Keep the Channel Open

My friend Paula Riff passed away recently, after having been ill with cancer for two years. Paula was a wonderful, kind, generous, and enthusiastic person, and a brilliant artist whose work pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with her about that work for the show. In our conversation, Paula and I talked about what photography is to her, why she's attracted to alternative processes, and how her work is ultimately autobiographical. Then for the second segment, we talked about the value of physical art spaces. In honor of her memory, I'm re-sharing our conversation today. Rest in peace, Paula.

(This episode was originally released on January 15, 2020. Conversation recorded December 3, 2019.)

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• Paula Riff
• Paula Riff - Blue Is Not the Sky
• Building Bridges Art Exchange - "All Women Are Dangerous II"
• Center for Photographic Art - "Winter Blues, Contemporary Cyanotypes"
• Mark Rothko
• László Moholy-Nagy
• Alfred Stieglitz
• Catalyst: Interviews - Paula Riff
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 8: Bryan Ida
• The Diffusion Tapes - Tape no. 7: Mike Sakasegawa
• The lemon video
• Paula Riff - Postcards from Russia
• Harvey Quaytman at Blum & Poe Gallery
• Constructed Mythologies: Luis González Palma
• Mike Sakasegawa - Sheets: A Love Letter

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, writer Wm Henry Morris joins me for a conversation about Sofia Samatar's 2017 story collection Tender. The stories in this collection range from fairy tale and folklore to dystopian sci-fi to (almost) contemporary realism, but all have in common Samatar's impeccable prose, attention to detail, and exceptional readership.

(Conversation recorded December 19, 2020)

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• Sofia Samatar - Tender
• Wm Henry Morris
• Sofia Samatar - A Stranger in Olondria
• Sofia Samatar - The Winged Histories
• Sofia Samatar - "The Red Thread"
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Franz Kafka
• Karl Ove Knausgård
• Sofia Samatar - "Selkie Stories Are For Losers"
• Selkie
• Kat Howard
• Amal El-Mohtar
• Theodora Goss
• Sofia Samatar - "Honey Bear"
• Pat Frank - Alas, Babylon
• Nevil Shute - On the Beach
• Sofia Samatar - "A Girl Who Comes Out of a Chamber at Regular Intervals"
• E. T. A. Hoffmann
• Sofia Samatar - "Meet Me in Iram"
• Iram of the Pillars
• Emily St. John Mandel - Station Eleven
• Sofia Samatar - "Tender"
• Radium Girls
• Wm Henry Morris - "Ghosts of Salt and Spirit"
• Sofia Samatar - "How to Get Back to the Forest"
• Sofia Samatar - "An Account of the Land of Witches"
• Sofia Samatar - "The Closest Thing to Animals"
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 113: Matthew Salesses
• Christian Petzhold
• Barbara (2012 film)
• Phoenix (2014 film)
• Transit (2018 film)
• Anna Seghers - Transit

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Kazim Ali is a writer based in San Diego, CA. Kazim's latest poetry collection, The Voice of Sheila Chandra, uses sound to explode meaning and explore silence and voicelessness, bringing together history, philosophy, spirituality, and personal experience to create something truly profound. In our conversation, Kazim and I discussed the divine in art, what the sound of poetry can embody and enact, and the fundamental oneness of human life. Then for the second segment, we talked about music.

(Conversation recorded December 17, 2020.)

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• Kazim Ali
• Purchase The Voice of Sheila Chandra
• Pre-order Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water
• Upcoming virtual events with Kazim Ali
• PoetryNow - "Know No Name"
• What's Love Got to Do With It
• Sheila Chandra
• Orpheus and Eurydice
• Alcestis
• Asian American Writers' Workshop - The Voice of Sheila Chandra with Kazim Ali, Sheila Chandra, and Rajiv Mohabir
• The Frost Place
• Ellen Bryant Voigt
• Prakriti Festival
• Kazim Ali - The Far Mosque
• Cyndi Lauper - At Last
• Alice Coltrane
• Qawwali
• Amjad Sabri
• Abida Parveen
• Kirtan
• Krishna Das
• Kazim Ali - Bright Felon
• Keep the Channel Open - Julia Dixon Evans
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers - The Age of Phillis
• Phillis Wheatley

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Rizzhel Mae Javier is a photographer and installation artist based in San Diego, CA. I first met Rizzhel when we were both participating in the portfolio reviews at the Medium Festival a few years ago, and her stop-motion, flipbook-style pieces immediately caught my attention. More recently, Rizzhel was named one of the 2017 emerging artists by the SD Art Prize for her "Unmentionables" project, creating new art out of old mementos. We had a great conversation for the show about her artistic process, what she loves about making mistakes, and her experience as a teacher. For the second segment, Rizzhel chose the Philippines as her topic.

