Time Sensitive

To the landscape architect Walter Hood, “place” is a nebulous concept made meaningful only through the illumination of its history and the people who have inhabited it. Hood has dedicated his career to this very perspective through his roles as creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California, and as chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley, where he has taught since 1990. His projects include a series of conceptual gardens at the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina; the grounds of the campus of the tech company Nvidia in Santa Clara, California; and the landscape of San Francisco’s de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Currently, he’s at work on the wayfinding for the Barack Obama Presidential Library in Chicago; a new park in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina; and twin memorials for Emory University’s campuses in Oxford and Atlanta, Georgia.On this episode, Hood discusses the intersection of social justice and landscape architecture, his arguments against what we traditionally deem “memorials” or “monuments,” and the power of language to literally shape the world around us.Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [03:34] Black Landscapes Matter[03:39] The World They Made Together[08:18] American Academy in Rome[08:27] Carthage[08:55] Loma Prieta Earthquake[13:48] Monticello[13:50] National Memorial for Peace and Justice[13:53] Gadsden’s Wharf[14:28] Lorraine Motel[16:07] Montgomery County Justice Center[18:40] Double Sights[24:37] Macon Yards[25:32] The Power of Place[28:59] Confederate Obelisk[29:55] Splash Pad Park[30:16] Lafayette Square Park[38:21] International African American Museum[38:25] “Native(s)”[39:54] Water Table[40:51] McColl Park[42:28] Twin Memorials[47:11] Octagon House[48:43] de Young Museum[51:13] The Broad[54:14] The Future of Nostalgia[54:53] Blues & Jazz Landscape Improvisations[58:01] Solar Strand[01:06:02] Art Institute of Chicago

Min Jin Lee could be considered an exemplar of the old adage “slow and steady wins the race.” The author’s bestselling 2017 novel Pachinko—a National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller that was adapted into a television series for Apple TV+ in 2022—took 30 years to write from its inception as a short story. Her debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires (2007), took five years. These extensive periods of time become understandable, or even seem scant, within the sprawling, multigenerational contexts of her novels—Pachinko spans almost a century—into which she pours deep anthropological, sociological, and journalistic research. Lee is also the editor of the just-published The Best American Short Stories 2023 (Mariner Books) anthology, and she’s currently at work on American Hagwon, the third novel in her diasporic trilogy.On this episode, she talks about the complex role of time in Pachinko, her miraculous recovery from chronic liver disease, and why she likens short-story writing to polishing diamonds.Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [00:25] Min Jin Lee[03:39] Viet Thanh Nguyen[06:08] Free Food for Millionaires[06:10] Pachinko[06:19] The Best American Short Stories 2023[08:08] Amy Tan[08:09] Salman Rushdie[09:36] “Bread and Butter”[09:37] “Motherland”[09:38] “The Best Girls”[10:04] William Trevor[10:06] Alice Munro[12:45] Yale University[17:23] Harvard Business School[17:34] Fashion Institute of Technology[47:37] Queens Public Library in Elmhurst[49:21] The Bronx High School of Science[49:32] The Hotchkiss School[49:33] Phillips Exeter Academy[58:46] American Hagwon[01:03:33] Stoner by John Williams

