Momus: The Podcast
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Lara Khaldi is our guest for the finale of season 6. A curator, artist, writer, and educator, Lara Khaldi was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, and currently lives in Amsterdam, where she has been newly appointed as director of de Appel https://www.deappel.nl/en/news/12827-lara-khaldi-is-de-nieuwe-artistiek-directeur-van-de-appel. Khaldi speaks to Lauren Wetmore about the Palestinian American artist, activist, and scholar Samia A. Halaby's book Liberation Art of Palestine: Palestinian Painting and Sculpture In The Second Half Of The 20th Century ((H. T. T. B. Publications, 2001). Both Khaldi and Halaby assert that art is part of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. In the context of ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and the retaliation faced by Palestinians and those expressing solidarity with Palestinian people, although representation may feel impossible, Khaldi urges that "the least we can do is talk about it, because the more we speak, the truth is said." Thank you to Lara Khaldi for her contribution to the season. Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors: the Sobey Art Awards https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/sobey-art-award at the National Gallery of Canada (nominations close March 20th) and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. https://www.thepowerplant.org/
For the 50th (!) episode of Momus: The Podcast, Lauren Wetmore speaks to Nasrin Himada, a Palestinian curator and writer who is currently associate curator at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. "I write for my people. I write for Palestinians, and I write for the liberation of our lands," Himada says of their practice, which foregrounds "embodiment as method, desire as transformation, and liberation through many forms." Wetmore and Himada discuss esteemed Caribbean-Canadian poet and writer M. NourbeSe Philip's text, “Interview with an Empire'' (2003), thinking through how Philip teaches us to decontaminate language from imperialism so that it can "truly speak our truths." Himada touches on strategies, including artistic experimentation, collective action, and love. Thank you to Nasrin Himada for their contribution to the season. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors: the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery’s In/Tension podcast https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/intension-podcast, and the Sobey Art Awards https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/sobey-art-award at the National Gallery of Canada.
In this episode, Jessica Lynne speaks with Catherine G. Wagley about their shared love for Barbara Christian’s iconically confrontational essay, “The Race for Theory” (1987, Cultural Critique). Christian, a ground-laying literary academic who introduced writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to the academe, goes toe to toe with her peers in this essay, rebuking the constraints and monolith of French theory and championing the approach of learning from the language of creative writers "as a way to discover what language I might use." In it, Christian both names and demonstrates the power of critique from within the institution, and its effective complement to calls for empowerment. And as Lynne and Wagley reflect on how criticism functions through a sense of curiosity and openness in both their practices, Lynne says, “it’s an intervening hand, right? Like, look at all these other planes that we could be living in. And, why not go there? Like, let's go there. In fact, we know writers who are already there. We know artists who are already there.”
This episode features Kate Wolf, one of the founding editors of the Los Angeles Review of Books https://lareviewofbooks.org/and a critic whose work has appeared in publications including The Nation, n+1, Art in America, Frieze. Wolf is currently an Editor at Large of the LARB and a co-host and producer of its weekly radio show and podcast, The LARB Radio Hour. In conversation with Sky Goodden, Wolf discusses Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971) and what she took from it for her own writing practice: “There are many pleasures, as there are pains, but I think the pleasure of writing is unwinding an opinion, a point of view that’s latent inside of you and can become fully expressed. Especially in criticism,” Wolf adds, “the kind of closing mechanism that your brain sometimes furnishes for you where something becomes a story, both by grammar and by very minute plotting … this turn of the key in the door is immensely satisfying.” Like, "wow, I’m so glad I noted this because now I can remember it.” Thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and to Chris Andrews for assistant production. Many thanks to the National Gallery of Canada https://www.gallery.ca/ and the Sobey Art Foundation https://sobeyartfoundation.com/en/ for their support.
