e-flux podcast-logo

e-flux podcast

Arts & Culture Podcasts

Conversations with some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today.

Location:

United States

Description:

Conversations with some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today.

Language:

English


Episodes

Ciarán Finlayson on Perpetual Slavery

3/12/2024
Andreas Petrossiants talks to author Ciarán Finlayson about his book, Perpetual Slavery, published by Floating Opera Press in 2023. In Perpetual Slavery, Ciarán Finlayson investigates the relationship of art to freedom in the work of Cameron Rowland and Ralph Lemon, who both utilize imagery of labor haunted and structured by the historical experience of slavery. Finlayson suggests that these two artists’ work overcomes the dichotomy between the recording of history and its interpretation by making both the object of artistic experience, thereby providing a space to grasp the continuing effects of slavery. Ciarán Finlayson is an editor from Houston, Texas. He is Senior Editor at Triple Canopy. Finlayson is on the core faculty of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York, and has taught aesthetics and social theory at Columbia University, New York, and the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, and at socialist night schools hosted by the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.

Duration:00:39:11

African Film Institute: Amelia Umuhire, Natacha Nsabimana, and Christian Nyampeta

2/8/2024
A conversation preceding the African Film Institute’s inaugural screening at e-flux curated by Natacha Nsabimana, featuring two works by Rwandan filmmaker Amelia Umuhire. The African Film Institute is convened by Christian Nyampeta and hosted by e-flux Screening Room. Amelia Umuhire (b. 1991, Kigali, Rwanda) is a filmmaker and artist living in Kigali and Berlin. In 2015, she wrote and directed the award-winning web-series Polyglot, in which she follows the lives of young, deracinated London- and Berlin-based Rwandese artists. Her short film Mugabo was awarded Best Experimental Film at the Blackstar Film Festival, and screened at MOCA Los Angeles and the Berlin Biennale among many other places. In 2018, Umuhire produced the Prix Europa-nominated radio feature Vaterland for the German radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She was a Villa Romana Fellow in 2020, and is currently working on her first feature film. Natacha Nsabimana teaches in the anthropology department at the university of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial critique, musical movements, and the cultural and political worlds of African peoples on the continent and in the diaspora. The African Film Institute aims to create a home and a place of intimacy with African cinema in New York, through developing gradually and organically a viewing program animated by fellowships; a growing library; an active writers’ room; and an expanding catalog of recorded dialogs. The African Film Institute draws from the visual cultures that view cinema as an evening school: a popular information system in the service of education, aesthetic experience, and public dissemination—employing a methodology concerning the use of cinema’s collective production, and investing in viewing methods informed by different uses of time, visual and textual histories, and social struggles and hopes in mutuality between their own locality and the world at large.

