Interview

The later 1950s and early 1960s saw the development and proliferation of radically new forms of dance driven by a desire to understand the essentiality of movement divorced from traditional, balletic and modern syntaxes. At the forefront of this new wave of performance was Simone Forti, an artist with a hand in both improvisational techniques and choreographed task-maneuvers. This interview details her exploration of each – with a particular focus on her earliest investigations into movement, owing to time spent under the study of Anna Halprin.

In a conversation with one of the Hells Angels at a party the motorcycle gang has thrown in Manhattan, the interviewee introduces “Kenny, from the Videofreex” to his friends, commenting (presumably explaining the Videofreex project): “like low class society type shit.” At the Hells Angels party, the Videofreex exemplify their position as a documentarian group for alternative media, navigating the cramped space of the party to conduct interviews with members of the highly controversial Hells Angels group.

A modulation of the discourse produces a portrait of the philosopher Slavoj Žižek during a dialogue.

Alfredo Jaar is a politically motivated artist whose work includes installation, photography and film.  Born in Chile and now living in the U.S., Jaar’s socio-critical installations explore global political issues, frequently focusing on the Third World and the relationship between consumption and power.  A 1988 installation in a subway station in New York involved dramatic photographs of impoverished gold miners n Brazil interspersed with quotations of current gold prices, drawing an unexpected parallel between the material desires that motivate people in both poverty-stricken Br

Born in Los Angeles in 1933, Michelle Stuart spearheaded the use of non-traditional materials from nature in the early '70s, and has produced and exhibited her work internationally.

Since the 1970s Mary Kelly (b.1941) has worked at the fore of feminist art and theory. She has continued to address issues and methods of activist politics, psychoanalysis, political science, literature, and the history of women and gender. Kelly received recognition in the early ’80s for her epic six-year project, The Post Partum Document, a mixed-media work chronicling her and her son’s development. Kelly says her work revolves “around the recurring themes of body, money, history, and power” in this interview with Judith Russi Kirschner.

Vito Acconci (b. 1940) is known as a conceptual designer, installation and performance artist. In the 1960s he embraced performance in order to "define my body in space, find a ground for myself, an alternate ground from the page ground I had as a poet." Acconci’s early performances, including Claim (1971) and Seedbed (1972), were extremely controversial, transgressing assumed boundaries between public and private space and between audience and performer.

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work explores the social role of the artist, and that role’s ability to create interactive spaces for people to come together. Focusing less on the construction of discrete objects, he maintains a practice predicated on diffuse forms of installation that facilitate the activities like cooking, reading, and general collectivity. The particularly conceptual nature of his work is a central theme in this interview. While in art school, a teacher Tiravanija greatly admired told him to “stop making art” and this was something he took very seriously.

Laurie Anderson is perhaps best known as a performance artist who works in both the art and commercial worlds. Anderson talks to Steven Poser through a voice manipulator, commenting on how performing abroad has informed her work and her perspective on American culture, especially regarding issues of language and voice in communication.

This video was produced for the Artists TV Network series Conversations.

Pat Ward Williams’s socially charged works confront issues of race, often dealing specifically with African American history and identity. Using a variety of photographic processes, video, audio tapes, assemblage and text, Williams layers meanings and images. Her subjects range from the autobiographical to the public, often combining documentary techniques with personal responses. “When I make photos about my family, I think my family is not a lot different than other peoples’ families, so that is a way people can access my work...

Through her performances and videotapes, Eleanor Antin (b. 1935) creates characters (King, Ballerina, Black Movie Star, and Nurse) while spinning tales that blur fiction and history. She avoids good taste and flaunts concealed intentions, forcing one to stretch all possible associations to the breaking point.

“I believe interesting art has always been conceptual... that it appeals to the mind. That does not mean that it cannot seduce and attract through the eye,” Antin says in this interview with Nancy Bowen.

In conversation with David Getsy — an art historian focusing on queer and transgender methodologies in sculpture theory and performance history — Cassils discusses their monumental performance artworks and inspirations.

The interstice of art and technology has proved to one of the most generative locations in contemporary transdisciplinarity. As media of all kinds become more electronically integrated and digitized across multiple platforms, current technologies approach a condition of complete imbrication with art practices, and vice versa. Ben Knapp and Andy Diaz Hope have been at the forefront of these techno-aesthetic interactions, and their career experience as hard-science engineers brings a level of practical competence to this interview that is truly enlightening.