Drew Kahu'āina Broderick https://drewbroderick.com/ (Kanaka 'Ōiwi) joins Lauren Wetmore in conversation about Māhealani Dudoit's fundamental text, “Carving a Hawaiian Aesthetic,” published in the first issue of 'Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal – He ‘oia mau nō kākou', which Dudoit co-founded in 1998. Broderick, an artist, curator, and educator from Mōkapu, O'ahu, champions the text, saying "Kanaka 'Ōiwi don't have a lot of writing about our recent stories of art, so the few texts that do exist become more significant with time because they function as rare points of reference that we can all share when we're reconstructing our own histories." Broderick discusses challenges faced by Native Hawaiians around stories of their art within institutional settings and the role of writing in his own practice: “I'm an artist, but I have to write now because the work that I make, no matter how understood it is by the communities that I'm a part of, if it’s not written about it doesn’t really exist for a certain audience ... Writing for me is a way to no longer have to waste time explaining what I already know.” On the occasion of this episode and especially following the fires in Hawai’i, we encourage listeners to visit the Puʻuhonua Society http://www.puuhonua-society.org/ and consider making a donation. Thanks to our Editor, Jacob Irish and Assistant Producer, Chris Andrews.
This episode features an interview with Sháńdíín Brown (Diné), continuing our series talking to participants in the Momus residency "Estuaries: An International Indigenous Art Criticism Residency https://momus.ca/momus-emerging-critics-residency/" co-hosted with Forge Project. Lauren Wetmore talks to Sháńdíín Brown, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and the first Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, about two very different texts written almost a century apart: Laura Tohe's "There is No Word for Feminism in My Language" (2000) and Uriah S. Hollister's "The Navajo and His Blanket" (1903). Brown speaks about these two texts in the context of the exhibition she has curated Diné Textiles: Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions(They Are Beautifully Dressed), which opens in early September at the RISD Museum. In highlighting the important role of women in Navajo culture, and Brown's own work as a facilitator of that culture, she speaks against racist writing about Indigenous art: "When someone so boldly says 'the Navajos are going to go extinct,'" Brown says of Hollister's text, "you're like, me being here, having Native people in museums, having Native people invited to be collaborators, and working in art history is a big deal." Diné Textiles: Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh (They Are Beautifully Dressed) curated by Sháńdíín Brown, will be on view from September 2nd, 2023 to September 29th, 2024. Thanks to our Editor, Jacob Irish; Assistant Producer, Chris Andrews; and many thanks to Gulf Coast Magazine https://gulfcoastmag.org/'s Toni Beauchamp Critical Art Writing Prize https://www.uh.edu/class/giving/giving-news/toni-beauchamp-critical-art-writing-prize-announced/#:~:text=The%20Toni%20Beauchamp%20Prize%20recognizes,arts%20in%20Houston%20and%20Texas. for their support.
Throughout the season, Lauren Wetmore and Sky Goodden will speak with participants of the Momus residency, “Estuaries: An International Indigenous Art Criticism Residency https://momus.ca/momus-emerging-critics-residency/,” created with Forge Project https://forgeproject.com/ and led by Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoa) and Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish). To launch this series, Wetmore speaks with writer and curator Megan Tamati-Quennell https://sharjahart.org/sharjah-art-foundation/people/megan-tamati-quennell, who is of Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu, KātiMāmoe, and Waitaha Māori descent and is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Māori and Indigenous Art at Museum of New Zealand | Te Papa Tongarewa https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/ in Wellington, New Zealand. Wetmore and Tamati-Quennell discuss a 2006 text on artist Michael Riley http://www.michaelriley.com.au/michael-riley/ by Australian historian Nikos Papastergiadis http://nikos.papastergiadis.com/, as well as Tamati-Quennell’s own writing and research, where she makes use of "Whakapapa," a knowledge system that binds all Māori people. "The joy is being able to put something into the world, and honor some people, and maybe shift some ground,” says Tamati-Quennell about her ongoing work.
