Art Practical Audio

As a little girl, I once dreamed of becoming a research scientist. It never happened, but I did spend a considerable amount of time in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry learning the intricacies of clinical research. While I never became the doctor my mother wished me to be, the desire to understand science, where we come from, and the internal workings of our various systems never cease to amaze me. In this episode, @_emotionalbaggage liked your post, I explore the artistic practice of artist Ani Liu and how she re-imagines portraiture and explores the translation between virtual to physical. In Liu’s most recent work, Real Virtual Feelings (2018), she examines how the digital realm affects our cognition and body chemistry. In essence, Liu shows the direct relationship of what happens inside our bodies directly affects our behaviors, intentions, and expectations. Yet Lui’s work is a part of a larger body of work of artists working at the intersections of art, science, and technology. The SubRosa collective has engaged in speculative and imaginative practices of how biomaterial can be used as artistic mediums for quite some time.

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It’s sad but true: all good things must come to an end. In their final episode of what are you looking at?, hosts Jay and Elena reflect on all the highs this past year has brought, revisit their all-time favorite segments, and interview their ultimate art crush Tschabalala Self.

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On this episode of the podcast, I talk with Oakland-based artist Katie Dorame. Dorame primarily works in painting and drawing to weave together elements from classic and camp Hollywood movies, genre fiction, and archival research to create narratives that explore colonialism and Native American pop-culture representations, leavened with moments of humor. Her work complicates this season’s theme of “movement,” challenging us to remember that movement is defined by the places moved through or into; that the power to enter in to a space is not the same as being welcomed in; and that the narratives that shape our knowledge of those journeys are a potential site to reclaim agency. In one of her signature series, Alien Apostles, Franciscan priests are depicted as invading outer space entities, terrorizing California’s Native peoples and facing staunch resistance. In Pirates & Sea Ghouls, she populates scenes from swashbuckling pirate cinema with Native American actors including Irene Bedard, Wes Studi, and Tantoo Cardinal, reimagining those oceanic Western fictions as a site for indigenous centered adventure. In our conversation we discuss the sources of her work; the compression of past, present, and future; and how painting suits her need for a reclusive practice.

Katie Dorame is a visual artist, primarily working in painting, born in Los Angeles, currently living and working in Oakland. Dorame’s work has been exhibited at Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles, Southern Exposure, Galería de la Raza, Incline Gallery, and the Thacher Gallery in San Francisco as well as the Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College in New York. She received her MFA from the California College of the Arts and her BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is an Indigenous artist of mixed descent, and member of the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe of California.

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One of the most memorable 2018 Super Bowl television commercials speculated on the loss of Alexa’s voice. At first, the viewer watches a woman at home, commanding the Amazon artificial-intelligence device to provide information. But the woman is surprised when the automaton belts out a cough and goes silent. Back at Amazon headquarters, the Alexa team reassures CEO Jeff Bezos of the backup plan, which entails the use of celebrities such as Gordon Ramsey and Cardi B to fill in for Alexa. Consumers requesting Alexa’s assistance are met with a slew of comical responses. The commercial aims to show the inadequacy and unpredictably of the human as a machine. In this episode, “Not So Artificial Intelligence,” I examine the ways in which assistive technology has become a new terrain for artists like Trisha Baga, Stephanie Dinkins, and Cara deFabio. Each artist has incorporated the use of assistive technology to explore human emotional labor as well as the slippery nature of language. For instance, in deFabio’s performance, Virtual Girlfriend (2017), the artist conducted extensive research on the crowdsourced labor of providing digital companionship to strangers around the world. Baga, meanwhile, examines what might happen when we develop an intimate relationship with a virtual assistant, in her work Mollusca & The Pelvic Floor (2018). The essay titled Telegraphy’s Corporeal Fictions, by the scholar Katherine Stubb, is a point of departure for the episode. Stubb’s work centered on phone operators, who were often women, as the providers of both connectivity and emotional support to the listener.

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In this episode, Elena and Jay reflect on the decades-long careers of Black artists, often overlooked or undervalued, and consider what their re-emergence in the contemporary art conversation says about our current moment and what it means for the future. And in the most cyclical of fashions, they provide tips for surviving your Saturn return but choose artwork that they’d willingly die for.

