The 'Artist Statement' podcast is a conversation series featuring artists and thinkers from the world of AQNB, a London and Los Angeles-based editorial platform working between visual art, music and critical thinking. Join Editor Steph Kretowicz and Associate Ed. Jared Davis in conversation with experimental practitioners that resist classification, paying close attention to the discursive changes brought on by developments in technology and communication.
In this episode Jared speaks with R.I.P. Germain, an artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans themes of grief, Black music culture in the UK, and complex entanglements of masculinity. Based in Luton, R.I.P. Germain has exhibited at spaces including London's V.O Curations, Peak, South London Gallery and more. He was selected as one of the recipients for ICA London's Image Behaviour commissions, for which he is developing a film exploring African spiritualism in the Caribbean through first hand conversations with practitioners. His forthcoming solo exhibition, 'Jesus Died For Us, We Will Die For Dudus!', opens at London's ICA on February 21, 2023.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with ANDRA, an interdisciplinary artist and representative of PHILTH HAUS, which is a collective who produce art installations, performance, and sound, to temporarily represent one or, occasionally more of its six so-called “member-clients” .Currently based in Berlin, Andra has worked under multiple monikers, for now settling under the PHILTH HAUS umbrella and presenting work in New York, Boston, Amsterdam, and elsewhere. The group's most recent project, was presented in four parts across three venues in Los Angeles between early June and late-August this year. Curated by Mandy Harris Williams, LYLEX 1.0 repurposed systemic hierarchies of financial and social domination by developing its own health-food supplement of fungal compounds infused with the blood of an anonymous transgender person undergoing hormonal and dietary modulation therapies.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Nichole Fitch and Christopher Adams-Cohen, two LA-based artists who've managed to make their individual creative practices collide in a bawdy spectacle of extravagance and deeply reflective eroticism.Both growing up in Pasadena, Nichole & Christopher have been friends first and collaborators second since age 12, finding each other in their shared appreciation for classical theatre, and a particular kind of aesthetic sexuality that imbues familiar forms with a new spirit of queer celebration. One is primarily a painter, and the other is an actor-director whose forays into playwriting led to this current collaboration, a play called The Dew Collectors that began with a residency at London's Soho Revue Gallery.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with R.I.P. Germain, an artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans themes of grief, Black music culture in the UK, and complex entanglements of masculinity. Based in Luton, R.I.P. Germain has exhibited at spaces including London's V.O Curations, Peak, South London Gallery and more. He was selected as one of the recipients for ICA London's Image Behaviour commissions, for which he is developing a film exploring African spiritualism in the Caribbean through first hand conversations with practitioners. His latest solo exhibition, Shimmer, is on now at Leicester's Two Queens gallery.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Jennifer Mehigan, an interdisciplinary artist working across media, including 3D modelling, video, and text; textiles, sound, installation, scent and more. Born in Ireland, raised in Singapore and partly educated in Australia, Jen has been applying her skills as a painter and graphic designer to an increasingly research-based and conceptual practice with videos like 'Honeysuckle Joyride' and performance series Creamatorium. She was the first contributor of cover artwork to AQNB's compendium series, called even my dreams don't go outside in 2020, where she drew on her more material interests in gardening with a special compost collage of low poly renders of Irish wildflowers.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Isabel Waidner, a writer and novelist whose fiction work incorporates elements of the surreal to develop thoughtful, critical and funny readings into class politics, race, and queer life in the UK. Moving to London from Germany in the mid-nineties, Isabel is the author of three novels, and presents This Isn't a Dream, an online conversation series with writers hosted by London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. They teach creative writing and performance at Queen Mary University of London, and their most recent book, Sterling Karat Gold, published by Peninsula Press earlier in the year, was the winner of the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Sam Rolfes, a self-described digital performance artist and designer working with sound, animation and the internet. Often collaborating with his brother Andy as Team Rolfes, Sam's worked with such big names as Lady Gaga, Danny Elfman and Rihanna, while presenting his solo real-time 3D improvisations and other collaborations with the likes of House of Kenzo, Rabit, Danny L Harle, Kai Whiston and many, many more. Born in Dallas, educated in Chicago and now based in New York, Sam started in painting before pivoting into the smart, noisy and raucous mixed format art that's made him a highly sought-after artist and designer across scenes, fields and industries. Sam's work is both entertaining and alluring, while having a hard edge of humour and criticality that's revealed through a rough-edged digital aesthetic that's aware of its own artifice.