Duration:00:44:42

Saodat Ismailova: To Share a Dream With a River

1/16/2024
Tamara Khasanova and Hallie Ayres talk to artist Saodat Ismailova following To Share a Dream With a River, a screening of three films at e-flux. Stay tuned after the conversation for an excerpt from a soundscape composed by Camille Norment for Ismailova’s film, The Haunted. Films discussed in this episode: The Haunted (2017, 23 minutes) takes the form of an open letter to the Turan tiger. A majestic symbol of the Central Asian landscape, this animal has been extinct for several decades but lives on as a sacred symbol in the collective imagination of the local population. In her captivating film essay, Ismailova pays homage to the tiger as she shows how firmly bound it is to the region’s history. Stains of Oxus (2016, 24 minutes) follows a transformation of the landscape of the Amu Darya riverbanks and the people that inhabit them, beginning from the high plateau in Tajikistan to the lowland deserts in Uzbekistan, where the river finds its end. Chillpiq (2018, 17 minutes) begins with a scene of two buses emerging on the horizon as they drive toward Chillpiq. A group of forty girls climb the ruins that stand atop a mount in the middle of the steppe. One by one, they tie pieces of cloth to a flagpole that crowns the archeological site, and worship it as a symbol of life. The girls circle the shrine while the setting sun changes the light to an orange glow, blurring their silhouettes as they disappear into the site. Two Horizons (2022, 24 mins) was exhibited as part of the 14th Shanghai Biennale’s Partial Eclipse section, and hints at infinite strategies through which humans access occluded forms of matter and energy. Two Horizons combines a prophecy carried down in the ancient Turkic oral histories of Qorqut with the more recent history of a space launch facility. The tomb of Qorqut—the storyteller and seer who is the central hero of the epic—lies in the south of Kazakhstan, near the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In the local culture the belief persists that a person will one day come to defeat gravity and achieve eternal life. Saodat Ismailova is a filmmaker and artist who came of age in the post-Soviet era in Central Asia. She graduated from Tashkent State Art Institute in Uzbekistan and Le Fresnoy, National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France. Drawing on the cultural identities and vernacular histories of Central Asia, Saodat Ismailova’s films meditate on memory, spirituality, immortality, and extinction. Frequently based around folk stories in which women are the lead protagonists, and exploring systems of knowledge suppressed by globalized modernity, these consciousness expanding works hover between visible and invisible worlds. Tamara Khasanova is a curator, researcher, and writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She currently serves as an Archives Assistant at e-flux, and curated the To Share a Dream With a River screening program. Hallie Ayres was on the curatorial team for Cosmos Cinema, the 14th Shanghai Biennale. She is Associate Director of e-flux.

Duration:00:52:11

Laure Prouvost in conversation with Kathy Noble

10/13/2023
Recorded live at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, September 5, 2023 during a retrospective screening of selected works by Laure Prouvost. The pre-screening introduction by Amal Issa and Laure Prouvost is followed by a conversation between the artist and writer-curator Kathy Noble. The screening portion of the program featured a selection of works spanning the last decade: OWT (2007, 3 minutes), Finger Point Green (2010, 3 minutes), They Parlaient Idéale (29 minutes, 2019), Every Sunday, Grandma (2022, 7 minutes), OMA JE (You, My, Omma, Mama, Shadow Does, and A Walking Story) (2023, 22 minutes). Language—in its broadest sense—permeates the video, sound, installation, and performance work of Laure Prouvost. Known for her immersive and mixed-media installations that weave in film in humorous and idiosyncratic ways, Prouvost’s work addresses miscommunication and ideas becoming lost in translation. Playing with language as a tool for the imagination, Prouvost is interested in confounding linear narratives and expected associations among words, images, and meaning. She combines existing and imagined personal memories with artistic and literary references to create complex works that muddy the distinction between fiction and reality. At once seductive and jarring, her approach to filmmaking employs layered storytelling, quick edits, montage, and wordplay, and is composed of a rich, tactile assortment of images, sounds, and spoken and written phrases. Laure Prouvost (b. 1867, Lieumeconu, France) lives and works. Here a long list of museums and institutions. A line, interesting things, a coma, a line, a list of residencies and prizes. A selection of solo projects including: an Oma-je in Vienna, a flying Grandma in Oslo, Esmé Blue in Busan, Helsinki, and Madrid, an elastic arm hold in tight in Copenhagen, a Swallowing and Breathing in Eindhoven, a Smoking Mother in Copenhagen, a Melting Into Another in Lisbon and Sonsbeek, an Occupied Paradise in Aalst, Deep See Blue Surrounding You in Venice, Toulouse, and Lille, a Waiting Room with objects in Minneapolis, a New Museum for Granddad in Milano, a tearoom for Grandma in Derry, a karaoke room in Brussels, a new octopus ink vodka bar for Gregor in Rotterdam, A travel agency for an Uncle in Frankfurt, a lobby for love among the artists in the Hague and Luzern… tea bags, and wet floors and tentacules. Kathy Noble is a curator and writer based in New York, currently working as Senior Curator at Performa. There she previously served as Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs to oversee the program and curated numerous commissions. As Curator, Interdisciplinary, at Tate Modern she co-curated Tate Modern Live, The Long Weekend Festival, and Art in Action, the first program in The Tanks spaces. In 2016 she launched the inaugural Art Night festival with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, presenting ten site-specific projects at venues across Westminster. She has published numerous essays in books and magazines such as Artforum, frieze, and Mousse Magazine.

