For episode 66 we are back in the conservation lab, visiting with the one and only Joanna Phillips. For any listeners familiar with time-based media conservation, Joanna hardly needs any introduction — she was among the first generation of practitioners in this field,  and the second ever time-based media conservator at a US museum. At the Guggenheim Joanna established the first museum time-based media conservation lab. Her work has been incredibly influential in the field — she developed a...

On today’s show we are visiting with Salome Asega, a true multihyphenate  who not only leads New Inc, the New Museum’s incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology, but who has also maintained a vibrant artistic practice all throughout the years that her career as an arts administrator has been thriving. This might be due to the fact that when you look at Salome’s work as a professional, it really is just an extension of her work as an artist — delightfully...

This month we’re in the studio visiting with contemporary artist Nikita Gale. Gale's work employs objects and materials like barricades, concrete, microphone stands, and spotlights to address the ways in which space and sound are politicized. Last year in episode 32 we visited with gallerist Ebony L. Haynes, director of 52 Walker, and it was in preparing for that conversation that I visited the gallery, and had the treat of seeing Nikita Gale’s work in person for the first time in the...

For this episode we are back in the conservation lab, visiting with Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art. If you were to visit the Whitney today and see the lab and the department that Carol leads, you might find it hard to believe that none of it existed back when she joined the Whitney. In 2001 Carol not only became the museum’s first director of conservation, but also its first staff conservator. In our...

Today we are visiting with the one and only Shirin Neshat, who hardly needs introduction. If you’ve ever taken an art history class that covers video art, photography, international cinema, or for that matter contemporary opera, you’ve definitely seen Shirin’s work. Since her debut exhibition in 1993 at Franklin Furnace, Shirn’s work has offered a deeply personal yet universal perspective on womanhood, power, corruption, trauma, and the female body as the battleground of social and political...

We are closing out 2022 with highlights from eight incredible artists that graced the show this year. Tune in to hear the voices of Gary Hill, American Artist, WangShui, Meriem Bennani, Alan Michelson, Tourmaline, Arthur Jafa, and Hito Steyerl discussing how they think about the preservation and documentation of their work, as well as intimate inside glimpses into their practice and studios. Sending a huge heartfelt thanks to everyone all of the listeners that made 2022 such a memorable year...

For our 60th episode, we are visiting with artist, writer, filmmaker, and educator, Hito Steyerl. In addition to being able to find Hito’s work in museums, biennales, collections, and bookshelves all over the world, a good deal of her single-channel moving image work can be watched freely online, which of course is a good thing, but Hito’s work has also explored the darker side of what the global dispersion of images can entail – starting with her deeply personal pre-internet short film...

This week on the show we are visiting with Rebecca Cleman, executive director of Electronic Arts Intermix. EAI has of coursed already come up on the show many times, and recently in episode 54 we visited with their director of preservation and media collections – today we will be going deeper into this history and evolution of EAI, and getting a look behind the scenes of an organization that has been incredibly central to the history of video art, and incredibly impactful for countless...

This week on the show we are traveling to Karlsruhe, Germany to chat with art conservator Morgane Stricot. You wouldn’t know it considering the technologically complex works of art that she cares for today, but Morgane’s first love in conservation was incredibly traditional, initially being drawn to frescos and murals. Fast forward to today and she is wrapping up a PhD in applying a media archeological approach to the conservation of time-based media art in the context of the collection of...

This week on the show we travel to Switzerland to visit with media conservator Martina Haidvogl. We’ve heard the conservation program at the Bern Academy of the Arts mentioned a few times on the show so far, as for a long time it was really the only formal conservation training program that had time-based media as a specialization. With time spent in Bern, and as an alum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Martina was one of the few first conservators to arrive in the US with formal...

This week on the show we are continuing to expand our perspective on the time-based media conservation ecosystem in Taiwan, with our guest Yuhsien Chen. In the handfull of years that she has been dedicated to time-based media conservation Yuhsien has been up to some incredibly exciting things. We heard her name come up back in episode 46 when visiting with her colleague and collaborator Tzu-Chuan Lin, about work they did together at the National Taiwan Museum of Art – and as you’ll hear in...

Since 1991 when he somewhat accidentally landed a curatorial position at the Guggenheim, Jon Ippolito has been passionately dedicated to building curatorial projects, research initiatives, and collaborations revolving around the preservation of time-based media art. Through projects such as the variable media questionnaire, exhibitions such as Seeing Double, and books such as Re-collection: Art, New Media, and Social Memory (co-authored with Rick Rinehart), Jon’s thinking about how to...