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Umru Rothenberg. Mostly known by the mononym umru, the producer is one of a younger generation of so-called SoundCloud artists signed to A.G. Cook's PC Music label, as well as a reluctant representative of the too broad and indeterminate musical catchall referred to as “hyperpop”. The scene includes peers like 100 Gecs, Petal Supply, himera, Fraxiom, Dorian Electra, the list goes on.Based in New York with Estonian roots, umru recently dropped single ‘check 1' from a forthcoming EP that features vocals by 645AR and Tallinn-born emcee Tommy Cash. The music presents a more song-oriented approach to his usual maximal EDM experimentation. At 22-years-old umru has already worked with Charli XCX and had a credit on a Diplo track, he co-runs design firm Parent Company which also organises Open Pit's Minecraft music festivals.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with Jenna Sutela, an artist whose audiovisual work incorporates language, sound and living matter to investigate sociality, technology and our interconnectedness with the wider environment. Originally from Finland and now based in Berlin, Jenna's work has been shown at the likes of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art, and Serpentine Galleries in London. She has also released an LP in 2019 via Berlin's PAN.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, an interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid sculptures evoke a monstrous tactility and sense of dreadful fascination, while echoing the Aztec mythology of shapeshifting beings called Nahuales. Not quite human and not quite animal, these phantoms can move with a freedom often not afforded the Latinx migrant communities that inhabit the same desert along the Rio Grande.Born in Mexico's Parral, Chihuahua and raised at the Mexico-United States border of Juárez–El Paso, Montoya's cosmology absorbs the memories and information embedded in the weathered human refuse of the desert, which the artists collects, repurposes and reanimates with the narratives of their own friends, experiences and traumas.
See here for more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Holly Childs, an interdisciplinary writer and artist whose elaborate creative cosmology filters “stories of computation through frames of ecology, earth, memory, poetry and light.” Graduating Amsterdam's Sandberg Instituut in 2019, Holly has worked across a spectrum of fields and forms, publishing two experimental novels in 2014, with a third due for release in 2021. What Causes Flowers Not to Bloom? will be an extension of Holly's Hydrangea performance series and album collaboration with Lithuanian producer Gediminas Žygus, which is partly inspired by her time as part of Benjamin Bratton's The New Normal postgraduate program at Strelka Institute in Moscow.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with Alice Bucknell, an artist and writer whose video work using game engines explores topics spanning big tech mythologies and magic, ecology, architecture and AI.Raised in Florida and now based in London, Alice's works have been exhibited by Ars Electronica with König Galerie, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and White Cube, with texts written for Flash Art, Mousse, Whitechapel's Documents of Contemporary Art series and more.Alice also runs New Mystics, an experimental publishing platform that examines the links between magic and technology through written collaborations between herself and other artists along with the language AI GPT-3, and for which AQNB is co-publishing texts on our site through September.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Anthoney Hart, a DJ and producer who has been working under a number of aliases since his ‘90s pirate radio days in London. Starting with jungle and hardcore in his teens then moving into noise, bass music and grime, Anthoney has more recently returned to his roots releasing more dance-floor focussed drum and bass records via labels like Planet Mu, Type Recordings, Hypercolour and his own Raw Basics. Born in Hastings but raised on the boundary of East London and Essex, Anthoney's experience growing up working class and on the margins of British society, as well as an engagement with what he describes as the golden age of the middlebrow means he has a unique perspective on the state of music today.
See here for more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Joey Holder, who is known for her installations, videos and web-based projects that speak to themes of contemporary myth-making, science, ecologies and online culture.Joey has held solo exhibitions at the likes of Matt's Gallery London, Wysing Arts Centre and Sonic Acts Amsterdam. Her shows create expansive mixed media environments—for instance her most recent exhibition 'Semelparous'—in which the artist's work occupied a disused swimming pool and leisure centre left to ruin in North London.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Adham Faramawy, an artist whose work in video, image making and sculptural installation examines interwoven themes around the body, queerness, ecologies and migration.Based in London, Adham has recently exhibited at the likes of Somerset House and London's Science Gallery. Their moving image work has twice been shortlisted for the Jarman Award, including this year for their film The air is subtle, various and sweet. Adham spoke on topics ranging from plant-life to body horror, intimacy and abjection, as well as the threads that run through their latest video, the heart wants what the heart wants, screened for London's Art Night in late June.
