
e-flux podcast
Conversations with some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today.
Latest episodes

Jan 16, 2020 • 28min
Goldin+Senneby: Insurgency of Life
Live recording from the opening of Goldin+Senneby’s exhibition, Insurgency of Life, at e-flux. The exhibition is on view until February 8, 2020. Goldin+Senneby is a Stockholm-based artist subject. Since 2004 their work has explored the structural correspondence between conceptual art and finance capital, drawn to its (il)logical conclusions. Recent works include a ghostwritten detective novel about an offshore company on the Bahamas (2007–15), a magic trick for the financial markets (2016), and a proposal for an eternal employment at a train station (2026–). Currently their practice is mutating: Drawing on bodily experiences of an autoimmune disease, they are staging a fiction with an “autoimmune tree” as the main protagonist. Read more about the exhibition here.

Dec 17, 2019 • 40min
Leigh Claire La Berge on Wages Against Artwork
Andreas Petrossiants speaks with author Leigh Claire La Berge about Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art, published in November 2019 by Duke University Press. “The last twenty years have seen a rise in the production, circulation, and criticism of new forms of socially engaged art aimed at achieving social justice and economic equality. In Wages Against Artwork Leigh Claire La Berge shows how socially engaged art responds to and critiques what she calls decommodified labor—the slow diminishment of wages alongside an increase in the demands of work. Outlining the ways in which socially engaged artists relate to work, labor, and wages, La Berge examines how artists and organizers create institutions to address their own and others' financial precarity; why the increasing role of animals and children in contemporary art points to the turn away from paid labor; and how the expansion of MFA programs and student debt helps create the conditions for decommodified labor. In showing how socially engaged art operates within and against the need to be paid for work, La Berge offers a new theorization of the relationship between art and contemporary capitalism.” Read more Leigh Claire La Berge is associate professor of English at BMCC CUNY and author of Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s as well as co-editor of Reading Capitalist Realism. Her writing and journalism has appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly, Post-45, the Los Angeles REview of Books and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She is also a member of the Marx for Cats collective

Nov 15, 2019 • 37min
Sophie Lewis on Full Surrogacy Now
Mariana Silva speaks to Sophie Lewis about her book, Full Surrogacy Now, on the occasion of her talk at e-flux, “Wages for Womb-Work, Polymaternalism, Critical Firestonianism.” The introduction from Full Surrogacy Now was also published in issue 99 of e-flux journal. Sophie Lewis is a writer and part-time faculty member at the Philadelphia branch of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Sophie's interdisciplinary work tends to blend feminist theory and cultural criticism, interrogating work, nature, and reproduction in a queer utopian mode. Her essays have appeared in many journals (both academic and non-academic) including Signs, Feminist Review, Gender Place and Culture, Viewpoint, Boston Review, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, Mute, Salvage Quarterly, Logic, The New Inquiry, and Commune. She is also a member of the ecological writing collective Out of the Woods, and an editor at the journal Blind Field. As an occasional translator (to make ends meet), she has translated books from German including the popular Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak, A Brief History of Feminism by Antje Schrupp, and Other and Rule by Paula Villa and Sabine Hark (forthcoming with Verso). Her PhD from the University of Manchester was in Geography, and she also holds two degrees from Oxford University—in English Literature and Nature, Society, and Environmental Policy respectively—as well as a Master's in Politics from the New School for Social Research. Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family is her first book.

Oct 24, 2019 • 41min
Sohrab Mohebbi and Christian Nyampeta discuss École du soir
Curator Sohrab Mohebbi speaks to artist Christian Nyampeta on the occasion of his exhibition at SculptureCenter, École du soir (The Evening Academy), on view through December 16, 2019. As part of the related public program, e-flux hosted an evening with philosopher Isaïe Nzeyimana, in dialogue with anthropologist Natacha Nsabimana and Christian Nyampeta on Wednesday, October 23 at e-flux. Excerpt from the press release: Christian Nyampeta’s project consists of a scriptorium (a place for writing), an exhibition, and public programs concerned with “thinking Africa,” then and now. The program is resourced around the idea of an “evening school,” following the Senegalese writer and film director Sembène Ousmane, who saw cinema as “cours du soir” or “evening classes.” This concept was informed by the traditions of orality, sensuality, and conviviality within the realm of art learning and making in his region. Sembène saw cinema as a popular information system in the service of education, aesthetic experience, and public dissemination. His methodology concerned the use of cinema’s collective production, and investing in its viewing methods that draw from different uses of time, visual and textual histories, social struggles and hopes, in mutuality between his own locality and the world at large. Read more here. Christian Nyampeta’s ongoing activities in art, design, and theory include the convening of a scriptorium, a roaming program of exhibitions, screenings, and lyrical performances concerned with longing and belonging through monuments and translation. Forthcoming exhibitions include the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Nyampeta runs Radius, an online and occasionally inhabitable radio station. He is completing a PhD in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London and he was awarded The Art Prize Future of Europe 2019. Sohrab Mohebbi is SculptureCenter's Curator and is responsible for organizing exhibitions, educational and public programs, publications, and for coordinating all aspects of program presentation. Before joining SculptureCenter in 2018, Mohebbi was the associate curator at REDCAT.