This week we’re visiting with media conservator and conservator Caroline Gil Rodríguez, who last year became director of preservation and media collections at the Electronic Arts Intermix. EAI played an incredibly pivotal role in cementing video art’s place in history, and there Caroline is doing exciting work not only to safeguard their important collection, but also to help shape and rethink what role a place like EAI plays within the broader time-based media conservation ecosystem today,...

This week we’re visiting the the one and only Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design and Director of Research and Development at the Museum of Modern Art. Paola is quite frankly is a legend  – not only because she made MoMA’s first ever homepage on the World Wide Web in 1995 – but for decades she has been pushing the envelope and really reshaping what it means for museums to collect. For instance, what does it mean for a museum to collect something that is in in the public...

This week’s guest, Paul Messier, is an excellent example of the potential for creativity that lies within the unique brand of entrepreneurship that is running an independent conservation practice. Although working as an independent art conservator comes with many unique challenges (Paul’s journey being no exception) it also has great potential for extending beyond what most people imagine art conservators do; far beyond just restoring or documenting artworks. Over the years, Paul has been...

This week on the show we’re visiting with Signal Culture director and co-founder Debora Bernagozzi. In our chat we delve deeply into the niche and history-rich dimension of video art practice where the video signal itself is deconstructed and the flow of electricity becomes a medium that is synthesized, manipulated, and performed by the artist in real-time. We’ll hear all about the incredible work that Signal Culture is doing to collect, preserve, build, and restore incredibly rare and...

This week on the show we’re in the artist’s studio visiting the one and only Arthur Jafa. From his extensive work in cinema, to his video art, sculpture, and other mixed media work shown in a contemporary art context – AJ’s work is often an embodiment of Black identity in America, and he is often cited with being a leader among a generation of artists creating defining a distinctly Black cinematic language. This extends as well into current projects on the more infrastructural / business side...

On this week’s show we continue expanding our perspective on the conservation field with contemporary art conservator Flaminia Fortunato. For the past two years Flaminia has served as the Stedelijk Museum’s first-ever time-based media art conservator, and prior to this held fellowships at MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, and more. In our chat we hear all about Flaminia’s origins growing up in the south of Italy, and her conservation education that began with very traditional roots in Venice, and...

This week’s guest Jochen Saueracker had some incredible stories to tell – the early decades of his career were spent as a sort of engineer and/or video art roadie for Nam June Paik, traveling all over the world installing complex towers of CRT monitors. Today, in addition to working closely with Shigeko Kubota’s estate to steward her legacy and archive, Jochen works as part of an incredible workshop called Colorvac. Not only is Colorvac one of really just a handful of workshops still capable...

This week on the show we are visiting the one and only Stuart Comer, chief curator of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art. Stuart is not only prolifically active as a curator at MoMA doing all of the things curators do: building exhibitions, building collections, building relationships with artists, the public, and patrons, etc – but as a department head at a museum the scale of MoMA, Stuart is also very much a leader. The department of media and performance art at MoMA...

This week on the show we're visiting with another emerging professional in the time-based media conservation field. Tzu-Chuan Lin is currently finishing up a masters degree focused in conservation of new media and digital information at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, and in his studies there, he’s been conducting some very needed research on the documentation and conservation of artworks that use a tool called Max/MSP – which a sort of visual programming language that has been...

We're off this week, re-running our second-ever episode from back in 2021, featuring curator, writer, and director of The Kitchen, Legacy Russell. We're back to our regularly scheduled program with incredible new episodes next week! Get access to exlusive content - join us on Patreon! > https://patreon.com/artobsolescence Join the conversation: https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/ Support artists Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast,...

We're off this week, re-running our second-ever episode from back in 2021, featuring artist Lynn Hershman Leeson. We're back to our regularly scheduled program with incredible new episodes on August 2nd. Get access to exlusive content - join us on Patreon! > https://patreon.com/artobsolescence Join the conversation: https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/ Support artists Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York...

This week on the show we are in the artist’s studio visiting with the one and only Tourmaline. Tourmaline’s work extends across various media and is a magical blend of a very research-oriented practice that brings history to life, and crafting visions of repose, luxury, relaxation, magic and joy – whether it is in the form of video installations,  photography, or fashion. To say that her work is interdisciplinary would be an understatement – not only is Tourmaline an accomplished and award...