In this episode Jared speaks with Terre Thaemlitz, a music producer, DJ, writer and public speaker, whose work over three decades offers uncompromising critical examinations of media distribution, queer identity, and non-essentialist transgenderism.Raised in Missouri before moving to New York in the late 1980s, Terre was a resident DJ at storied queer nightclub Sally's II in the early ‘90s. Since then, Terre has released music, critical writing, and video via her own Comatonse Recordings, as well as independent labels including Germany's influential Mille Plateaux. Based in Japan since the early 2000s, he also continues to perform and record under the deep house alias DJ Sprinkles, releasing the acclaimed 'Midtown 120 Blues' in 2008.Image courtesy Comatonse Recordings.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Onyedika Chuke, an artist and archivist whose largest body of work — 'The Forever Museum Archive' — is a growing collection of sculptures, text and images examining different social, cultural and political structures, while analyzing their interconnectedness. The project has been running for a decade now, starting as an essay and expanding into multiple forms and exhibitions in a number of locations around the world. Its most current iteration at New York's Governor's Island — ‘The Forever Museum Archive_Circa 6000BCE' — explores where patronage, capital and religion intersects with the carceral system. Born in Onitsha, Nigeria and based in New York, Onyedika also co-runs Storage Gallery on the Bowery, an archive and curatorial project aimed at highlighting the work of women artists and artists of color, while combining his experience as a maker, community member, activist and dealer to find ways to create more equity in the art world.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Tianzhuo Chen, an artist whose videos, performances and visual works create spectacles evoking religious ritual and iconography, sexuality and the body.Based in Beijing, while also having lived and worked extensively in Shanghai, Tianzhuo is the founder of Asian Dope Boys, a loose collective and party series, presenting performances and club nights at spaces ranging from Shanghai's All Club, to the Barbican Centre in London. Often working with others, Tianzhuo's extensive network of collaborators include artists such as Aïsha Devi, Gabber Modus Operandi, 33EMYBW, to name a few.
See here for more info: bit.ly/3zvbB00For more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode we explore contemporary challenges to rationalism in an age of data, asking what the unique effects of technological mediation are on the culture of spirituality, by inviting artist and founding member of Black Obsidian Sound System Evan Ifekoya for a discussion, along with a mix from multifaceted art platform Most Dismal Swamp.Jared talks with Evan on topics spanning astrology and digital mediation, ritual practices, and music's relation to mysticism, as explored in exhibitions such Ritual without Belief at London's Gasworks, and their work for the major group show Transformer: a Rebirth of Wonder exhibition at London's 180 The Strand in 2019.This is followed by 'Night Science (Deep Tissue mix)' by Most Dismal Swamp, a London based interdisciplinary art project and curatorial platform producing exhibitions, online events and music releases. We invited Most Dismal Swamp to contribute a mix on the theme of mysticism and technology, being interested in the way the platform speculates on weirding and reality in our online age.
See here for more info: bit.ly/3fMSfvHFor more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode, we respond to the topic of illness, considering the structural conditions affecting health and the nature of life, by inviting artist, writer LTTR journal and collective co-founder Every Ocean Hughes for a discussion, as well as an audio work by interdisciplinary artist and writer Clay AD.Steph speaks with Every about her work around notions of queer death and illness, as well as her place in a rich lineage of queer art that crosses her early days in the 2000s New York city punk scene, and more recent working relationships with the likes Geo Wyeth and Colin Self.This is followed with a reading by Clay AD—a Glasgow-based artist working across writing, sound, video and movement—from their novel Metabolize, If Able. We first spoke with Clay last year, for an interview on AQNB, and have been drawn to their use of sci-fi and speculative fiction to explore themes of illness, ecology and biopolitics today.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Dean Erdmann, an interdisciplinary artist whose expansive practice attempts an investigative and sensory understanding of their queer and working-class subjectivity in the present moment, as part of a personal, familial and geopolitical legacy of inherited violence and descendent technologies. Born and raised in the Mojave Desert, Dean’s ongoing 'And, Apollo' project—begun as a fellow at The New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics and New York’s Urban Glass—examines the material histories and entanglements of war, space exploration, meth addiction and masculine ritual. They use experimental documentary, video, and sculpture to deconstruct the relationship between glass and sand, speed and acceleration, fragility and power, in their highly autobiographical work replete with universal implication.