(This episode was originally released on August 16, 2017. Conversation recorded July 26, 2017.)

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• Rizzhel Mae Javier
• The AjA Project - Buy STEAM OnDemand Workshop Box
• The AjA Project - Apply to Speak City Heights project
• Rizzhel Mae Javier - Move(meant)
• Rizzhel Mae Javier - Unmentionables
• San Diego Art Institute - Millennial Pink
• SD Art Prize - 2017 New Contemporaries
• CM Curatorial
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 33: José Olivarez
• ARID Journal - Strange Vistas: The Work of Walter Cotten
• Richard Keely
• Duane Michals
• Eikoh Hosoe
• Richard Prince

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

José Olivarez is a poet living and working in Chicago, Illinois, and is also co-host of one of my all-time favorite podcasts, The Poetry Gods. In our wide-ranging conversation we talked about how The Poetry Gods came to be, toxic masculinity in the poetry world, and how discovering poetry allowed José to find his artistic voice. In the second segment, we talked about beginnings and endings.

(This episode was originally released on February 15, 2017. Conversation recorded January 1, 2017.)

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• José Olivarez
• José Olivarez - Citizen Illegal
• José Olivarez - The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT
• "In Search of the Ecstatic" Workshop
• "Revision Is Writing" Workshop
• The Poetry Gods
• Jon Sands
• Aziza Barnes
• T-Pain: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
• Louder Than a Bomb
• Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You
• José Olivarez - "I Walk Into the Ocean"
• Young Chicago Authors
• Urban Word NYC
• Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib - "Searching for a New Kind of Optimism"
• Maria Popova - "Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves"
• Patricia Smith
• Gloria Anzaldúa - Borderlands
• Eduardo Galeano - Open Veins of Latin America
• Keah Brown
• @_joseolivarez

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Esmé Weijun Wang's debut novel The Border of Paradise was one of my favorite books of 2016. A multigenerational epic centered on an interracial family, the Nowaks, this book touches on so many profound topics, from mental illness to intergenerational trauma to culture clash to the very question of what it means to be a family, all done in stunningly beautiful prose. Esmé and I had a great conversation about her book in the first segment, and in the second segment we chatted about our favorite social media platform: Twitter.

(This episode was originally released on September 14, 2016. Conversation recorded July 19, 2016.)

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• Esmé Weijun Wang
• Esmé Weijun Wang - The Border of Paradise
• Esmé Weijun Wang - The Collected Schizophrenias
• The Rawness of Remembering guided e-course (33% off with coupon code GOODBYE2020)
• Esmé Weijun Wang - With Love and Squalor (e-letter)
• Heather Havrilesky - Ask Polly
• Esmé Weijun Wang - "You Are Not Lazy"
• Esmé Weijun Wang - "I'm Chronically Ill and Afraid of Being Lazy" (elle.com)
• Esmé Weijun Wang - "Why My Novel Uses Untranslated Chinese" (lithub.com)
• Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Jordanna Kalman is a fine art photographer who lives and works in New York. Jordanna's work explores loneliness, femininity and individuality, and the images are highly personal. In her series Little Romances, she rephotographs prints of earlier images of hers which had been stolen and misused. By considering the prints as objects and adding new elements, she creates a new narrative, examining the anxieties of being a woman and creating a form of protection for the image. In our conversation we discussed prints as still-life subjects, what anger can accomplish, and our mutual dislike of "mean" photography. Then in the second segment we discussed a recent Instagram dust-up between two photographers, and how it's relevant to our larger society.

(Conversation recorded October 21, 2020.)

