NOAM TORAN

Biography

Born 1975 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Noam Toran studied fine art and combined artist commissions with set designs for theatre and film before receiving an MA in design at the Royal College of Art in London. His work spans multiple disciplines and mediums, from film to installations, conceptual product design to photography.

Research based, Toran’s work focuses on the social, psychological and ethical implications of emerging technologies, mass culture, and celluloid media, and attempts to both define and criticize the intersection between science and society, between modernity and culture. Consistently, the work appropriates the discourse of design and the effects of products as a means with which to investigate and envision anomalies in contemporary and speculative human behaviour. Toran not only creates products but their narratives and contexts as well, imagining them to be the real protagonists of modern everyday life. These “products” are imagined as constructions for particular individuals and psyches, vehicles for an elaboration of the desires, fantasies and pathologies unique to specific modern subjects. In this way, his conceptual products are never dislocated from the specific social and historical contexts in which they appear or are materially produced.

Toran’s work is exhibited, screened and published internationally, and is part of the NY MoMA and Paris FRAC collections. He currently teaches at the Royal College of Art and lectures worldwide.