Time Sensitive

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

Dr. Jessica B. Harris is renowned as the grande dame of African American cookbooks. One of the world’s foremost historians, scholars, writers, and thinkers when it comes to food—and African American cooking in particular—she has, over the past 40 years, published 12 books documenting the foods and foodways of the African diaspora, including Hot Stuff (1985), Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons (1989), Sky Juice and Flying Fish (1991), The Welcome Table (1995), The Africa Cookbook (1998), and High on the Hog (2011)—the latter of which became a Netflix docuseries and, in turn, a New York Times bestseller. Through her cookbooks, her work, and her very being, Harris is a living testament to the polyvocal, far-reaching traditions and histories of African American food and culture.On the episode, Harris talks about her love of West African markets, her disregard for recipes despite being the author of numerous cookbooks, and the widely unrecognized yet critical differences between yams and sweet potatoes.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [00:49] Dr. Jessica B. Harris[05:28] Harris’s “French-Speaking Theater in Senegal” N.Y.U. Doctoral Dissertation[05:49] Carrie Sembène[07:45] Souvenirs du Sénégal by J. Gérard Bosio and Michel Renaudeau[10:17] R.A.W.[21:06] Hot Stuff (1985)[21:43] The Welcome Table (1995)[22:01] Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons (1989)[22:05] Sky Juice and Flying Fish (1991)[22:06] Tasting Brazil (1992)[23:12] The Africa Cookbook (1998)[23:15] Beyond Gumbo (2003)[23:28] Rum Drinks (2010)[23:56] Vintage Postcards From the African World (2020)[24:46] High on the Hog (2011)[25:46] High on the Hog Netflix Series[33:53] “African/American: Making the Nation’s Table” Exhibition[33:57] Ebony Test Kitchen[34:00] Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture[34:29] New York Botanical Garden[35:41] Stephen Satterfield[01:05:00] My Soul Looks Back (2018)[01:05:14] Maya Angelou[01:05:15] James Baldwin[01:05:16] Toni Morrison[01:05:17] Nina Simone[01:07:46] Yahdon Israel[01:09:29] Nancy Harmon Jenkins

The term “polymath” is unquestionably overused, and often just plain wrong, but it suits the multi-hyphenate British designer, creative director, and artist Samuel Ross, whose hard-to-pin-down practice spans high fashion, streetwear, painting, sculpture, installation, stage design, sound design, product and furniture design, experimental film, and street art. Best known for founding the Brutalism-tinged fashion label A-Cold-Wall, which sits at the nexus of streetwear and high fashion, and for his work, earlier in his career, with the late Virgil Abloh, Ross also runs the industrial design studio SR_A and has collaborated with brands including Nike, Converse, and Timberland. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, he talks about notions of ritual, essence, and alchemy; how his work straddles the line between the organic and the synthetic; and why he always thinks in threes.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: [03:59] “Samuel Ross: Coarse” at Friedman Brenda[06:41] Glenn Adamson[22:48] Hettie Judah’s Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones[27:45] Vitsoe 606 Shelving System[30:46] Virgil Abloh[37:02] “Samuel Ross: Land” at White Cube[42:05] Rhea Dillon[46:24] Sondra Perry’s Typhoon Coming On[46:43] Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake[46:46] Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments[50:30] Steve McQueen’s Small Axe[52:41] John Berger[58:19] 2wnt4[58:53] Pyrex Vision[58:55] Kanye West[58:56] Donda[01:04:09] A-Cold-Wall[01:05:46] Jerry Lorenzo[01:09:25] Black British Artist Grants[01:12:22] SR_A[01:12:50] “Fashion Design: Samuel Ross/A-Cold-Wall” at the V&A Museum[01:13:22] Grace Wales Bonner[01:13:54] Mac Collins[01:13:59] Nifemi Marcus-Bello[01:20:44] David Drake