To launch our sixth season, Lauren Wetmore interviews Sky Goodden on a book that has recently got her all "twirled up." They discuss Art Writing in Crisis https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/art-writing-in-crisis/ (Sternberg Press, 2021) which sits adjacent to an exhausting list of books on art criticism in crisis and points instead to the emancipatory potential of criticism, and, as Goodden and Lauren term it, the "present imperfect" of a field actively redefining itself. "I think it's important to understand what art writing and criticism has recently been in order to have a sense of its future," reflects Goodden. "However, I find that, for decades now, we can get so stuck in what it's been, we never get to the second part." All thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer). Our deepest appreciation to this episode's advertisers: Plural Contemporary Art Fair https://www.plural.art/en and Maleko Mokgosi: https://agyu.art/project/mokgosi/ Imaging Imaginations https://agyu.art/project/mokgosi/ at the Art Gallery of York University. Look for us on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9tb211cy5jYS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5i3zzCD5YPIXWuiL1IA5aL, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/momus-the-podcast, iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/momus-the-podcast/id1342481337, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
The finale of Season 5 features a conversation between writer, art critic, and co-founder of ARTS.BLACK, Jessica Lynne, and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi about her new book Feels Right: Black Queer Women and the Politics of Partying in Chicago https://www.dukeupress.edu/feels-right(Duke UP, 2022). An “art-adjacent academic,” Adeyemi is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and Director of The Black Embodiment Studio at the University of Washington. Lynne speaks to Adeyemi about writing an ethnography of how Black queer women in Chicago use dance to assert their physical and affective rights to the city. Their conversation looks at the pleasures (and challenges) of working between the classroom and the dancefloor in order to pay a different kind of attention to Black queer women's lives. "What pleasures are sweeter than talking with your friends about the brilliant things they write, create, and offer to us" says Lynne. Our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Jessica Lynne and Dr. Kemi Adeyemi for their contribution to our fifth season finale. Many thanks, as well, to Cui Jinzhe https://cuijinzhe.com/home.html for her support. Look for us on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9tb211cy5jYS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5i3zzCD5YPIXWuiL1IA5aL, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/momus-the-podcast, iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/momus-the-podcast/id1342481337, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
For the penultimate episode of Season 5, Sky Goodden interviews Cecilia Alemani https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022/director, the Artistic Director of the 59th Venice Biennale. After three years of research and commissioning (an extended period of preparation, due to the pandemic) and 7 months of The Milk of Dreams https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022 being open to an immense public, Alemani takes a rearview look onto a show that responded to—and endured—several seismic shocks over the course of its run, and was, in so many respects, unprecedented. She touches on "history knocking on the door of the biennial" with regards to both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and the ways in which she embedded history in the exhibition, in turn. She also speaks to the impact of art writing, both its influence on a longer-researched edition of the biennial—one "curated from a desk"—but also in terms of the reviews, too, some of which underscored the need for more female-driven programming. Perhaps most poignantly, Alemani remembers the slow time of this show's creation, and her drawing on sensorial and somatic influences, however unconsciously, as she worked at a remove from artists' studios. "I think [the biennial] was a reaction to what I missed the most." Our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Cecilia Alemani for her contribution to our fifth season. This conversation is presented in collaboration with Art Toronto https://arttoronto.ca/home/; our deepest thanks to them for in part making this possible. Many thanks to Gallery 44 https://www.gallery44.org/for their support. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
