Time Sensitive

The architect Brad Cloepfil views his work as less of a job and more of a calling. Sites speak to him. He listens with his eyes. When embarking on a project, Cloepfil slowly feels out the place, studying its particularities closely in order to understand its truest, deepest nature. He and his Portland, Oregon- and Brooklyn-based firm, Allied Works, craft buildings as much as they design them. His are finely tuned, well-wrought structures, elegantly proportioned, and unforgettable in their tactility, visual wonder, and reverence for their sites and surroundings.From the Portland, Oregon, headquarters of the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy (2000); to Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum (2011); to, more recently, the U.S. embassy in Mozambique (2021), Allied Works sculpts spaces of meaning and feeling that also serve pragmatic functions. Not surprisingly, the firm has become renowned for its designs of museums and arts institutions, including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2003).On this episode of Time Sensitive, Cloepfil talks with Spencer about his multisensorial approach to design and making; how reading, writing, and poetry have shaped his perspectives on the built world; and why all of his buildings are on some level about “amplifying and elevating the idea of service.”Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Brad Cloepfil[23:46] Allied Works[07:26] Wieden and Kennedy[45:29] Portland Institute for Contemporary Art[48:01] Maryhill Overlook[48:20] Sitings Project[51:40] Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis[53:30] Museum of Arts and Design[55:37] Duchess County Guest House[55:58] University of Michigan Museum of Art[58:38] Clyfford Still Museum[01:07:43] Eleven Madison Park[01:08:43] National Music Centre of Canada[01:11:41] National Veterans Memorial and Museum

To Annie-B Parson, choreography isn’t confined to the studio and the stage; rather, practically everything around us abounds with movement that’s worth paying attention to. In her new, aptly titled book, The Choreography of Everyday Life, an inventive, observant, and witty ode to her relationship with dance and movement over the course of her lifetime, she delves into exactly that belief. Across the past 30-plus years with Big Dance Theater, which she co-founded in 1991, her work has amounted to more than 20 choreographed and co-created works. As a whole, her inventive oeuvre extends in seemingly infinite directions: opera, pop music, television, movies, ballet, marching bands, symphonies. A frequent and close collaborator with the legendary David Byrne, Parson has choreographed two of his world tours, and most recently, his highly acclaimed Broadway hit American Utopia. The eclecticness of Parson’s body of work is rivaled only by that of her choreographic style, which finds inspiration in everything from traditional ballet, to Russian folk dances, to pedestrians on the sidewalk. A meticulous attentiveness and a whimsical ingenuity are the hallmarks of everything she does.On this episode, Parson speaks with Andrew about how the pandemic has altered our understanding of the ways our bodies relate to one another, why she considers TikTok a new kind of folk dance, and choreography as a means of controlling and testing time.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Annie-B Parson[05:19] The Choreography of Everyday Life[36:15] Big Dance Theater Company[29:27] Paul Lazar[09:30] Previous books[49:37] The Mood Room[55:15] American Utopia[55:20] Here Lies Love[55:51] Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

If there were a bard for our bewildering times, Saeed Jones would be a fitting choice. In his newly released collection of poems, Alive at the End of the World, Jones dances through grief, rage, and trauma—collective and personal—with acerbic clarity and sharp-edged wit. It is a book that gets to the heart of this confounding, erratic era, by turns reflecting on the tremendous amount of loss that has come with Covid-19; more broadly, the staggering, startling nature of living through a pandemic; the unignorable realities of climate disaster; the ongoing dangers of being Black and queer in the face of systemic racism, homophobia, and white supremacy; and, individually, the 2011 death of his mother and the past decade he has spent wallowing, mourning, mending, processing, and growing in the aftermath. Following his two previous books—the 2019 coming-of-age memoir How We Fight for Our Lives and the 2014 poetry collection Prelude to Bruise—Alive at the End of the World is only sort of a hyperbolic, if coy, title. “This human era we’re in is wild,” Jones says on this episode of Time Sensitive. “I am not here to tell people, ‘Oh, it has always been this calamitous.’ No! We are in an era of instability, destability. It’s bad, and I think we need to be real about that.” There’s a blunt, let’s-not-beat-around-the-bush quality to Jones’s work—he intentionally and directly addresses harsh, gut-punching realities that many of us would rather ignore. But he does so in ways that are alluring, and that draw readers in. Wading through the tough stuff, slowly, thoughtfully, and with good humor, Jones gets to higher truths and finds meaningful connection points. Also on this episode, Jones talks with Spencer about growing up Black and queer in the suburban city of Lewisville, Texas; how the murders of James Byrd, Jr., and Matthew Shepard haunted him throughout his teenage years and still do; and why, “in our culture right now, everything’s a proxy war, everything’s one-upmanship.”Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Saeed Jones[03:36] Alive at the End of the World[05:41] “Deleted Voice Message: Hey, Robyn—It’s Me, Whitney”[05:41] “A Spell to Banish Grief”[07:03] “Saeed, How Dare You Make Your Mother Into a Prelude”[14:18] “Okay, One More Story”[16:31] “The Dead Dozens”[25:05] “Diahann Carroll Takes a Bath at the Beverly Hills Hotel”[48:07] How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir[52:09] Prelude to Bruise[52:09] “Jasper, 1998”[01:13:55] “Self-Portrait of the Artist as Ungrateful Black Writer”

