The Beauty Of Poetic Voids with Steven Seidenberg

A vacant lot sounds like nothing, until you look at it long enough to hear what it’s saying. From Rome, I’m joined by artist, poet, and photographer Steven Seidenberg for a conversation about the places we pass every day and the histories we rarely name, even when they’re right in front of us.

We talk about Steven’s conceptual photography practice and why he works in series, using repetition to build an idea across multiple images. His photo book Kanazawa Vacancy takes us to Kanazawa, Japan, where demographic shifts leave gaps in the city and nature moves back in fast. We dig into why he chose black and white, how negative space can feel heavy, and why “decay” can be understood as transformation rather than pure loss.

Then we head to southern Italy through The Architecture of Silence, where abandoned post-war housing reveals the long afterlife of policy, power, and displacement. We discuss Matera, the Sassi cave dwellings, and the uneasy reality of gentrification when “culture” becomes a brand that prices locals out. From there, Steven brings us to his book Coda, sharing a writing process that begins in the middle, circles back, and borrows freedom from medieval narrative, alongside a love of language, sound, and the deep roots inside English itself.

If you care about fine art photography, urban change, architecture, creative writing, and the quieter forms of spirituality that live inside everyday experience, you’ll find plenty to sit with here. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves thoughtful art, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Welcome To Balm To The Soul

SPEAKER_00 0:02

So welcome everybody to another edition of Balm to the Soul. I'm your host, Natasha Joy Price, and I'm an energy healer, an author, and a podcaster. And today we've got a super new guest, and his name is Stephen Seidenberg. So welcome, Stephen. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

So I was reading up about you, and I've seen you described as an artist, a poet, a philosopher, a photographer. So which do you prefer? How would you describe yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:38

I think in all of those ways, uh I do all of those things sometimes discreetly, sometimes in uh concert with one another. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah. Okay, lovely. And you have exhibitions of your work all over the world, which is amazing. You've got a new book out called Coda, um, and you have a recent photo book out, The Architecture of Silence, and a new one coming out, Kanazawa Vacancy. Did I say that right?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

You did.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Perfect. So, first of all, I know you're in Rome at the moment. So, how is Rome?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

It's wonderful. It's uh, you know, a kind of barely controlled chaos, yes, as Rome generally is. And uh I I love this city and have lots of uh friends here in various communities here, writing communities and and artistic communities of various kinds, and uh it's a wonderful place to be and to to work with people and and to make work here.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah, lovely. So, how long are you in Rome for quite a while or two months? Two lovely. That's really nice. Yeah, I'm very jealous. So um Euclidean.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

Have you spent time in Italy or in Rome in particular?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

No, I've never been to Rome, but I love Italy. I've been to Amalfi a few times and southern Rome, and I really, really love the way of life and the people, and I love the fact that it's a bit chaotic, but it's colourful as well, and the scenery's beautiful. So, yes, I'm I need to make my way to Rome at some point, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

It's a great city, it really is. It's a wonderful uh place to explore.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, lovely place to spend the summer as well.

Meeting Stephen In Rome

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So um I was gonna ask about travel because you clearly love to travel. Um, your photo books, which we'll get to, are different countries across the world, etc. So um, and they often they often show, well, they are showing a different side to that country and the problems maybe that that country have had. And so um, is that how you get your ideas traveling to those places? Or do you read about it and then go to those places? How does that work for you?

SPEAKER_02 3:04

It happens in different ways, and you know, it's uh sometimes it's things that are uh, as you say, you know, maybe have uh reveal political consequences in some way. Um I think that my my work as uh as a photographer is certainly um it's conceptual in a certain respect. It it it uh it has certain compositional elements and aesthetic elements within each photograph and within a series of photographs, but it's always in series and it it functions. Uh part of what is appealing about working in series is the way in which it builds um an overarching conceptual structure by virtue of the repetition of certain elements in in different images. Um sometimes those things can be uh uh can not be entirely easy to determine, but there's a sense of weight that happens through them. So I you know, for instance, in the UK I've had a few projects, including a project in London, which um images these little plastic grids that are in the sidewalk that are largely decaying, and I think indicated previous the previous locations of certain types of uh gas conduits under the sidewalks or in the street. Um and they're they they're not uh used anymore, and they so they fall into this kind of disrepair. It's not really a critical position to take with respect to that. It is noting the ways in which uh our traces uh uh become elements in our visual landscape, in our cultural landscape,

Travel As Creative Research

SPEAKER_02 4:58

often without noticing any longer. And and noticing those traces has consequences, uh, which are quite positive, both aesthetically, I think, and and uh philosophically and and and politically at times when that happens.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah. Because there's um through your last two projects that I was looking at um the architecture of silence and kind of Zawa vacancy, there is a uh a parallel of decay, isn't there?

