Art and Obsolescence

A very special episode! Today we are chatting with Pippi Zornoza, co-founder of the Dirt Palace, a feminist artist-run collective/residency program/space that has been a pivotal part of the artistic community in Providence for over 20 years, and this interview is part two of a three part series focused on the Dirt Palace and its two co-founders: Xander Marro and Pippi Zornoza. Pippi’s art and musi...

A very special episode! Today we are chatting with Xander Marro, co-founder of the Dirt Palace, "a feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river, which is to say in Providence, RI USA". The Dirt Palace is a feminist artist-run collective/residency program/space that has been a pivotal part of the artistic community in Providence...

Help shape the future of the show! Take our listener survey:  https://forms.gle/Pr8kThnNUGU6hasF6 If you listen to this show chances are you are familiar with some iconic images of time-based media art that has taken place in Times Square — in fact I think perhaps the first image I ever saw of Jenny Holzer’s work  was a grainy black and white photo of one of her truisms on display on an LED sign i...

Today we are revisiting an episode that aired originally two years ago to the day featuring artist Ian Cheng. This episode was one of our most popular in 2021, so we are pulling it out of the archives for our more recent subscribers to enjoy. Since 2012, Ian has been building a universe of sentient software, creatures, and elaborate systems of logic in the form of self-playing video games, install...

In our latest episode we visit with artist legacy specialist Ursula Davila-Villa. In her crucial work, Ursula helps artists and their families put appropriate plans in place to ensure that their work and archives will exist in a way consistent with the artist’s wishes after they are gone. This unique work draws upon conservation, archives, estate planning, curation, and more. Despite how critical...

In Episode 68, we sit down with Jill Sterrett, Director of Collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Before her tenure in Wisconsin, and even before her time as director at the Smart Museum of Art, Jill dedicated over 28 years to SFMOMA. There, she led the conservation department during its formative years, establishing SFMOMA as a pioneer in the field of time-based media conservation. Thro...

Today we are diving deeper into the world of digital preservation in our visit with Crystal Sanchez, digital archivist for the Smithsonian Institution. So far, over the past two years and sixty six episodes we’ve visited with all kinds of folks involved in different aspects of preservation of works of art — but something we haven’t really looked at closely is the infrastructure that makes all of t...

For episode 66 we are back in the conservation lab, visiting with the one and only Joanna Phillips. For any listeners familiar with time-based media conservation, Joanna hardly needs any introduction — she was among the first generation of practitioners in this field,  and the second ever time-based media conservator at a US museum. At the Guggenheim Joanna established the first museum time-based...

On today’s show we are visiting with Salome Asega, a true multihyphenate  who not only leads New Inc, the New Museum’s incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology, but who has also maintained a vibrant artistic practice all throughout the years that her career as an arts administrator has been thriving. This might be due to the fact that when you look at Salome’...

This month we’re in the studio visiting with contemporary artist Nikita Gale. Gale's work employs objects and materials like barricades, concrete, microphone stands, and spotlights to address the ways in which space and sound are politicized. Last year in episode 32 we visited with gallerist Ebony L. Haynes, director of 52 Walker, and it was in preparing for that conversation that I visited t...

For this episode we are back in the conservation lab, visiting with Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art. If you were to visit the Whitney today and see the lab and the department that Carol leads, you might find it hard to believe that none of it existed back when she joined the Whitney. In 2001 Carol not only...

Today we are visiting with the one and only Shirin Neshat, who hardly needs introduction. If you’ve ever taken an art history class that covers video art, photography, international cinema, or for that matter contemporary opera, you’ve definitely seen Shirin’s work. Since her debut exhibition in 1993 at Franklin Furnace, Shirn’s work has offered a deeply personal yet universal perspective on woman...

We are closing out 2022 with highlights from eight incredible artists that graced the show this year. Tune in to hear the voices of Gary Hill, American Artist, WangShui, Meriem Bennani, Alan Michelson, Tourmaline, Arthur Jafa, and Hito Steyerl discussing how they think about the preservation and documentation of their work, as well as intimate inside glimpses into their practice and studios. Sendi...