Duration:00:53:21

Esteban Jefferson: MAY 25th, 2020

7/25/2023
Recorded in February 2023, Keli Maksud talks to Esteban Jefferson about his exhibition, MAY 25th, 2020, at 303 Gallery. A second iteration of the show will open at Goldsmiths CCA in October 2023. Esteban Jefferson's practice centers around issues of race, identity and the legacies of colonialism. Using photography, drawing, painting, and sound installation as forms of documentation, Jefferson paints the focal points of his compositions in great detail, creating a stark contrast between the subject or object in focus and the surrounding environment. The paintings are left intentionally unfinished, creating a raw style emblematic of his investigative process. Well known for his series, “Petit Palais”, first featured at White Columns, New York, in 2019, Jefferson’s latest works consider the related symbolism of flags and toppling of equestrian monuments in New York, through the lens of racial and colonial legacies. Esteban Jefferson was born in New York City in 1989, and attended Columbia University. Recent group exhibitions include Art on the Grid, Public Art Fund, New York (2020); ESTAMOS BIEN: La Trienal, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2021) and Open Call, The Shed, New York (2021). Jefferson lives and works in New York City.

Duration:00:40:51

Raven Chacon: Solos

6/20/2023
An excerpt from Raven Chacon’s performance Solos, followed by a conversation with Xenia Benivolski, recorded live at e-flux on April 27. Solos, is a series of short, improvised works performed in quick succession. Using a variety of acoustic and electronic instruments, Chacon’s experimental compositions range from sparse, minimalistic soundscapes to complex, multi-layered works that incorporate voices, noises, and found sounds. Raven Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, performer, and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. Since 2004, he has mentored more than three hundred Native high school composers in writing new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP). As a solo artist, collaborator, and a member of Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Ar, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SITE Santa Fe, Ende Tymes Festival, New York, the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International, and Carnegie Museum of Art. Chacon is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Artist Fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage’s Fellowship-in-Residence. Xenia Benivolski writes and lectures about visual art, sound, and music. She is the curator of the project You Can’t Trust Music which is an online e-flux exhibition.

Duration:00:32:06

Jacopo Galimberti: Images of Class

5/19/2023
Andreas Petrossiants talks to author Jacopo Galimberti about his book, Images of Class: Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962–1988), published in 2022. Jacopo Galimberti is an art historian and Assistant Professor at IUAV (Venice). He is the author of Individuals Against Individualism: Art Collectives in Western Europe (1956-1969) (Liverpool) and Images of Class: Operaismo, Autonomia and the Visual Arts (1962-1988) (Verso), which historicizes those political currents and movements alongside visual and literary culture that was either in dialogue or in debate with the figures he centers—as well as the revolutionary aesthetic/cultural theory that they produced through workers’ inquiries and research on forms of postwar labor, and later participation in extraparliamentary militant social and urban movements. In addition to providing an art and architecture historical perspective on these movements, the book acts as a very helpful entry-point to operaist theory, which Classe Operaia called an “anti-dialectical Marxism,” including the work of Mario Tronti, Rita di Leo, Mandredo Tarfuri, Silvia Federici, and the various groups and grassroots movements that would constitute autonomia. Referenced in this episode: Rossella Biscotti, The Trial at e-flux (2012)

Duration:00:41:52

Shubigi Rao on Pulp and curating the Kochi-Muziris Biennale

4/26/2023
Ben Eastham talks to Shubigi Rao about her long term project Pulp, and curating the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Artist and writer Shubigi Rao makes layered installations of books, etchings, drawings, pseudo-scientific machines, metaphysical puzzles, video, ideological board games, garbage and archives, and has been exhibited and collected in Singapore and internationally. Her interests include archaeology, neuroscience, libraries, archival systems, histories and lies, literature and violence, ecologies and natural history. Since 2014 she has been visiting public and private collections, libraries and archives globally for Pulp, a decade-long film, book and visual art project about the history of book destruction. See here for more info. Rao curated the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022–23. The biennale was originally planned for 2020–21, but was delayed due to COVID-19.

