e-flux podcast

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.

Artist Karl Holmqvist reads “ANOTHER WAR IS POSSIBLE” and “NUMBERS,” and speaks with artist and e-flux founder Anton Vidokle. Karl Holmqvist is known for using a wide range of formats—poetry readings, installation, and sculpture–to bring out the primal qualities of language. He is one of a current generation of artists working with language and text as sculptural or performative material. Holmqvist says his work is meant to spark the creative process in the viewer, seeing his art and poetry as a translation of the complexities of contemporary life. He blends poetry with pop music and his texts, composed of anecdotes as famous as they are diverse, explore the themes of communication and language. Together, the works unpack the many operations of language, how it can occupy space and provoke “invisible images” within memory and imagination. In February 2019, e-flux’s Bar Laika presented a new work by Karl Holmqvist: #FLU$$CH (29 minutes, 2017), with an introduction by and Q&A with Pati Hertling. You can read “GORILLAZ GRRLZ,” Holmqvist’s contribution to e-flux journal’s SUPERCOMMUNITY project at the 56th Venice Biennale, here.

e-flux journal editor Brian Kuan Wood speaks to Kader Attia, artist and founder of La Colonie, a space in Paris for sharing ideas and discussion. Focussing on decolonialisation not only of people but also of knowledge, attitudes and practices, it aspires to de-compartmentalise knowledge by a trans-cultural, trans-disciplinary and trans-generational approach. Driven by the urgency of social and cultural reparations, it aims to reunite which has been shattered, or drift apart. Kader Attia (b. 1970, France), grew up in Paris and in Algeria. Preceding his studies at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and at Escola Massana, Centre d’Art i Disseny in Barcelona, he spent several years in Congo and in South America. The experience with these different cultures, the histories of which over centuries have been characterised by rich trading traditions, colonialism and multi-ethnic societies, has fostered Kader Attia’s intercultural and interdisciplinary approach of research. For many years, he has been exploring the perspective that societies have on their history, especially as regards experiences of deprivation and suppression, violence and loss, and how this affects the evolving of nations and individuals—each of them being connected to collective memory. His socio-cultural research has led Kader Attia to the notion of Repair, a concept he has been developing philosophically in his writings and symbolically in his oeuvre as a visual artist. With the principle of Repair being a constant in nature—thus also in humanity—, any system, social institution or cultural tradition can be considered as an infinite process of Repair, which is closely linked to loss and wounds, to recuperation and re-appropriation. Repair reaches far beyond the subject and connects the individual to gender, philosophy, science, and architecture, and also involves it in evolutionary processes in nature, culture, myth and history. Attia's solo exhibition The Museum of Emotion at The Hayward Gallery, London recently closed. Upcoming 2019 exhibitions include a solo show opening in September at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and group shows at Rubin Museum of Art, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and The Phillips Collection.

Following a recently published text in e-flux journal issue 98 (March 2019), Tyler Coburn joins Contributing Editor Elvia Wilk to discuss the project Ergonomic Futures. Coburn's Ergonomic Futures asks questions about contemporary “fitness” through the lens of speculative evolution. The multi-part project includes furniture designed with Bureau V and a website of stories designed with Luke Gould and Afonso Martins. Tyler Coburn is an artist and writer based in New York. His most recent book, Richard Roe, was published by Sternberg Press in March 2019. –Watch a performance delivered at e-flux in 2016 as part of Ergonomic Futures on e-flux Video & Film.  –Read "Ergonomic Futures," published in e-flux journal issue 98 (March 2019).

Sanna Almajedi and Andreas Petrossiants speak with Lucie Vítková following her Satellite music series performance at Bar Laika. Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, voice, and tap dance) from the Czech Republic. She recently organized a performance with OPERA Ensemble on climate change. For Satellite, Vítková performed two pieces, one from “Music Domestic,” and another from her “Post-Apocalyptic” series. In 2017 Vítková was nominated to the Herb Alpert Awards in Arts in the category of Music, and was a resident artist at Roulette in 2018. She has put together two ensembles—the NYC Constellation Ensemble (focused on music behavior) and the OPERA Ensemble (for singing instrumentalists). During her 2017 Mentor/Protégé Residency in Tokyo, she studied hichiriki with Hitomi Nakamura and has been a member of the Columbia University Gagaku Ensemble. As an accordion player, she collaborated with the New York-based TAK Ensemble, S.E.M. ensemble, String Noise, Du.0, Argento Ensemble, CU Raaga, Ghost Ensemble, and Wet. Satellite is a monthly experimental music series organized by Sanna Almajedi at Bar Laika by e-flux.   Music clips in order heard: (1) Lucie Vítková, “Music Domestic” (excerpt). Released by Bánh Mì Verlag, 2017. (2) Lucie Vítková, “Post-Apocalyptic Piece” with water, live performance (excerpt).

Tony Wood and Brian Kuan Wood discuss “Intrusions: Or, The Golden Age Is Not in Us” published in e-flux journal #98, March 2019. The text examines three science-fiction scenarios that for Tony illustrate three collapses of orders of magnitude or scale—Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, written in the US in the 1970s; Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, filmed in the USSR in the same decade; and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, published in the US in the 2010s. Tony Wood lives in New York and writes about Latin America and Russia. He is the author of Russia without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War (2018), and is currently working on a PhD about the Latin American radical left in the 1920s and 1930s.

