Withstanding Podcast Season 3

FCINY’s Withstanding podcast returns with a new season after a year-long hiatus. The podcast was originally launched as a reaction to the halt in production caused by the pandemic, as it was framed as a platform for rethinking professional practices within the cultural field. What do we want to take with us to the future?  What to hold on to? What to leave behind? What to cultivate?

Envisioning a brighter future, Withstanding continues to bring together art professionals from both sides of the Atlantic to share and speculate, care and criticize, and to dream of more just and sustainable conditions for artists and art practitioners at large.

Each podcast episode features a sound-based art work, including new commissions. Essays accompanying selected episodes offer further reading and references on the discussed topics.

Make sure to check out season 2 & season 1 of Withstanding.

Listen to the episodes on for example Apple podcasts, Spotify, or soundcloud.

Episode 9: On AI and Artistry

In this episode our guest host, curator and writer Eileen Isagon Skyers, leads a conversation about the dynamic interplay between artificial intelligence and contemporary art.

We hear from artist Sofia Crespo, renowned for her mesmerizing generative art using neural networks, and artist Tuomas A. Laitinen, whose recent artistic practice includes an in-depth study of octopus intelligence. The episode delves into how AI redefines the boundaries of creativity, touching on the impact of machine learning on artistic expression, its ethical considerations, and the role of AI as both tool and collaborator in the creative process. Join us for an exploration into the evolving dialogue between art, technology, and the natural world.

The episode features an excerpt of a sound piece by Robert M. Thomas, based on his close collaboration with Sofia Crespo on her piece Structures of Being at Antoni Gaudí’s famed Casa Batlló in Barcelona earlier this year. Mapping and zooming in on the micro life forms found at Casa Batlló, the piece is an immersive invitation for audiences to think about the life cycles and life forms we are necessarily a part of. Thomas formed the musical piece by writing generative algorithms that made intricate harmonic textures evoking natural growth and the stages of Gaudi’s life and development as an artist.

Sofia Crespo is an artist working with a huge interest in biology-inspired technologies. One of her main focuses is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them and not a completely separated object. Crespo looks at the similarities between techniques of AI image formation, and the way that humans express themselves creatively and cognitively recognize their world. Her work brings into question the potential of AI in artistic practice and its ability to reshape our understanding of creativity. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques. She currently works as part of the artistic duo Entangled Others.
 

Tuomas A. Laitinen is an artist who works with moving image, sound, light, glass, chemical and microbial processes, as well as algorithms to explore the entanglements of multi-species coexistence. Laitinen composes situations and installations that inquire into the porous interconnectedness of language, body, and matter within morphing ecosystems. In recent years, Laitinen has been working with questions of ecology blended with mythological undertones, and processes of knowledge production. The works are often made with translucent and transparent materials. 

Artist and curator Eileen Isagon Skyers has nearly a decade of experience producing online exhibitions at non-profit and contemporary arts institutions including David Zwirner, Rhizome and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Through recent roles in curation and creative direction for various web3 platforms, she has conducted extensive research on contemporary digital art and culture in an effort to understand the community-building potential for artists working on the blockchain. Skyers's own moving image work has been exhibited in the US, UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Mexico. Her first book, Vanishing Acts, looked at the role of network-based art practices, and her writing has been published in Frieze, Hyperallergic and Dirt, among other publications. Skyers was FCINY and Frame Contemporary Art Finland’s 2019 curator-in-residence.
 

Robert M. Thomas is a composer, sound designer and audio programmer. Through experimental instrumentation, elaborate production techniques, and creating bespoke software technology, he aims to work with the way music is experienced. His work has been performed at institutions such as the Barbican London, Walt Disney Concert Hall LA, Lincoln Centre NYC, and NXT Museum. His collaborators include, among other, Brian Eno, Massive Attack, and Hans Zimmer. Robert is a leading expert in adaptive and generative functional music for health. He has composed many functional music soundtracks, for example music for exercise, driving, meditation, and sleep. 

Episode 8: On Community Activism

In this episode, we delve into the field of community activism in New York and Helsinki, through a discussion led by Ella Kaira and Matti Jänkälä from the Helsinki-based architectural practice Vokal. They are joined by organizer and activist Annie Carforo and curator, organizer and activist Monxo López to discuss both urgencies and longer-term goals of working towards a more equitable urban space. What kind of impact can community-led grassroots organizing have in a city like New York? What are the most urgent matters on either side of the Atlantic? What kind of recent triumphs and challenges to bring forth?

As the sound piece of this episode, we present two tracks, when the saints (interlude) and when the saints (reprise) by artist E. Jane’s alter ego MHYSA. Included in MHYSA’s album NEVAEH (2020), the tracks are a cover of an extended and prophetic version of the familiar song When the Saints Go Marching In. For the artist, this not-quite-as-familiar version of the song symbolizes people imagining a radically different world, and trying to call it into being through music.

