Dispatch

In this episode, Dispatch talks to an artist Diane Severin Nguyen about her latest exhibition, the meaning behind its philosophical title, and how she deals with the ambiguity and politics of images through merging history, narration, and subversion of the identity and symbols. 

Diane Severin Nguyen was born in California in 1990. She is an artist who uses photography and time-based media. Her photography hybridizes the organic and the synthetic into amalgam sculptures, held together by the parameters of a photographic moment, and her video work expands that moment into a layered cultural and historical context. Nguyen earned an MFA from Bard College and a BA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS, SculptureCenter, New York; Between Two Solitudes, Stereo, Warsaw; Tyrant Star, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Reoccurring Afterlife, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong; Minor twin worlds, with Brandon Ndife, Bureau, New York. Her video ‘Tyrant Star’ has been screened at Yebisu Festival, Tokyo; IFFR Rotterdam; and the New York Film Festival. Recent select group exhibitions include Made in L.A. 2020, Shanghai Biennale 2021; Metabolic Rift, Berlin Atonal, Berlin, Germany, Greater New York, MoMA PS1. Forthcoming, IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS will be exhibited at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, in May this year.

In this episode, Dispatch talks to an artist Diane Severin Nguyen about her latest exhibition, the meaning behind its philosophical title, and how she deals with the ambiguity and politics of images through merging history, narration, and subversion of the identity and symbols. 

Diane Severin Nguyen was born in California in 1990. She is an artist who uses photography and time-based media. Her photography hybridizes the organic and the synthetic into amalgam sculptures, held together by the parameters of a photographic moment, and her video work expands that moment into a layered cultural and historical context. Nguyen earned an MFA from Bard College and a BA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS, SculptureCenter, New York; Between Two Solitudes, Stereo, Warsaw; Tyrant Star, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Reoccurring Afterlife, Empty Gallery, Hong Kong; Minor twin worlds, with Brandon Ndife, Bureau, New York. Her video ‘Tyrant Star’ has been screened at Yebisu Festival, Tokyo; IFFR Rotterdam; and the New York Film Festival. Recent select group exhibitions include Made in L.A. 2020, Shanghai Biennale 2021; Metabolic Rift, Berlin Atonal, Berlin, Germany, Greater New York, MoMA PS1. Forthcoming, IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS will be exhibited at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, in May this year.

Dispatch comes to you this week from both sides of the United States with Rirkrit Tiravanija in New York and our host and partner Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran in California. The two enjoy a relaxed but contemplative conversation asking questions that Arlette finds she’s never had the opportunity to ask before as every other time the pair meets they tend to talk more about daily life and the food they share.

Instead, this talk focuses on the musings and reflections attitudes on life, on the pace of art practitioners in the world in recent times that has suddenly both slowed down and changed radically. Finally, the pair discuss Rirkrit’s path to teaching, something he’s been doing for decades but is rarely talked about or noted upon.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is known for a practice that overturns traditional exhibition formats in favor of social interactions through the sharing of everyday activities such as cooking, eating and reading. Creating environments that reject the primacy of the art object, and instead focus on use value and the bringing of people together through simple acts and environments of communal care, Tiravanija’s work challenges expectations around labour and virtuosity. Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of the Arts at Columbia University and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. He also helped establish an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located near Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Dispatch comes to you this week from both sides of the United States with Rirkrit Tiravanija in New York and our host and partner Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran in California. The two enjoy a relaxed but contemplative conversation asking questions that Arlette finds she’s never had the opportunity to ask before as every other time the pair meets they tend to talk more about daily life and the food they share.

Instead, this talk focuses on the musings and reflections attitudes on life, on the pace of art practitioners in the world in recent times that has suddenly both slowed down and changed radically. Finally, the pair discuss Rirkrit’s path to teaching, something he’s been doing for decades but is rarely talked about or noted upon.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is known for a practice that overturns traditional exhibition formats in favor of social interactions through the sharing of everyday activities such as cooking, eating and reading. Creating environments that reject the primacy of the art object, and instead focus on use value and the bringing of people together through simple acts and environments of communal care, Tiravanija’s work challenges expectations around labour and virtuosity. Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of the Arts at Columbia University and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. He also helped establish an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located near Chiang Mai, Thailand.

For the third episode of Dispatch season two, XTer Asia, partner and host Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran meets up in person with this week's guests. Young Chung and Kibum Kim are two important figures in the Los Angeles’ multicultural art scene from the Commonwealth and Council gallery. 

It’s a beautiful sunny day in Southern California. The three speakers sit in the gallery’s bright office and enjoy some homemade cookies baked by Kibum. The duo begins to talk about their alternative, and to some extent, subversive approaches of running the gallery, how to maintain their experimentation, belief and ethos in the severity of the art market, the matter of representation in art, and what it means to truly care in the relationships formed between gallerists and their artists. 

For the third episode of Dispatch season two, XTer Asia, partner and host Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran meets up in person with this week's guests. Young Chung and Kibum Kim are two important figures in the Los Angeles’ multicultural art scene from the Commonwealth and Council gallery. 

It’s a beautiful sunny day in Southern California. The three speakers sit in the gallery’s bright office and enjoy some homemade cookies baked by Kibum. The duo begins to talk about their alternative, and to some extent, subversive approaches of running the gallery, how to maintain their experimentation, belief and ethos in the severity of the art market, the matter of representation in art, and what it means to truly care in the relationships formed between gallerists and their artists. 

Today for the second episode of XTer Asia season, Dispatch is going to talk to Barcelona-based art patron Han Nefkens. Despite having a lot of mutual friends through our cross-continent network, this is the first time our host Arlette meets Han. 

The conversation will anchor to Han Nefkens’ close engagement with Asia at large. We start from the new initiative of Han Nefken's foundation with major institutions across Asia, to Han’s very first activities in the continent at the AIDS-awareness event in Bangkok, and the idea of collecting without artwork possession. 

Han Nefkens is a writer, art collector, and patron of the arts. His collection of contemporary art consists of photographs, videos, installations, and paintings by Jeff Wall, Roni Horn, Bill Viola, Shirin Neshat, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and others...

Today for the second episode of XTer Asia season, Dispatch is going to talk to Barcelona-based art patron Han Nefkens. Despite having a lot of mutual friends through our cross-continent network, this is the first time our host Arlette meets Han. 

The conversation will anchor to Han Nefkens’ close engagement with Asia at large. We start from the new initiative of Han Nefken's foundation with major institutions across Asia, to Han’s very first activities in the continent at the AIDS-awareness event in Bangkok, and the idea of collecting without artwork possession. 

Han Nefkens is a writer, art collector, and patron of the arts. His collection of contemporary art consists of photographs, videos, installations, and paintings by Jeff Wall, Roni Horn, Bill Viola, Shirin Neshat, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and others...

We inaugurate this season with X Zhu-Nowell, an Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Our host and partner Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran is in Saigon and reaches out to X in New York through a virtual screen, but the warm and honest conversation brings the two close despite the geographic gap. 

Join us as we embark with X on a discussion filled with inquiries about the power of naming and being named, along with the assistant curator’s perspectives on power. From sensorial architecture in exhibition making, to that of the particularity of identity and work title in being an art curator in American institutions. 

We inaugurate this season with X Zhu-Nowell, an Assistant Curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Our host and partner Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran is in Saigon and reaches out to X in New York through a virtual screen, but the warm and honest conversation brings the two close despite the geographic gap. 

Join us as we embark with X on a discussion filled with inquiries about the power of naming and being named, along with the assistant curator’s perspectives on power. From sensorial architecture in exhibition making, to that of the particularity of identity and work title in being an art curator in American institutions.