On the occasion of her first book of collected art writings, Malleable Forms http://arpbooks.org(ARP Books), Meeka Walsh, editor of Border Crossings https://bordercrossingsmag.com/ magazine, speaks to guest-host Jarrett Earnest http://www.jarrettearnest.com/about-1.html about geographic isolation, the eroticism of art writing, her connection with an emerging spiritual lineage, and about a set of relationships driving her engagement with art. In this far-ranging and generous conversation around publishing, editing, looking, and listening, Walsh reflects, "I'm happiest when I'm writing." Meeka Walsh is a writer, art critic, editor and curator who has had a major influence on the arts in Canada. She is the editor of Border Crossings, an internationally renowned and award-winning quarterly magazine that investigates contemporary culture. Jarrett Earnest is the author of What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/What-it-Means-to-Write-About-Art/Jarrett-Earnest/9781941701898 (David Zwirner Books, 2018); editor of Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings 1988-2017 by Peter Schjeldahl (Abrams, 2019), The Young and Evil: Queer Modernism in New York, 1930-1955 (David Zwirner 2020), and Devotion: today's future becomes tomorrow archive (PUBLIC books, 2022), among others. His criticism and long-form interviews have appeared in New York Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, Vulture, The Village Voice, Los Angeles Review of Books, Art in America, New York Magazine, and many exhibition catalogues and other publications. In 2021 Earnest was awarded a Dorothea and Leo Rabkin prize for visual arts journalism. Our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Jarrett Earnest and Meeka Walsh for their contribution to our fifth season. Many thanks to SFU Galleries http://www.sfu.ca/galleries.html for their support; you can listen to their ten-part radio program Listening to Pictures: Artists on the Art Collection, https://www.sfu.ca/galleries/special-projects/current/ListeningtoPictures.html featuring artist voices with lived experience on the West Coast. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/.
In the introduction to Ben Davis’s new book, a bracing and perspectival collection of essays titled Art in the After-Culture http://www.benadavis.com/after-culture (Haymarket Books), he reflects that “the only thing that has grown faster than the demands on art has been doubt that art can respond adequately to those demands.” In a generous and thoughtful conversation with Sky Goodden, Davis expands on those cultural tensions that exacerbate an already fraught cultural dialogue, and touches on other central themes to this collection of writing, including the economic structures that inform contemporary art and its technologies, the roots of cultural appropriation, the context collapse of our critical reception, and the ambient shifts in contemporary art's 'connoisseurship'. Of course, this is also a conversation about writing. In discussing a book that has taken the better part of a decade to come out, and has required significant rewriting as Davis responded to a shape-shifting present, he reflects, “It’s a process that resembles depression in the psychoanalytic sense. You feel, for a long period of time, that you have this giant object, inexpressible, inexpressible presence in your life that can’t be expressed, that hangs over you like a dark cloud. I don't have a life hack around that except to say that I think it really helps to believe in what you're doing.” Ben Davis is the National Art Critic at artnet News, where he’s also a senior editor. His first book, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, came out in 2013 (Haymarket Books) and, as one artist put it, delivered "a truth-bomb of a book.” Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/.
"We are post-purity," observes Arushi Vats, a Delhi-based writer and inaugural fellow of the Momus/Eyebeam Critical Writing Fellowship https://momus.ca/critical-writing-fellowship/. Rooted in field research and expanded through poetics, Vat's text Exit the Rehearsal: A Body in Delhi http://runway.org.au/arushi-vats, published by Runway Journal, is a precise yet capacious meditation on our "epoch of waste"— ecocide, legacy waste, and the Anthropocene in which Vats suggests that what we waste is "highly proximate, right under your skin, in your gut, and there is something radical in accepting that this is a part of your lifecycle." In this interview with Lauren Wetmore, Vats discusses building a text from both a bodily and civic curiosity, and why sometimes, when writing about culture, it is important to leave the artworks out.
This month, Sky Goodden speaks with Rahel Aima https://rahelaima.com/, a prolific critic, art writer, and Associate Editor at Momus. We focus on a text Aima published in Momus, “Depleting Felix Gonzales-Torres https://momus.ca/depleting-felix-gonzales-torres/” (July 2020), that takes aim at “a mammoth exhibition” of the late Gonzalez-Torres’s 1990 work Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner). Aima writes “In a move taken right out of the influencer marketing playbook,” Andrea Rosen and David Zwirner, who co-represent his estate, shipped the piece around the world to collectors who would then display and “document them for the ‘gram.” While Gonzales-Torres’s work conjures a body through accumulation and depletion, “we can understand the exhibition as an extension of overwhelmingly white, moneyed arts professionals and their tendency to trivialize Black and Indigenous death by trying to relate it to the art world.” Aima engages us in a gripping conversation about writing, including the discomfort of penning a polemic that goes viral.