Richard Prince appropriates images from commercial advertising and travelogues for his photographs. Choosing these images for their melodramatic, super-real power, he then isolates their stylistic realism to accentuate its rhetoric. In this portrait/performance, Prince narrates experiences that demonstrate his extreme sensitivity to appearances and context. He relates the event of buying his first car as the imprinting of a certain aesthetic impression.

This title is also available on Crossover Series.

California-based painterJoan Brown (1938-1990) attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). Brown has long been recognized as one of the most important artists to emerge from the creative milieu of the San Francisco Bay Area of the late 1950s. She created a body of work distinguished by its breadth and personal vision. Brown’s style incorporated abstract expressionism and figurative painting. One of California's pre-eminent figurative artists, she died in at the age of 52, in India.

This tape was produced by Artists TV Network, documenting a symposium that included composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, writer Richard Kostelanetz, and video artist Nam June Paik with art critic Dore Ashton serving as moderator. This freewheeling symposium taped before a live audience ranges from individual reminiscences to discussion of then-current art community concerns about music, literature, theater, art, dance, video, and technology.

In conversation with curator and educator Mary Jane Jacob, visual artist Ann Hamilton (b. 1956) talks about care, interactivity, and social relations — key concepts that preoccupy her practice — and why she feels compelled to revisit these issues under the Trump administration. Hamilton was trained in textile design and sculpture, and she received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1985.

Nathan Lyons (b.1930) has contributed to the field of photography as a critic, author, curator, educator, and photographer. He has published several books and catalogs, including Photographers on Photography (1966), Photography in the 20th Century (1967), Towards a Social Landscape (1967), Persistence of Vision (1968), and Notations in Passing (1974).  His body of work consists primarily of photographs which focus on American culture.

Since 1977, Mierle Laderman Ukeles has been a volunteer artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, allowing her to introduce radical art into a public system. Since she wrote the Manifesto for Main-tenance Art (1969), virtually all of Ukeles’s work has been public. Recent permanent commissions include Percent for Art Fresh Kills Landfill Project, New York City, the world’s largest landfill; Schuylkill River Park, Philadelphia; Creative Time, New York City; and Ayalon Park, Israel.

In this interview, political and social theorist, Terry Eagleton (b. 1943), shares stories of his Irish upbringing and British education, and sums up his current engagement with art theory, leftist politics, and spirituality under capitalism. With reference to Henry James, Frederic Jameson, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, among others, this interview spans a vast landscape of literature and social theory.

Julie Ault is an artist, curator, and founding member of the artist collective Group Material, which has organized exhibitions on themes such as the U.S.’s involvement in Central America, AIDS, education, and mass consumerism. Her exhibitions question traditional gallery and museum systems by asking “how is culture made and for whom?”

Interview by Michael Crane.

Danh Vo is a Vietnamese-born Danish conceptual artist, currently living and working between Berlin and Mexico City. His large installations often deal with issues of personal identity and belonging. In conversation with Norah Taylor, an art historian specializing in South and Southeast Asian art, Vo discusses his upbringing, career, and what led him to become an artist.

A major figure among underground filmmakers, Stan Brakhage (1933-2003) boasted a prolific career that spanned more than 50 years and 300 films. His personal, independent films range in length from nine seconds to several hours, and contemplate such fundamental issues as form, life, and death—most famously in Window Water Baby Moving (1959), Dog Star Man (1961-65), and The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971). His early writings and journals about filmmaking are collected in Metaphors on Vision (1976).

Born in 1987, Ibrahim Mahama is an artist and author who creates monumental installations out of materials originating from Ghana, Mahama's home. Described in The Guardian as "a junkyard utopian", he investigates the conditions of supply and demand in African markets, often making work with materials like cocoa and jute sacks.

From his photo-text canvases in the 1960s to his video works in the 1970s to his installations in the 1980s, John Baldessari’s (b.1931) varied work has been seminal in the field of conceptual art. Integrating semiology and mass media imagery, he employed such strategies as appropriation, deconstruction, decontextualization, sequentiality, and text/image juxtaposition. With an ironic wit, Baldessari's work considers the gathering, sorting, and reorganizing of information.