Duration:00:51:28

Dorit Chrysler on Calder Plays Theremin

4/3/2023
Recorded at e-flux before the launch of Dorit Chrysler’s album, Calder Plays Theremin, on February 23, 2023. The conversation with Sanna Almajedi is followed by an excerpt from Dorit’s live performance. The album Calder Plays Theremin is a co-release by the NY Theremin Society and Fridman Gallery, and can be ordered on Bandcamp. The album is based on a sound piece commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the exhibition Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start. For the piece, Chrysler identified two of Alexander Calder’s sculptures, Snow Flurry, I (1948) and Man-Eater with Pennants (1945), to interact and “play” multiple theremins on site. Dorit Chrysler is a Berlin-based composer and sound artist, and co-founder of the NY Theremin Society. Her work explores new applications of the theremin in various forms. Chrysler was awarded the Austrian State Stipend in Composition 2023 and earned her Master's Degree of Musicology in Vienna. She has performed worldwide, and written for film and the theater. Chrysler’s compositions have been collected by the Guggenheim and Moderna Museet, and presented at MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and Klang Fest. Chrysler has collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony, CERN, Laurie Spiegel, Herb Deutsch, Elliot Sharp, Trentemøller, Alva Noto, and Gaite Lyrique. She produced a ten-piece orchestra performance for the LA Disney Hall, and is the founder of Dame Electric, a festival featuring female pioneers of electronic music. Her recordings appear on over twenty releases by labels such as InMyRoomRecords (DE), The Prurience Factory (US), Monika Enterprise (DE), PlagDichNicht (AU), PlasticTray Records (US), and Mute.

Duration:00:42:27

In Union: Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, and Keith Christensen

3/2/2023
A conversation with artists Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, and Keith Christensen on the occasion of their exhibition and book project, In Union, on view at Open Source Gallery in New York. In Union highlights the native role in a union strike, union families, and environmental protests. The conversation is hosted by Matt Peterson. Read more about the project here. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds has worked as an artist, activist, and teacher. Heap of Birds's artwork confronts unacknowledged histories of state and settler violence against Native communities in the United States. His piece “Our Red Nations Were Always Green” was published by e-flux Architecture in May 2021. Keith Christensen is an artist and designer. His work includes a focus on social justice issues. He created Game Turn, Learning from the Minneapolis Truckers’ Strike of 1934, a book and board game installation. He recently authored the book See & Say Time on his paintings. Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He co-directed the film Spaces of Exception (2018), and co edited the book The Mohawk Warrior Society (2022).

Duration:00:26:07

Maria Chávez on Topography of Sound (2007–now)

2/7/2023
Sanna Almajedi speaks to Maria Chávez on the occasion of Topography of Sound (2007–now) at e-flux. The conversation is followed by an excerpt from the performance, Maria’s first public live show since a medically induced sabbatical. Maria Chávez is an abstract turntablist, conceptual sound artist, and DJ based in New York and born in Lima, Peru. Coincidence, chance, and failures are themes that are at the heart of her practice, which expands from the world of sound to sculpture and other disciplines. Chávez is one of the only people, if not the only person, in the world that uses the double-headed RAKE turntable needles in her live performances. She uses broken needles that bounce and scratch in their attempt to play a groove. Sometimes she breaks the record itself and stacks broken shards of vinyl on the turntable. Through these experimentations, Chávez utilizes destruction as a method to discover new sonic worlds. Chávez’s influences stem from improvised contemporary music; she is an avid practitioner of deep listening and was mentored by the composer Pauline Oliveros. Chávez describes her turntablism technique as taking the detritus of vinyl and repurposing it into sonic sculptures that can be compared to improvised musique concrète pieces. Her latest body of work, a series of white Carrara marble sculptures, handmade in her studio in Carrara, Italy, has revealed a parallel with her vinyl practice. Chávez is on the cover of Thom Holmes’s book Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture (Routledge, 2020). She was a David Tudor and Robert Rauschenberg arts fellow and research fellow for Goldsmith's Sound Practice Research Department. Her large-scale sound and multi-media installations along with other works have been shown at the Getty Museum, the Judd Foundation, Documenta 14, and HeK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel) among others. She is also part of Don’t Blame it on Zen: The Way of John Cage & Friends, currently on view at MoCA Jacksonville. Chávez is the author of Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable (2012), which is the first book about abstract turntablism. This book has developed a reputation as both an academic resource and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists. She has contributed to many other publications including e-flux Architecture with “Too Much Reality”—a text about neuroplasticity and its place in the arts. In 2023, Chávez will be an artist-in-residence at the Counterflows Festival in Glasgow, Scotland and at the Rewire Festival in the Hague, the Netherlands.