This month, Sky Goodden speaks with Rahel Aima, a prolific critic, art writer, and Associate Editor at Momus. We focus on a text Aima published in Momus, “Depleting Felix Gonzales-Torres” (July 2020), that takes aim at “a mammoth exhibition” of the late Gonzalez-Torres’s 1990 work Untitled (Fortune Cookie Corner). Aima writes “In a move taken right out of the influencer marketing playbook,” Andrea Rosen and David Zwirner, who co-represent his estate, shipped the piece around the world to collectors who would then display and “document them for the ‘gram.” While Gonzales-Torres’s work conjures a body through accumulation and depletion, “we can understand the exhibition as an extension of overwhelmingly white, moneyed arts professionals and their tendency to trivialize Black and Indigenous death by trying to relate it to the art world.” Aima engages us in a gripping conversation about writing, including the discomfort of penning a polemic that goes viral.
Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Lithuanian curator and writer Raimundas Malašauskas https://kadist.org/people/raimundas-malasauskas/ resigned as curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Bienniale, along with participating artists Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov, citing the war as “politically and emotionally unbearable.” Using his letter of resignation https://www.instagram.com/p/CafBdqHglG4/, which Malašauskas posted to Instagram on February 27th, Lauren Wetmore interviews him about what led to this decision—“I started from my experience of being in the Empire and not wanting to go back”—and the complexities of its reception within different networks of impact across the international art world, the Russian political and cultural regime, and Malašauskas’s Lithuanian community. With this episode Momus both condemns the Russian war on Ukraine, and echoes Malašauskas’s assertion of the existence of many “different Russias” by extending solidarity to its artists and creative communities. All our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Raimundas Malašauskas for his contribution to this season. Thanks to the Sobey Art Award https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/sobey-art-award for its support. Look for us on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9tb211cy5jYS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5i3zzCD5YPIXWuiL1IA5aL, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/momus-the-podcast, iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/momus-the-podcast/id1342481337, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Lithuanian curator and writer Raimundas Malašauskas resigned as curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Bienniale, along with participating artists Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov, citing the war as “politically and emotionally unbearable.” Using his letter of resignation, which Malašauskas posted to Instagram on February 27th, Lauren Wetmore interviews him about what led to this decision—“I started from my experience of being in the Empire and not wanting to go back”—and the complexities of its reception within different networks of impact across the international art world, the Russian political and cultural regime, and Malašauskas’s Lithuanian community. With this episode Momus both condemns the Russian war on Ukraine, and echoes Malašauskas’s assertion of the existence of many “different Russias” by extending solidarity to its artists and creative communities. All our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Raimundas Malašauskas for his contribution to this season. Thanks to the Sobey Art Award for its support. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
Days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Lithuanian curator and writer Raimundas Malašauskas https://kadist.org/people/raimundas-malasauskas/ resigned as curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Bienniale, along with participating artists Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov, citing the war as “politically and emotionally unbearable.” Using his letter of resignation https://www.instagram.com/p/CafBdqHglG4/, which Malašauskas posted to Instagram on February 27th, Lauren Wetmore interviews him about what led to this decision—“I started from my experience of being in the Empire and not wanting to go back”—and the complexities of its reception within different networks of impact across the international art world, the Russian political and cultural regime, and Malašauskas’s Lithuanian community. With this episode Momus both condemns the Russian war on Ukraine, and echoes Malašauskas’s assertion of the existence of many “different Russias” by extending solidarity to its artists and creative communities. All our thanks to Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer), and thanks especially to Raimundas Malašauskas for his contribution to this season. Thanks to the Sobey Art Award https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/sobey-art-award for its support. Look for us on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9tb211cy5jYS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5i3zzCD5YPIXWuiL1IA5aL, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/momus-the-podcast, iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/momus-the-podcast/id1342481337, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