In art and design circles, the name George Nakashima is synonymous with expert woodworking, exquisite furniture, and high-quality craftsmanship. Over the past 30-plus years, his daughter, the architect and furniture maker Mira Nakashima, has not only artfully built upon his techniques and time-honored traditions, further cementing his legacy, but also stepped outside of his shadow and carved a name for herself. Having worked full-time at George Nakashima Woodworkers since 1970, Mira took over as its president and creative director upon her father’s death in 1990. Since then, she has carried on his unfinished projects, continued producing dozens of his designs, and also developed many of her own creations, including her Keisho and Shoki furniture lines. Through it all, Mira has remained as humble as ever and maintained a deep reverence for her father, his boundless creativity, and his exacting vision.On this episode, Nakashima talks about her family’s time spent in a Japanese internment camp during World War II; the enduring “karma yoga” influence of the Indian philosopher and spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo, whom her father once studied under and worked for as an architect; and why her father considered his work “an antidote to the modern world.”Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [01:15] George Nakashima Woodworkers[03:39] Nakashima Foundation for Peace[03:43] George Nakashima[03:52] Altar for Peace at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine[04:08] Altar for Peace at the Russian Academy of Arts[04:14] Altar for Peace in Auroville, India[08:42] Hague Appeal for Peace[13:52] Sri Aurobindo[15:36] Bnai Keshet[15:45] St. Martin of Tours[15:50] Monastery of Christ in the Desert[15:58] Queen of Peace Chapel[17:14] Ivan Wyschnegradsky[17:22] Antonin Raymond[17:36] Golconde[21:00] George Nakashima Woodworker[23:07] Katsura Imperial Villa[23:26] Junzō Yoshimura[30:11] Udar Pinto[31:27] The Soul of a Tree[42:07] Nature Form & Spirit: The Life and Legacy of George Nakashima[45:22] The Krosnicks’ furniture collection[49:54] Keisho collection[54:14] Shoki collection

Ian Schrager, a hospitality titan and Studio 54 co-founder, shares insights from his illustrious career. He discusses his design philosophies, emphasizing authenticity and the soul of a space. Schrager draws inspiration from visionaries like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, reflecting on how their innovative thinking shapes his approach. He also explores the evolving concept of luxury, defining it through the freedom to pursue passions rather than material wealth. The conversation highlights the lasting cultural impact of Studio 54 and the art of creating memorable experiences.

To Sanford Biggers, the past, present, and future are intertwined and all part of one big, long now. Over the past three decades, the Harlem-based artist has woven various threads of place and time—in ways not dissimilar to a hip-hop D.J. or a quilter—to create clever, deeply metaphorical, darkly humorous, and often beautiful work across a vast array of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, photography, music, and performance. Among his standout works are “Oracle” (2021), a 25-foot-tall cast bronze sculpture that combines a Greco-Roman form with an African mask; his “BAM” series (2015) of gunshot statuettes; and his ongoing “Codex” series of quilts, which have, over his past decade of making them, become an especially potent and ritualistic part of his art-making.On this episode, Biggers talks about the influence that musicians such as Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder have had on his art; why he thinks of himself as a “material polyglot”; and why religious and spiritual works like reliquaries, shrines, and “power objects” are the bedrock of his practice.Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:[00:26] Sanford Biggers[03:55] “Sanford Biggers with Yasi Alipour”[07:14] “The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers”[12:34] Moon Medicin[13:36] Mahalia Jackson[13:39] Ray Charles[13:40] Charles Mingus[13:41] Thelonious Monk[15:32] Stevie Wonder[16:06] Prince[18:00] Dick Gregory[18:01] Richard Pryor[18:02] Redd Foxx[18:47] “BAM” series[27:17] “re:mancipation”[29:05] Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture[30:08] John Biggers[31:41] “Codeswitch” at the California African American Museum[33:28] Dr. Leslie King-Hammond[33:30] Maryland Institute College of Art[37:47] University High School[38:23] Morehouse College[38:33] Art Institute of Chicago[47:34] Isamu Noguchi[47:36] Martin Puryear[49:06] “Lotus”[50:31] “Orin”[55:52] “Meet Me on the Equinox”[55:52] “Back to the Stars”

London-based artist, Edmund de Waal, discusses his infatuation with Japan, his affinity for Isamu Noguchi, and the roles of rhythm and breath in his work. He explores the power of language and time in a poem by Paul Celan, his collaborative exhibition with Sally Mann, his childhood memories of cathedrals, and the mentorship of potter Jeffrey Whiting. The concept of letting go is also explored through personal experiences and grief.