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Which Yes, uh kind of uh decay, well, you know, of course, decay is everywhere, and you know, including we here we are decaying as we speak. Um the uh and that this is this is uh uh we're also and we we can think of it as decay, but we can that is uh decay is just another kind of transformation, yeah. Um, and we are so there's transformation in all of the photos. There is movement. So in the Kanazawa book, um that images uh uh essentially vacant lots in this important cultural city of Kanazawa, Japan, a place where there's areas of historic preservation and has uh areas that are uh significant in all kinds of ways. And outside of those areas of of historic preservation, the city undergoes the same kinds of demographic shifts that we see in Japan, but also in other places in Italy and in many places uh now uh with declining population

Traces In Cities We Stop Seeing

SPEAKER_02 6:36

and uh and people moving from this relatively uh small city in in in the in in uh an area of the country that's uh largely rural uh to the bigger cities, to Tokyo and for jobs and for other kinds of work and other kinds and and cultural reasons too.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

People have to want to be with large groups of people, especially young people nowadays. And uh that that uh uh so when those properties fall into disrepair, sometimes the the structures are taken down, sometimes they're not. When they're taken down, sometimes the lots are paved over, sometimes they're not. So you see how the non-human world uh reclaims how quickly it's reclaimed, uh space. And um again, that I I don't see that it it involves in some respects the decay of of human construction, but of course it's the the effervescence and the the the abundance of uh of of non-human activity that is uh that that we're reminded of by seeing these places and focusing on them. So, you know, it's interesting. I don't see that series as not it's not a series that is uh melancholy in particular. It's not a particularly uh sad series or critical series, it's an observational series, and it's one that is about an understanding of what's happening around us, not uh a critical perspective on what's happening behind around us. In with respect to the architectural science,

Kanazawa And The Weight Of Emptiness

SPEAKER_02 8:26

that's a more critical work that has to do with the ways in which um the the in in the post-war period in Italy, as reconstruction was happening around the new Italian Republic, uh, there was uh an attempt by essentially the the right to appropriate uh many of the significant agenda uh policy agendas of the left, especially in the south, where there was a really large uh uh radicalized working class left. And in an attempt to, I suppose you could say, undermine that agenda funded by the Americans by the Marshall Plan. They they established this this land reform program, but it was not uh it it it it was largely uh uh uh uh tragic for the people who were its supposed beneficiaries.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

And so m all of those houses and all of those structures end up abandon. So imaging that they're also very strange structures that have a kind of modernity to them architecturally. Um they and uh they're they're uh some of them are suburban develop us, what we would think of as suburban developments in the middle of uh wheat fields, far from anything else, uh and really uh pulled people out of their communities in ways that were not at all sustainable. So most of these houses are are empty, and obviously the the the work is uh imaging inside them, and there is a uh a kind of tragic and critical quality to that. And it's a yeah, it's uh a way I think of thinking through aesthetically uh uh and through the ways in which we can understand things by virtue of these compositional works. Um the how uh how policy and uh and in in this case uh the the uh capitalization of the previously uh nearly feudal agricultural systems of

Italy’s Land Reform And Abandonment

SPEAKER_02 10:52

of the of southern Italy uh uh uh resulted in radical exploitation of people.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Um yeah, I found those um I found them incredibly beautiful because of the colours as well. The colours are beautiful in them and remind you of Italy as well, especially the one, the blue room. I thought that that was a really beautiful one. But they are also quite haunting because, like you say, they're attached to the fact that you know it it there was upheaval for the people there, and it it's not associated particularly with um good emotions, is it? So, but they are they have got that element of being quite haunting because of that.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Yeah, and you know, I mean one of the things that's interesting about the that area, this is an area between essentially in Bisco, it's a relatively small area that we were focused on. This happened in a bunch of different parts of the of of Italy, including as part of Tuscany and Calabria, and I I did not spend time in those places. I was really in this relatively small area between the city of Matera and Basilicata and Altamura in in Puglia, and uh people like many difficult histories, the people who are who were largely exploited by virtue of this program don't want are the are the ones who feel the shame of it.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