Oct 11, 2019 • 33min
The New Museum Union on collective bargaining
Rachel Ichniowski talks to three representatives from the New Museum Union’s Bargaining Committee—Dana Kopel, Francesca Altamura, and Gabe Gordon—about the decision by staff to form a union, and the details of their first five-year contract, which was agreed upon with the museum on October 1, 2019. Staff at the New Museum voted to unionize in January 2019. The formation of the union, which is a part of UAW Local 2110, has been closely watched amid calls for greater transparency in art and culture sector workplaces. The New Museum employs over 140 people, and counts over 70 staff members as part of the union. New Museum Union’s Mission Statement: “When Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum in 1977, she envisioned an institution that did away with hierarchies—not only in the art exhibited, but in the structure of the museum itself. Her aim, as she wrote in 1990, was to work toward “a collaborative, self-critical, and ‘transparent’ organizational model.” As the New Museum Union, we are committed to Tucker’s vision, and to the Museum’s mission today. We have organized as the Organizing Committee of the New Museum Union (NewMuU of UAW Local 2110) because we take great pride in the Museum’s legacy and we are committed to its success, its health, and its future growth. As a museum and as a community, we have always championed diversity, equity, and progress. This distinguishes us as an art institution historically and, we hope, today as well—both in New York and globally. Our mission centers intersectional feminist concerns and cross-cultural dialogue, and our exhibitions, programs, and initiatives aim to model inclusivity and access. We ask, above all, that these ideals be mirrored in the Museum’s hiring and staffing. We believe that fair compensation for all workers throughout the museum is essential to ensuring its diversity: salaries, wages, and benefits at the museum must be sustainable for everyone, regardless of the privileges afforded them by race, class, or gender.” Read more here.

Sep 27, 2019 • 36min
Metahaven on Turnarounds
Brian Kuan Wood talks to Daniel van der Velden of Metahaven (Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden) on the occasion of their exhibition at e-flux titled Turnarounds. Turnarounds consists of the film installation Hometown (2018), a new series of textile pieces, and an essay in e-flux journal. Hometown focuses its ultra-wide, hypnotic gaze on two cities—Beirut and Kyiv—that merge into a fictional home for the film’s protagonists, Ghina Abboud and Lera Luchenko. Fluorescent, lava-like animations alternate between images of industrial estates and overgrown gardens as Ghina and Lera lyrically describe the town. A caterpillar gets killed, but while mourning the loss, both evade responsibility for the crime. With their monologue in Russian and Arabic colorfully subtitled in English and Ukrainian, they eat ice cream. Their laughter solves puzzles, and there is a sunken city inhabited by adults who forgot what children taught them. The script of Hometown draws on a genre of Russian children poems called perevortyshi (“turnarounds,” or “twisters”). In perevortyshi, positive statements are provisionally joined with their opposites to the great joy of both narrator and listener. These poems are, in their playfulness, also fundamentally questioning our reliance on verbal statements in order to approach reality. In "Sleep walks the street," an essay for e-flux journal no. 102 that will go live when the exhibition opens, Metahaven interrogate our current tendency to aestheticize politics by relying on the cognitive guidance of metaphorical and allegorical construction. Examining figures of speech that normalize not just words but also entire semantic contexts and cognitive patterns, they reference the work of the German-Polish linguist Victor Klemperer (1881–1960) who studied the language of the Nazis. In searching for potential antidotes, Metahaven focus on the work of the Russian poets Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941) and Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), as well as the contemporary poets Eugene Ostashevsky, Jackie Wang, and Galina Rymbu. In addition to the film installation and the essay, a new series of digitally created textile pieces is installed throughout the public and private spaces at e-flux. Bearing titles like Mise-en-Anthroposcene, Skyrofoam, and Now You Know You Now, Metahaven’s recent textile works draw on the thematic and affective tropes they have embraced since their documentary The Sprawl: Propaganda About Propaganda from 2015. The work of Metahaven consists of filmmaking, writing, and design. Hometown will be on view at e-flux through November 2, 2019.