The artist and photographer Trent Davis Bailey (our host, Spencer Bailey’s, identical twin brother) continually seeks to unearth the tangled roots of his identity through his intensely personal and place-based work. This summer, his first-ever solo museum exhibition, “Personal Geographies” (on view through February 11, 2024)—a photographic exploration of memory, family, and place—opened at the Denver Art Museum, and this fall, he will release the corresponding project, “The North Fork,” in book form. Bailey is also currently at work on “Son Pictures,” an ongoing series of photographs piecing together fragments of his family’s past and present, some of which were recently published alongside a New York Times op-ed titled “What a Motherless Son Knows About Fatherhood.” Leading him to take deep-dives into newspaper and family photo archives, and from Colorado to Iowa to the Adirondacks, “Son Pictures” unpacks the loss of his mother, who died in a plane crash in 1989 when he was 3; his family’s attendant trauma and grief; and his present life, at 38, as a husband and parent of two toddlers.On this episode—his and Spencer’s first formal “twinterview,” recorded last month on their 38th birthday—Bailey talks about what it was like to grow up as an identical twin, his unusual and decidedly dysfunctional upbringing, and photography as a device for commemoration.Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [00:28] Trent Davis Bailey[09:58] “The North Fork” [10:02] “Personal Geographies” at the Denver Art Museum[10:12] “What a Motherless Son Knows About Fatherhood” [10:18] “Son Pictures”[11:54] Paonia, Colorado[20:10] California College of the Arts[20:22] Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Snider Prize[20:28] Robert Koch Gallery[22:34] The Sublime[23:52] The Hotchkiss Crawford Historical Museum/Society[26:42] Robert Frank[26:53] Stephen Shore[26:55] Joel Sternfeld[28:27] “A Kingdom From Dust”[28:32] The California Sunday Magazine[36:40] Rebecca Solnit[45:43] United Airlines Flight 232[45:46] Spencer Bailey Reflects on the Crash-Landing of United Airlines Flight 232[45:56] Sioux City, Iowa[46:02] Frances Lockwood Bailey[56:42] International Center of Photography[56:57] Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb[59:55] Robert Frank “The Americans” Exhibition at the Met[01:08:10] Lake Placid, New York[01:14:24] Brooklyn Darkroom

For each and every performance the theater director, playwright, choreographer, and sound and lighting designer Robert Wilson creates, time isn’t just of the essence—it is the essence. Perhaps best known as the director of the four-act opera Einstein on the Beach, which he composed with Philip Glass and debuted in 1976, Wilson now has nearly 200 stage productions to his name. These include Dorian, which premiered last year in Düsseldorf, and The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, which opened at the Manchester International Festival in 2011. What stands out about Wilson’s work, among many things, is its rare ability to disorient viewers while also enchanting them. Duration is often another part of the equation: Some of the performances on Wilson’s résumé have ranged from seven hours to an astonishing seven days. Many critics, writers, and scholars have agreed that Wilson has completely reshaped the landscape of theater, vastly expanding its vocabularies and horizons.On this episode, Wilson talks about his personal philosophies around silence and sound, the intersections of architecture and theater, and his enduring vision for the Watermill Center.Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:[04:31] The King of Spain[04:32] The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud[04:34] Deafman Glance[04:59] John Cage[09:02] Madama Butterfly[13:51] “Time to Think”[14:34] Marina Abramović[16:37] The Ring[16:39] King Lear[16:41] Einstein on the Beach[16:43] Philip Glass[18:14] Parsifal[18:50] The Watermill Center[28:55] Dorian[32:09] Time Rocker[32:15] Lou Reed[34:27] Ka Mountain and Guardenia Terrace[39:28] Festival of Autumn in Paris[40:38] The Golden Windows[41:04] Pratt Institute[43:45] Medea[44:48] Edison[44:58] Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights[45:00] Relative Calm[46:32] H-100 Seconds to Midnight[52:27] The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin[52:40] A Letter for Queen Victoria

