e-flux podcast

Recorded at e-flux before the launch of Dorit Chrysler’s album, Calder Plays Theremin, on February 23, 2023. The conversation with Sanna Almajedi is followed by an excerpt from Dorit’s live performance. The album Calder Plays Theremin is a co-release by the NY Theremin Society and Fridman Gallery, and can be ordered on Bandcamp. The album is based on a sound piece commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with the exhibition Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start. For the piece, Chrysler identified two of Alexander Calder’s sculptures, Snow Flurry, I (1948) and Man-Eater with Pennants (1945), to interact and “play” multiple theremins on site.  Dorit Chrysler is a Berlin-based composer and sound artist, and co-founder of the NY Theremin Society. Her work explores new applications of the theremin in various forms. Chrysler was awarded the Austrian State Stipend in Composition 2023 and earned her Master's Degree of Musicology in Vienna. She has performed worldwide, and written for film and the theater. Chrysler’s compositions have been collected by the Guggenheim and Moderna Museet, and presented at MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and Klang Fest. Chrysler has collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony, CERN, Laurie Spiegel, Herb Deutsch, Elliot Sharp, Trentemøller, Alva Noto, and Gaite Lyrique. She produced a ten-piece orchestra performance for the LA Disney Hall, and is the founder of Dame Electric, a festival featuring female pioneers of electronic music. Her recordings appear on over twenty releases by labels such as InMyRoomRecords (DE), The Prurience Factory (US), Monika Enterprise (DE), PlagDichNicht (AU), PlasticTray Records (US), and Mute.

A conversation with artists Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds, and Keith Christensen on the occasion of their exhibition and book project, In Union, on view at Open Source Gallery in New York. In Union highlights the native role in a union strike, union families, and environmental protests. The conversation is hosted by Matt Peterson. Read more about the project here. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds has worked as an artist, activist, and teacher. Heap of Birds's artwork confronts unacknowledged histories of state and settler violence against Native communities in the United States. His piece “Our Red Nations Were Always Green” was published by e-flux Architecture in May 2021. Keith Christensen is an artist and designer. His work includes a focus on social justice issues. He created Game Turn, Learning from the Minneapolis Truckers’ Strike of 1934, a book and board game installation. He recently authored the book See & Say Time on his paintings.  Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He co-directed the film Spaces of Exception (2018), and co edited the book The Mohawk Warrior Society (2022).

Sanna Almajedi speaks to Maria Chávez on the occasion of Topography of Sound (2007–now) at e-flux. The conversation is followed by an excerpt from the performance, Maria’s first public live show since a medically induced sabbatical.  Maria Chávez is an abstract turntablist, conceptual sound artist, and DJ based in New York and born in Lima, Peru. Coincidence, chance, and failures are themes that are at the heart of her practice, which expands from the world of sound to sculpture and other disciplines. Chávez is one of the only people, if not the only person, in the world that uses the double-headed RAKE turntable needles in her live performances. She uses broken needles that bounce and scratch in their attempt to play a groove. Sometimes she breaks the record itself and stacks broken shards of vinyl on the turntable. Through these experimentations, Chávez utilizes destruction as a method to discover new sonic worlds. Chávez’s influences stem from improvised contemporary music; she is an avid practitioner of deep listening and was mentored by the composer Pauline Oliveros. Chávez describes her turntablism technique as taking the detritus of vinyl and repurposing it into sonic sculptures that can be compared to improvised musique concrète pieces. Her latest body of work, a series of white Carrara marble sculptures, handmade in her studio in Carrara, Italy, has revealed a parallel with her vinyl practice.  Chávez is on the cover of Thom Holmes’s book Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture (Routledge, 2020). She was a David Tudor and Robert Rauschenberg arts fellow and research fellow for Goldsmith's Sound Practice Research Department. Her large-scale sound and multi-media installations along with other works have been shown at the Getty Museum, the Judd Foundation, Documenta 14, and HeK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste Basel) among others. She is also part of Don’t Blame it on Zen: The Way of John Cage & Friends, currently on view at MoCA Jacksonville. Chávez is the author of Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable (2012), which is the first book about abstract turntablism. This book has developed a reputation as both an academic resource and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists. She has contributed to many other publications including e-flux Architecture with “Too Much Reality”—a text about neuroplasticity and its place in the arts. In 2023, Chávez will be an artist-in-residence at the Counterflows Festival in Glasgow, Scotland and at the Rewire Festival in the Hague, the Netherlands. 

