Momus: The Podcast

In this episode, we feature Legacy Russell, the writer, curator, and Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen, an artist-driven non-profit space in New York City. As a cultural critic she has published the books Glitch Feminism (Verso Books, 2020) and Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us [https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/2751-black-meme?srsltid=AfmBOorgse-3GX4IMBPjnmfUB1MMAEtYdNDJ3G7djeQqaVip2WkmEHkg] (Verso Books, 2024), which questions how we define Blackness through mediated material. For the podcast, Russell reads from Lorraine O’Grady’s iconic essay [https://lorraineogrady.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Lorraine-OGrady_Olympias-Maid-Reclaiming-Black-Female-Subjectivity1.pdf] “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity,” first published in Afterimage in 1992, and collected in New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (Routledge, 1994). Russell speaks with Sky Goodden about her relationship to O’Grady’s essay—one that “came before its time and carried us into the future”—and touches on the central conceit that perhaps also explains its controversy: “Lorraine truly believed in a culture that would allow for contestation.” But, Legacy reflects, perhaps our culture hasn’t caught up to her yet.  Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, the artist Cui Jinzhe [https://cuijinzhe.com/home.html], for her support of our work. Thanks to Legacy Russell for her contribution to this season. And thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Nizan Shaked is our guest this month! Shaked is Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum, and Curatorial Studies at California State University, Long Beach, and most recently the author of Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections [https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/museums-and-wealth-9781350045767/] (Bloomsbury, 2022). She speaks to Lauren Wetmore about the resources offered by criticality, writing for ”liberals that I want to become more radical,” and researching her forthcoming book Art Against the System, for which she recently won a Warhol Arts Writers Grant. Shaked offers artist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s book The Notion of Family [https://aperture.org/books/the-notion-of-family-4/] (Aperture, 2014) to consider the devastation perpetrated by imperial industry, its connection to art systems, and how artists provide models for how to deal with authoritarianism. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Centre PHI [https://phi.ca/en/?gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADFxj83ZvqL68afnTIgkXXb4jvv1x&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2ZfABhDBARIsAHFTxGzshekdsHmo3AwI_fFJR2FSdlOuASkuxQj1d6Jc90dG8ZqasJNEmm4aAp2ZEALw_wcB] and Night Gallery [https://nightgallery.ca/], for their support of our work. Our deepest thanks to Nizan Shaked for her contribution to this season. And a big thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Season 8 of Momus: The Podcast launches with Ajay Kurian, an artist, critic, and co-founder of New Crits [https://www.newcrits.studio/], a platform for artist mentorship. Kurian speaks with Sky Goodden about a text by Robert Pogue [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5815522.html] Harrison  [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5815522.html]on the art of the zen garden (Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 2008), and about his artist-writer influences including Robert Smithson, Paul Chan, and Hannah Black. He also touches on his recent response (in Cultured Mag [http://turedmag.com/article/2024/12/04/critics-table-dean-kissick-identity-art-harpers-response]) to Dean Kissick's screed on identity politics (in Harper’s [https://harpers.org/archive/2024/12/the-painted-protest-dean-kissick-contemporary-art/]), and what it required to “clean the public restroom” in the wake of Kissick’s feature going viral. “I think I was more upset by how bad the piece was than the ideas in the piece. […] I think especially for artists of color, like none of that stuff is new to us. And to think that there was massive progress … it could all be taken away in a second. I'm not holding it as new solid ground.” Kurian’s solo exhibition Peanuts (Deluxe) [https://47canal.us/exhibitions/peanuts-deluxe] is on view at 47 Canal in New York through March 22.   Many thanks for this episode’s sponsors, CONTACT Photography Festival [https://contactphoto.com/], Plural Art Fair [https://www.plural.art/en], and Workman Arts [https://workmanarts.com/], for their support of our work. Thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Momus: The Podcast’s Season 07 finale features Tiana Reid, a Toronto-based critic and assistant professor of English at York University. Reid is a former editor at The New Inquiry and her writing has been featured in Frieze, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and The Paris Review, among others. She reads from an early influence on her practice, Sylvia Wynter, whose text "Jonkonnu in Jamaica: Towards the Interpretation of the Folk Dance as a Cultural Process" [https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00090030/00010/36j] (Jamaica Journal, June, 1970) thinks about “what art's function is in unequal and oppressive societies and regimes.” In conversation with host Sky Goodden, Reid also discusses a forthcoming text for Momus, which focuses on an evacuated landscape in Toronto’s cultural institutions due to several curator dismissals, and moves Reid “to this question of action.” Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Esker Foundation [https://eskerfoundation.com/].

Esteemed critic and writer Claudia La Rocco [https://claudialarocco.com/] speaks to Lauren Wetmore about being a “dance partisan” and how “language can nail things down in a way that dance doesn’t.” This wide-ranging conversation touches on artists including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Simone Forti, and Moriah Evans, through critics including Jill Johnston and Megan Metcalf, to consider how dance and writing move through different institutions and histories. La Rocco reads American choreographer Susan Rethorst’s “Dailiness” from A Choreographic Mind: Autobodygraphical Writings (University of the Arts, Helsinki, 2015), which she describes as a text that “was formative for me but still fits me pretty well, and relates to both how I think about writing, and what is so special about dance.”  Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Many thanks to this episode’s sponsor, The Blue Building [https://www.thebluebuilding.ca/].