In this episode Lauren Wetmore speaks with writer and organizer Dana Kopel https://danakopel.com/ about her widely-read article “Against Artspolitation: Unionizing the New Museum https://thebaffler.com/salvos/against-artsploitation-kopel,” published in September 2021 by . In conversation, Kopel expands on “the personal and messy dimensions” of unionizing work, and reflects on the challenges of calling out the exploitation, abuses, and hypocrisies of an art industry that, at the time, she was actively working in. She doesn’t hold back on the sacrifices made or the consequences suffered as a result of this successful union drive, but she also stresses that there is never a sole author. Kopel offers emotional and practical resources for organizing work but also acknowledges that “the fight really doesn’t end … the end point is the end of capitalism, the end of institutions, and abolition. And until we get there, this is just what we keep doing every fucking day.” We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer). Thanks especially to Dana Kopel for her contribution to this season. Look for us on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9tb211cy5jYS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/momus-the-podcast, iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/momus-the-podcast/id1342481337, and other podcast apps. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
In this episode Lauren Wetmore speaks with writer and organizer Dana Kopel about her widely-read article "Against Artspolitation: Unionizing the New Museum," published in September 2021 by The Baffler. In conversation, Kopel expands on “the personal and messy dimensions” of unionizing work, and reflects on the challenges of calling out the exploitation, abuses, and hypocrisies of an art industry that, at the time, she was actively working in. She doesn't hold back on the sacrifices made or the consequences suffered as a result of this successful union drive, but she also stresses that there is never a sole author. Kopel offers emotional and practical resources for organizing work but also acknowledges that “the fight really doesn’t end … the end point is the end of capitalism, the end of institutions, and abolition. And until we get there, this is just what we keep doing every fucking day.” We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer). Thanks especially to Dana Kopel for her contribution to this season. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
In this episode Lauren Wetmore speaks with writer and organizer Dana Kopel https://danakopel.com/ about her widely-read article “Against Artspolitation: Unionizing the New Museum https://thebaffler.com/salvos/against-artsploitation-kopel,” published in September 2021 by The Baffler. In conversation, Kopel expands on “the personal and messy dimensions” of unionizing work, and reflects on the challenges of calling out the exploitation, abuses, and hypocrisies of an art industry that, at the time, she was actively working in. She doesn’t hold back on the sacrifices made or the consequences suffered as a result of this successful union drive, but she also stresses that there is never a sole author. Kopel offers emotional and practical resources for organizing work but also acknowledges that “the fight really doesn’t end … the end point is the end of capitalism, the end of institutions, and abolition. And until we get there, this is just what we keep doing every fucking day.” We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Assistant Producer). Thanks especially to Dana Kopel for her contribution to this season. Look for us on Google Podcasts https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9tb211cy5jYS9mZWVkL3BvZGNhc3Qv, iTunes https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/momus-the-podcast/id1342481337, and other podcast apps. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign https://momus.ca/patreon/. To inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact: skygoodden@momus.ca.
In this episode Lauren Wetmore speaks with writer and organizer Dana Kopel https://danakopel.com/ about her widely-read article "Against Artspolitation: Unionizing the New Museum https://thebaffler.com/salvos/against-artsploitation-kopel," published in September 2021 by The Baffler. In conversation, Kopel expands on “the personal and messy dimensions” of unionizing work, and reflects on the challenges of calling out the exploitation, abuses, and hypocrisies of an art industry that, at the time, she was actively working in. She doesn't hold back on the sacrifices made or the consequences suffered as a result of this successful union drive, but she also stresses that there is never a sole author. Kopel offers emotional and practical resources for organizing work but also acknowledges that “the fight really doesn’t end … the end point is the end of capitalism, the end of institutions, and abolition. And until we get there, this is just what we keep doing every fucking day.”
