On Goingness

Elan Rodman is a fashion professional with a flair for the past. He founded the @thelostandfoundmuseum on Instagram, a space that connects sportswear history with design and cultural histories. While a graduate student at Parsons School of Design in their M.A Fashion Studies program, he explored the possibilities of connecting fashion history with art and theory as a way to understand the effects fashion has on society. His interest in vintage clothing became a focal point, as his thesis focused on the history of taboo, seen through vintage t-shirt graphics and phraseology.

Today, he is the Footwear & Packaging Specialist for the Reebok Archive in Boston, Massachusetts, where he combines his passion for footwear fashion history to help maintain Reebok’s rich legacy in sporting culture. 

In this episode, Elan and I talk about his genuine and unconventional path to building a career in fashion, how he got started as a vintage dealer and the importance of pushing through rocky terrain to pursue your dreams.

Adam Trunell⁠ is an LA-based filmmaker. In the past, Adam's been a writer, producer, and editor, depending on the job. Eventually, by necessity, he had to do all those things at once, including camera. That, plus the need to make anything into something, is where you end up with "filmmaker." In this conversation we focus on Adam's feature documentary The Row that he shot and produced on his own in Skid Row, Los Angeles during Covid-19. We chat about unraveling typical expectations of community and the nonprofit harm reduction organization called ⁠The Sidewalk Project⁠. Below is Adam's written bio for this project:

"The first time I heard someone cry on the streets of Skid Row, I was stunned, realizing it was only the first time.

The sound should be an anthem in a place like this, its chorus rising every night with the moon. Instead it sang unremarkably among the silent, sleeping bodies curled on the sidewalk—impossible in repose—falling like a whisper on deaf ears.  

That was my first year in Skid Row; eight since and I know better. Tears come at the breaking point, and if you’re already here, you’re past broke. By the here and now, you found a way to deal and people to deal with. 

We co-exist in Skid Row, home of the eccentric, troubled, corrupted, enlightened, exemplary, and unhinged. It cuts a complicated beauty whose diversity is unknown in any modern city, anywhere. I keep friends who have roofs and walls and friends without; friends with addiction disorders and friends without; friends who make victims and those who’d been one. 

None of us got the same story; all of us share the same space."

Christine Mai Nguyen (b. 1988 Fountain Valley, CA) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. With a background in film studies and new media, Christine has been creating journalistic video diaries for the past 15 years. At the recommendation of a therapist she picked up clay in an effort to find peace in a tactile, off screen pursuit. She found comfort in the beginner’s mind of a new medium. 

I’ve been following and loving her soothing video content on YouTube for 10+ years, and was excited she agreed to pop on for an episode. In this one, we discuss how she got started on Youtube, how she’s maintained it all of these years, her start to DJ’ing and ceramics, how creativity can spring from both organic and structured spaces, and how switching mediums to avoid burnout is often a good idea. 

You can see her show "On Returning" on view until September 1st at Umico Gallery.

Laura Splan is a transdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of science, technology, and culture. She creates conceptually layered and carefully crafted artworks that explore the sublime complexity of the biological world while unraveling entanglements of natural and built systems. Her research-driven projects connect hidden artifacts of biotechnology to everyday lives through embodied interactions and sensory experiences. Recent exhibitions have included immersive installations, networked devices, and tactile sculptures. Splan often engages audiences with themes in her work through companion programming, including participatory workshops covering laboratory techniques, specialized software, and textiles methods that she uses in her own studio practice. Her artworks exploring biomedical imaginaries have been commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control Foundation and the Bruges Triennial. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Arts & Design, Pioneer Works, and New York Hall of Science and is represented in the collections of the Thoma Art Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, NYU’s Langone Art Collection, and the Berkeley Art Museum. Reviews and articles including her work have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Discover, designboom, American Craft, and Frieze. Splan’s research and residencies have been supported by the Jerome Foundation, Institute for Electronic Arts, Harvestworks, the Knight Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

In this episode, Laura and I discuss where art and science meet, Sticky settings in software and DNA, the relationship between learning and teaching, the presence of sound, early memories of where her art practice began and where it stands now.

Torkil Stavdal (b. 1974) is a Norwegian photographer and curator currently residing in New York. At the age of 12, Torkil's grandmother gifted him a Kodak Instamatic 126, and he has not stopped taking photos since. In the mid-90's, after studying photography more formally in Copenhagen, he continued his education by assisting iconic photographers such as Knut Bry, Johan Wildhagen and Massimo Leardini, amongst others. Originally based out of Oslo, Norway, he started his studio "Konfekt" in the early 2000s with Lars Pettersen, Catarina Caprino and Tove Sivertsen. In 2009, Torkil moved to NYC and worked with a number of editorial and commercial clients, including: the New York Times, Elle, Dwell, Apple, VW, Bollinger Motors and Pollack Associates. In 2011, he added motion to his repertoire, and has since worked on shows and movies with Netflix, Lionsgate, BBC, the History Channel and several others. Torkil appreciates the unspoken in a photograph; that there is a story that the spectator gets to finish.

In this episode, Torkil and I chat about nature taking back human occupied spaces, the functionality and use of objects (or lack thereof), the photo as a conversation starter, finding your play space, and keeping his art practice going. You can find the gate photo Torkil references in our conversation on our instagram page ⁠here.

