Interviews by Brainard Carey

Hilary Plum is the author of the novel Strawberry Fields, winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose (2018); the work of nonfiction Watchfires(2016), winner of the 2018 GLCA New Writers Award; and the novel They Dragged Them Through the Streets (2013). She has worked for a number of years as an editor of international literature, history, and politics.

She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program and is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. Recent work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Oversound, the Fairy Tale Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the author of a memoir and three novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Her new novel, Sketchtasy, was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR Books.

Her memoir, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her previous title, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book.

Her next book, The Freezer Door, will be published in fall 2020. Watch out, world…

This is her second interview, the first one can be heard here.

Daniel Giordano lives and works in Newburgh, NY.  He earned his MFA from the University of Delaware, and has shown nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Menage/rie at Super Dutchess; A Salve of Sorts at Vacation;  and Living/Breathing at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York, NY.

Giordano currently has work on view at the Karpeles Manuscript Library and Museum in Newburgh, NY, and has a forthcoming exhibition at Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver, Canada.

Danial Giordano also co-founded and runs Vicki, a project space in upstate New York.

The book mentioned in the interview is The Physics of Sorrow a book by Georgi Gospodinov. Two exhibits mentioned in the interview were one at Sardine and also at Gazebo.

Study For Brother (Biped) 2016 Glazed ceramics, cast aluminum, marzipan, Orange Tang, epoxy resin, artificial teeth, 22 x 12 x 16 inches

The Grip of Goron 2016 - 2019 Glazed ceramic, glazed brick, Orange Tang, epoxy resin, pigment, glass, enamel, acrylic, casein, fibered aluminum coating, tennis ball, tennis racquet string, tennis racquet grommet, sparklers, foam, cork, lichen, cattail, contact lense, leather, peat, 24K gold leaf, shag faux fur, steel, sewing machine needle, sewing machine cogged teeth gear belt, Megan Murphy Martinez's hair, dog ticks, hardware, 20 x 23 x 21 inches

The Krolikowski Art Duo includes Alexander Krolikowski (1982, Donetsk) and Alexandra Krolikowska  (1990, Donetsk). Since 2007, they both work exclusively in the format of duo.

They both live and work in exile (before 2014 in Sevastopol, Ukraine). At the moment they are based in Kyiv, Ukraine.

The duo Krolikowski Art is the Bonnie and Clyde in the world of art, who don't separate even in bed, constantly overcoming the Universal laws and giving the world a new challenge. Art-works of the duo are what contemporary philosophy describes as the metamodernist art, ironic and naive, romantic and conceptual at the same time. The main techniques of the duo are visual arts, installation, new media and performance. Also the duo has research in contemporary visual arts, especially photography, and writes critical articles devoted to the newest philosophy and contemporary art. Beside, Krolikowski Art lecturing about the search of a new cultural dominant in 21st century.

Alexandra Krolikowska (1990, Donetsk) is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on the socio-psychological aspect of the modern mankind life. Psychologist, graduated from Cherkasy State University, based her science work on art therapy with using film photography. Inspired by transformational functions of art, and works with problems of gender identity, sexuality, youth culture and fashion.

Alexander Krolikowski (1982, Donetsk) is a conceptual artist whose interest focuses on the view of art as an instrument of social change, contemporary religious and political studies, the study of methods of information warfare, new media and performance. Lecturer, journalist and philosopher, studied media science at the Institute of Social Education in Donetsk. Inspired by the metamodern cultural paradigm, develops this cultural theory within themes of post-truth, advertising and public space, new sincerity and empathy.

The works of duo were exhibited at the Mystetskyi Arsenal, IZOLYATSIA, Dymchuk gallery, Odessa Museum of Contemporary Art (Ukraine), DOX (Prague, Czech republic), Galata Rum Okulu (Istanbul, Turkey), Summer Gallery (Toronto, Canada), Ukrainian House (Warsaw, Poland), Korea Foundation Gallery (Seoul, Republic of Korea) and others.

Supernova project

MONEYFESTO project, 2015, Odessa Biennale, with Herbert Rometsch

My decision to “become an artist” can be broken down into two dimensions: “I was born to make art,” and “I have to do something with my life.” The first is an expression of some innate identity—that I have an artistic disposition and that making art is a manifestation of who I am—and the second is about finding a solution to a problem—that I ought to spend my life doing what I am good at and what brings me fulfillment, and that making art is how I am somehow trying to solve that problem.