Peter Saville is a man of the moment—and has been, again and again, throughout the past five decades. Raised in Manchester, England, in the sixties—in tandem with the growing prominence of counterculture, the rise of anti-war sentiments, and the birth of pop—Saville developed early on a keen eye and ear for the zeitgeist, or what he terms “nowness.” In his adolescence, he took up a fervent interest in music and in record covers in particular, and went on to art school to study graphic design. In his final year, he was commissioned to design the very first posters for the punk music venue The Factory, which would soon morph into the legendary independent record label Factory Records. Across his prolific, nearly 50-year-long career in graphic design and art direction, Saville has created album covers for Joy Division and New Order (most iconically, the one for Joy Division’s debut studio album, Unknown Pleasures); branding for clients including Ferragamo, Burberry, and Aston Martin; and more recently, even Kvadrat fabric designs—each drawing inspiration from the spirit of their times—that can be called nothing short of era-defining. Woven across all of his work are provocative dialogues between past, present, and future.On this episode, Saville speaks with Andrew about coming of age in the punk and post-punk worlds, the increasing impossibility of tracking “nowness,” and creating literal signs of the times.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Peter Saville[12:11] Kvadrat Technicolour[01:10:48] Power, Corruption & Lies album cover[42:21] Factory Records[50:15] FAC1 poster[50:15] Haçienda[53:13] FAC 2[29:23] Unknown Pleasures album cover[01:22:13] Closer album cover[01:24:43] “Blue Monday” cover[01:35:44] The Apartment[01:39:29] Show Studio

Roxane Gay describes her wild trajectory as a multihyphenate writer-editor-publisher-professor-social commentator as “fairly bewildering.” And she’s not wrong: Over the past decade—and with long odds stacked up against her as a queer Black woman of size—Gay has had a meteoric rise in the media and publishing stratosphere, achieving rare heights. She has written a best-selling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017); a book of essays, Bad Feminist (2014); and two collections of short stories, Ayiti (2001) and Difficult Women (2017). She publishes a weekly newsletter called The Audacity and hosts The Roxane Gay Agenda podcast. Gay is also a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. This spring, she launched the Roxane Gay Books imprint with the publisher Grove Atlantic, and this fall, she begins her rarified position as the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her next book, the astutely titled How to Be Heard, comes out in the spring. Across all of her work, Gay addresses topics related to feminism, women’s rights, rape culture, sexual violence, weight and body image, trauma, race, and friendship. Gay, it is safe to say, is one of the most essential writers of our time, someone hyperattuned to the moment we’re in and who fights like hell for the issues and causes she deeply believes in. Now in a well-earned position of power, she uses the influence she has to elevate the voices of other writers she feels are being or have been overlooked.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Gay talks with Spencer about her nomadic childhood across America as the daughter of Roman Catholic Haitian immigrant parents, her fluid and flexible approach to time, and her open-armed joy of cooking.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Roxane Gay[04:16] Bad Feminist[04:16] Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body[13:01] Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies[13:12] Roxane Gay Books[13:16] The Audacity Newsletter[13:18] Roxane Gay Agenda Podcast[13:22] Roxane Gay MasterClass[45:31] Ayiti[45:31] An Untamed State[45:31] Difficult Women[48:20] T Magazine “Cooking Class” videos

For the past five decades, the British-born, New York–based artist Jamie Nares has been capturing the passage of time, the physics of motion, and the essence of self through a wide variety of mediums, including film, painting, music, photography, and performance. Many of Nares’s films, such as Pendulum (1976) and Street (2011), play with rhythm and speed as they distill the streets of New York City and the movements of its inhabitants. Nares’s vast body of work shares a common theme: the recording of a specific moment in time that gives the viewer an intimate look into a human experience. Her famous brushstroke paintings are both powerful and delicate, capturing the mere seconds of a single, continuous bodily motion using a repeated swooping gesture. One of her recent projects, “Monuments,” pays homage to the workmen who, centuries ago, chiseled marks in the huge granite blocks of downtown Manhattan. As life speeds up following the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, Nares’s work serves as a beautiful reminder to slow down, and to more deeply explore the many movements around us.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Nares talks with Andrew about her decades of work exploring time, rhythm, and movement; her journey transitioning to womanhood at age 65; and why her daughters and the next generation give her hope for the future.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptJamie NaresKasmin Gallery[03:32] Street[15:43] Pendulum[25:26] Red-Handed[27:29] A New Vein[31:10] James Chance and the Contortions[38:18] Ramp[38:36] No Wave Cinema[39:21] Monuments[50:02] “Nares: Moves”

