Art of Interference

Amie Esslinger’s site-specific installation Holding Impact is currently on display in Cohen Memorial Hall on the campus of Vanderbilt University. In this program we hear from Amie and from Amanda Hellman, the director of Vanderbilt’s Art Gallery, about Amie’s artistic process, the probing questions Amie’s work asks about the relation of contemporary art and advanced science, the unique opportunities afforded to university art museums to incite research and curiosity, and the pleasures second graders bring to art venues.  

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AoI Special Editions present thought-provoking conversations about the arts as transformative media of inquiry, the role of art within the landscapes of higher education, and the interplay between artistic research, climate science, and technology development.

For more information visit: https://artofinterference.com/

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

This special edition of Art of Interference explores echoes between ancient rock and cave art and our contemporary moment. We feature the work of photographer Stephen Alvarez and visual artist Dustin Mater and discuss the role of non-profit organizations such as the Ancient Art Archive in preserving and educating the public about the oldest art on our planet. Steven and Dustin will join host Lutz Koepnick for this conversation, as will Steph Welsh, the Executive Director to the Ancient Art Archive, and Leah Lowe, Professor of Theater at Vanderbilt University, and the Director of the Curb Director. 
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AoI Special Editions present thought-provoking conversations about the arts as transformative media of inquiry, the role of art within the landscapes of higher education, and the interplay between artistic research, climate science, and technology development.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

In the final installment of Art of Interference’s first season, we feature a contemplative conversation with Cannupa Hanska Luger, an artist of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota heritage, who speaks with us about the practice of water protection. We also hear from curator Patricia Norby, who recently organized the Water Memories exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as Winona LaDuke and Autumn Peltier, two activists whose work revolves around protecting the sacred relationship between humans and water. After nine episodes of thinking through water and its many forms, this episode examines how Native artists and activists are fighting for the right to access clean water—a right that Native populations are disproportionately denied.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

“Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon,” wrote poet Edward Thomas in the trenches of the first World War. Today’s episode deals with two different sorts of grief: climate grief, as inspired by composer Jamie Perera’s Anthropocene in C Major, and pandemic grief, which he tackled in his follow-up project, Sonification. Today’s episode explores how we might utilize grief productively to make change, and considers the importance of interrogating what it means to consider ourselves the antagonists in a climate change narrative. 

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

In this week’s episode, the Art of Interference team explores the magic and allure of snow as a creative medium. We speak with international snow artist Simon Beck, whose large-scale snow-shoe drawings transform winter landscapes into geometric wonders. Environmental scientist George Duffy helps us to break down the science of snow and the various threats posed to snowy climes in an age of global warming. We reflect on the cultural impact of snow’s disappearance in Arctic regions and on the relationship between the plurality of snow as an atmospheric phenomenon and the vocabulary used to describe it. Most of all, we consider how snow’s capacity to transform the environment into a blank slate inspires all sorts of creative responses—it’s an ecological relationship that stirs our deepest memories of childhood play and instincts toward imaginative world-building.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

“If one looks at a glacier long enough,” the Icelandic author Halldor Laxness once wrote, “words cease to have any meaning on this earth.” In this episode of Art of Interference, we put Laxness’s observation to the test. We meet Montreal-based artist Jessica Houston and climate scientist Bruno Tremblay to discuss Letter to the Future, a 1,000-year project collaborating with the ice in Antarctica to invite reflections about our planet’s past, present, and future. We speak about the project’s ambitions, the pleasures and challenges of working in the arctic region, and what art—and words—can do to address the perils of climate change today. 

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

For this episode musicologist Joy Calico joins Lutz Koepnick as co-host to discuss contemporary projects dedicated to the planet’s oceans in distress. We speak with Juliana Snapper and her collaborator Andrew Infanti about their unique opera,You Who Will Emerge from the Flood. A soprano who combines radical vocal techniques and improvisation, Snapper’s underwater performances not only push the operatic medium to its extreme limits but ask tough questions about the role of music and art in face of our planetary crises. We also hear from media scholar and ocean humanist Melody Jue about what she calls our terrestrial bias and how we can change our relation to the planet’s troubled oceans—and the environment in general—if we assumed the perspective of a scuba diver.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

In this episode, we delve into the fascinating world of rivers as we talk to artist Carolina Caycedo, whose work contemplates human and river relationships by breaking down boundaries between activism and artmaking. Additionally, we discuss the destructive effects of damming with geomorphologist Frank Magilligan (Dartmouth), before further discussing Caycedo’s works with curator Carla Acevedo-Yates and art historian Lisa Blackmore.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

Our fourth episode takes a look under the hood of what we understand as interference. We feature the work of German artist and experimental musician Carsten Nicolai to discuss analogies between water and sound, acoustical and aquatic waves. We hear from Hawaiian scholar and surfer Karin Amimoto Ingersoll about the art of attuning one’s body to the waves of the ocean and communicating with the elements. And we survey Western ideas of freedom and key experiments in modern physics to propose a new concept of interference, of acting and being acted upon, that reflects our world of human-made climate emergencies—a concept for which artists such as Nicolai provide intriguing models.

This episode is co-hosted by Emma Reimers and Lutz Koepnick.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/

This third episode of Art of Interference features artist Eve Mosher whose project High Water Line reflects on the ever-more common experience of living in flood-prone areas. In our conversation, we talk about:

• the importance of engaging communities in complex climate issues,
• understanding storm predictions,
• and the importance of the imagination in facing the perils of present and future.

We also hear about:

• a team of researchers at Vanderbilt University building complex models to research urban floodings caused by climate change,
• and the role of floods in different mythologies and what we can possibly still learn from them.   

This episode is co-hosted by Tori Hoover and Emma Reimers.

For more information about she show, as well as the artists, the experts, the music, and additional materials featured in each episode, visit: https://artofinterference.com/