See here for more info: https://bit.ly/3eWnkfIFor more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode, at a moment in which it is difficult to think beyond the present, we consider queer notions of time, the future, and apocalypse, by speaking with Jack Halberstam, a queer theorist and Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University.Jared talks with Jack on queer notions of forgetting, futurity, and the figure of the zombie in today’s popular imagination, as explored in his books such as 2011’s ‘The Queer Art of Failure’, and most recently ‘Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire’, published last year by Duke University Press.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with DeForrest Brown, Jr., a music journalist, theorist and musician, whose work critically examines platform capitalism, white supremacy and the politics of music distribution, with a particular interest in how these issues manifest through techno music.Raised in Birmingham, Alabama, DeForrest is now based in New York, having worked as a music journalist and producing experimental techno under the alias Speaker Music through PTP and Planet Mu. His first book, Assembling A Black Counterculture, is due for release later this year via Primary Information.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Holly Childs, an interdisciplinary writer and artist whose elaborate creative cosmology filters “stories of computation through frames of ecology, earth, memory, poetry and light.” Graduating Amsterdam’s Sandberg Instituut in 2019, Holly has worked across a spectrum of fields and forms, publishing two experimental novels in 2014, with a third due for release in 2021. What Causes Flowers Not to Bloom? will be an extension of Holly's Hydrangea performance series and album collaboration with Lithuanian producer Gediminas Zygus, which is partly inspired by her time as part of Benjamin Bratton’s The New Normal postgraduate program at Strelka Institute in Moscow.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Amrita Hepi, an artist working with dance and choreography across video, performance and digital works, whose practice illuminates themes from personal histories to embodied self-surveillance.Born in Townsville, Australia of Bundjulung and Ngāpuhi heritage, Amrita is based in Melbourne and has presented work for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as well as Serpentine Galleries and Kaldor Public Art Projects’ do it programme to name a few. Calling from her home in Melbourne, Amrita discussed topics including self-surveillance, embodiment and the indigenous dance practices she has drawn inspiration from.
See here for more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks to Jonnine Standish, a performer and musician best known for fronting Australian post-punk band HTRK, and her developing solo career under the mononym Jonnine. The Australian artist is is currently living in the idyllic Dandenong Ranges of greater Melbourne with her husband Conrad (of CS + Kreme), where Jonnine spent her time during lockdown producing her debut solo album Blue Hills. Released via Boomkat in late July, the record moves even further from the dub-y post-industrial gloom of early HTRK into a lovely warmth and introspection that’s lightly sprinkled with the singer’s inimitable wit.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Coby Sey, a musician and producer who’s known for his dream-like post-grime releases, and ongoing work as part of the loosely-defined South London collective and now label, CURL. It’s organised by friends and collaborators Mica Levi and Brother May, and involves, in one way another, eminent underground peers such as Tirzah, Farai, Kwes, Klein and many, many other artists from the area. Coby’s own practice is similarly broad and eclectic, having released his first EP ‘Whities 010: Transports for Lewisham’—inspired by his love-hate relationship with London’s public transport system—as well as a handful of other experimental drops that contain a palpable emotional strain unique to his environment. Coby’s also a long-time NTS Radio cohort and presenter of a show sharing his music in conversation with his hip-hop, drone and ambient influences.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with Terre Thaemlitz, a music producer, DJ, writer and public speaker, whose work over three decades offers uncompromising critical examinations of media distribution, queer identity, and non-essentialist transgenderism.Raised in Missouri before moving to New York in the late 1980s, Terre was a resident DJ at storied queer nightclub Sally’s II in the early ‘90s. Since then, Terre has released music, critical writing, and video via her own Comatonse Recordings, as well as independent labels including Germany’s influential Mille Plateaux. Based in Japan since the early 2000s, he also continues to perform and record under the deep house alias DJ Sprinkles, releasing the acclaimed 'Midtown 120 Blues' in 2008.Image courtesy Comatonse Recordings.