Through his abstract paintings, the Miami-born, Brooklyn-based artist José Parlá explores themes ranging from memory, gesture, and layering, to movement, dance, and hip-hop culture, to codes, mapping, and mark-making. Coming up in Miami in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Parlá spent his adolescence and young adult years steeped in hip-hop culture and an underground scene that involved break dancing, writing rhymes, and making aerosol art. The art form still manifests, in wholly original ways, in his abstract works, which, while decidedly of the 21st century, extend in meaning and method back to ancient wall writings and cave drawings.On the episode, Parlá talks about his recent near-death experience with Covid-19; his activism with the collective Wide Awakes; and how his large-scale murals at locations including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barclays Center, and One World Trade Center trace back to his early days of painting elaborate wall works with aerosol.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [07:37] Rey Parlá[11:45] Ciclos: Blooms of Mold[12:19] Augustin Parlá[13:13] Curtiss School of Aviation[14:05] José Martí[16:20] “Phosphene” series[18:27] “Polarities” series[18:32] “Breathing” series[23:25] Wide Awakes[23:26] For Freedoms[23:29] Hank Willis Thomas[23:31] J.R.[23:35] Wildcat Ebony Brown[24:28] “The Awakening”[32:04] “It’s Yours”[34:17] Snøhetta[34:45] Ghetto Gastro[36:50] Craig Dykers[36:55] José Parlá’s Studio[38:20] James B. Hunt Jr. Library[38:22] “Nature of Language”[38:47] Far Rockaway Writer’s Library[56:56] “Brothers Back to Back”[59:51] “Parlá Frères”[01:00:03] Hurricane Andrew[01:00:12] Savannah College of Art and Design[01:01:32] New World School of the Arts[01:01:51] Mel Alexenberg[01:02:29] “Combine” by Robert Rauschenberg[01:06:29] “Gesture Performing Dance, Dance Performing Gesture” at BAM[01:06:30] Barclays Center mural[01:06:32] “One: Union of the Senses” at One World Trade Center[01:06:33] “Amistad América” at the University of Texas at Austin[01:12:08] Gordon Parks fellowship

The renegade British designer Tom Dixon has long had a roving obsession with raw materials—everything from cast iron, steel, and copper; to clay, glass, and stone; to felt, plastic, and marble; to, more recently, cork and aluminum. Entirely self-trained and without any formal design education, Dixon emerged in the design sphere in the 1980s by creating unusual welded salvage furniture that was at once antique, experimental, beautiful, and punk in spirit. Never short of bold, forward-looking ideas, Dixon works from a materials-first perspective. Over the years, he has created an industrial chair with upholstery inspired by the rubber inner tubing of car tires, furniture made of flame-cut steel, and even conceptual pieces grown underwater and built of Biorock. Central to all that he does is a quest for longevity and, in turn, sustainability; he has even, in the past, toyed with the idea of a thousand-year guarantee.On the episode, Dixon talks about how two motorbike accidents transformed his life, his days in the early 1980s as a bass player in the disco-funk band Funkapolitan, why he considers cork a “wonder material,” and the parallels he sees between his design creations and those of a baker.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [00:56] Tom Dixon[07:02] Flame-Cut Furniture[11:27] Design Miami[12:06] Craig Robins[13:50] Wolf Hilbertz[31:14] S-Chair[34:41] Giulio Cappellini[35:12] Marc Newson[35:15] Jasper Morrison[38:56] Isamu Noguchi[38:56] Akari Light Sculptures[39:57] Constantin Brâncuși[40:33] Dixonary[46:34] Funkapolitan[49:16] Funkapolitan’s “If Only”[49:17] Funkapolitan’s “In the Crime of Life”[50:17] August Darnell[53:56] Guy Pratt[53:58] Rockonteurs with Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt[54:50] Creative Salvage[01:01:06] IKEA[01:03:37] Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec[01:03:50] Enzo Mari[01:03:51] Achille Castiglioni[01:03:52] Verner Panton