And so it's really their children, the new the the or their grandchildren, the this uh this contemporary generation that says, wait, there are these houses in those fields. Uh, what's that about? Why is that there? Why doesn't anybody talk about this? And uh, you know, why doesn't anyone talk about the ways in which our community is transformed in that way? And the city of Matera has gone through so many transformations, and this is a famous city uh made famous recently in part because of uh a number of films that have been shot there. So recent James Bond movie had some scenes there. Uh Wonder Woman was shot there, Mel Gibson's uh uh biblical story was was shot there. It has and and and Pasolini shot his Gospel of St. Matthew there long ago. And around it is an an extraordinarily beautiful place uh where uh people did traditionally live in in what are called the Sasika caves, basically, caves that are then fronted with these almost Baroque fronts, but inside it's their dugout caves.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

And you know, it was an it was a a way of life uh that was difficult and had many problems, including post uh post-war, there's a famous book by uh Carlo Levi called uh Christ stopped at Eboli, that is uh uh a uh an expose of the conditions that people were living in, in part in various parts of the south and in Matera in particular. And it provoked, and this was an initiative from the left, but this uh kind of ham-fisted uh well-meaning attempt to improve the lives of people there by essentially uh uh forcibly removing them from the Sasi and building housing, modern housing, up above this ravine where people had lived, uh, but with so little attention to the culture that was there and and its value, and you know, it wouldn't happen today, but it it at that time people were because there's no sort of infrastructure, is there either?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

It literally is in the middle of a field, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Well, this uh the the the the SASI were in this is a ravine and it becomes if it was a city, you know, so it it didn't have modern infrastructure, like it didn't really have power and other sorts of and running water in the ways that we are used to in in modern thing. It does now.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Now it's uh the the the reforma houses are literally in the middle of the field. That was oh right, okay. That that's another movement to bring these so that they moved them up to

Matera’s Caves To Gentrified Shell

SPEAKER_02 15:18

uh these apartment blocks above above just above the this ravine where people had been living, something like 20,000 people. Uh and you know, it at the same time it it it demobilizes this uh this radicalized uh uh uh working population in terms of their uh uh uh uh political voice. Uh and it uh and it undermines their cultural communities in ways that you know are not really recoverable and people still talk about. Then the uh more recently, and this is uh something I think is quite emblematic of the of all of Europe, uh, that this place Matera was uh the city uh an EU city of culture in 2019, I think it was. And you know, it became it just became uh ever it became incredibly expensive. The saucy, these cave things were uh were uh made into Airbnb's hotels only. It's a and it's a it's a shell of a place within the saucy part. Of course, the modern community is still there and still and still doing very well, but it became very expensive. The whole place became very expensive in ways that make no sense, you know. Like so much of the uh of how this supposed this essentially neoliberal agenda of gentrification happens. Um we're we're supposed to celebrate it, and there are people there who to to who were responsible for it who celebrate the business opportunities a lot, but of course it doesn't allow business opportunities for for most of the people who lived there before, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah, so that's quite sad in itself, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

I did I did find that quite haunting, uh especially because of the story behind it as well. But your new book, Kanazawa, Vacancy, I actually found that quite um I like the idea that there was no more building and that these dilapidated buildings that were being taken down were creating space. And I thought actually that's incredibly beneficial for the inhabitants. We don't none of us want to be squashed in, and creating that space must be um so much better for them, their well-being.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah. Yeah, I think that they're there it's a great, it's a wonderful place to visit if anyone has a chance. And you can get there from uh from there's a Shinkansen, uh uh bullet train from Tokyo. It's a couple hours on the train. Uh it's a beautiful city and a city that has this long cultural history. The it's the second largest city after Kyoto that would never was it was destroyed by earthquake or bombing or other things. Yeah. So um it it has uh a lot of cultural res resonance for Japanese people and and and within Japanese culture, and there are a lot of Japanese tourists who go there. Um a great food city, it's right on the ocean, and a lot of fishing happens right there. Um but it it uh uh it there there is I think many people who who live there are uh and within Japan in general are sad to see the the diminishment of some of these smaller communities because the work is in the big cities. Yeah. Um but it is true, I think that Kanazawa remains and continues to be uh an incredibly pleasant place to to be and to live for people. And and as you say, the opening of spaces within that city doesn't make it a less pleasant place to be. Uh and there's still a lot of commercial activity, it's a very vibrant place. There's an art school, there's a great contemporary art museum there. Uh, so it's a center for for various kinds of arts. It's a traditional center of of Japanese craft and and uh and and artisanship. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I thought that was that was uh a good concept. I'm surprised that they didn't start making them into beautiful gardens. I could just as soon as I saw them, I thought, you know, that would be amazing. But you did those. Yeah, a few. But they um you did those in black and white, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yes. Why would why did you decide to do those in black and white?