In this episode Jared speaks with Elvia Wilk, a writer whose practice deals with art, technology and culture under capitalism, expressed through an entanglement of critical essays, autobiography, and speculative fiction. Based in New York after years spent in Berlin, Elvia’s writing has appeared in the likes of frieze, Artforum, Mousse and the Los Angeles Review of Books to name a few. Her debut novel 'Oval' was published in 2019 by Soft Skull Press, and she is a contributing editor at e-flux Journal.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Rhea Dillon, an artist, writer and poet who has made a name for herself with her photography and film work exploring, abstracting and undermining what she calls Western culture’s ‘rule of representation’, while advocating for “equality-led perspectives on how we visualise Black bodies” with her self-coined notion of "humane afrofuturism”. The London-based artist has developed her own visual and conceptual language, which traces histories through a crossmedia archival and research practice, that includes painting, installation, images, video and olfaction.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Jack Latham, a musician and producer also known as Jam City, whose releases on the UK’s Night Slugs label in the 2010s were some of the best examples of a post-club sound that had come to define a generation of artists.After building a name for himself through this cross-Atlantic, post-dubstep amalgamation of grime and garage, hip-hop and bass music on Classical Curves in 2012, Jack’s follow-up record Dream a Garden in 2015 disavowed the slick high-definition and commercial aesthetics of his previous work in favour of a more critically lo-fi excursion into political thought and social activism. Since then, Jack has been working primarily as a producer, spending extended periods in Los Angeles to work with artist like Troy Sivan, Lil Yachty and Kelela. Pillowland meanwhile is his first solo release in five years, dropped through his own Earthly label and primarily concerned with looking back at the music of the past to see what it can teach us about the present.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with Ashley Holmes, an artist whose mixed media installation, sound and performance works explore musical diasporas, unpacking notions of place, ownership, and Black British experience.Based in Sheffield, Ashley has shown work at the likes of FUTURA, Prague, Jerwood Arts, London, Two Queens, Leicester, and is the host of the monthly experimental radio programme Tough Matter on NTS.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Huw Lemmey, a writer whose novels create alternate imaginings of the present, casting a critical and at times satirical eye on topics from politics to belief systems, gay culture to psychotropic drugs.Having relocated from the UK to Barcelona, Huw is the author of novels including Unknown Language via Ignota Books, Red Tory: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell from Montez Press, and a prolific critic having written for the Guardian, Frieze, Flash Art as well as his regular essay series on the Substack platform, Utopian Drivel.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Akinola Davies Jr, a director and moving image artist whose music videos and films concentrate on documenting the broad and diverse collective identity of his community.Growing up in Lagos and now based in London, Akin has developed a unique and striking visual language that explores race, gender and identity, particularly surrounding the Black diaspora in Britain and beyond. He’s built an impressive portfolio crossing film and installation, radio and live events, while making music videos for the likes of Klein, Farai, Tirzah and Blood Orange as well as shooting for campaigns by Kenzo, Bianca Saunders and Gucci. Most recently, Akin’s short film Lizard premiered at London Film Festival in October last year, while winning official selection for Sundance 2021.