Xiye Bastida was quite literally born into environmentalism. Throughout her upbringing in San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, and later in New York City, Bastida’s Indigenous community leader father, of the Otomi-Toltec people, and Chilean ethno-ecologist mother taught her the importance of ancestral wisdom, respecting nature, and protecting the planet. A lead organizer of the Fridays for Future youth climate strike movement, Bastida is also the co-founder of the Re-Earth Initiative, whose aim is to make the climate movement more inclusive and accessible. She has quickly become one of the world’s most visible and vocal youth leader’s in the climate conversation: Last year, she spoke at the U.N. Leadership Summit on Climate, hosted by the Biden administration, and gave the closing speech at the World Leaders Summit at COP26. She was recently on the cover of Vogue México, and in May, she attended the Met Gala upon the invitation of fashion designer Gabriela Hearst. All this while attending the University of Pennsylvania, where she’s an undergraduate majoring in environmental studies with a concentration in policy.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Bastida speaks with Spencer about effective strategies for climate activism, the deep meaning and value of Indigenous wisdom and ancestral knowledge, and what’s next for the climate movement.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptXiye Bastida[10:48] “Okay, doomers”[16:38] Otomi-Toltec people[21:53] COP26 World Leader Summit speech[52:54] Re-Earth Initiative[53:13] U.N. Leaders on Summit Climate speech[53:28] Gabriela Hearst[59:41] Levi’s Partnership[59:47] Nike campaign

Fashion designer Rachel Comey has always done things in a tightly focused way—and on her own terms. For more than two decades, she has followed an independent, wholly original approach to clothing design and retail that has resulted in her eponymous brand’s staying power. From novelty underwear with pockets, to a hand-painted shirt that musician David Bowie once wore on the Late Show with David Letterman, to her trademark high-waisted, wide-legged Legion pants, Comey’s designs stand out for their artful craft, distinctive aesthetic, and no-fuss sensibility. Beautiful as they are, they’re also, in a sense, utilitarian: Comey spends her time imagining her wearers’ needs as they go about their days and designs around that. There is something about the entire Rachel Comey universe that comes across as effortlessly cool.On this episode, Comey talks with Andrew about her 20-plus years in the fashion industry experimenting while staying true to herself, childhood memories that have helped shape her enduring designs, and her attention toward creating joy through clothing.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptRachel Comey[34:29] Fashion Week[47:39] Pioneer Works[49:14] High Maintenance[52:08] Legion Pant

For Céline Semaan, the founder of Slow Factory, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing climate justice and social equity, no obstacle is too big—or too conceptual—to surmount. Underlying all of Slow Factory’s efforts is the notion of “fashion activism,” a term that’s been credited to Semaan herself. The organization’s past projects include “Landfills as Museums,” which served as a meditation on what “trash” really is, and among its upcoming efforts is “Garment-to-Garment,” an initiative that will teach designers to make clothes from existing apparel instead of from rolls of raw fabric. Semaan is also currently developing the new Slow Factory Institute in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which will serve the dual roles of a factory for waste-led production as well as a Bauhaus-style school for climate justice.On this episode, Semaan speaks with Spencer about fashion as a political act, the importance of finding ease with contradiction, and what a post-trash world could look like.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Full transcriptcelinecelines.comslowfactory.earth[03:54] “Slow is Beautiful”[06:16] Open Education[10:58] “Cities at Night”[30:16] “Applied Utopia”[34:05] Slow Factory Institute[35:01] Colin Vernon[36:33] Slowhide[41:13] “Landfills as Museums”[51:25] “Garment-to-Garment”[01:08:41] A Woman Is a School[01:24:45] “The Revolution is a School”

For writer, comedian, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston, host of the How to Citizen podcast, humility is a tool to connect with people—and to bring them together around some collective sense of truth. Through his work, Thurston serves as an ambassador to his audiences, always considering what they’re going through and the questions they might ask. A Harvard graduate, he has advised the Obama White House and worked as a producer on The Daily Show, and is author of the best-selling memoir How To Be Black. A dogged dedication to transparency shines through all that Thurston does. Across his projects, he takes on nuanced discussions about race, technology, and democracy—and in the hopes of galvanizing his readers, listeners, and viewers, uses compassion and humor to make these subjects more approachable. Whether writing about Will Smith’s Oscars slap or the metaverse for the media company Puck (of which he is a founding partner) or hosting the new PBS travel series America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston, he navigates everything with great self-awareness, curiosity, and an open mind. On this episode, Thurston speaks with Andrew about storytelling as a collaborative process, the value of open-source technology, and the word “citizen” as a verb.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptbaratunde.com[04:16] Sidwell Friends School[13:49] We’re Having A Moment podcast[14:59] Live on Lockdown[21:56] “How To Do a Data Detox In a Zillion Easy Steps”[25:06] Thurston’s TED Talk, “How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time”[39:01] How to Citizen podcast[01:22:27] How to Be Black[01:24:26] “The Human Shield Against Technology”[01:25:17] Thurston’s TEDx Talk, “Hacking Comedy”[01:32:53] America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston