The Conversation Art Podcast

James Delbourgo, professor of history at Rutgers University and author of A Noble Madness: the Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now, talks about:

Why he's written about contemporary art so extensively, as a history academic who's very interested in the present, going to galleries and wondering who collectors are right now, raising a lot of questions about archetypes for what would become a big part of his book; how collectors can not only be defined as powerful, they can also be defined as weak, unhinged and deranged, among other things; how the profile of the collector, over time, is more a corkscrew than an arc, with the Freudian view of the collector was seen as repressed and even dangerous, whereas the contemporary collector is seen as being more about power; how in Robert Bloch's book "Psycho," upon which the movie was based, the Norman Bates character is actually described as a collector but one who is ugly and unprepossessing, and how the Hitchcock film turned him into a charming, ingratiating figure who turns the audience on his side; how really thoroughly experiencing housed collections (prime examples are the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA, and    the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone, owned by Gabrielle d'Anunzio) was embedded in his writing the book; the collector as puppeteer, as orchestrator (and collector) of people, as William Randolph Hearst was; how encountering someone's place, and their things, is "a physical experience that constitutes the way you understand this person and your relationship to them," as James put it; and how Freudian interpretation has had such a lasting relevance over the years, even as it's gone out of fashion.

In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to Patreon Supporters of the podcast, you'll hear James talk about:

How hoarding, like the Middle Ages, has waned, and is tossed around far too lazily; the 'l' word, as in "loser," which he used to describe Robert Bloch's Norman Bates, whom he qualifies as a 'lovable loser,' particularly because collectors like Bates collect authentically, out of passion, not for financial gains; how he couldn't quite get the marketing department to change the subtitle of his book (particularly "The Dark Side" part), and why he's interested in authentic collectors, those who collect for love, with no thoughts of profits or strategy, the type of collector who he believes is vindicated in the end, as opposed to the Charles Foster Kane-type collector, who collects to accumulate; the democratization of collecting, including 'garbologists,' in which everything can, and does, get commodified; countercultural collectors, who collect things like deformed animal corpses, their own child's placentas, and other curiosities, and how they don't care what people think of them, or in fact that they want to defy popular opinion…as James put it: "their truth to self is uncompromised…by notions of taste or fine arts or utilitarianism…they're the freest people of all…they've freed themselves from the tyranny of the respectable opinion of other people;" and finally he describes an exhibition about Marie Antoinette at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (the lines to get in were staggering), a collector of shoes and porcelain and snuff boxes and furniture…who was so vilified/demonized for political reasons, as the enemy of the people…she is the classic case of the political demonization of a collector who is executed as if it would purge the suffering of her subjects; the most classic case of that political question around the collector, and how, ironically, it was her execution that made her immortal.

John Byrne, author of "Useful Art- How Activist Artists Can Change the World," and professor of Useful Art at Liverpool John Moores University's School of Art and Design, talks about:
The city of Liverpool and its art community, with about 20 total galleries, and how he fits into it; where he'll be book touring the book; a key framing in the book, being in a 'neo-liberal occupation' that we live under, which has a huge impact on the culture industries and means the financialization of essentially everything; the surprising pushback there's been at conferences and other events where Useful Art is discussed, including a lot of resistance from those in the art world who may feel that their positions of power are being threatened; the complex but far too under-considered distinction between "use value" and "aesthetic value," and why it's worth considering "use value" as a legitimate part of art-making (and which can even somehow manage to incorporate some aesthetic value); how one of the things he's interested in is having a radical re-think of what aesthetics are but also what they can be; some among many Useful Art projects, including by individual artist Tania Bruguera and Indonesian collective Ruangrupa, which curated Documenta 15, and how they came to be as a group…and, in turn, what the effect of having Ruangrupa curate that Documenta, which was an adventurous choice of curation, a role that John has heard described as "the curatorial Everest."
In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to Patreon supporters of The Conversation, John Byrne talks about:
how ruangrupa came to be, a very different trajectory as they didn't grow up in a culture with contemporary galleries or museums (though they did go to art schools abroad), but had a goal to make a living as artists through the collective, more specifically the "lumbung," equivalent to a co-operative;  how the controversy that arose from a single figure with a swastika in the much, much broader scope of ruangrupa's curation led to calls of anti-semitism which overshadowed that Documenta from an outsider's and the press's perspective, and how John believes this distraction was used by many as a way of avoiding discussing some of the core meanings and significance of ruangrupa's contributions to the vaunted art event; the importance of "switching the aperture of the Overton Window," a term he mentions several times, which is about re-orienting your settings in terms of shared understandings of what big concepts are, like Art with a capital A, and how venturing into Useful Art doesn't in any way mean excluding being an individual artist who works solo- they can exist simultaneously; it's also that if we don't open up and expand the definition of what an artist can be and art can be and who can make it, we run the risk of surrendering Art to the neoliberal occupation; his interest, back in the day when he was a young person, in DIY culture (Rough Trade Records,  et al.) and how that's a good analog for Useful Art projects; the artist Ahmet Ögüt, a former student of John's who started The Silent University, a knowledge exchange which evolved into a significant cultural platform; Tania Bruguera's project for the Tate Modern which entailed accessing/experiencing police horses and their corralling, and how inside the institution it follows certain basic and old-school protocols, whereas she also has done several projects outside the institution/into the street/community; the concept of 1:1 Scale Art, which the critic Steven Wright appropriates from a Lewis Carol story, in which a map is produced that is so elaborate that it covers everything that exists in the 'real world' of that map, and Wright takes that perspective and applies it as the idea that artists jettison making representations of the real world, and instead affecting change in the real worlds itself (one of the cruxes of the book), which the art world hasn't been able to understand because of the condition of neoliberal capture; a former student who's working on a project in which public libraries become spaces of the Commons, open to all kinds community members including especially those on the margins (whether pensioners, immigrants, etc.); and how posting some of the entries from the Association of Arte Util in open community meetings/events has been a great starting point – another bringing someone in to introduce a skill – to get people engaged in a Useful Art project and think and live artfully.

Boston-based photographer Jim Dow talks about:

The Boston art community (which is often connected to the art school and universities) and why he's lived there the great majority of his life (he lives in the house he grew up in); he's a dedicated Mass-hole- there's an edge to people there and you have break that edge; how he navigates random passersby when he's photographing for long sessions with his wooden large-view camera (his exposures range from a second to 20 minutes), with people always around him (here's a short video of a food stand guy singing tango where Jim was doing a shoot); his experiences with the difference between analog and digital photography, each of its pros and cons, and why he uses digital for documenting exhibitions which he's used for his teaching; suggestions for how to best edit documentation of your own work, which starts with photographing on your phone, to get a good sense of color that you can use as a template for your photo editing; how he used the NEA's selection process, of not using artist statements as part of the process for the initial rounds, as a tool to teach his students (including as a guest lecturer at Harvard) about how decisions are made; the Harvard student he had who wrote a study evaluating the value of photography based on economic models; two fully adults students he's had over the years, and how their stories impacted both Jim and his other, younger students; and how the odds of becoming monetarily successful artists are worse than becoming a professional baseball player, at least by one (possibly obsolete?) metric.

This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

      In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:

His own relationship to financial success as an artist, both as a teacher and a photographer, which has added up to a solid middle-class income, and how 'his photography supports his photography,' just barely; how crucial it is for artists to have day jobs; how scarcity and nostalgia play a big role in a photograph's market value; his insights on financial precarity, not only through his students but his own kids, and what he tends to advise kids to do vis-à-vis art school; how he worried about students who thought their path after leaving art school was being an art star – because of those low odds he mentioned – and meanwhile how many mature adult students he had who were in their 30s all the way up to even their 70s, and how they got so much out of his classes with the life experience they brought; how he wrote 'a million' letters of recommendation for students, always starting from scratch (no template); though he didn't want to necessarily become friends with his students, he's become good friends with about 7 of them between early 30s and early 70s; how he saw his students as "peers-in-training;" the visual sophistication of the recent college kids he taught, due to their lifelong exposure to such a vast range of imagery; how the women and the gender fluid students were infinitely more articulate than the men, in his experience; how one of his students, who grew up on a dairy farm, expressed her frustrations with class differences she experienced amidst her fellow students (read: privilege); and his next project, documenting the food stands and other businesses along north-south highway 111, using it as an opportunity to explore the 'hallway doors' along the way.