SPEAKER_02 19:59

You know, you can do different things with with color in black and white. In that case, it because uh that so much of that project is about emphasizing this uh compositional distinction between positive and negative space within the uh I I that's one of the places that I think monochrome photography really excels is allowing one to feel uh the weight of emptiness. Yeah, and and to and and not to be because color can be another form of of presence within a photograph. Uh and so this in having it in grayscale allows it to uh to to uh allows me to make the composition a bit more explicitly about how negative and positive space work in relationship to one another.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah. It it was interesting for me because I found the colour more haunting than the the Japanese photos, which I found quite uplifting because I kept saying, oh, well, they're getting more space. They're they're gonna get more bre you know, breathing space there. So I suppose it it works with different people's different viewpoints, I suppose. But both beautiful. Both beautiful. And then let's talk about your book, Coda. Um, so um so how did the uh what made you want to write this book?

SPEAKER_02 21:37

What what what was your uh Yeah, it's a little bit it's a it's a uh it's not so different. I mean, it is Coda's my sixth literary work and it's it's not so different from my others. I mean I have a particular approach. This one is a little bit uh, you know, each is a little different, of course. Yeah. Um uh uh but uh this work, you know, uh some of the themes that are in all of my work continue in in Kodo. In particular, this interrogation of the relationship between the reader and the author, and the this questioning of what exactly is being communicated between uh the the voice of the

Why Black And White Matters

SPEAKER_02 22:27

text and the and the receiver of the text. Yeah. Um and uh in in in in many ways the what distinguishes this book from many of my other books is the the kinds of language that happen uh or that I use are often in relationship to um certain narratives that I that are extremely important to me, but medieval narratives in particular. So and and uh the the freedom, the kind of uh the the completely freewheeling, I suppose you could say, uh uh and abandon that you see in these pre-modern narratives. So there's no necessity of telling a story in a particular way. There's no necessity of story in in a writer like Rabelais, even in say Cervantes, who is seeing in Don Quixote, we've seen as a as a as as a first modern novel. It really isn't. It's much more of an of a kind of a constant reminder of what is being lost or what was ultimately lost in medieval narrative by this codification in the especially in the 19th century, of what a novel should be, of what a story should be.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah,

Writing Coda Against Modern Novel Rules

SPEAKER_00 23:55

exactly. It's actually you have to get your head around how it's written to sort of get into it. Because when you start, it's like, well, I'm what what what am I following? Is there what you know what's so you have to sort of you have to adjust the way that you sort of read and uh sort of work your way through the book, basically. Yeah. And the language is amazing. Well it is. I have a I am part of a a very small writer's group here in Suffolk, and we have a book um vocabulary that you know we work on. Well, I had a field day because they had amazing words that I wouldn't normally put into my stories, but actually it made me think you can you can use all of that. There's so much language that we don't use, isn't there? There's a huge amount of vocabulary that we and I actually think it's almost diminishing and it's slightly changing with the next generation. We we're getting words put in and words taken out, which breaks my heart to take words out. But it's so it was it it was great vocabulary.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Yeah, it's a it's a it's a broad lexicon that I'm interested in using, and part of that is because of my uh love of of sound and the lyricism of the of writing. So, you know, uh it's and and the ways in which I mean one one of the wonderful things that uh that English does very well is uh because in its orthography, we people complain that English orthography is not standardized in many ways. But of course, what what happens in English that doesn't happen in other languages is we we we accept some of the ways in which the spelling of a word can reveal its origins and its place or the way in which it came into the language. So a word that you can see. This word can this is a word that came from Greek, this word came from French, this word came from Latin, this came from some many other languages that have influenced uh uh uh English and and have entered English, and that allows one to use those references. You can you every word can present uh a kind of world and uh it's it's its spelling and its sound are it's it it's a scarified body, if you will. Yeah. So it's uh it it has a it's just another tool that one can play can use and play with as a writer.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah, and you sort of you feel yourself getting lost in the vocabulary as well, you know, and the amazing words. Um, so yeah, it's in it's very interesting. So um explain to me how you write as well. And when I mean that, I mean do you start from page one and go to page 200? Or do you sort of preamble around as you sort as as the book grows, as the idea grows?