See here for more episodes: https://patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Lucrecia Dalt, a musician and producer whose abstract sound design explores notions of time and physicality through her minimalist synth, rhythm and vocal manipulation marking a point where the borders between genres and disciplines, forms and bodies collapse.Currently based in Berlin, the Colombian artist has worked with subjects ranging from new german cinema and body horror to geology and astrophysics. This year she released a record in her native Spanish titled No era sólida which translates to “she wasnt solid” drawing on inspiration from Malian griot performer Fanta Damba and taking notes on ideas of the marginal, in-between, and mixed from Chicana feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with Elvia Wilk, a writer whose practice deals with art, technology and culture under capitalism, expressed through an entanglement of critical essays, autobiography, and speculative fiction. Based in New York after years spent in Berlin, Elvia’s writing has appeared in the likes of frieze, Artforum, Mousse and the Los Angeles Review of Books to name a few. Her debut novel 'Oval' was published in 2019 by Soft Skull Press, and she is a contributing editor at e-flux Journal.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks with Margaret Haines, an artist and writer based in Amsterdam whose work with film and installation has developed into a fascinating archival research practice focussed on the esoteric and the occult.Originally from Montreal and spending much of her formative art education in Los Angeles, Margaret has developed a unique visual aesthetic and experimental writing approach to exploring complex belief systems and spiritual practices evolving within broader political, social and historical contexts. Margaret has been working on a narrative biography—produced and edited by AQNB—on artist and occult icon Cameron, probably best known for her role in Kenneth Anger’s ‘Welcome to the Pleasure Dome’ and marriage to rocket scientist and founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jack Parsons. Inspired by her close study and understanding of Cameron's life and work throughout the Cold War, Margaret’s intention is to bring her influence on a fascinating, if little-known scene to public consciousness—touching on the worlds of notorious English occultist Aleister Crowley, and Scientology—while privileging Cameron’s role within it.
See here for full episode: https://patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared talks with Nile Koetting, an artist whose immersive works mix installation, performance, and ambient environments to explore interests in technology, human solidarity and times of crisis. Born in Japan and based in Berlin, Nile often works collaboratively with performers and artists including composer Nozomu Matsumoto, and writer Miriam Stoney. His work has been shown at the likes of Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum, Shanghai, Somerset House, London, Kunstverein Göttingen, and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode — which we're releasing early before the US election — Steph speaks with Maria Minerva, a performer and producer known for her self-conscious bedroom productions of nu disco and lo-fi pop, who also happens to work in environmental advocacy in CaliforniaThe Estonian-born artist and recently naturalised American citizen released her fifth solo album after an extended, six year hiatus, somewhat anticlimactically in September while America was (and is) still in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. Released via not not fun sister label 100% Silk, the album is Maria’s first to be co-produced with LA-based producer Adam Gunther and her most high fidelity, danceable and energetic release to date.
See here for full episode: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Steph speaks to Jonnine Standish, a performer and musician best known for fronting Australian post-punk band HTRK, and her developing solo career under the mononym Jonnine. The Australian artist is is currently living in the idyllic Dandenong Ranges of greater Melbourne with her husband Conrad (of CS + Kreme), where Jonnine spent her time during lockdown producing her debut solo album Blue Hills. Released via Boomkat in late July, the record moves even further from the dub-y post-industrial gloom of early HTRK into a lovely warmth and introspection that’s lightly sprinkled with the singer’s inimitable wit.
See here for more episodes: patreon.com/aqnbIn this episode Jared speaks with Legacy Russell, a writer, curator and artist who examines our digital selfhood through critical lenses of blackness and queerness.Born and raised in New York, with time spent in London where she received a Masters from Goldsmiths in 2013, Legacy has organised shows and events at the likes of London’s ICA, MoMA PS1 and The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she is currently Associate Curator of Exhibitions. Legacy's book 'Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto' was published via Verso Books on September 29.
In this episode Jared speaks with Zach Blas, an artist, filmmaker and writer whose videos and mixed media installations draw queer readings on American mythologies around tech, psychedelia and the Californian Ideology, expanding these through the language of science fiction.Born in West Virginia, studying in California, and now at home in London where he is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, Zach has presented work for the likes of de Young Museum, San Francisco, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Gwangju Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery, London and more.
In this episode Steph speaks with Geo Wyeth, a musician, performer and educator whose interdisciplinary work aims to create language around colonial and racial histories through embodied storytelling. Currently based in Rotterdam, the New York-born artist is co-founder queer social space Tender Center, and has worked with the likes of Tourmaline, Jen Rosenblit and Niv Acosta among others. Wyeth most recently collaborated with cult icon Vava Dudu, translating the Parisian fashion designer, musician and painter’s poetry from French to English and performing a joint companion piece organized by Buenos Tiempos, International’s Alberto García del Castillo at BOZAR Brussels in June.