Annie Carforo is the Climate Justice Campaigns Manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. She is responsible for engaging WE ACT members and residents of Northern Manhattan in the organization’s climate policy initiatives, and overseeing policies and programs that promote equitable land use in the community. Prior to joining WE ACT, Annie organized alongside New Yorkers experiencing homelessness on City and State legislation designed to improve access to high quality affordable housing. All of Annie’s organizing and policy experience is grounded in community led activism. She holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Human and Organizational Development with a focus on Community Development from Vanderbilt University and is currently pursuing a Master of Urban Planning degree at Hunter College with a focus on equity and sustainability in city planning.

Monxo López is the Curator of Community Histories at the [Museum of the City of New York], where he has worked on the exhibitions Puppets of New York, Food in New York, New York Responds, and Who We Are. He holds a PhD in political science. Monxo was born and grew up in Puerto Rico, and lives in Mott Haven in the South Bronx. He is a founding member of South Bronx Unite, and sits on the boards of both the Cooper Square Community Land Trust and the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Stewarts (aka the South Bronx CLT).

Vokal is an architectural practice founded by architects Ella Kaira and Matti Jänkälä. Their approach to architecture and urban design is community-based. Through a mix of architectural design methods and research, their goal is to craft livable cities for all while delving into the dynamics between architecture, social movements, and property markets within the contemporary city. Vokal participated in the Finnish Cultural Institute residency in New York in November 2023. During the residency period, Ella and Matti studied the role of community-based organizations in climate adaptation.

 E. Jane is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Brooklyn. Inspired by Black liberation and womanist praxis, their work incorporates digital images, video, text, performance, sculpture, installation, and sound design. E. Jane’s work explores safety and futurity as it relates to how Black femmes navigate and negotiate space in popular culture and networked media. Since 2015, Jane has been developing the performance persona MHYSA, an underground popstar for the cyber resistance. The project is a total work of art that honors and examines the life of the Black diva and of Black femmes in popular culture. MHYSA has released two albums, fantasii (2018) and NEVAEH (2020). E. Jane received their MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Art History from Marymount Manhattan College in New York. They have performed at The Kitchen, MoCADA, and MoMA PS1, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, New Museum in New York, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and Les Urbaines in Switzerland as one-half of sound duo SCRAAATCH alongside collaborator chukwumaa.

Episode 7: On listening and hearing

The new season of Withstanding begins with a deep dive into sound. Each Withstanding episode functions as a platform not only for discussions on urgent topics in the post-pandemic world, but also for sound-based artworks.

In this episode, we discuss sounding, listening and hearing with sound artist, composer and activist Antye Greie-Ripatti and multidisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton. What kind of a material is sound for an artist? How to adjust oneself to practices of attentive listening? And what kind of social and communal potential lies within sound? Join in as we discuss various aspects of sound and listening, alongside Greie-Ripatti's and Hamilton's practices within sound-based art.

Antye Greie-Ripatti is a digital songwriter, sound artist and curator, composer, poet, feminist, and an activist. She is also known as AGF, Laub and poemproducer. Born and raised in East Germany, she lives and works in Hailuoto, Finland. She works with language, sound, listening, voice and communication, which is expressed in mixed media, audiovisual live performances, digital communication, sound installations, commissions for radio, movies and theatre, as well as exhibitions and conceptual works. Greie-Ripatti has released 30 long player records and taken part in numerous collaborations. She runs the production company and music label AGF PRODUKTION and has produced records for other artists, such as Ellen Allien. In 2011 Greie-Ripatti founded the arts organization Hai Art in Hailuoto and practices as its artistic director, executive producer, and workshop leader.

Find out more about Greie-Ripatti’s practice on Feminist Sonic Technologies.

LaMont Hamilton is a multidisciplinary artist. Hamilton's work deals with the spiritual, ecological and subconscious through sound, installation, performance, poetry and photography.Hamilton has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Artadia Award, ArtMatters Grant, and more. His residencies include Skowhegan (2017), Camargo Foundation, MacDowell Colony (MF 2015), and MFAH Dora Maar. He is currently exhibiting at Colorado University Art Museum, and he's the current artist in residence / guest curator at Anchorage Museum in Alaska.

Withstanding is hosted by ELINA SUOYRJÖ, FCINY’s Director of Programs.

Visuals for Withstanding are designed by TSTO / JONATAN ERIKSSON.

Theme & editing for Withstanding are created and produced by RETAIL SPACE, a Brooklyn-based composing duo.

Withstanding is made possible in part by the support of the NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS. We are thankful for their support in bringing Withstanding to the public sphere, making conversations like these possible.