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yeah, it moves around a lot. It moves around a lot. I don't uh it's uh uh I'm I'm it's it's not uh it's definitely not beginning to end, and and every book of mine is a circular in a way, it always begins, it always begins in the middle, as you can assuming uh assuming a previous engagement that isn't there potentially, uh and it ends with uh back in many ways right where it began. Yeah um and uh uh uh it takes me a long time to write things. I mean it's a it's a process of uh many, many years and sometimes even decades of with the same blocks of text that I'm trying to figure out how to how to work with. Yeah. And uh so it's uh process of constant revision and constant thinking through, and and of of course it's always in relationship to the things that I'm reading, uh, whatever they happen to be while I'm writing.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, they pull in or I they they I they push me towards things. The writing pushes me towards uh some and there are of course works uh that are uh of primary importance to me, so they make their way into everything I do just by virtue of their the the profound influence that that those writers have exerted on me, as with most writers, I think.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah, that's interesting because that's exactly how my book emerged. It emerged the first scene I wrote was a middle scene. And then I was like, well, what do I do with that? And then you slowly preamble about. But yeah, interesting. And also the cover of Coda, that's one of your um that is one of your photos, uh, yes, it is, isn't it? Yes, and I and Anon has also got a photograph of a door.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yes, it's the same. This is a series from uh uh uh a series in Rome, actually, of these uh uh basically these uh little doors in the sides of buildings that serve uh to allow access as access points for various utility conduits from the outside. So reading a meter or or uh plumbing conduits or or various kinds of electrical conduits that can be worked on without entering the house.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Yeah. I I went for a period of time of photographing doors. There's something about doors to me, I think, and I wondered if there was also an element of that for you. You know, it's sort of the mystique and what's behind that door, and you know, a full-size door, who's walked through that door, who's who looks after that door. You it it's sort of a I don't know, there's something additional to doors in a way.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah, thresholds are are are of interest. Uh and uh and and and we're constantly passing through them, and we're constantly finding uh uh being surprised by what we find on the other side. Yeah, so for sure. And uh there is a uh these these doors that have I suppose that's part of what drew me to them initially, but also in for me, uh these are doors that are not maintained the way that entrances that people walk through are maintained. Uh so they are you know they're they're they're they're uh appliances, they're things on the sides of uh they're in the middle of buildings that are not accessed by most people. So they they can be covered in graffiti, they can be painted in the way that those three on the cover of Cotera painted or on the cover of Anand. It's uh one of these little doors that someone has pasted a map onto. Um and uh uh there are uh so so uh they have a relationship uh to the city and in this case to Rome and to how things uh how objects and uh structures live within the city and change and transform over time with the city.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah.

Doors As Thresholds And Urban Memory

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Yeah, there's that theme then, isn't there, about how things change over time, including us. Yeah, and there's but there's beauty in that, isn't there? There's you know, it's life. Everything changes, we have to just move with that. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

The illusion is the sameness, not the ch not the changing.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Yes. Yes. So would you call yourself spiritual? Would is that a word that you would use to describe your work or or your life?