I think much of my earlier work had to do with working out the first dimension: what identifies my artistic decisions as apart from any of my other decisions?; how can I reify the creative thought processes and structures and biases and attitudes that shape my own work?

The last five years, however, things have shifted to the second dimension. The show “Mom” that I did in 2013 at Kirk’s Apartment in Chicago was a bridge between the two dimensions: it started with wondering about the ways my mother has played a role in shaping my visual experience of the world, or my sense of style and taste, by the kinds of visual and sensory experiences I was conditioned to appreciate growing up, but it also was trying to make explicit the ways in which using the source material of maternal influence could in effect help work through—in real life—issues with my actual mother (to simplify: if the show was beautiful, she would feel honored, and it would bring us closer together).

Since that show, this slightly buffoonish and hyperbolic instrumentalization of the avant grade project (that art be joined into life to make it better) to make my life better by, for example, making me feel better about my use of time, exposing me to more interesting people, helping me mature and accept myself, making my parents feel proud, giving me more to offer my friends or my daughter, turning me into an honorable participant in society, helping me find meaning or rent money or a sense of direction, yadda yadda yadda—this somewhat jokey reduction—bad life + good art = good life—has been central to every new work I’ve put out there.       - Diego Leclery

The book mentioned in the Interview is Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization by Abdullah Ocalan.

Me Playing Civilization, 2014, Performance at the Whitney Biennial

Proboscis Monkey 2017 unfired clay 10 x 11 x 13 inches

Anna Bitkina is an independent curator, director, and co-founder of The Creative Association of Curators TOK, an art organization founded in 2010 with Maria Veits.

Anna lives and works between St Petersburg and The Netherlands, and she curates projects in Russia and different countries in Europe as well as in the US. She sees the curatorial practice as a multidisciplinary process that connects theory, science, philosophy, and politics in order to generate knowledge about the contemporary reality where art has an ability to articulate socio-political conditions and foster social changes.

Her curatorial research often lay between historical analysis and the political imaginary where she combines her cultural background with current life experience. In her practice, Anna explores post-Soviet conditions in contemporary Russia and remnants of Soviet history in different social spheres like public space, local governance, educational and youth policies, media landscape. She is also interested in local and global implications caused by the accelerated capitalism in the region. An ongoing public art project ‘Critical Mass’ that she initiated and curates in St Petersburg since 2010 became a platform for conducting such research and developing knowledge on post-socialist conditions. The project is divided into seasons with a focus on different problematics. Four last seasons were conducted in 2011, 2013, 2015 and in 2016-2017.

Development of speculative scenarios about possible political horizons in Russia and in the world have been central interests for her projects and projects of TOK. ‘Design Platform’ (2012-2014) and ‘School Museum: Creating History Together’ (2014-2017) conducted in one of the schools in St Petersburg aim at researching pedagogic conditions of the Russian system of education, its spatial and architectural structures and governmental strategies in shaping young citizens.

Such projects by TOK like ‘Propaganda News Machine: Creating Multiple Realities in the Media’ (2016, Flux Gallery, New York City) and  ‘States of Control’ (2017, HIAP Gallery, Helsinki) and aim at stimulating critical thinking around the topics of information manipulation, the history of propaganda, post-truth and constructing news during times of political unrest. ‘States of Control’ is scheduled to be presented at the Weisman Museum of Art in Minneapolis in March 2020.

A research-based project ‘The Russian Bar: Why Relocate? New approaches to neighborliness and interchange’ (2018-2019, series of events in various locations in Helsinki) is analyzing the conditions of global migration with a close focus on the ‘new wave’ of emigration of Russians to Finland that is since 2011 was formed due to radical changes of the political situation in Russia.

In 2014 Anna was a local contributor for the public program of Manifesta 10 with Jeremy Deller’s project ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ and with a new performance ‘Debates on Division: When the Private Becomes Public’ by artist Gluklya (Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya). During 2015-2019 the performance ‘Debates on Division’ was conducted at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam – SMBA, at the Creative Time Summit in Washington DC at the Lincoln Theater and at RAM Gallery and Deichmanske Bibliotek in Grünerløkka in Oslo. In March 2019 the project was presented for the 5th time in the Center for Fine Arts BOZAR.

