Paul Pfeiffer, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Anthony Elms

Oct 3, 2025

Guest

Anthony Elms

Guest

Paul Pfeiffer

Guest

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, an artist and writer focused on photographic practice and memory, joins Paul Pfeiffer, known for his art that critiques mass media. Curator Anthony Elms facilitates their deep dive into perception and the constructed nature of viewing. They explore how material choices influence photographic experiences and discuss the ethical implications of authorship and representation. The conversation touches on themes of race, instability, and the role of interruptions in art, ultimately envisioning a world shaped by critical engagement and presence.

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INSIGHT

Exhibition As Psychic Space

Stanley treats the exhibition as a psychic space where legibility is intentionally complicated to force the viewer to 'carry the exhibition in your head.'
He stages variable scales so perception becomes an active, social scene rather than a passive, unified gaze.

ADVICE

Force The Viewer To Carry The Show

Design exhibitions so viewers must mentally carry relationships between works, not just read individual objects.
Use scale and placement to make perception reflexive and socially interactive.

ANECDOTE

Watching The Watcher

Stanley recounts watching a woman mirror his movement in Paul's long count piece and then discuss watching him watching.
The encounter crystallized how Paul's armatures individualize viewing and make spectators themselves part of the scene.

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A conversation with Paul Pfeiffer, Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Anthony Elms recorded in May 2025.

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa makes art, writes about it, and occasionally edits essay anthologies. His artist’s book, INDEX 2025, is out now from ROMA Publications, and his recent essay “ECHO—LOCATION,” on installations at Dia Art Foundation by Cameron Rowland and Steve McQueen, featured in the April issue of e-flux journal.

Recent exhibitions include Scene at Eastman, at George Eastman Museum (2025), Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2021), and But Still, It Turns at the International Center of Photography, New York (2021).

Read more essays in e-flux journal by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa here.

Paul Pfeiffer recasts the visual language of pop spectacle to investigate how media images shape our perception of the world and ourselves. Working in video, photography, sculpture, and sound, he is drawn to moments intended for mass audiences (live sports events, stadium concert tours, televised game shows, celebrity glamour shots), which he meticulously samples and re-edits to expose an uncanny emptiness underneath. From the hyperreality of photo retouching and digital erasure to the endless repetition of video loops, his mastery of postproduction allows him to magnify the surreal aspects of contemporary existence, where bodies become sites of saturated observation, and violence-as-entertainment flirts with nationalism, religion, and ancient myth. While he also experiments with the format and scale of his works, immersive audiovisual installations often cohabit with portable fetish objects in his exhibitions. Throughout his practice, Pfeiffer seeks to reflect and heighten the existential condition of the viewer as consumer by perversely blurring the boundary between voyeurism and contemplation.

The recent exhibition discussed in this episode, Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the MCA Chicago.

Read a review from e-flux Criticism of Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles by Juliana Halpert.

Anthony Elms organizes exhibitions and writes. He recently organized Rodney McMillian: Neighbors for the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Wa. opening in October 2025. An essay on artist Oliver Ressler, "Ellipsesverse," posts online this fall for Ressler's exhibition Scenes from the Invention of Democracy at the Museum Tinguely. His essay "Begin to begin to begin to begin to begin" is forthcoming in Ecstatic Aperture: Perspectives on the Life and Work of Terry Riley. from Auryfa / Shelter Press.