Sanna Almajedi speaks with C. Spencer Yeh following his Satellite music series performance at Bar Laika.  C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as an artist, improviser, and composer, as well his music project Burning Star Core. Originally conceived in 1993 in Cincinnati, the project was known for its unique blend of musique concrète, ambient, drone, and psychedelic music. His recent solo albums Solo Voice I-X (2015) and The RCA Mark II (2018) were published by Primary Information. His video works are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix. Recent exhibitions and presentations of his work include Shocking Asia at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong; Two Workaround Works Around Calder at the Whitney Museum, New York; Modern Mondays at MoMA, New York; and Tony Conrad Tribute at Atelier Nord/Ultima Festival, Oslo.    Satellite is a monthly experimental music series organized by Sanna Almajedi at Bar Laika by e-flux. Music clips in order heard: (1) C. Spencer Yeh, "SOLO VOICE LIVE," from a performance of the album, December 2015 in Chicago at the Option series, Experimental Sound Studios. (2) CS Yeh, "I Can Read Your Mind," from the album "Transitions" (on De Stijl label). (3) Burning Star Core, "Benjamin," from the album "The Very Heart of the World." Also mentioned:  Spectacle Theatre, a collectively run screening space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)'s exhibition, The Moon Represents My Heart: Music, Memory and Belonging, is on view May 2–September 15, 2019 in New York.  

Sanna Almajedi speaks with Keith Fullerton Whitman following his Satellite music series performance at Bar Laika.  A composer and performer living in Brooklyn, Keith Fullerton Whitman is currently in the process of realizing geographically and thematically relevant live electronic music under the “Redactions” banner, as well as performing contemporary revisions of his classic “Generators” and “Playthroughs” frameworks. He recently performed at the GRM's Immersion festival in Paris, Documenta 14 in Athens, The Labyrinth in Niigata, MaerzMusik's The Long Now in Berlin, Semibreve in Braga, Send + Receive in Winnipeg, The Geometry of Now in Moscow, and the Don Buchla Memorial Concerts in San Francisco. Satellite is a monthly experimental music series organized by Sanna Almajedi at Bar Laika by e-flux.

Artist Agnieszka Kurant and researcher Tobias Rees in conversation with e-flux journal Contributing Editor Elvia Wilk.   Agnieszka Kurant explores how complex social, economic and ecological systems can operate in ways that confuse distinctions between fiction and reality or nature and culture. Probing collective intelligence, surveillance capitalism, AI and the evolution of culture, labor and creativity, she investigates automation, crowdsourcing and data exploitation in the context of art production. Her works often behave like living organisms, self-organized complex systems or bachelor machines. Her past projects include a commission for the façade of the Guggenheim Museum (2015) and a solo exhibition at the Sculpture Center, New York (2013). In 2010 she co-represented Poland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Her work was featured in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Guggenheim Bilbao, Tate Modern, Witte de With, Moderna Museet, MUMOK, Bonner Kunstverein, The Kitchen, Frieze Projects and Performa Biennial. She is an artist in residence at MIT CAST and a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute and the Berggruen Institute. Tobias Rees is the Reid Hoffman Professor of Humanities at the New School for Social Research, Director at the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.    Rees finds himself intrigued by situations that are not reducible to the already thought and known—by events, small ones or large ones, that set the taken for granted in motion and thereby provoke unanticipated openings for which no one has words yet. In his writings he seeks to capture something of the at times wild, at other times tender, almost fragile openness that rules as long as the new/different has not yet gained any stable contours—when it is pure movement.   Over the last decade his research has explored possibilities of practicing the human sciences after the figure of the human on which the human sciences (and art) has been contingent failed us: The human—the object of the human sciences is a figure not known before the late eighteenth century.    He is the author of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (2008), Plastic Reason (2016), and most recently of After Ethnos (2018).

Artist Agnieszka Kurant and researcher Tobias Rees in conversation with e-flux journal Contributing Editor Elvia Wilk.   Agnieszka Kurant explores how complex social, economic and ecological systems can operate in ways that confuse distinctions between fiction and reality or nature and culture. Probing collective intelligence, surveillance capitalism, AI and the evolution of culture, labor and creativity, she investigates automation, crowdsourcing and data exploitation in the context of art production. Her works often behave like living organisms, self-organized complex systems or bachelor machines. Her past projects include a commission for the façade of the Guggenheim Museum (2015) and a solo exhibition at the Sculpture Center, New York (2013). In 2010 she co-represented Poland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Her work was featured in exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Guggenheim Bilbao, Tate Modern, Witte de With, Moderna Museet, MUMOK, Bonner Kunstverein, The Kitchen, Frieze Projects and Performa Biennial. She is an artist in residence at MIT CAST and a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute and the Berggruen Institute. Tobias Rees is the Reid Hoffman Professor of Humanities at the New School for Social Research, Director at the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute, and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.    Rees finds himself intrigued by situations that are not reducible to the already thought and known—by events, small ones or large ones, that set the taken for granted in motion and thereby provoke unanticipated openings for which no one has words yet. In his writings he seeks to capture something of the at times wild, at other times tender, almost fragile openness that rules as long as the new/different has not yet gained any stable contours—when it is pure movement.   Over the last decade his research has explored possibilities of practicing the human sciences after the figure of the human on which the human sciences (and art) has been contingent failed us: The human—the object of the human sciences is a figure not known before the late eighteenth century.    He is the author of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary (2008), Plastic Reason (2016), and most recently of After Ethnos (2018).