To Jelani Cobb, reading, writing, and education are inherently acts of empowerment, and sometimes even ones of defiance. A staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015 and recently appointed the dean of Columbia Journalism School, where he has been on the faculty since 2016, Cobb has written on subjects ranging from the power of Dave Chappelle’s comedy, to the vital lessons of Martin Luther King Jr., to Donald Trump as a rapper. Cobb is also the author of the books The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress (2010) and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (2007). Given the precarious moment we’re in when it comes to truth and the future of not just journalism, but democracy itself, he is unquestionably one of the most essential writers, historians, and thinkers of our time. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, Cobb talks about timing and flow in hip-hop, why being a “first Black” leader in any high-profile profession is like “doing a high-wire act without a net,” and his belief that the future of journalism will include greater transparency around how a story gets made.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes: [03:39] DJ Kool Herc[03:49] “Hip-Hop at Fifty: An Elegy”[03:56] To the Break of Dawn[08:05] August Wilson[09:13] Skip James[27:10] Run-D.M.C.[27:16] LL Cool J[27:24] Q-Tip[27:25] Phife Dawg[27:27] Salt-N-Pepa[27:41] Kool G Rap[27:45] Pharoahe Monch[37:17] Queens Public Library[39:27] Adell Patton[41:18] Elizabeth Clark-Lewis[43:06] David Carr[43:23] Ta-Nehisi Coates[49:58] The Devil and Dave Chappelle: And Other Essays[53:21] “Trayvon Martin and the Parameters of Hope”[59:14] “Postscript: Rodney King, 1965-2012”[59:46] “Alvin Bragg, Donald Trump, and the Pursuit of Low-Level Crimes”[01:02:21] Between the World and Me[01:03:51] Columbia Journalism School

Over the past 50 or so years, Marilyn Minter has been on a roving exploration of feminist, sex-positive thinking. In her art-making, she harnesses the power of sexual imagery—a realm long controlled by men—and presents it through the lens of female desire. Among her most acclaimed works are her “Bathers” series, which reimagines classic female bathers; her “Bush” series, originally a Playboy commission; and a group of new portraits, currently on view at the New York gallery LGDR (through June 3), featuring impactful cultural figures she admires, such as Roxane Gay, Gloria Steinem, Lizzo, and Monica Lewinsky. On the episode, Minter talks about the unrealistic societal and body-image standards young women continue to face, the importance of embracing complexity and multiplicity in artwork, and the hope she has in the next generation to fight social injustice.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes: [00:49] Marilyn Minter[04:02] Bettie Page[06:10] Susie Bright[24:31]  “The Joys (and Challenges) of Sex After 70”[27:31] HBO’s The Deuce[33:37] Pamela Anderson for Parkett[40:33] LGDR[46:30] Minter’s “Coral Ridge Towers” Series[52:19] Linda Yablonsky[53:23] Diane Arbus[55:24] James Harithas[56:35] Sylvia Mangold[56:59] Kenneth Snelson[58:16] Christof Kohlhöfer[01:04:15] Neville Wakefield[01:07:32] Planned Parenthood[01:07:45] ADLAR AR App

As the co-host of NPR’s flagship news program All Things Considered, Ari Shapiro is a go-to source for tens of millions of Americans for essential deep-dives into some of the most critical stories unfolding across the globe. At NPR for more than two decades now, Shapiro has made it his mission to serve as an informational and emotional conduit—or even a translator of sorts—between the subject and the listener. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, he talks about his new memoir, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening; why he considers hosting All Things Considered like inheriting an heirloom; embracing one’s identity as a journalistic asset; and the parallels between reading fiction, cooking, and reporting the news.Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:[01:14] Ari Shapiro[03:48] “The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening”[04:09] Mary Louise Kelly[04:10] NPR’s All Things Considered[07:23] Susan Stamberg[08:51] Noah Adams[09:44] Audie Cornish[17:27] “A Second, Chance Interview With Subject of Controversial First Lady Remarks”[20:46] “Ari Shapiro On Covering the Pulse Shooting”[22:07] Billy Manes[24:50] “‘Dr. No’ Becomes Diplomat, Continues a Family Story”[24:54] Norm Eisen[27:29] “For Two Sarajevo Women, a Chance Friendship Forged in the Ashes of War”[31:40] “One Man's Moment With Martin Luther King Jr.”[38:48] Cascade AIDS Project[43:21] Nina Totenberg[52:59] Amitav Ghosh[53:02] “Journey To The Sundarbans: The ‘Beautiful Forest’ of Mangroves”[53:05] Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide”[54:30] “Meet Bonbibi: The Indian Forest Goddess Worshiped Across Religions”[54:32] “Experts Fear Climate Change Will Lead to More Tiger Attacks in the Sundarbans”[54:53] “Amitav Ghosh: ‘The World of Fact Is Outrunning the World of Fiction’”[55:00] Ghosh’s “Gun Island”[55:49] Pink Martini[55:53] Alan Cumming[57:50] Kim Hastreiter[59:23] Och and Oy[01:02:11] Ernesto Lecuona