SPEAKER_02 32:17

I don't know. You know, I it's hard for me to say. People use that term in so many different ways that uh it's it's really I mean, there are definitely contexts where I wouldn't, and there are contexts where I'm I would be perfectly happy to be to be described as such.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

As spiritual, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Yeah. Um there are I would say um a part of my problem with with the ways that sometimes people use that term, I would say that I'm not spiritual in the sense that I do not understand uh something like spirit as separate from anything, uh from the character of my uh of sensory experience.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

I I okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

I it's within my experience. And uh and but that doesn't mean that I don't also see the ways in which my experience uh is uh is a constant uh presents uh a constant series of of um of enigmas to me that uh uh in fact uh I suppose one might identify as a uh as certainly within a Buddhist tradition, the spiritual a spiritual impulse to allow myself to accept what remains enigmatic and without without thorough or at least complete explanation. Uh and to feel comfortable, if not comfortable, at least accepting of that. Yeah, and that's of course a challenge I think we all face.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

And so in that sense, I think that the my work is constantly in in, you know, uh there is there is the experience of beauty or of sublim sublimity an intrinsically spiritual experience? I'm comfortable if someone says it is, uh certainly. I'm comfortable if someone wants to describe it in some other way too.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah, sure. Okay. So um what's one I usually ask my clients this? Uh my clients, my guests. Um what is something that

Spirituality As Living With Enigma

SPEAKER_00 34:36

you do that helps you to um keep yourself balanced and centered? And um, is there something that you do every day? Is there a a routine that you do that just helps you keep um on track with life? That's a very broad question, but it is a broad question.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

I don't know. I don't I don't know if there's a track for me.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Uh your meander through life.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Yes, my meander through life. I I uh you know uh we we all uh the the I certainly um struggle with anxiety and ego uh quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

And I think we all do a little in this hectic world.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Yeah. Yeah and uh it's it's there are there's a lot of insecurity, uh material insecurity in this in in in this particular life that uh if one is an artist or uh of any kind in writing or in it for me being uh working both visually and and in text, um, and it so there's a there's a kind of hustle that is it's a constant and it is uh it can feel unbelievable sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Uh just just completely enervating. Um and so the question is how to how to take it.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

How do you cope with that?

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Is there something that you do when you feel overwhelmed or you know, I try to uh uh I I try to find the ways in which I mean uh I I I think I I just feel overwhelmed. I try to accept what I'm feeling as I'm feeling it, and you know, the this yeah uh have an observational policy. Yeah. I've come to recognize over the course of my life that those that those anxieties are not uh are not relieved by resistance.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Yeah.

Anxiety And The Artist’s Hustle

SPEAKER_02 36:53

In fact, in some in many ways exacerbated by existence. So just accepting by accepting I'm feeling this now. Yeah, and you know, I do that. I'm more or less successful at different moments.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Um I try to return to the things that uh provide me. I mean, in in some respects, it's most success, my most successful uh uh escape from the the ways in which I am uh uh I can feel brought down by my own struggles, uh emotional or professional or otherwise, uh, is uh through the the kind of ecstasis that happens uh in the experience of the work of others. So um you know, I I one as an artist, one uh is in some way or other, I like to say, uh drawn or driven to uh the recapitulation of an experience that one has had by virtue of a relationship to someone else's art.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

It's a kind of reciprocity uh that happens, maybe it begins in emulation. Uh ultimately it it if I think if one is successful, it in one's own self self-realization is the wrong word, in one's own realization of one's vision, then that attempted emulation results in uh uh one's own voice coming out in one way or another. And so this happens for me in in in visual work and in in writing. And uh so I am uh in a constant uh uh discursive uh dialogue, uh constant dialogue, but a discursive relationship of various kinds with those source materials for me and with new source materials as they as they come to me.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

And and that is, I know it's a peculiar thing perhaps to say that the the uh that that the the path the the keeping on track on the on the non-track track involves uh uh challenging oneself with other people's work.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

And allowing that to be and and also not shying away from that challenge. I mean, a lot of people think that um reading and uh say or art and intellectual life shouldn't be uh a challenge to them. And I can't see why one would want anything but that.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

In I mean, uh I'm sure there's there's a place for escape in this kind of thing, but uh it's a small place.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Yeah. You want that push, push the boundaries, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

And not necessarily for one's own, even if one is not uh an artist in one's own right, but uh you want to push the push that for the way that one lives. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I get that how one lives.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a real delight to um well, to research your work and have a look at your photographs and ultimately to chat too. So um thank you very much for supporting the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Uh it's been a pleasure for me to thanks for for having me on and for your for your interesting questions. And it's it's lovely to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Good. Thank you. So if you've enjoyed listening to Stephen and I chat, please like and share. You I will put all the details of his work below the episode so you can have a look. Um, you can also subscribe to the podcast as well on our subscription page, and um, I will talk to you all soon.