In this episode Steph speaks with Cristine Brache, whose practice spanning sculpture, poetry and video concerns issues of cultural erasure, and the survival of identity in oppressive environments through codified behaviors.Currently living between Toronto and Miami, Cristine often draws on personal experience as an American born queer woman of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent, and the colonial and patriarchal conditions these things imply. Her current exhibition—‘Commit Me, Commit to Me’—at New York's Fierman Gallery explores the work of woman surrealists of the early 20th century and the ongoing culture of gaslighting these lost histories reveal more broadly.
In this episode Jared speaks with Legacy Russell, a writer, curator and artist who examines our digital selfhood through critical lenses of blackness and queerness.Born and raised in New York, with time spent in London where she received a Masters from Goldsmiths in 2013, Legacy has organised shows and events at the likes of London’s ICA, MoMA PS1 and The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she is currently Associate Curator of Exhibitions. Legacy's book Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto is forthcoming via Verso Books on September 29.
In this episode Steph speaks with Lucrecia Dalt, a musician and producer whose abstract sound design explores notions of time and physicality through her minimalist synth, rhythm and vocal manipulation marking a point where the borders between genres and disciplines, forms and bodies collapse.Currently based in Berlin, the Colombian artist has worked with subjects ranging from new german cinema and body horror to geology and astrophysics. This year she released a record in her native Spanish titled No era sólida which translates to “she wasnt solid” drawing on inspiration from Malian griot performer Fanta Damba and taking notes on ideas of the marginal, in-between, and mixed from Chicana feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa.
On today’s episode Jared talks with Joey Holder, who is known for her installations, videos and web-based projects that speak to themes of contemporary myth-making, science, ecologies and online culture.Joey has held solo exhibitions at the likes of Matt’s Gallery London, Wysing Arts Centre and Sonic Acts Amsterdam. Her shows create expansive mixed media environments—for instance her most recent exhibition 'Semelparous'—in which the artist’s work occupied a disused swimming pool and leisure centre left to ruin in North London.
In this episode Jared talks with Lawrence Lek. Working across video, music and VR, Lawrence's interrelated projects build speculative fictions addressing questions around AI, authenticity, and geopolitics, as imagined through the future of cities like London and Singapore.In a 2017 interview on AQNB, Lawrence spoke about how when confronted by empty cities or ruins it can lead to epiphanies about ourselves. This awareness of a social aspect to the cityscape—no doubt drawing from his training as an architect—continues to run through his practice today. He’s since shown notable works at London’s 180 The Strand for the major Transformer: A Rebirth of Wonder group exhibition last year, as well as a solo exhibition AIDOL 爱道 at Sadie Coles HQ.
In this episode Steph speaks with Cristine Brache, whose practice spanning sculpture, poetry and video concerns issues of cultural erasure, and the survival of identity in oppressive environments through codified behaviors.Currently living between Toronto and Miami, Cristine often draws on personal experience as an American born queer woman of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent, and the colonial and patriarchal conditions these things imply. Her current exhibition—‘Commit Me, Commit to Me’—at New York's Fierman Gallery explores the work of woman surrealists of the early 20th century and the ongoing culture of gaslighting these lost histories reveal more broadly.
In this episode Jared talks with Lawrence Lek. Working across video, music and VR, Lawrence's interrelated projects build speculative fictions addressing questions around AI, authenticity, and geopolitics, as imagined through the future of cities like London and Singapore.In a 2017 interview on AQNB, Lawrence spoke about how when confronted by empty cities or ruins it can lead to epiphanies about ourselves. This awareness of a social aspect to the cityscape—no doubt drawing from his training as an architect—continues to run through his practice today. He’s since shown notable works at London’s 180 The Strand for the major Transformer: A Rebirth of Wonder group exhibition last year, as well as a solo exhibition AIDOL 爱道 at Sadie Coles HQ.
In this episode Jared talks with artist, composer and choreographer Colin Self, who builds on queer dance and movement traditions, drawing from extended notions of family and kin.Colin first appeared on AQNB’s radar as part of experimental drag collective Chez Deep. Formed in New York in 2012, the group that originally included Alexis Penney, Bailey Stiles, Hari Nef, Sam Banks along with Colin produced a series of performance videos in collaboration with our site back in 2015. Now based in Berlin, Colin has released music on RVNG Intl. and presented performances as well as workshops for the likes of 3hd Festival, MoMA PS1 and the Getty Center, while being a live and studio collaborator of musician Holly Herndon.