Artist Annette Messager: Like in a Dream
Annette Messager, French contemporary artist, explains in the video how her practice blends installation, photography, and textile work, rooted in instinct and personal history. She describes growing up with an architect‑painter father whose calm demeanor while painting shaped her disciplined yet spontaneous approach. Her work repeatedly employs black‑and‑white photographs of body fragments, strings, nets, and fabrics to interrogate gender, motherhood, and the fragility of human connections. Specific examples include using fishing‑net motifs inspired by her coastal childhood, juxtaposing images of lovers with cut strings to highlight contradiction, and recounting how dreams provide immediate solutions to creative blocks. Messager’s methodology underscores a broader shift toward interdisciplinary, feminist art that challenges traditional narratives, offering a template for artists seeking to merge personal narrative with material experimentation.
Artist and Architect Liam Young: My Solutions Are Not Polite
Liam Young argues that today’s "before‑culture" technologies outpace society’s ability to comprehend them, demanding an architectural practice that moves at tech’s breakneck speed. He positions architecture as a rare interdisciplinary bridge, capable of translating between engineers, scientists, filmmakers, and policymakers,...
Artist Paulina Olowska: ”I Think Being an Artist Is Kind of Like Being a Medium.
Polish artist Paulina Olowska describes her practice as a medium that senses the right moment and energy, while recounting her move to a small village and the restoration of the historic Kadenówka house into a creative sanctuary. Olowska explains that Kadenówka,...
Writer Seán Hewitt: The Gift of Shame
Sean Hewitt uses a talk titled “The Gift of Shame” to explore how poetry, memoir, and religious imagery function as tools for arresting and revisiting time. He likens poems to photographs that freeze a single expression, allowing readers to return...
Will Oldham on His Artistic Alter Ego, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy #music #bonnieprincebilly #folk
In a candid interview, singer‑songwriter Will Oldham explains why he adopted the moniker Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy as an artistic alter ego, framing it as a strategic separation between his personal identity and the voice listeners hear. Oldham argues that audiences naturally...
Becoming Sophie Calle: “Sometimes You Suffer, and It Offers You a Boulevard of Pleasure.”
Sophie Calle reflects on a lifetime of personal loss, family dynamics, and the mundane objects that have become the scaffolding of her art. The interview weaves anecdotes about a giraffe plush representing her mother, a bed‑in‑India project that launched her Venice...
Sophie Calle Gives Advice to the Young #contemporaryart #art
Sophie Calle, the celebrated French conceptual artist, appears on camera reflecting on the difficulty of offering guidance to a new generation of creators. She notes her own circumstances—no children, no teaching role, and a life lived across decades—make her perspective...
How Małgorzata Mirga-Tas Uses Textile Art to Reclaim Roma Stories
Małgorzata Mirga‑Tas, a Polish‑Romani artist, uses vibrant textile collages to reclaim Roma history and memory. By stitching fabrics from family and friends, she replaces bleak palettes with bright, patterned cloth, honoring traumatic events like the Holocaust while celebrating everyday life....
Turkish Writer Zülfü Livaneli on Poet Yaşar Kemal: "He Was My Best Friend for 44 Years."
Turkish musician‑writer Zülfü Livaneli pays heartfelt tribute to his longtime friend, novelist Yaşar Kemal, recalling a 44‑year bond that spanned Istanbul, Paris, Stockholm and exile. Livaneli notes Kemal’s universal reach—his novel “My Hawk” topped bestseller lists in Sweden, Britain and the...
Painter Michael Craig-Martin: "A Picture of a Shoe Has Nothing to Do with a Shoe."
Painter Michael Craig‑Martin uses a simple shoe illustration to argue that two‑dimensional images are fundamentally separate from the objects they depict. He emphasizes that a picture of a shoe “has nothing to do with a shoe,” framing visual representation as...
Pipilotti Rist on Her Iconic Work 'Ever Is Over All' (1997) #contemporaryart #art
The video features Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist discussing her 1997 work "Ever Is Over All," an iconic looping video of a woman smashing windows with a flower. Rist recounts that the idea emerged from a fraught encounter with a newspaper...
Artist Isabella Ducrot: The Story of the World Has Been Written by Male Minds #contemporaryart #art
Isabella Ducrot, born in 1931 in Naples, has built a four‑decade career that fuses textile motifs with pencil, pastel, ink and watercolour on delicate paper. Her practice compresses philosophy, folklore and weaving traditions into intimate and monumental compositions. Ducrot’s works...
Artist Sophie Calle: “In My Youth, Losing One Year Didn’t Exist.”
Sophie Calle reflects on a generation that perceived time as limitless, recalling how, in her youth, the notion of "losing a year" was unheard of. She recounts spending seven years hitchhiking across Mexico and other countries without money, relying on...
Italian Artist Lulù Nuti: "When I Study the Material, It Gives Me a Vision."
The video features Italian sculptor Lulù Nuti, who explains that her practice begins with a dialogue with material—particularly iron—and that studying the material gives her a vision of form. She describes how she avoids precise drawings, using free sketches as energetic...
Advice to Emerging Artists
The video offers candid counsel to emerging artists, urging them to shed the fear of error and to view artistic labels—like "multimedia artist"—as fluid rather than restrictive. The speaker emphasizes that imagination deserves respect and that a solid grounding in...
Photographer Noémie Goudal: “There Are so Many Layers in an Image.”
Noémie Goudal uses photography and film to investigate how a seemingly flat image can contain multiple layers of meaning, perspective, and materiality. Her practice, rooted in early hobbyist experimentation, has evolved into a disciplined inquiry that merges artistic composition with...
Adania Shibli: What Formed Me As a Writer
In a candid interview, Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli traces the origins of her literary voice to a childhood saturated with books and a conviction that everyone, in some form, is a writer. She recounts how a simple notebook, gifted by her...