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In this episode of the podcast, I talk with artist, curator, and cultural organizer Nancy Hom. For decades, Nancy has served as an anchor and mentor in the Asian American artistic community, creating platforms to support artists, bring together people, and advance social justice work. From her early artistic and activist work in New York as a co-founder of the Asian American Media Collective and as part of Asian Women United, to her work with San Francisco’s Kearny Street Workshop, Nancy has dedicated her life to building institutional resources for the Asian American community and movements. We talk about her recent installations that take the form of collectively shaped, ephemeral mandala sculptures and the ways that practice reflects the worldview and spirituality that she built through decades of work in Asian American arts movements.

Nancy Hom is an artist, writer, and cultural organizer. Based in San Francisco, she has served as an Executive Director for Kearny Street Workshop and was co-founder of the Asian American Media Collective in New York City. Nancy received her BFA in Illustration and Visual Communication from Pratt Institute. She is an internationally exhibited artist and has worked with many Bay Area community arts groups, including Galeria de la Raza and Japan Art and Media Workshop. Her archive and papers are collected in the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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Subscribe to Art Practical on iTunes to catch (un)making as soon as it publishes, or look for it here every other Wednesday! #APaudio. Check us out on Instagram at @un_making.

With the popularity of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos on YouTube and social-media platforms, sound has become an integral part of understanding and exploring embodiment. Yet the fascination with sound has a long history beyond the digital realm. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art new-media curator, Rudolf Frieling, aptly described The 40 Part Motet by the artist Janet Cardiff as “sound as sculpture.” In a similar vein, this episode seeks to explore the history and convergence of analog and digital technologies in the production of experimental sound. The show’s topic is also inspired by Jonathan Sterne’s research and scholarship on the MP3 format, which reveals not only the evolution of the MP3 but also how this sonic commodity produced a science of sound connected to telephony and music and drew distinctions between public and private sound. In this episode, sound as a medium for creative practice and inquiry is examined through a conversation with the artist and scholar, Anna Friz.

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Subscribe to Art Practical on iTunes to catch PRNT SCRN as soon as it publishes! Check us out on Instagram (@prnt_scrn_ap) and Twitter (@PRNTSCRN1). #APaudio.

PRNT SCRN is a podcast hosted by Dorothy R. Santos about bridging the gaps between analog, new media, and digital art practices. The first official episode launches on artpractical.com on October 24th!

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Twitter: @PRNTSCRN1

Dorothy R. Santos is a Filipina American writer and curator whose research interests include digital art, computational media, and biotechnology. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, she holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco and received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow. Her work appears in art21, Rhizome, Hyperallergic, Ars Technica, Vice Motherboard, and SF MOMA’s Open Space. Her essay “Materiality to Machines: Manufacturing the Organic and Hypotheses for Future Imaginings,” was published in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture. She serves as a co-curator for REFRESH (in partnership with Eyebeam) and works as the Program Manager for the Processing Foundation.

On this episode, Jay and Elena visit Bay Area Now 8, the YBCA triennial exhibition, and talk about faves and feelings. From work that complicates the relationship between past and present to work that’s just plain complicated. The hosts look at the fine line between art crushes and art conundrums. Let’s just say there are a lot of feelings in this episode, a lot to unpack, and a lot of talk about...crime?

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In this (un)making episode, we talk with Ho Chi Minh City-based artist, curator, and cultural organizer Dinh Q. Lê. Lê is probably best known for his photo weavings that interlace Western representations of the American war in Vietnam, from Hollywood films to photojournalists’ documentation. His use of a traditional mat weaving technique, taught to him by his aunt, breaks apart and reassesses those fragmentary depictions through a Vietnamese lens.

Along with those iconic pieces, Lê has explored issues of migration, trauma, collective memory, and global conflict through videos and photographs. We spoke briefly about one of the pieces, The Colony, which mixes drone footage of guano mining on the Chincha islands, video of Chinese vessels harassing Vietnamese boats in the South China Sea, and standoffs between the US and Chinese planes in international airspace to explore the human and ecological impact of global capital against the backdrop of the continuing neo-imperial struggles for territory and control.

Our discussion of his current solo exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, True Journey is Return, serves as a jumping off point for a conversation about the forced departure of Vietnamese refugees in the wake of the American War in Vietnam and the return of many in the community to the home of their births, including Lê himself. We talk about how these journeys have impacted his work and expanded his worldview, the visual strategies he uses to contend with images, and the rebuilding of collective cultural memories.

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Subscribe to Art Practical on iTunes to catch (un)making as soon as it publishes, or look for it here every other Wednesday! Check us out on Instagram at @un_making. #APaudio