Sep 12, 2019 • 20min
Interference Archive: Louise Barry and Rob Smith
Erin talks to Interference Archive volunteers Louise Barry and Rob Smith about the archive, and the exhibition Resistance Radio: The People’s Airwaves, on view through September 29, 2019. Resistance Radio: The People’s Airwaves focuses on the people, stations, and organizations that have battled to bring their defiant programming onto the airwaves, and particularly when these actions were in service of grassroots movements and/or community organizing. The mission of Interference Archive is to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements—through an open stacks archival collection, publications, a study center, and public programs. The archive consists of posters, flyers, zines, books, t-shirts, buttons, moving images, audio recordings, and more. You can listen to Interference Archive’s podcast, Audio Interference, here.

Jul 24, 2019 • 43min
Franco “Bifo” Berardi on the future possibility of living well
e-flux journal editorial assistant Andreas Petrossiants speaks to Franco “Bifo” Berardi following his recent texts “(Sensitive) Consciousness and Time: Against the Transhumanist Utopia” in issue 98, and “Game Over” in issue 100. Franco Berardi, aka “Bifo,” founder of the famous Radio Alice in Bologna and an important figure in the Italian Autonomia movement, is a writer, media theorist, and social activist. His most recent books are Breathing: Chaos and Poetry (Semiotexte, 2018) and The Second Coming (Polity, 2019).

Jul 11, 2019 • 36min
Satellite music series: Peter Zummo and Eve Essex
Sanna Almajedi talks to composer and trombonist Peter Zummo, and Eve Essex, a musician who performs with alto saxophone, piccolo, voice and electronics. The music heard in this episode was recorded live during the fifth edition of Satellite at Bar Laika on March 12, 2019, featuring Zummo and Essex. Peter Zummo is a composer and trombonist whose music encompasses both the contemporary-classical and vernacular genres. His work is informed by five decades of realizing the work of other composers, poets, bandleaders, choreographers, directors, and filmmakers. The way in which he maneuvers the contemporary trombone is genre non-conforming, and still finds a place in any genre. Zummo worked closely with Arthur Russell, appearing on many of his recordings. He has also collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Phil Niblock, and Yasunao Tone. His music has been released by Foom, Optimo Music, and Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Eve Essex is a Brooklyn-based musician who performs with alto saxophone, piccolo, voice and electronics, harnessing elements of classical, drone, free jazz, and distorted pop. She has performed as Das Audit (with guitarist Craig Kalpakjian), as well as in trios Hesper (with James K and Via App), and HEVM (with MV Carbon and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix). She has also collaborated extensively with Juan Antonio Olivares as installation/performance-art duo Essex Olivares. Her first solo album, Here Appear, was released by Soap Library (cassette) and Sky Walking (LP) in 2018. She also appears on Pan’s compilation Mono No Aware. Select solo performances include Artists Space, Outpost Artists Resources, Safe Gallery, and Meakusma Festival. Satellite is a monthly experimental music series curated by Sanna Almajedi.

Jun 27, 2019 • 28min
Closed for installation: Fiona Connor
Andreas Petrossiants, Editorial Assistant for e-flux journal, speaks to artist Fiona Connor starting from her exhibition at SculptureCenter, Closed for installation, Fiona Connor, SculptureCenter, #4. As the show's press release describes: "Los Angeles-based artist Fiona Connor remakes overlooked everyday objects, including bulletin boards, park benches, community noticeboards, doors of closed down clubs, real estate signs, municipal water fountains, and so on. She is interested in where these objects come from, what they are made out of, who makes them and for whom, as well as the relationships that the artist initiates and maintains in order to reproduce and re-present the objects as works of art. For her new commission at SculptureCenter, Connor is producing a set of intersecting works that bring together the artist’s investment in the various operations of sculpture in an expansive field of production, maintenance, and display. In the gallery, she shows a number of bronze pieces that replicate tools required to install an exhibition, such as a measuring tape, a paint tray, a dolly, and scraps of cardboard. Nearby in an apartment in Long Island City, the artist arranges for an annual window cleaning, in perpetuity. Later in the course of the exhibition, Connor convenes a series of workshops, using pulped institutional printed material to make a set of catalog-sized blocks that will function as the exhibition’s publication." Read the full text here. Closed for installation, Fiona Connor, SculptureCenter, #4 is on view through July 29, 2019.