Duration:00:58:18

Launch of e-flux journal issue #131

1/5/2023
This episode was recorded live during the launch of e-flux journal issue #131 on December 7, 2022. The evening was introduced and moderated by the journal editors, and featured authors Martin Guinard, Sabu Kohso, Matt Peterson, Leon Dische Becker, and Cosmo Bjorkenheim. Martin Guinard expands on his “Homage to Bruno Latour” with a message on diplomacy between different worlds that are no longer commoning together. In connection to Dische Becker and Bjorkenheim's later conversation, Guinard also touches on Latour's (non-)relationship to science fiction. Sabu Kohso and Matt Peterson discuss their conversation “The Catastrophe Revealed: On Radiation and Revolution,” which traces deep, interconnected fault lines between the ongoing aftermaths of the Fukushima disaster and the Covid pandemic, as well as the imperial and also liberatory history of activist movements in Tokyo, New York, and all places where people rise up against a disintegrating world. Leon Dische Becker and Cosmo Bjorkenheim discuss their essay “A Cursed Franchise: Reliving Colonial Nightmares Through Endless Sci-fi Remakes,” which, among other things, recommends against Hollywood directors mounting a fourth remake of H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, arguing that its curses and racist colonial critiques are better left in the past. e-flux journal is a monthly art publication featuring writings by some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today. Its Issue #131 (November 2022) features contributions by Mi You, Sabu Kohso, Matt Peterson, Martin Guinard, Leon Dische Becker, Cosmo Bjorkenheim, Nicola Perugini, Tommaso Fiscaletti, Su Wei, Pelin Tan, Olga Olina, Hallie Ayres, and Anton Vidokle. Read or download the issue here. Martin Guinard has been a curator at LUMA Arles since 2021. Before this, he worked on several interdisciplinary projects dealing with ecological mutation in close collaboration with Bruno Latour. He was a curator of the 2020 Taipei Biennial, titled “You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet,” as well as a guest-editor of the e-flux journal issue of the same name. Sabu Kohso is a political and social critic, translator, and a long-time activist in the global and anti-capitalist struggle. He has published several books on urban space and struggle in Japan, and has translated books by Kojin Karatani and David Graeber. His most recent book is Radiation and Revolution (Duke University Press, 2020). Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He codirected the film Spaces of Exception (2018), and coedited the books In the Name of the People (2018) and The Mohawk Warrior Society (forthcoming 2022). Leon Dische Becker is a writer, editor, and translator (Ger-to-Eng) from Berlin currently living between Los Angeles and New York City. He is trying to write more again. Cosmo Bjorkenheim is a filmmaker and writer who lives in New York City. His work has been screened at Anthology Film Archives, Maysles Documentary Center, and the Museum of the Moving Image. He is a contributing editor at Screen Slate.

