This new series of Serpentine Podcast explores the complexities of closeness. Released weekly from 22 August 2023, Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies asks how we can expand and evolve our intimacy with others, ourselves and the world around us.
Join our host, Gaylene Gould, as she gathers perspectives from artists, designers, writers, thinkers, and more on how we can rekindle trust, and open ourselves up to new possibilities for connection.
Confronting the slippery topics of fear, vulnerability, sex, love, and loneliness in art and life, the Intimacies series delves into the feelings and experiences which we don’t always voice – from our relationships with family or strangers, to the things we fear most and our deepest desires, to our surroundings and our innermost selves. Each episode combines interviews, original audio works, conversations, and pieces from the Serpentine archive. This series itself is personal, emotional, reflective, and an exploration of vulnerability in many ways.
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You can find out more at www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/serpentine-podcast/ and on socials @serpentineuk
[curious, warm, ambient tones]
Ident: Serpentine Podcast: Intimacies (echoes).
Gaylene Gould: What does intimacy mean to you?
[slow, thoughtful ambient music continues under voices]
Tiona Nekkia McClodden: I think of intimacy generally as the things that I know about myself that other people don't know.
Adrian Piper [voice actor with effects]: A meeting of minds.
Tomás Saraceno: Sometimes it's so precious that you're afraid to share it and you want to keep it as your last resource because you're afraid to be too vulnerable. It's important to share that, let's not be afraid.
Gaylene Gould: How can we expand and evolve our intimacy with ourselves, others, and the world around us?
[birdsong alongside music]
Olivia Laing: Intimacy requires risking something of your own ugliness, your own sort of less flattering angles. You can't get intimate when you are trying to present an armour.
Gaylene Gould: I’m Gaylene Gould, an artist, and explorer of ideas. I host Serpentine Podcast, and in our new series we are exploring the complexities of closeness. Last series, we were reimagining the world, and it's now time to look within ourselves, and our relationships with those around us. Getting up close, personal and raw.
Scottee: If I spot something in somebody that I feel is close to me, I feel like I understand you, or we might understand each other. I think you start to find parallels between people that maybe are slightly abstract from your own, but you can see a gauze through the world in a similar way.
Gaylene Gould: I feel my sense of intimacy has been disrupted in recent times. So, I want to challenge myself to connect with more courage and ask braver questions. That’s what this series represents. We’ll be interrogating intimacy in unexpected ways. From our relationships with family or strangers, the things we fear most and our deepest desires, to the way our surroundings influence our intimacy, and of course, intimacy with our innermost selves.
Hetain Patel: It was kind of a mind-blowing experience, you know? It was very emotional, probably for all of us, for me and my family. I don't think it's an understatement to say it changed our relationship and things changed from there.
[sounds of a surrounding park]
Lina Ghotmeh: There's this moment of peacefulness, actually, where you're really in a timeless kind of bubble or environment. And there's a lot of wonder and, and intimacy, actually, because you feel how belonging we are to nature, to Earth, in a way…
[running water]
Pixy Liao: We are creating a world just for the two of us. A place we can always go back to that is safe and warm. A cult with only two members…
[music returns to curious, ambient tones]
Gaylene Gould: Each episode we’ll be untangling webs of intimacies through interviews with artists, writers and thinkers. We’ll be featuring new sound work, as well as diving into Serpentine’s huge archive of past programmes.
You can find Serpentine Podcast, Intimacies, on any podcast platform weekly, starting on Tuesday 22nd of August.
Subscribe to Serpentine Podcast now to be the first to hear new episodes.
CREDITS
Hosted by Gaylene Gould
Produced by Katie Callin (Reduced Listening)
Production support by Nada Smiljanic (Reduced Listening)
Executive production by Anishka Sharma (Reduced Listening)
Curated by Hanna Girma and Fiona Glen
Mix engineering by Jesse Lawson (Reduced Listening)
Theme music by Hinako Omori
Visual identity by the unloved