For our 60th episode, we are visiting with artist, writer, filmmaker, and educator, Hito Steyerl. In addition to being able to find Hito’s work in museums, biennales, collections, and bookshelves all over the world, a good deal of her single-channel moving image work can be watched freely online, which of course is a good thing, but Hito’s work has also explored the darker side of what the global...

This week on the show we are visiting with Rebecca Cleman, executive director of Electronic Arts Intermix. EAI has of coursed already come up on the show many times, and recently in episode 54 we visited with their director of preservation and media collections – today we will be going deeper into this history and evolution of EAI, and getting a look behind the scenes of an organization that has b...

This week on the show we are traveling to Karlsruhe, Germany to chat with art conservator Morgane Stricot. You wouldn’t know it considering the technologically complex works of art that she cares for today, but Morgane’s first love in conservation was incredibly traditional, initially being drawn to frescos and murals. Fast forward to today and she is wrapping up a PhD in applying a media archeolo...

This week on the show we travel to Switzerland to visit with media conservator Martina Haidvogl. We’ve heard the conservation program at the Bern Academy of the Arts mentioned a few times on the show so far, as for a long time it was really the only formal conservation training program that had time-based media as a specialization. With time spent in Bern, and as an alum of the Academy of Fine Art...

This week on the show we are continuing to expand our perspective on the time-based media conservation ecosystem in Taiwan, with our guest Yuhsien Chen. In the handfull of years that she has been dedicated to time-based media conservation Yuhsien has been up to some incredibly exciting things. We heard her name come up back in episode 46 when visiting with her colleague and collaborator Tzu-Chuan...

Since 1991 when he somewhat accidentally landed a curatorial position at the Guggenheim, Jon Ippolito has been passionately dedicated to building curatorial projects, research initiatives, and collaborations revolving around the preservation of time-based media art. Through projects such as the variable media questionnaire, exhibitions such as Seeing Double, and books such as Re-collection: Art, N...

This week we’re visiting with media conservator and conservator Caroline Gil Rodríguez, who last year became director of preservation and media collections at the Electronic Arts Intermix. EAI played an incredibly pivotal role in cementing video art’s place in history, and there Caroline is doing exciting work not only to safeguard their important collection, but also to help shape and rethink wha...

This week we’re visiting the the one and only Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design and Director of Research and Development at the Museum of Modern Art. Paola is quite frankly is a legend  – not only because she made MoMA’s first ever homepage on the World Wide Web in 1995 – but for decades she has been pushing the envelope and really reshaping what it means for museums to co...

This week’s guest, Paul Messier, is an excellent example of the potential for creativity that lies within the unique brand of entrepreneurship that is running an independent conservation practice. Although working as an independent art conservator comes with many unique challenges (Paul’s journey being no exception) it also has great potential for extending beyond what most people imagine art cons...

This week on the show we’re visiting with Signal Culture director and co-founder Debora Bernagozzi. In our chat we delve deeply into the niche and history-rich dimension of video art practice where the video signal itself is deconstructed and the flow of electricity becomes a medium that is synthesized, manipulated, and performed by the artist in real-time. We’ll hear all about the incredible work...

This week on the show we’re in the artist’s studio visiting the one and only Arthur Jafa. From his extensive work in cinema, to his video art, sculpture, and other mixed media work shown in a contemporary art context – AJ’s work is often an embodiment of Black identity in America, and he is often cited with being a leader among a generation of artists creating defining a distinctly Black cinematic...

On this week’s show we continue expanding our perspective on the conservation field with contemporary art conservator Flaminia Fortunato. For the past two years Flaminia has served as the Stedelijk Museum’s first-ever time-based media art conservator, and prior to this held fellowships at MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, and more. In our chat we hear all about Flaminia’s origins growing up in the south...