Hadley, Massachusetts and NYC artist Sarah K. Khan talks about:
How it's a "little miracle" to have a studio (a former chick coop on a farm in the 5-college area of Mass.) after so many years working in kitchens and other spaces not dedicated to her work and where she can really spread out; her short films about the immigrant experience in New York via food trucks (particularly her Queens Migrant Kitchens series), and how she was originally motivated to work in this area in 2015 as a way to follow up on the fall-out from 9/11 among the immigrant community; the challenges she had getting street vendors and other food makers in being filmed, because they were afraid of being surveilled; the films' impact on the street vendor community, including one woman who was able to grow from a street vendor stall to a brick-and-mortar restaurant (and keep the food stall active); her collaboration on 'Speak Sing Shout: We, Too, Sing America' with the animator Simon Rouby; her film and photography work in Old Dehli, one of the many world crossroads she's covered; how making things for herself, first and foremost, is a practical way of making work (this may or may not be connected to her not being trained in a BFA/MFA kind of way; she has advanced degrees in food studies and has a background in integrative medicine); and how the core of her work is talking about the migration of people, plants and ideas (often women, often domestic spaces).
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
      In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:
Sarah's background in integrative medicine, including teaching chefs about nutrition, and taught Western nutrition to Eastern practitioners;  how it's time to grow our own vegetables as a way of taking control of our own health; vegetables and herbs people can grown themselves, both as food and in teas; plant-based diets, which are followed by most of the world; how food and culture infuses the ceramics, prints and animation work she's been doing; the research and work she's been doing in southern India and how it connects with the history of 'the Sultan,' and in her case replacing that story with the Queen of Shiba; how her engagement with her own cultural lineage in her work can encourage viewers to engage with their own cultures; how she's created her own pipeline as an artist, without a BFA or MFA (having come from nutrition and science); her filming all over India (including in Nagaland in the far north) of women farmers; and how compassionate and tuned in she is to the immigrant experience.

Artist and legendary street artist Robbie Conal talks about:

His family history, including his two activist-and-politically inclined parents, his background in fighting the power; moving up to Los Osos (in San Luis Obispo County) as a permanent residence (back after the 2008 crash), but keeping a small place in L.A.; what he misses about not being in the city (he's lived in NYC and SF as well as L.A.); his first big moment with public art, through postering, which was born out of caricature paintings he was making of Ronald Reagan's cabinet, which he dubbed 'Men with No Lips,' and alighted through a large postering campaign just as Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, was opening to the public in 1986; how he's Shepard Fairey's OG, and how he was an influence on him as a future street artist (though Fairey said, "I can do that" quite confidently); his personal mantra:  "apply what you do best to what you care about most," which in his case his drawing and talking smack (does best) and American democracy (cares about most); how, to make his work quicker to keep his work temporal, he switched from oil painting to charcoal and then to acrylic with oil accents; how all his friends who have his art (mostly of terrible characters) have them in their toilets; and his most popular work, "Watching, Waiting and Dreaming," a triptych of Gandhi, the Dahli Lama and Martin Luther King.

This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:

How he's sustained himself financially over the decades outside of sales of his work, from teaching to receiving donations to his postering campaigns to lots of (young) volunteers; what he thinks about street art, and mural art, today, and the distinction between graffiti, street art and poster art, and how his reputation saved him from competing street artists when he was postering; our different respective takes on street art, and how Leon Trotsky taught him that everything is political, and street art is inherently political; what he's learned from terrible jobs: mainly, you can't make good art, let alone great art, in your spare time, while holding down a full-time job (and doing the work on the side); the most commonly asked questions he's received about postering (how many times have you been arrested?); how part of your mission as a poster is muscling up for the consequences; and what the best thing is to say to the judge when you're asked why you did it.

And for the final 15 minutes of our talk, he covers the breadth of logistics related to putting up posters in public/on the street, which he refers to as 'acts of civil disobedience.'