Chase Hall’s paintings in coffee and acrylic on cotton canvas investigate generational celebrations and traumas encoded throughout American history. In 2023, his work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia and in 2022, he was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to produce a large-scale artwork for its opera house in New York. Previously, Hall has been an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, Maine, and he is...

For this episode, we asked artist, mother, and activist Tanya Aguiñiga which artist she would most wish to speak with and she chose visual artist and curator Julio César Morales. The pair discuss the versatility of the border experience, unlikely influences, and functional art practices. This episode is in partnership with The Armory Show. Both artists appearing in the episode are part of the curated sections of the fair’s 2022 edition. Tanya Aguiñiga’s work is presented by Volume Gallery in...

For this episode, we asked writer Maggie Nelson which artist she would most wish to speak with and she chose painter and animation artist Tala Madani. In the course of their conversation, Maggie reflects on the process of writing On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. The pair discuss how to capture magic in adult life, balancing doubt and trust, and Maggie’s first experience writing about art.  Maggie Nelson is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently the New...

For this episode, we asked visual artist Tschabalala Self who she’d most like to speak with—she selected her friend Abdu Ali, the musician and multidisciplinary artist. The pair discuss the fantasy of permanent institutional spaces, unapologetic art, and the fraught desire for canonical recognition.

For this episode, we asked musician and songwriter David Byrne which artist he’d most wish to speak with. He chose hip-hop artist and comedian Open Mike Eagle. David reveals how he wrote the iconic Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House,” and the pair discuss gatekeeping in the music industry, anime as inspiration, and what punchlines can teach you about songwriting.

For this episode, we asked choreographer Miguel Gutierrez which artist he’d most like to speak with, and, without hesitation, he selected performance artist and writer Gabrielle Civil. Over the phone, Miguel and Gabrielle discuss their paths to artistic success, the pressures of first-generation exceptionalism, and the time Miguel memorized the choreography to The Nutcracker as a ten-year-old.

We asked Eiko Otake, the movement-based interdisciplinary artist, who she’d most like to speak with and she named her former collaborator and artistic director, David Harrington, founder and violinist of Kronos Quartet. In the course of their conversation, Eiko explores her reluctance to use music with her choreography, David divulges the most disturbing piece of music he’s ever heard, and they ponder art’s resonance in the body by asking, “Where does a sound go once you've finished making...

FUSE: A BOMB Podcast returns for a second season. Here’s how it works: In each episode, BOMB invites an artist to choose a guest from any creative discipline— an art crush, a close collaborator, or even a stranger they’ve admired from afar —and we bring them together. The result? Candid, unfiltered conversations on art: what inspires it, how it’s made, and what we can learn from it. Don't miss an episode. Subscribe to FUSE wherever you listen.

For this episode, Olivia Laing, author of Everybody: A Book About Freedom and Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, selected her old friend and documentarian Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth) as the artist she most wanted to speak with. They discuss their abhorrence of the word “storytelling,” mining cultural history for inspiration, and the queerness of living unconventionally—in Olivia’s case, living in a tree.

For this episode, we asked musician Okay Kaya which artist she would most like to speak with, and she selected filmmaker John Wilson, creator of HBO’s How To with John Wilson. Listen in on their conversation to discover the genesis of John's voyeuristic style, and how a late-night karaoke fail led Kaya to write a song “you can dance to.” With humor and vulnerability, the pair discuss finding inspiration in everyday moments, the transformation of shame into art, and, of course, how to approach...

In an expansive examination of academia and the archive, Gary and Greenidge underscore the importance of expanding access and redistributing power. They talk about how a historically based practice shapes representations of Black womanhood in their respective works.

The two performers discuss how they build relationships with their audiences, challenging gender norms, fighting fear with art making, and the power of body language in their work.

The two writers address the state of fiction twenty years later, the importance of forgoing “safe” characters, their candid take on the word “process,” and the 2015 PEN/Charlie Hebdo scandal.

Since 1981, BOMB Magazine has delivered the voices of the most iconic artists of our time, publishing conversations between visual, literary, and performing artists. BOMB seeks to further its mission by fostering meaningful discussions among creative luminaries. FUSE departs from a typical podcast format, with neither a host nor a moderator. Episodes present an uninhibited, probing glimpse into the histories and creative processes of some of this generation’s most seminal artistic figures.

Simone Leigh selected longtime collaborator and friend Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich to talk about experimenting with new media, the importance of failure in one’s career, and what it means to be a “race woman.”

We asked Nick Hornby, author of the memoir Fever Pitch and the novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, who he’d most like to speak with. Without hesitation, he named Grammy-winning composer and jazz orchestra leader Maria Schneider. The pair discuss writing “big stuff,” small towns, childhood fantasies, flailing, building an archive, hang gliding, and finding one’s voice.

Mira Jacob selected fellow novelist Scott Cheshire to discuss process, epiphany, and race in the era of Trump. Jacob considers how to write unflinchingly about the realities of contemporary American life—with horror and humor—as well as the hard choice between vengeance and clarity.