Art Unquoted

Art Unquoted

By Esenija Bannan & Charlotte DesagaSociety & CultureEducationArtsPhilosophyVisual Arts
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Art Unquoted episodes

  • Bonus Episode: Bluete
    in German language
    Ausgangspunkt ist eine Begegnung mit „Rosa Canina“ (1990) von herman de vries: Geschnittene Rosenzweige machen sichtbar, was von einer Rose jenseits ihrer Blüte bleibt.
    Themen dieser Bonusfolge:
    - Gustav Theodor Fechners „Nanna oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen“ und die Grenzen unseres Zugangs zu pflanzlichem Erleben.
    - Elektrische und chemische Signalprozesse in Pflanzen – und warum biologische Koordination kein wissenschaftlicher Beweis für bewusstes Empfinden ist.
    - herman de vries’ Auseinandersetzung mit Fechner und seine Arbeit mit Blättern, Steinen und Bodenproben.
    - Sammeln und Ordnen als künstlerische Entscheidungen, die Aufmerksamkeit auf Licht, Wetter, Ort und Zufall lenken.
    Im Mittelpunkt steht eine Haltung: genau hinsehen und Pflanzen als eigene Lebensformen ernst nehmen, ohne vorzugeben, ihre Erfahrung zu kennen.
    6 min
  • Selma Selman: Scrap Metal, Labour and Transformation
    How materials, family history and labour resist being made invisible

    Esenija Bannan and Charlotte Desaga discuss Selma Selman’s portraits on scrap metal, the value and visibility of labour, Roma history and the works Mercedes Matrix and Dirt 0. The episode follows how materials carry family history and social relations into the gallery without being smoothed into an easy story.

    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/selma-selman/

    8 min
  • Kubra Khademi: Context, Allegory and Artistic Transformation
    How biography, formal choices, and political context shape the work

    Kubra Khademi’s project Let us believe in the beginning of the hot season inverts Forugh Farrokhzad’s feminist poem and combines gouache drawings, photo collages, and film. Esenija Bannan and Charlotte Desaga discuss its allegory of US–Afghanistan relations, its collaboration across Paris and New York, and the relationship between biography, context, and artistic form. They also consider Khademi’s 18kg performance and her contribution to WIR at the German Bundestag.

    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/kubra-khademi/

    13 min
  • JeeMin Kim, Seoul and What Remains Unread
    A first encounter with Seoul through art, memory, place and the limits of looking from afar.
    Esenija Bannan reflects on her first visit to Seoul, tracing a path from JeeMin Kim’s Prototype Temples at Hwigyumjae to Frieze Seoul and the artist-run and non-profit spaces beyond the fair. She considers how wood, sound, memory and movement shape attention—and how a city’s art scene emerges through different places, speeds and forms of encounter.
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/episode-x/
    9 min
  • Agnes Martin: Painting with Her Back to the World
    How grids, imperfection, and inner vision make the invisible perceptible.
    Charlotte Desaga and Esenija Bannan discuss Agnes Martin’s statement, “I paint with my back to the world.” They explore her hand-drawn grids, imperfect lines, the New Mexico works titled With My Back to the World, and the way her paintings bring a non-visible kind of beauty into view.
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/episode-10/
    9 min
  • Jordan Wolfson: The Practical and the Intuitive
    How technology becomes a vessel for desire, embodiment, and what resists explanation.
    Charlotte Desaga and Esenija Bannan discuss Jordan Wolfson’s unsettling, immersive works, with particular attention to Little Room at the Fondation Beyeler. They consider how practical systems—technology, code and mechanics—might carry intuition, desire and experiences that resist explanation, moving between the uncanny body, internet culture and the mystery of being human.
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/episode-09/
    12 min
  • Rebecca Horn: Energies in Motion
    How fragile machines make invisible forces tangible
    Charlotte Desaga and Esenija Bannan revisit Rebecca Horn’s idea of energies passing through us. They consider how her trembling machines, films, used objects, feathers, and eggshells give invisible forces a precise, fragile, and human form—and how sensitivity connects body, machine, and emotion.
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/episode-08/
    8 min
  • Ohio Architecture and Cinema: Hamilton’s Quiet Presence
    How ordinary buildings become cinematic through stillness, light, and attention
    What makes a place cinematic? Esenija Bannan moves from the modernist architecture of Columbus, Indiana, to the brick warehouses and Victorian storefronts of Hamilton, Ohio, reflecting on stillness, loneliness, memory, and the way Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind reveals the quiet visual power of an overlooked town.
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/bonus-episode-iv/
    7 min
  • V&A East Storehouse: Curating Freedom
    What changes when museum visitors choose the collection—and the curator steps aside?
    Charlotte Desaga reflects on the V&A East Storehouse, where visitors can browse a quarter million objects and request selected works for private viewing. Three objects from the Rhineland lead into a wider question: does choosing freely expand our horizons, or does it make the museum resemble a cultural marketplace?
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/bonus-episode-a-river-of-time-a-warehouse-of-culture/
    9 min
  • Cornelia Parker: Beauty, Destruction and the Uncanny
    How violent transformations unsettle the objects and meanings we take for granted
    Charlotte Desaga and Esenija Bannan discuss how Cornelia Parker transforms everyday objects through crushing, explosions and dissolution. From Thirty Pieces of Silver and Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View to The Maybe and Pornographic Drawings, they consider beauty, violence, the uncanny, psychoanalysis and the viewer’s gaze.
    Read the full transcript: https://artunquoted.com/artist/episode-07/
    10 min

About Art Unquoted

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Art Unquoted is a podcast about contemporary art hosted by Charlotte Desaga and Esenija Bannan. Both bring decades of professional experience working with artists, museums, and galleries internationally.