Art and Obsolescence

This week on the show we are diving back into exploring what it looks like to collect time-based media art outside of institutions, by chatting with another collector who has developed a real passionate focus on time-based media art. Alain Servais has been collecting digital art for many many years, and not only lives among the work in his home in Brussels, but also operates a loft space specifica...

This week's episode features pioneering gallerist Magda Sawon, who together with her husband and business partner Tamas Banovich has been running Postmasters gallery since 1984.  Postmasters hardly needs introduction – it is a veritable New York institution, and an incredibly important piece of the puzzle when looking at how time-based media art (and especially digital art) exists within the...

This week on the show we sit down with Raina Mehler, who is leading the way for how one of the largest contemporary art enterprises in the world manages the challenging needs of time-based media art installations. Tune in to hear all about Raina’s work as a registrar establishing Pace Gallery's internal practices for installing, shipping, tracking, and caring for time-based media art, what it...

This week on the show we take our first foray into an incredibly important pillar of the long term care of art: how we document, catalog, and care for archives. Our guest Farris Wahbeh is the Benjamin and Irma Weiss Director of Research Resources at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Farris’ role is quite unique in the sense that he oversees and serves as a central hub for all of the various team...

On this week’s show we sit down with the one and only American Artist, whose brilliant practice places a critical lens on technology and systems, often as a means by which to discuss the forms of systemic racism, control, and manipulation that become coded into the world. In our chat we’ll hear about _____________’s origins as an artist and graphic designer, and how their work extends across resea...

This week on the show we chat with an art conservator who has been pivotal in formalizing the field of time-based media conservation over the past two decades: Christine Frohnert. When Christine immigrated to the US in 2005 she was the only conservator who had training in  time-based media conservation – and she got to work quickly! Through her private practice with partner Reinhard Bek, her leade...

This week we chat with contemporary artist, and pioneer of video art, Gary Hill. For many Gary needs no introduction – he was among the first generation of artists to explore television and the video signal as a creative medium in the early 1970s. Through video sculptures, installations, and single-channel works, Gary explores the phenomenological, language, and the body’s relationship to technolo...

This week on the show we sit down with gallerist and curator Bridget Donahue. If you know Bridget it’s likely through her gallery’s sharp programming and the impactful work she has done over the years to help steward the careers of time-based media artists like Sondra Perry, Martine Syms, and Lynn Hershman Leeson – but did you know that Bridget got her start in the gallery world as an archivist? T...

This week’s show features artist, musician, herbalist, and community builder Cy X, whose  work encompasses installations, digital instrument building, live audiovisual performances, and their broader interdisciplinary practice blurs boundaries between art, community building (Including co-founding Synth Library NYC), healing work, and music. Tune in to hear Cy’s journey from working in marketing t...

Continuing our coverage of emerging professionals, sasha arden will soon be graduating as one of the first conservators from the NYU Conservation Center's recently established time-based media conservation program. sasha is hardly new to the field though, having spent over a decade meeting the audiovisual needs of numerous institutions prior to making the pivot to conservation. Tune in to hea...

This week on the show we sit down with curator Tina Rivers Ryan – one of the preeminent curators mapping contemporary artistic practices engaged with the digital, and keeping the flame of digital art history alive. In this in-depth conversation we delve into Tina's evolution as a curator, and many of the particularities of curatoring digital art. As well, Tina is one of the few thinkers out t...

This week on the show we visit with the one and only Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, whose software-based artwork spans from massive outdoor interactive public art, to more domestic-scale works that can be found in galleries and art fairs all over the world. Rafael has been making both intellectually and technically challenging work for decades, and in this chat we’ll hear about his roots as young artist wo...

This week features legendary curator of digital art, Christiane Paul. It would be fair to say that digital art is having a moment these days, so who better to provide some context than the curator who quite literally wrote the book on it. From publishing a glossy quarterly magazine on digital art and hypertext in the 90s (Intelligent Agent), to her extensive curatorial work at the Whitney Museum o...

This week’s show features art conservator Asti Sherring, who for the past ten years has played a leading role in developing the time-based media conservation community in Australia. Tune in to this week’s episode to hear how Asti went from saving up her summer job money as a fourteen year old to go on an archaeological dig in Italy, to being the first time-based media conservator at the Art Galler...

This week on the show my guest is Tommy Martinez, artist, musician, composer, and a technician who has helped countless artists bring their vision to life. Formerly, Tommy was Director of Technology of Pioneer Works where he ran an incredible residency program. In our chat we cover so much ground, discussing what it means to document site-specific sound installations, the broken system of attribut...

This week on the show our guest is the one and only Barbara London. Since she began her career at MoMA in 1973 and collected the museum’s first video art in 1975, Barbara has had an immeasurable impact on the field of time-based media art – from her 1979 exhibition “Video from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto” to her phenomenal new book “Video art: the first fifty years”. Listen in on our conversation to...

This week’s show features legendary net art pioneer Shu Lea Cheang, interviewed by our very first guest host, Emma Dickson. Together they discuss the conservation of Shu Lea’s piece Brandon (1998-1999), how the remnants and ephemera of creative practice lives in archives, institutional link rot, and Shu Lea’s fruitful decades long collaboration with a programmer whom she’s never met. Links from th...

This week’s show features emerging conservation professional Kayla Henry-Griffin, currently in their final year of graduate studies at NYU. Tune in to hear about Kayla’s journey from optics and physics to their current research around the intersection of Black and queer community archive practices and video game preservation. Links from the conversation with Kayla > Kayla's website: https:...

This week's show offers an inside glimpse into a major private collection of time-based media art, as we chat with Robert Rosenkranz. Come along for a walking tour of a home in the mountains of Aspen, purpose built for living with time-based media art. We'll hear about the unique challenges of collecting and living with time-based media, what Robert looks for when he's considering a...

On this week's show we chat with curator Chrissie Iles, who since 1997 has been the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, where she has built a singular collection of time-based media art. In this extended chat with host Cass Fino-Radin, Chrissie tells the tale of how she built this amazing collection, her general approach and philosophy as...

On this week's show we chat with artist Ian Cheng, who since 2012 has been building a universe of sentient software, creatures, and elaborate systems of logic in the form of self-playing video games, installations, drawings, and prints. In this extended chat with host Cass Fino-Radin, Ian shares some of his deepest influences, past mentors, childhood, studio practice and rituals for creativit...

On this week's show I chat with art conservator Glenn Wharton, who years ago was MoMA's first-ever time-based media conservator, and the fist museum conservator specializing in time-based media in the US. Today Glenn is the Lore and Gerald Cunard Chair, UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage and Professor of Art History and Conservation of Material Culture. Links fro...

The Kramlichs began collecting time-based media thirty years ago, and eventually they asked the question: what would a home look like if it were purpose-built for living with their collection? On this episode we'll not only get to hear the story of what inspired Pam to focus on collecting this challenging medium so early on, but also the treat of a walking tour of the Kramlich's  residen...

Host Cass Fino-Radin chats with curator and author Legacy Russell. Legacy's recent book Glitch Feminism offers "a new manifesto for cyberfeminism: finding liberation in the glitch between body, gender, and technology". We discuss Legacy's origins as a curator, the book, and her vision for The Kitchen where she is the incomming director and chief curator.

For decades, Lynn was told that she wasn't an artist. That whatever it was she was doing, it most certainly wasn't art. Neverthelss she persisted, and her story is truly one of perseverance, as today Lynn's work can be found in art history books, art galleries, museums and private collections all over the world. Lynn's exhibition at the New Museum is open until October 3rd 2021...