In this episode, artist and writer Harry Dodge reads from My Meteorite, or Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing (Penguin Press, 2020). Perhaps best known as a sculptor, Dodge writes from inside the artist's life and the sometimes inchoate density of a studio practice. Tracking us through cosmic patterns and material grapplings as they intersect with family, work, and grief, this first book gives us a genre-defying memoir that succeeds, as well, as art writing. Harry Dodge is an American visual artist and writer. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, and his sculpture, drawing, and video work has been exhibited at many venues nationally and internationally, including JOAN (LA, 2018), Tufts University Art Gallery (2019), Grand Army Collective (Brookyn, 2017), and the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena (2016). His first book, My Meteorite, was published by Penguin Press in 2020. We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor), Mitra Shreeram (Assistant Producer), and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design). Thanks especially to Harry Dodge for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery for their support.
In this episode, artist and writer Harry Dodge http://harrydodge.com/ reads from My Meteorite, or Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing (Penguin Press https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/607650/my-meteorite-by-harry-dodge/, 2020). Perhaps best known as a sculptor, Dodge writes from inside the artist’s life and the sometimes inchoate density of a studio practice. Tracking us through cosmic patterns and material grapplings as they intersect with family, work, and grief, this first book gives us a genre-defying memoir that succeeds, as well, as art writing. Harry Dodge is an American visual artist and writer. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, and his sculpture, drawing, and video work has been exhibited at many venues nationally and internationally, including JOAN (LA, 2018), Tufts University Art Gallery (2019), Grand Army Collective (Brookyn, 2017), and the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena (2016). His first book, My Meteorite, was published by Penguin Press in 2020. We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor), Mitra Shreeram (Assistant Producer), and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design). Thanks especially to Harry Dodge for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery http://ellengallery.concordia.ca/?lang=en for their support.
In the first episode of Season 5, Lauren Wetmore speaks with Nigerian critic Emmanuel Iduma. He reads from “Mileage from Here: Nine Narratives," published in Todd Webb in Africa (Thames & Hudson, 2021), an exceptional presentation of Webb's previously lost photographic work, in which Iduma chose a selection of photographs and wrote directly and imaginatively both to and of them. Iduma insists on his genre-bending approach to narrative art writing as presenting “a third, or shared, space between images and text.” Emmanuel Iduma is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a travel memoir. His essays and art criticism have been published in The New York Review of Books, Aperture, Best American Travel Writing 2020, Artforum, and Art in America. His honors include a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation grant for arts writing, the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism from AICA-USA, the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory, and a Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. I Am Still with You, his memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war, is forthcoming from Algonquin (US), and William Collins (UK). We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor), Mitra Shreeram (Assistant Producer), and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design). Thanks especially to Emmanuel Iduma for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Sobey Award for their support. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign. And if you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact our Sales Director Chris Andrews, at chrisandrews@momus.ca.
In the first episode of Season 5, Lauren Wetmore speaks with Nigerian art writer Emmanuel Iduma, https://www.mriduma.com/ who reads from “Mileage from Here: Nine Narratives.” Known for his travel and photography writing, and for establishing what he calls “a third, or shared, space between images and text,” the selection Iduma reads from (published in an exceptional presentation of Todd Webb’s previously lost photographic work, Todd Webb in Africa https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/todd-webb-in-africa-outside-the-frame-hardcover, by Thames & Hudson, 2021) sees Iduma choose a selection of photographs and imaginatively write to, as well as of them. Emmanuel Iduma is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a travel memoir. His essays and art criticism have been published in The New York Review of Books, Aperture, Best American Travel Writing 2020, Artforum, and Art in America. His honors include a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation grant for arts writing, the inaugural Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism from AICA-USA, the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory, and a Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. I Am Still with You, his memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war, is forthcoming from Algonquin (US), and William Collins (UK). We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor) and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design). Thanks especially to Emmanuel Iduma for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Sobey Award https://www.gallery.ca/whats-on/sobey-art-award for their support.