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• Jordanna Kalman
• Jordanna Kalman - Little Romances
• Purchase books and prints from Jordanna Kalman's online shop
• 2018 Critical Mass Top 50
• Speax - "Jordanna Kalman - Artist & Photographer"
• Vik Muniz
• Joseph Beuys
• Fotofilmic
• Laura Letinsky
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 114: Jessica Eaton
• Bruce Gilden
• Martin Parr
• Rebecca Traister - Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger
• William Camargo
• John Divola
• William Camargo's Instagram (@billythecamera)
• William Camargo's IG post riffing on John Divola's work
• John Divola - As Far As I Could Get
• Killing of Ahmaud Arbery
• PetaPixel - "Folded Map Project's Tonika Johnson Confronts Alec Soth and the NY Times"
• Tonika Johnson - Folded Map Project
• The Phoblographer - "Martin Parr is Under Fire for a Photo Book Reprint He Edited in 2017"
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 110: Maggie Tokuda-Hall
• Kazim Ali - The Voice of Sheila Chandra

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, I'm joined by writer Alyssa Harad for a conversation about Tove Jansson's 1982 novel The True Deceiver. Despite the slimness of the volume, Jansson's novel yet contains a surprising degree of depth and complexity, not to mention psychological tension, in a story that challenges the reader to consider the nature of truth, honesty, and different forms of deception.

(Conversation recorded September 22, 2020.)

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• Tove Jansson - The True Deceiver
• Alyssa Harad
• Alyssa Harad - Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride
• #KTCOBookClub on Twitter
• Moomin
• Ali Smith
• Tove Jansson - The Summer Book
• Flannery O'Connor
• Eudora Welty
• Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 113: Matthew Salesses
• Tove Jansson - Fair Play
• William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
• Christiane Ritter - A Woman in the Polar Night
• Tove Jansson - Moominland Midwinter

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Maggie Smith is a poet and essayist based in Bexley, Ohio. Maggie's new book Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change was born out of a difficult life change; it both discusses and is an example of resilience and hope in the face of an unknown future. In our conversation, we talked about the book's origins in a series of social media notes-to-self, about becoming an essayist after having been a poet for so long, and about finding agency through language. Then for the second segment, we talked about community and connection via social media.

(Conversation recorded September 10, 2020.)

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• Maggie Smith
• Maggie Smith - Keep Moving
• Literati Books - At Home With Literati - Maggie Smith & Molly Spencer (October 8, 2020)
• Books Are Magic - Maggie Smith: Keep Moving w/ Rebecca Soffer (October 14, 2020)
• Gramercy Books - A Virtual Conversation about Resilience: Maggie Smith and Saeed Jones (October 15, 2020)
• Maggie Smith - Upcoming Events
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 49: Maggie Smith
• Maggie Smith - Good Bones
• Maggie Smith - "At Your Age I Wore a Darkness"
• Maggie Smith - "Tracking the Demise of My Marriage on Google Maps" (NYT Modern Love)
• Sabrina Orah Mark - "Happily" (The Paris Review)
• Angel Olsen - Whole New Mess
• Tove Jansson - The True Deceiver (upcoming KTCO Book Club pick)

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

In the inaugural KTCO Book Club episode I'm joined by writer and podcaster David Naimon, host of the literary podcast Between the Covers. For our conversation, David selected Teju Cole and Fazal Sheikh's hybrid photo/prose book Human Archipelago. In their collaboration, Cole's writing and Sheikh's images support each other in a way that expands the form of the traditional photobook and provides a potent exploration of human migration, national boundaries, imperialism, the connections between people, and our responsibilities to one another.

(Recorded September 2, 2020.)

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• Teju Cole & Fazal Sheikh - Human Archipelago
• Between the Covers
• Between the Covers Patreon
• Teju Cole
• Fazal Sheikh
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 114: Jessica Eaton
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 103: Philipp Scholz Rittermann
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 80: Jerry Takigawa
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 81: Mike Sakasegawa
• Teju Cole - On Photography (New York Times Magazine column)
• Steidl Verlag
• Teju Cole - "A Too-Perfect Picture"
• Between the Covers - Philip Metres : Shrapnel Maps
• Sharon Mizota - "Review: 'Human Archipelago' shines light on refugees and our shared humanity"
• The Family of Man
• Tanvi Misra - "A New Way of Seeing the Global Migration Crisis"
• Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives
• Walker Evans
• Dorothea Lange
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 77: Brandon Thibodeaux
• Teju Cole - Open City
• Between the Covers - Molly Crabapple : Brothers of the Gun — A Memoir of the Syrian War
• Between the Covers - Joe Sacco : Paying the Land

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo