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This week: Our final installment in the Open Engagement series. This week we talk to Jule Ault!

This is sort of like a preview for two series of interviews and posts I have planned. You may have noticed I haven’t been posting as many interviews these last couple of weeks; that’s because I’ve been conducting them in the back room, just out of your view. It’s been like a back stage shuffle and I’m getting more and more excited about launching these projects. I hope to do so starting next week.

1) The first series of interviews comes out of a month-long residency I went on this last summer. For the month of June I lived at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island. There I made use of their most amazing print shop facility to make books and conducted interviews with different individuals running projects. From those talks I have three interviews that I’ll be posting: an interview with Xander Marro and Pippi Zornoza of the ever illustrious artist-run Dirt Palace, a conversation with former-Providence resident and print maker Meg Turner about a print shop/collective she’s opened in New Orleans and a recounted conversation with AS220 founder Umberto Crenca (this last conversation was not recorded and will, no doubt, suffer or shine from the process of memory). I was particularly interested the relationship between a political environment and DIY artistic initiatives. Providence seemed like a particularly interesting place to think about that dynamic given that it espouses vibrant artistic energy in a city historically notorious for its corruption.

2) The next series I’m working on is shaping into a longer trajectory in which I wanted to examine this ever illusive “hybridity” idea. As an adjective that seems to regularly crop up in conversation, it has started to feel like a buzzword of some kind, and while I love its aura I have some difficulty grasping its meaning. To that end, I’ve been interviewing different artists who specifically address different aspects of hybridity in their work. From Tessa Siddle, Sebastian Alvarez, Milan Mathay, and Gwenn-Ael Lynn — the project continues to grow. I’m interested in hybridity because of how it seems to challenge traditional ideas of category, therefore calling to question the structures that gather around categories, whether that structure is a kind of material power, or a linguistic scaffold. What kind of work follows from this investigation? And where do we locate the self? I’m planning a few non-interview posts on the same topic, including (for instance) a review of Marcus Coates’ new book, The Trip and an old friend (the only 500 year old witch I know) has agreed to put together three hybridity spells, which should only be incanted at night.  I’m pretty excited.

Hopefully you will be too!

Stay tuned till next week

This has nothing to do with Art in even the most remote way but I would be amiss to not post this since it is some of the best comedy for a while and doesn’t appear on TV, Cable or Cinema. No, it’s specifically made and shown on Funny or Die. I could say much more but it would only ruin the best casted skit almost ever.

This is quite possibly the first time you have every SNL Presidential Doppelgänger on screen at the same time ever (just missing Rich Little) and showcases Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Jim Carrey, Fred Armisen, Darrell Hammond, Dan Aykroyd, Maya Rudolph, Dana Carvey & Directed by Ron Howard to promote the Consumer Financial Protection Agency that is under debate/creation right now. Here is a behind the scenes video of the shoot.