Frank Prattle with Zefrey Throwell

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Liam Gillick (artist and cat fancier)

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In the backstage green room of Creative Time’s Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice (which was a bright yellow), as a semi-fascist performance warmed up outside with stomping shovels and chanted power slogans, Liam Gillick and I stole away for a few moments over some free snacks and wrangled through the beautifully sticky morass of what it means to be an artist today.

The territory we covered was vast and yet focused, theoretical and yet personal, starting with progressive working practices and how the car company Volvo has indirectly/directly effected art production today and moving to the “hypocrsy equation” in social projects and even straying into Sabrina the Teenage Witch and monkey-wrenching talking cat toys.

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Liam Gillick presenting at the Creative Time Summit in the NY Public Library

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One of my favorite moments of the conversation came when discussing a question that Liam puts to his students, “What is your hobby going to be?”. In a world so focused on productivity and maximizing the multi-tasking potential of every nanosecond, the idea of a hobby has a slight smack of slander, especially in the high octane New York art world today. Precisely because of that and because eventually one will have some inbetween moments where their quotient of product will fall below the bar, “the hobby” is a vital question.

Find out what Liam Gillick’s hobby is, hear him say the words, “unicorns, planets, and falling down” and much more!  For full knowledge, listen to the titillating tell-all in it’s entirety!

To listen to the full interview click here:

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Lars Bang Larsen and I sat down across from each other at the bustling Japonica lunch, his demeanor was precise and yet friendly. I had heard much about this young curator and with such a striking name one hoped for some exotic sword swallower with a flashy orange head scraf and a missing arm. While the package proved to be fairly standard, the goods inside were anything but.

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Lars Bang Larsen (curator and writer)

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From the starting gun this interview was a dilly. I have done many interviews in my life and the rule is generally the subject of the interview does all the talking. It is a rare day when the interviewee flips it back on the interviewer and I end up doing most of the talking, but such was the case at first with Lars.

Just to give you a taste, our conversation ranged from hippy communes, organized unions for bands with light shows, food fights, Jacob Holdt, the most dangerous part of town, the weight of Såo Paolo, Sweet Movie, and even touch on social justice in the arts.

This one is dynamite! Not to be missed.

Listen along to the full interview:

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Morris Dickstein, author and professor

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Morris Dickstein, distinguished author and professor, is one of the most understated and humble people that I have had the pleasure of speaking to. While his books are world renowned, his demeanor is down to earth and straight forward. I chatted with him over the phone this evening about his new book, Dancing In the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression as well as what he plans on presenting at the Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice.

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One of the primary issues that Dickstein touched upon was the depth with which the Great Depression relates to the current state of affairs. Chronicling the lives of artists who survived and produced during the 1930’s, Dickstein shows the lessons that we can learn from those who came before us. Following such greats at the Gershwin brothers, Walker Evans, Fred Astaire, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, and Dorothea Lange, Dickstein offers a glimpse at the coping skills of these artists amidst the storm of poverty and misery.

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This week is the lead up to one of the hottest events happening this year, the Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice. Collaborating with the New York Public Library, the arts organization Creative Time has put together a zinger of a conference. 35 cultural producers will present their work in a rapid fire format of 7 minute information blasts, making “short, pointed, and dynamic presentations on their work and art and social justice in the public sphere.”

While many conversations of the what art can do for society and vice versa, get bogged down in stuffy academic jargon and seem to fruitlessly wander without results, this summit has been organized as a tight and pointed springboard, reigning in the great minds of public art and action to 7 minutes and forcing them to focus on a point.

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Dara Greenwald, artist

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The list of participants is vast and varied from the Yes Men, to Thomas Hirschorn, Suzanne Lacy, Dara Greenwald, Temporary Services, Okwui Enwezor, Liam Gillick, Harrell Fletcher, and many many more. (For a complete list of presenters visit: here).

This column will be highlighting some of the artists that will be participating in the summit. With such a short span of time to present their work at the conference, this blog will be augmenting the summit by giving background history, context, and anecdotes as a well as interviews and photos for those involved.

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