Duration:01:02:58

Erika Balsom on Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image

12/1/2022
Lukas Brasiskis, associate curator of e-flux Video & Film, talks to Erika Balsom about the book and exhibition co-curated with Hila Peleg, Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image. The episode was recorded at e-flux Screening Room before “No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image,” a talk by Erika Balsom preceded by a screening of Han Ok-hee’s Untitled 77A (1977, 6 minutes) and Grupo Chaski’s Miss Universo en el Perú (1982, 32 minutes). Erika Balsom is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of four books, including After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (Columbia University Press, 2017) and TEN SKIES (Fireflies Press, 2021, shortlisted for the Kraszna Krausz prize). Her criticism appears regularly in venues such as Artforum, Cinema Scope, e-flux, and 4Columns. With Hila Peleg, she is the co-curator of the exhibition No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (HKW Berlin, 2022) and co-editor of the books Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (2022) and Documentary Across Disciplines (2016), both published by MIT Press. In 2018, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Katherine Singer Kovacs essay award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Duration:00:27:37

Jad and Tarek Atoui: Through Rust and Dusk

10/25/2022
Sanna Almajedi talks to Jad and Tarek Atoui about their experimental music duo, Through Rust and Dusk. The conversation is followed by an excerpt of their performance at e-flux on September 26, 2022 that incorporated improvisation, custom made instruments, field recordings, and electronic sounds. Read more about Tarek Atoui‘s The Whisperers (October 1–December 10, 2022) at Flag Art Foundation here. Jad Atoui is a Beirut-based sound artist and improviser. He composes and performs electronicand electro-acoustic music and has worked with musicians like John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Anderson, Chuck Bettis, and Anthony Sahyoun. During his formative years in New York, Atoui found interest in the New York avant-garde scene. He began working closely with NYC downtown musicians and learning improvised music techniques, while also working at the Stone and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2015, Atoui spearheaded the “Biosonics” project in collaboration with scientist Ivan Marazzi where they used bio-sonification of behaviors as compositional tools. The project was later published in John Zorn’s Arcana Book Vol. XVIII and premiered at National Sawdust as part of The Stone’s commissioning series. Atoui has given and co-directed workshops at Marfa Sounding, Ashkal Alwan, and Beirut Synth Center, and has been a resident at The Stone, The National Sawdust, Beirut Art Center, Arab Image Foundation, and Sharjah Art Foundation. Tarek Atoui is an artist and composer born in Beirut. His work stems from performance and looks into how sound can be perceived with sensory organs other than the ear, how sound acts as a catalyst for human interaction, and how it relates to social, historical, and spatial parameters. The point of departure for his works is usually extensive anthropological, ethnological, musicological, or technical research, which results in the realization of instruments, listening rooms, performances, or workshops. Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2009 and 2013); dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany (2012); the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014); Tate Modern, London (2016); CCA NTU, Singapore (2017); Garage Moscow (2018); the 58th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia (2019); the Okayama Art Summit 2019; the Sharjah Art Foundation (2020); The Fridericianum (2020); And Pinault Collection (2021). He was appointed co-artistic director of STEIM studios in 2007, and of the Bergen Assembly, a triennial for contemporary art in Norway in 2016. He is the recipient of the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize 2020. Tarek Atoui currently lives and works in Paris, France. e-flux music is curated by Sanna Almajedi.

Duration:00:33:19

Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams: Diego Garcia

8/17/2022
Ben Eastham talks with authors Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams about their novel, Diego Garcia (Fitzcarraldo Editions, Semiotext(e) / Native Agents). “Through the intricately woven histories and the corresponding fictions within fictions, the compassion expressed in Diego Garcia highlights the absence of it in those who, forsaking their obligations towards other human beings, exiled the Chagossians from their home. We see that until the Chagossian people are home, nobody is home.” –Vanessa Onwuemezi, author of Dark Neighbourhood About the book: August 2014. Two friends, writers Damaris Caleemootoo and Oliver Pablo Herzberg, arrive in Edinburgh from London, the city that killed Daniel—his brother, her frenemy and loved by them both. Every day is different but the same. Trying to get to the library, they get distracted by bickering—will it rain or not and what should they do about their tanking bitcoin?—in the end failing to write or resist the sadness which follows them as they drift around the city. On such a day they meet Diego, a poet. They learn that Diego's mother was from the Chagos Archipelago, that she and her community were forced to leave their ancestral islands by soldiers in 1973 to make way for a military base. They become obsessed with this notorious episode in British history and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people, and feel urged to write in solidarity. But how to share a story that is not theirs to tell? Natasha Soobramanien is based in Brussels. She is a writing tutor on the Lens-Based Media Masters Programme at Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam. Luke Williams is based in Cove, west Scotland. He teaches creative and critical writing at Birkbeck University of London. More information on the Chagos Refugees Group can be found at thechagosrefugeesgroup.com.

