A design and culture leader with over twenty years of creative, multi-disciplinary global experience across multi-platform design systems and experiences. Internationally exhibited artist, working critically with new technologies. Author of two books engaging with technology’s societal impact. One quarter of the creative research group, Planetary Portals.
With an award-winning track record of distinguished online and offline creative solutions across the cultural sector, I deliver unique perspectives informed by extensive cross-disciplinary expertise, through which I produce narrative experiences and generate ideas for organisations intent on exploring deeper sociological, technological, and cultural significance. My creative direction and strategy bring rigorous and adaptable insight together with poetic imagination, physical and digital.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I have successfully combined critical ideas with technology, exhibiting internationally. Recently, I have developed new approaches to filmmaking using game engine software and machine learning (AI), with recent exhibitions at The Photographer’s Gallery and screenings at Transmediale and the Gropius Bau Museum in Berlin. My digital artistic practice informs my work as a creative leader and strategist, and vice versa.
In addition to numerous smaller publications, I have published two books: 'Red Earth' (Calamari Archive, 2023) and 'Cybernetics, or Ghosts?' (Subtext Books UK 2024), Exploring our intricate and intimate relationship with technology, I create overlapping works that are part of my artistic practice, informed by research that informs my broader profession.
I am a creative entrepreneur, initiating new ideas and engaging with the public. My live arts series, Local Transport, held a residency at The Southbank Centre in London. My ongoing artist research project, The Red Earth Project (theredearthproject.org), explores the impact of artificial intelligence on non-Western knowledge systems and has been exhibited in Berlin, London and beyond. My creative research group, Planetary Portals, in collaboration with academics from QMUL and UEA, examines the ongoing colonial legacies and geo-traumas that extend from gold and diamond mining in South Africa to the renewed scramble for African minerals and data, fueling global digital economies. Commissioned recently for an exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.
I have spoken at numerous cultural institutions, including TEDx, the Unseen Photo Fair, the London Literature Festival, the British Library Gallery, and 5x15.
https://michaelsalu.com/
Projects
- Cybernetics, or Ghosts?Edited by writer and artist Michael Salu, fifteen of today’s most daring writers from across the globe read and respond to Italo Calvino’s seminal essay ‘Cybernetics and Ghosts’ with rich and expansive works of fiction. In Calvino’s essay, first delivered as a lecture in 1967, he provocatively suggested that writing could one day become a computationally reducible process, speculating that machines might eventually become sophisticated enough to reimagine the singular author’s human’ parameters
- Tools for Extinction: contributorby Enrique Vila-Matas, Olivia Sudjic, Jon Fosse, Inger Wold Lund, Vi Khi Nao, Patrícia Portela, Lucie Elven, Mara Coson, Christina Hesselholdt, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Naja Marie Aidt, Michael Salu, Joanna Walsh, Jakuta Alikavazovic, Anna Zett, Emilio Fraia, Frode Grytten, and Olga Ravn Translations by Margaret Jull Costa, Zoë Perry, Martin Aitken, Denise Newman, Paul Russell Garrett, Damion Searls, and Rahul Bery Eighteen international writers respond to the open-ended period of social distan
- The Red Earth Project: language machine learning and augmented reality.Does language have its own geology? From our ongoing research project at House of Thought entitled 'Red Earth' - a series of translations between photography, film, prose and machine learning to produce, new geologies. Red Earth is a work I am developing as part of exploring the evolution of language and what we consider to be ‘lived experience’. In what I like to refer to as a series of translations, I am looking to create intimate narratives through direct translations between image, text an
- The Swarm: Language as a FictionAn creative and critical essay using natures swarming species as an entry point to discussing both the refractions of lnaguage and who actually owns language particularly in its current technological acceleration. Published by American literary magazine Entropy The piece also features a still from a new digital series I'm creating of the same name. Its a series thinking about the tense relationship between technology and nature (and also language).
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Projects credited in
- Facial recognition and the ecstasy of synthesised experienceWe're exploring how ecstasy and agony are reintepreted when much of what we know as experience is now synthesised and privacy is no longer a right. These experiemental processes are now used on King of Joy as part of our creative strategy for Soft Skull Press in New York.2
Work history
DirectorHouse of Thought
Berlin, GermanyFreelance
My multi-disciplinary studio. I work with a broader network of top talent to produce a variety of different creative work for creative clients.
G
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Creative Director + Art EditorGranta Publications
- London, United KingdomFull Time
Creative director and art editor for all the activities of Granta Publications including two book publishing imprints and Granta Magazine. Responsible for developing the brand of Granta both on and offline. Picked up numerous awards and brought in countless artists and designers for collaborations including the likes of The Chapman Brothers and Sir Paul Smith.
Creative Direction
Commissioning Editor for print & online (art and photography)
Creative brand and digital strategy
Contributing writer
Designer
Illustrator
Granta Magazine
- Artistic Direction
http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/The-Art-of-Horror
- Commissioning Editor of art and photography
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/september/granta-112-pakistan
- Writer
http://www.granta.com/Contributors/Michael-Salu
http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=579
http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Remembering-Tim-Hetherington
Essay for issue 11 of Under the Influence magazine.
Article on 'Taste' for issue 19 of Varoom Magazine
- Digital and creative strategy
- Viral and promotional solutions
www.nothingbutamovie.com
http://www.thisisnotapurse.com
http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Aftermath
Granta & Portobello Books
- Creative direction of all titles and digital marketing.
Granta Publications
- Brand development and implementation
Creative collaborators and published artists include:
Sir Paul Smith
The Chapman Brothers
Yinka Shonibare
Nadav Kander
The Royal College of Art
Central St Martins
The Photographer's Gallery
Adam Broomberg
Mishka Henner
Ghariokwu Lemi
Ian Teh
The Archive of Modern Conflict
A.L. Kennedy
John Burnside
James Jean
Paradise Row
The Zabludowicz Collection
Magnum Photos
Panos Pictures
Brad Feuerhelm
Kris Hofmann
Catherine Anyango
FUEL Publishing
Pocko
Big Active
YCN
The British Council
Crane TV
Owen Freeman
Institute for Eyes
Theo Tillberg
Jocabola
Monocle
Melvin Galapon
Meri Media
La Boca
Tom Darracott
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Skills
- Concepts
- Ability to Adapt any Creative Project and Branding Solution
- 5+ Years art Directing
- Creative Writing
- 5+ Years Project Management
- Typography
- Filmmaking
- Narratives
- Brand Storytelling
- Creative Storytelling
Awards
Book designD&AD
Art direction award for Londoners, by Craig Taylor.Newspaper & Magazine DesignD&AD
D&AD 'in book' award for the Granta 'Sex' issue.+ Show more