Anna was a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin in 2013 -2014 and a finalist of the EUNIC competition for Russian curators with a curatorial placement in London at Artangel in 2014. Among other projects she curated are exhibitions for the 3 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009) and for the 2 Moscow International Biennale for Young Art. She also was an initiator and co-curator of a major exhibition in Russia of artists from Nordiс region: ‘Nordic Art Today: Conceptual Debts,

Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1957, Peter Cole is the author of five books of poems—most recently Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations (FSG, 2017)—and many volumes of translation from Hebrew and Arabic, medieval and modern.  Praised for his “prosodic mastery” and “keen moral intelligence” (The American Poet), and for the “rigor, vigor, joy, and wit” of his poetry (The Paris Review), Cole has created a body of work that defies traditional distinctions between old and new, foreign and familiar, translation and original. He is, Harold Bloom writes, “a matchless translator and one of the handful of authentic poets in his own American generation.” Among his many honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Jewish National Book Award, the PEN Prize in Translation, and, in 2007, a MacArthur Fellowship. He divides his time between Jerusalem and New Haven.

Adam Simon is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, known both for his paintings and for public projects around the presentation and distribution of art. Simon’s paintings mine cultural phenomena; newspaper layout and content, stock photography, iconic images from art history and (most recently) corporate logos. In a 2012 interview with James Kalm, Simon said, “I’m a conceptual artist first, I’m a figurative artist when I’m making drawings for the stencils and when I’m actually painting I’m an abstract painter.”

Simon’s public projects began with Four Walls, an artists forum and exhibition space that featured one-evening exhibitions with discussion. Simon co-directed Four Walls with Michele Araujo in Hoboken, NJ (1984-1988) and later with Mike Ballou in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY (1990-1998).

Other of Simon’s public projects included the online Fine Art Adoption Network, in collaboration with Art in General (NYC). FAAN launched in 2006 and ended in 2019. Adopters received permanent ownership of artworks at no cost. Artists selected adopters from those who solicited them through the site, often after several email exchanges. Over 350 artists participated and more than 600 artworks were adopted.

Other projects included a series of public conversations between artists in various NYC galleries, a very short-lived talent agency that offered the services of trained actors as proxies for visual artists in situations requiring public relations and a soap-box style public address platform in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Simon has exhibited his paintings in the United States and Europe, most recently at Studio 10 in Brooklyn, NY. He has been the recipient of several awards and grants including a NYC Percent for Art commission and a Yaddo artist’s residency.

Fragment 1, 2018, acrylic on canvas 35 x 48”

Arrangement 1 2017, acrylic on canvas 8’ x7’ (approximate)

Photo by Zach Gross

William J. Simmons is Provost Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Southern California.

Simmons did his BA at Harvard University and spent three years at the Graduate Center, CUNY and taught at the City College of New York.

His criticism and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals and books internationally.

This is his second interview for this series, the first interview can be found here.

During the interview, three pieces of writing were mentioned; A review of the Jenny Saville show at Gagosian Gallery that was not published but can be found here, also an article on Lena Dunham and Jill Soloway.

photo by Alan Kimara Dixon

Laurel Jenkins’ choreography emerges from rigorous experimentation and interdisciplinary dialogues in the realms of contemporary dance, opera, music and theater. She engages with the choreographic process as a radical space for reimagining our collective human experience. Her work has been presented by Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, REDCAT, Automata, the Getty Center, Show Box LA, Danspace, Berlin’s Performing Presence Festival, and Tokyo’s Sezane Gallery. She recently choreographed Bernstein’s MASS with the LA Phil and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. In addition, she has choreographed for LA Contemporary Dance Company, The Wooden Floor, California State University, Long Beach, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Jenkins was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 2007-2012, and developed original roles in Brown’s final works. Jenkins also danced in New York with Vicky Shick and Sara Rudner. She performed the role of Ismene in Peter Sellars’ staging of Oedipus Rex conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. This spring she will perform solos by Merce Cunningham in Los Angeles as a part of the Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event. Jenkins is the recipient of a Vermont Arts Council Grant, an Asian Cultural Council Grant, holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence, and an MFA from UCLA. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Middlebury College in Vermont.

The book mentioned in the interview is RIE Manual: Resources for Infant Educarers edited by Magda Gerber, Mothering from your Center: Tapping into your Body's Natural Energy for Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting by Tami Lynn Kent

Nmon Ford, the Celebrant, and dancers in Lincoln Center’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS at the 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival. © Richard Termine.

Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra Music Director Louis Langrée and the orchestra and cast of Lincoln Center’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS. © Richard Termine.