Duration:00:04:30

Miriam Hillawi Abraham & Nasra Abdullahi on “The Afro-Cosmologist's Treatise on the Astrolabe”

7/7/2022
Hallie Ayres talks to Miriam Hillawi Abraham and Nasra Abdullahi about their text, “The Afro-Cosmologist's Treatise on the Astrolabe,” published in the Cosmic Bulletin 2021. Miriam Hillawi Abraham is a multi-disciplinary designer from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. With a background in Architecture, she works with digital media and spatial design to interrogate themes of equitable futurism and intersectionality. She holds an MFA in Interaction Design from the California College of the Arts and a BArch in Architecture from the Glasgow School of Art. She is a CCA-Mellon researcher for the Digital Now multidisciplinary project, a 2020 fellow of Gray Area’s Zachary Watson Education Fund and a Graham Foundation 2020 grantee. Nasra Abdullahi is a designer, writer, and editor based in London. She is currently a junior writer at Wallpaper* magazine, the 2021 guest editor of The Avery Review and a member of the second cohort of New Architecture Writers. A student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, she is interested in ways we can seek equitable futures through material cultures away from projected architectural and urban desires. Seeking a multiplicity in spatial practice, she is interested in what modern architectural technology can look like when innovated and reappropriated through and in relation with various knowledge systems. Currently her work is centered around exploring the possibilities of using analytical tools from black and indigenous radical traditions to inform us about design and technological practice.

Duration:00:34:06

Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan: We Are “Nature” Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones

5/6/2022
Andreas Petrossiants discusses We Are “Nature” Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones (Pluto Press/Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, 2021) with authors Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan. An excerpt from the book was published in e-flux journal issue 124. “Since 2004, through the work of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, we have questioned how to radically transform and entangle art, activism, and everyday life amidst the horrors of the Capitalocene. A decade ago, we deserted our metropolitan London lives, rooting our art activism in a place that French politicians had declared “lost to the republic,” known by those who inhabited it as la ZAD (the “zone to defend”). On these four thousand acres of wetlands, turned into a messy but extraordinary canvas of commoning, an international airport project was defeated through disobedience and occupation. This is an extract from our latest book, where an art of life is populated by rebel farmers and salamanders, barricades and bakeries, riots and rituals.” —Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan Isabelle Fremeaux is an educator and action researcher. She was formerly Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College London. Jay Jordan is an art activist and author, cofounder of Reclaim the Streets and the Clandestine Insurgent Clown Army.

Duration:00:46:25

Shimrit Lee on Decolonize Museums

9/15/2021
Hallie Ayres talks with Shimrit Lee about her forthcoming book, Decolonize Museums. Shimrit Lee is a writer, educator, and curator based in Philadelphia. An interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of visual culture, performance, and critical security studies, Shimrit’s research interests relate to the cultural production of security narratives in Israel and the US. She holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from NYU, and currently teaches high school history as well as community-based adult education at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her book, Decolonize Museums, will be published as part of the series “Decolonize That” by Warscapes and O/R Books in 2021.