This episode was recorded live during the launch of e-flux journal issue #131 on December 7, 2022. The evening was introduced and moderated by the journal editors, and featured authors Martin Guinard, Sabu Kohso, Matt Peterson, Leon Dische Becker, and Cosmo Bjorkenheim. Martin Guinard expands on his “Homage to Bruno Latour” with a message on diplomacy between different worlds that are no longer commoning together. In connection to Dische Becker and Bjorkenheim's later conversation, Guinard also touches on Latour's (non-)relationship to science fiction.  Sabu Kohso and Matt Peterson discuss their conversation “The Catastrophe Revealed: On Radiation and Revolution,” which traces deep, interconnected fault lines between the ongoing aftermaths of the Fukushima disaster and the Covid pandemic, as well as the imperial and also liberatory history of activist movements in Tokyo, New York, and all places where people rise up against a disintegrating world.  Leon Dische Becker and Cosmo Bjorkenheim discuss their essay “A Cursed Franchise: Reliving Colonial Nightmares Through Endless Sci-fi Remakes,” which, among other things, recommends against Hollywood directors mounting a fourth remake of H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, arguing that its curses and racist colonial critiques are better left in the past. e-flux journal is a monthly art publication featuring writings by some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today. Its Issue #131 (November 2022) features contributions by Mi You, Sabu Kohso, Matt Peterson, Martin Guinard, Leon Dische Becker, Cosmo Bjorkenheim, Nicola Perugini, Tommaso Fiscaletti, Su Wei, Pelin Tan, Olga Olina, Hallie Ayres, and Anton Vidokle. Read or download the issue here. Martin Guinard has been a curator at LUMA Arles since 2021. Before this, he worked on several interdisciplinary projects dealing with ecological mutation in close collaboration with Bruno Latour. He was a curator of the 2020 Taipei Biennial, titled “You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet,” as well as a guest-editor of the e-flux journal issue of the same name.  Sabu Kohso is a political and social critic, translator, and a long-time activist in the global and anti-capitalist struggle. He has published several books on urban space and struggle in Japan, and has translated books by Kojin Karatani and David Graeber. His most recent book is Radiation and Revolution (Duke University Press, 2020). Matt Peterson is an organizer at Woodbine, an experimental space in New York City. He codirected the film Spaces of Exception (2018), and coedited the books In the Name of the People (2018) and The Mohawk Warrior Society (forthcoming 2022). Leon Dische Becker is a writer, editor, and translator (Ger-to-Eng) from Berlin currently living between Los Angeles and New York City. He is trying to write more again.  Cosmo Bjorkenheim is a filmmaker and writer who lives in New York City. His work has been screened at Anthology Film Archives, Maysles Documentary Center, and the Museum of the Moving Image. He is a contributing editor at Screen Slate.

Lukas Brasiskis, associate curator of e-flux Video & Film, talks to Erika Balsom about the book and exhibition co-curated with Hila Peleg, Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image.  The episode was recorded at e-flux Screening Room before “No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image,” a talk by Erika Balsom preceded by a screening of Han Ok-hee’s Untitled 77A (1977, 6 minutes) and Grupo Chaski’s Miss Universo en el Perú (1982, 32 minutes). Erika Balsom is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. She is the author of four books, including After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation (Columbia University Press, 2017) and TEN SKIES (Fireflies Press, 2021, shortlisted for the Kraszna Krausz prize). Her criticism appears regularly in venues such as Artforum, Cinema Scope, e-flux, and 4Columns. With Hila Peleg, she is the co-curator of the exhibition No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (HKW Berlin, 2022) and co-editor of the books Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (2022) and Documentary Across Disciplines (2016), both published by MIT Press. In 2018, she was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Katherine Singer Kovacs essay award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Sanna Almajedi talks to Jad and Tarek Atoui about their experimental music duo, Through Rust and Dusk. The conversation is followed by an excerpt of their performance at e-flux on September 26, 2022 that incorporated improvisation, custom made instruments, field recordings, and electronic sounds.  Read more about Tarek Atoui‘s The Whisperers (October 1–December 10, 2022) at Flag Art Foundation here.   Jad Atoui is a Beirut-based sound artist and improviser. He composes and performs electronicand electro-acoustic music and has worked with musicians like John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Anderson, Chuck Bettis, and Anthony Sahyoun. During his formative years in New York, Atoui found interest in the New York avant-garde scene. He began working closely with NYC downtown musicians and learning improvised music techniques, while also working at the Stone and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2015, Atoui spearheaded the “Biosonics” project in collaboration with scientist Ivan Marazzi where they used bio-sonification of behaviors as compositional tools. The project was later published in John Zorn’s Arcana Book Vol. XVIII and premiered at National Sawdust as part of The Stone’s commissioning series. Atoui has given and co-directed workshops at Marfa Sounding, Ashkal Alwan, and Beirut Synth Center, and has been a resident at The Stone, The National Sawdust, Beirut Art Center, Arab Image Foundation, and Sharjah Art Foundation. Tarek Atoui is an artist and composer born in Beirut. His work stems from performance and looks into how sound can be perceived with sensory organs other than the ear, how sound acts as a catalyst for human interaction, and how it relates to social, historical, and spatial parameters. The point of departure for his works is usually extensive anthropological, ethnological, musicological, or technical research, which results in the realization of instruments, listening rooms, performances, or workshops. Atoui has presented his work internationally at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates (2009 and 2013); dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany (2012); the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014); Tate Modern, London (2016); CCA NTU, Singapore (2017); Garage Moscow (2018); the 58th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia (2019); the Okayama Art Summit 2019; the Sharjah Art Foundation (2020); The Fridericianum (2020); And Pinault Collection (2021).  He was appointed co-artistic director of STEIM studios in 2007, and of the Bergen Assembly, a triennial for contemporary art in Norway in 2016. He is the recipient of the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize 2020. Tarek Atoui currently lives and works in Paris, France. e-flux music is curated by Sanna Almajedi. 

