islands, a site devastated by 23 US nuclear tests. The authors combine travel diary, historical account, and visual documentation to explore human impact on the planet. They dove 60 meters to witness sunken warships and examined radiation-altered coconuts and bunkers. The narrative oscillates between present observations and historical flashbacks, emphasizing the role of witness and image-maker. Charrière, a Franco-Swiss artist based in Berlin, studied at the Institut for Spatial Experiments under Olafur Eliasson. His work 'Future Fossil Spaces' was shown at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Samman, a curator with a PhD from the Courtauld Institute, founded the Antarctic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and curated the 2016 Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. The book is part of a broader artistic discourse merging art and science, and is available for €10.