Chelsea Hodson is the author of the book of essays Tonight I'm Someone Else and the chapbook Pity the Animal. She is the publisher and editor of Rose Books, and she founded the Morning Writing Club. She has taught at Bennington College and co-founded the Mors Tua Vita Mea workshop in Sezze Romano, Italy. She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell Colony and PEN Center USA. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Hazlitt, i-D, and elsewhere. She lives in Sedona, Arizona.

In this episode, Chelsea and I discuss her move from NYC to Sedona, finding stability in instability, allowing a project to find its own timeline, starting an indie press, and Chelsea's writing process.

Kimberly Jenkins is the founder of The Fashion and Race Database and Artis Solomon Consulting. Artis Solomon offers consulting on fashion history and cultural awareness, and is a one of a kind learning platform that is supported by subscribing universities and museums globally. Kim formerly held the position of Assistant Professor of Fashion Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University and lecturer at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute. She has spent over ten years studying the impact of our clothes and how we express ourselves, through the lenses of politics, race, psychology and anthropology. She is best known for introducing the course "Fashion and Race" at Parsons, and for working as an education consultant for Gucci in Europe and Asia to support their efforts in design and cultural awareness. Most recently, Kim co-produced and hosted the podcast, "The Invisible Seam," in partnership with Tommy Hilfiger, highlighting the underrepresented contributions Black culture has made to fashion. 

In this episode, Kim and I discuss how she became interested in the cultural contexts of dress, how she became disenchanted and then excited again by building much-needed communities and databases within the industry, on looking to fill voids within the industry, and how her journey blossoming towards an authentic career has led to invaluable conversations and communities.

Singer-songwriter Leona Naess made her name in the early 2000s on warm, radiant, lyrically-driven indie rock, earning a wide range of rave reviews. In those years, Naess was living in the historic Chelsea Hotel and had put out three records in quick succession between 2000 and 2003. Naess’ diverse musical past also includes time studying music composition and even singing onstage as a child with her then-stepmother, the legendary Diana Ross.

Midway through making her new album in 2021, Naess read an article detailing the upcoming emergence of Brood X, a family of cicadas due to emerge along the East coast of the United States for the first time since 2004—the same year she’d last released an album. The same year she met her now-husband. The same year her father passed away. And in the intervening years, Naess had lived her own life “underground,” nesting, preparing for motherhood and growing her family. After 17 years, birthed from a kit of remarkable vulnerability, honesty, and strength, Brood X (via MessyNaess Records/distributed through AWAL and co-produced by Max Cooke) is an album of rebirth, reemergence, and rediscovery.

In this episode, we discuss the emergence of a new project after years in the making, the wisdom gleaned from several years in the music industry, keeping your art and work honest, and the merging and balance of work, motherhood and real life.

Shannon Price is an art, design, and fashion curator, historian, and educator with extensive leadership experience within cultural and academic institutions. Shannon recently moved back to her hometown of Oakland, CA after 20 years in New York City where her most recent position was at Parsons/The New School where she served as the Director of External Partnerships and Cultural Affairs. She developed global innovative partnerships in private and non-profit sectors aligned with the mission of education, driven by social justice and sustainability. Prior to that, Shannon worked through multiple roles at the Pratt Institute: Acting Assistant Dean of the School of Design and Assistant Chair and Associate Professor in the Fashion Department. Before entering education, Shannon spent over a decade at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an Associate Research Curator in The Costume Institute where she collaborated with curators on annual blockbuster exhibitions and related publications. As part of her role there, she enriched the college and high school public programming, and elevated overall departmental educational collaborations, in pursuit of more inclusivity socioeconomically and accessibility to people with disabilities. Shannon is currently the Dean of Art & Design at West Valley College in Silicon Valley and is passionate about ensuring that education for creatives is welcoming and accessible to everyone. In this episode, we chat accessible education, sustainability in design, working with Andrew Bolton on the Alexander McQueen show, this great interview with Fashion educator, Kim Jenkins (for The Fashion Studies Journal), and having the courage to forge a career path tailored to your passions and beliefs.

Shradha Kochhar (b. Delhi, India) is a textile artist and knitwear designer based in New York, as well as the co-founder of apparel and clothing brand LOTA. Best known for her home spun and hand knitted ‘khadi’ sculptures using ‘kala cotton’ - an inherently organic cotton strain indigenous to India, her work is at an intersection of material memory, sustainability and intergenerational healing. Focusing on generating a physical archive of personal and collective south asian narratives linked to women’s work, invisible labor and grief, the work is large scale and will exist beyond whispers over generations.

The work is made from hand spinning ‘Kala cotton’ - a cotton crop indigenous to India on a portable booklet spinning wheel (charkha) and hand knitting it into textures and structures that mimic the skin on our bodies. Focusing and investigating resources lost and born out of colonization in India such as ‘Khadi’ - a self reliant and equitable practice of textile making and ‘Kala Cotton’, a miracle cotton crop that sustains completely on seasonal rainfall as solutions to climate change, water shortage, soil degradation and social inequity. Built from an ongoing library of seed bank that documents indigenous cotton strains found across the world, unraveling the intersection of words - ‘cotton’, ‘cloth’, ‘colonization’ and ‘community’. Shradha's mission is to understand the potential in soil and to establish an alternate system of textile farming and making, that discourages modern technology that feasts on the felling of forests and extraction of resources.

In this episode, we discuss regenerative resources and how we can think about materials in a more cyclical way, soft sculpture and the knitted essay, and how collaboration and the act of building community can make an art practice that much stronger.