Ben Eastham talks with authors Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams about their novel, Diego Garcia (Fitzcarraldo Editions, Semiotext(e) / Native Agents). “Through the intricately woven histories and the corresponding fictions within fictions, the compassion expressed in Diego Garcia highlights the absence of it in those who, forsaking their obligations towards other human beings, exiled the Chagossians from their home. We see that until the Chagossian people are home, nobody is home.” –Vanessa Onwuemezi, author of Dark Neighbourhood About the book: August 2014. Two friends, writers Damaris Caleemootoo and Oliver Pablo Herzberg, arrive in Edinburgh from London, the city that killed Daniel—his brother, her frenemy and loved by them both. Every day is different but the same. Trying to get to the library, they get distracted by bickering—will it rain or not and what should they do about their tanking bitcoin?—in the end failing to write or resist the sadness which follows them as they drift around the city. On such a day they meet Diego, a poet. They learn that Diego's mother was from the Chagos Archipelago, that she and her community were forced to leave their ancestral islands by soldiers in 1973 to make way for a military base. They become obsessed with this notorious episode in British history and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people, and feel urged to write in solidarity. But how to share a story that is not theirs to tell? Natasha Soobramanien is based in Brussels. She is a writing tutor on the Lens-Based Media Masters Programme at Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam. Luke Williams is based in Cove, west Scotland. He teaches creative and critical writing at Birkbeck University of London.  More information on the Chagos Refugees Group can be found at thechagosrefugeesgroup.com.

Hallie Ayres talks to Miriam Hillawi Abraham and Nasra Abdullahi about their text, “The Afro-Cosmologist's Treatise on the Astrolabe,” published in the Cosmic Bulletin 2021.  Miriam Hillawi Abraham is a multi-disciplinary designer from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. With a background in Architecture, she works with digital media and spatial design to interrogate themes of equitable futurism and intersectionality. She holds an MFA in Interaction Design from the California College of the Arts and a BArch in Architecture from the Glasgow School of Art. She is a CCA-Mellon researcher for the Digital Now multidisciplinary project, a 2020 fellow of Gray Area’s Zachary Watson Education Fund and a Graham Foundation 2020 grantee. Nasra Abdullahi is a designer, writer, and editor based in London. She is currently a junior writer at Wallpaper* magazine, the 2021 guest editor of The Avery Review and a member of the second cohort of New Architecture Writers. A student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, she is interested in ways we can seek equitable futures through material cultures away from projected architectural and urban desires. Seeking a multiplicity in spatial practice, she is interested in what modern architectural technology can look like when innovated and reappropriated through and in relation with various knowledge systems. Currently her work is centered around exploring the possibilities of using analytical tools from black and indigenous radical traditions to inform us about design and technological practice.

Authors and activists Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan discuss entangling art, activism, and everyday life in the context of defending the environment. They share experiences from living in la ZAD, a space of resistance against an airport project. Topics include collective action, sustainable living, and the challenges of self-management amidst governmental intervention.

Shimrit Lee discusses her forthcoming book, 'Decolonize Museums', exploring the history of dispossession and colonial theft within museums, the contested nature of decolonization, the transformation of museums into participatory spaces, protests within museums, and the importance of repatriation and nationalism in decolonizing museums.