Duration:00:58:39

Wet Togetherness [9]—Lubricating: Tabita Rezaire and Aiwen Yin presented by Shanghai Biennale

6/28/2021
Bodies exceed humanity. They remind us that we are part of something vaster—and smaller—more complex, more connected than our mere existence as an atomized species. Our bodies, and bodies in general, are comprised of heterogeneity and multitudes. All bodies are wet collective bodies defined by how they link to other bodies, places, environments, technologies. Think of breathing, clogging, decomposing, discharging, flushing, lubricating, melting, menstruating, transfusing. Bodies exist as trans- and extra-territorial beings. They live in hybridity. This porous condition produces a planetary wet-togetherness, a “commoning” force that constitutes all bodies as collective hydro-subjects. Wet-Togetherness is a collaboration between e-flux and the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water, curated by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, and YOU Mi, and organized and promoted by the Power Station of Art. It consists of nine sound pieces in which 21 artists, activists, and researchers enact aqueousness through sound. The series has been edited by José Luis Espejo and Rubén Coll, with sound design by Tomoko Sauvage, coordination by Roberto González García, and locutions by Yang Yang. Episode 9: Lubricating. With two independent sound pieces by artists Tabita Rezaire and Yin Aiwen Smoothness drives contemporary technological regimes: frictionless experiences, immediate gratifications, a promise of a world of flows without disruption. We are enchanted by a slippery seamlessness, mediated by sleek surfaces. A visual order accommodating the idea that the world, and capital, run painlessly. An order enabling control over collective imaginations, bodies, and natural resources. One that oils the relentless infrastructural libido. Tabita Rezaire sends her blessings and wishes for a New Moon day. A new life cycle. An opportunity to create anew. A time for identity seeking and becoming a seeker of the depths of existence. The New Moon meddles to remind us that the possibilities for change are infinite. Aiwen Yin is member of the ReUnion Network collective, a group of people operating from different modes of engagement to both promote and speculate with non-familiar forms of kinship. In Yin’s words, support, mutual care, grief, healing, and affection are not exclusively allocated among blood-related beings, but instead become a fundamental feature of human associability and of social-making at large. Aligned with ReUnion Network’s engagement with the daily formation of social bonding, Aiwen Yin imagines her practice as providing a frame where non-normative forms of inclusivity can be nurtured.

Duration:00:26:21

Wet Togetherness [8]—Discharging: Cyan Cheng, Marco Ferrari and Elise Hunchuck presented by Shanghai Biennale

6/28/2021
Bodies exceed humanity. They remind us that we are part of something vaster—and smaller—more complex, more connected than our mere existence as an atomized species. Our bodies, and bodies in general, are comprised of heterogeneity and multitudes. All bodies are wet collective bodies defined by how they link to other bodies, places, environments, technologies. Think of breathing, clogging, decomposing, discharging, flushing, lubricating, melting, menstruating, transfusing. Bodies exist as trans- and extra-territorial beings. They live in hybridity. This porous condition produces a planetary wet-togetherness, a “commoning” force that constitutes all bodies as collective hydro-subjects. Wet-Togetherness is a collaboration between e-flux and the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water, curated by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, and YOU Mi, and organized and promoted by the Power Station of Art. It consists of nine sound pieces in which 21 artists, activists, and researchers enact aqueousness through sound. The series has been edited by José Luis Espejo and Rubén Coll, with sound design by Tomoko Sauvage, coordination by Roberto González García, and locutions by Yang Yang. Episode 8: Discharging. With a sound piece by researchers and designers Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Marco Ferrari, and Elise Hunchuck (in collaboration) Rainmaking is a long-lasting human dream. Triggering water precipitation in air to combat water scarcity, drought, and global warming has driven spiritual cultural practices, scientific studies, and territorial conflicts. It has materialized in countless ceremonies, rituals, and other technologically enabled practices. Human ambition to tame the environment drives the proliferation of contemporary cloud seeding programs, which speaks about the political, ecological, and social consequences of the extraction of what is common. Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Marco Ferrari, and Elise Hunchuck talk about Sky River, a project supported by the Chinese government to work on the watershed of the Huang He (Yellow River) through weather engineering and aimed at mitigating the territory’s increasing drought conditions. Articulating a new planetary and atmospheric imaginary, Sky River positions the water that circulates in the upper atmosphere not as a natural occurrence but as an asset that can be secured through infrastructure. Precipitation is, in this context, a readily available water source that could be managed through a distributed network of cloud-seeding devices, while the tracking of weather patterns can be done via sophisticated remote-sensing technologies.

Duration:00:22:23