S2/E1
“As long as I’m surrounded by this archive”
W/ Thomas Sauvin

               Square Meters starts the second season welcoming the listeners into the studio of Thomas Sauvin, author of the project Beijing Silvermine.


Since 2009, the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin has salvaged discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing, negatives that were destined to destruction. His Beijing Silvermine archive, one of the largest archival projects in China, now encompasses over 850000 anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005, thus allowing the reconstruction of a large part of the history of popular analogue photography in the country. This unceasingly evolving archive provides a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions, while impacting on our collective memory of the recent past.

Talking about his workplace he says: “It doesn’t make a huge difference to me as long as I am surrounded by the archive”.

Thomas Sauvin won the prize for the Exhibition of the year at Lianzhou Photo Festival in 2013. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Chicago, the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Art, and the Guangdong Museum of Art.

Over the last seven years, Thomas has published 10 photo books with the Archive of Modern Conflict (UK), Jiazazhi (CH), Skinnerboox (IT), The M Editions (FR), VOID (GREECE) as well as self-published artist books. His publications has entered the collections of TATE, the V&A, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Pompidou Museum.

Credits /
Recorded, edited and produced by The Room Projects
Curated and coordinate by Alessandra Chiericato
Associate Curator: Camilla Magnani
Recorded: January 2021
Music: Roberto Farina
Photo Credits: The Room Projects