In the penultimate episode of Season 4 – across which Momus: The Podcast has been engaging writers on the genesis and reception of a particular piece of criticism – Sky Goodden speaks with Kristian Vistrup Madsen about writing Artforum Diary through the pandemic, and bringing the historic column to a more isolated, romantic, existential, and sometimes fictional space. The conversation also touches on Madsen's first book, Doing Time: Essays on Using People (Floating Opera Press), which has just been released and features a series of "reflections about the politics of solidarity and appropriation, but also about writing itself and what happens when life is turned into art." Madsen says, "There’s such an overemphasis on representation as though representation is the sphere in which the violence takes place and not the sphere in which the violence is portrayed." We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor), Mitra Shreeram (Assistant Producer), and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design). Thanks especially to Kristian Vistrup Madsen for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Sobey Award for their support. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign. And if you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact our Sales Director Chris Andrews, at chrisandrews@momus.ca.
In the penultimate episode of Season 4 – across which Momus: The Podcast has been engaging writers on the genesis and reception of a particular piece of criticism – Sky Goodden speaks with Kristian Vistrup Madsen about writing Artforum Diary through the pandemic, and bringing the historic column to a more isolated, romantic, and literary space. The conversation also touches on Madsen's first book, Doing Time: Essays on Using People (Floating Opera Press), which has just been released and features a series of "reflections about the politics of solidarity and appropriation, but also about writing itself and what happens when life is turned into art." Madsen says, "There’s such an overemphasis on representation as though representation is the sphere in which the violence takes place and not the sphere in which the violence is portrayed." We wish to thank Jacob Irish (Editor), Mitra Shreeram (Assistant Producer), and Chris Andrews (Sales Director and Podcast Design). Thanks especially to Kristian Vistrup Madsen for his contribution to this season. And thank you to Sobey Award for their support. Look for us on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iTunes, and other podcast apps. Please consider donating through our Patreon campaign. And if you would like to inquire about advertising opportunities or other forms of support, please contact our Sales Director Chris Andrews, at chrisandrews@momus.ca.
In the penultimate episode of Season 4 – across which Momus: The Podcast has been engaging writers on the genesis and reception of a particular piece of criticism – Sky Goodden speaks with Kristian Vistrup Madsen https://kristianvistrup.dk/front%20page/writing.html about writing Artforum Diary through the pandemic, and bringing the historic column to a more isolated, romantic, existential, and sometimes fictional space. The conversation also touches on Madsen's first book, Doing Time: Essays on Using People http://moussemagazine.it/kristian-vistrup-madsen-doing-time-essays-on-using-people-2021/ (Floating Opera Press), which has just been released and features a series of "reflections about the politics of solidarity and appropriation, but also about writing itself and what happens when life is turned into art." Madsen says, "There’s such an overemphasis on representation as though representation is the sphere in which the violence takes place and not the sphere in which the violence is portrayed."
This episode gets a jump on summer with artist and filmmaker Tourmaline and writer and producer Muna Mire. In conversation, they discuss Mire’s profile of Toumaline in Frieze (October 2020) and elaborate on Tourmaline's celebration of trans histories, queer joy, community organizing, Black freedom, communing with her chosen ancestries, and what she describes as her “works of care, of lineage holding, of remembering who we really are and what we deserve.” They also delight in the everyday beauty and mysticism that holds their friendship, and the significance, for Mire, of establishing that textured sensuousness and intimacy in this text. The experience of writing and publishing in the past year is also touched on, as Mire observes, “The reason this article exists is that people set cars on fire, people burned down police precincts, and the ripple effect of that is really powerful.”
