When Artists Stop Asking Where They Fit & Start Building Something New

Recorded during LA Art Week near Frieze Los Angeles, this episode of Vessel: Art Is a Doorway captures an intimate salon-style conversation with artists Bobby Joe Smith III, Camila Galaz, Jonah King, and Joshua Dawson, gathered at Wilshire Online as part of the NEWINC community.

Across practices spanning immersive media, speculative design, research based installation, and painting, the group reflects on how artists are navigating & reshaping the systems surrounding contemporary art. Together they discuss emerging technologies, shifting institutional models, and the growing desire to build new ecosystems for creative work beyond traditional structures.

Camila Galaz

https://www.camilagalaz.com

Jonah King

https://jonahking.com

Chester Toye

Chestertoye.com

Bobby Joe Smith III

https://bobbyjoesmith.com

Joshua Dawson

https://joshua-dawson.com

References:

Peggy Weil's MIT Media Lab’s Architecture Machine Group (precursor to the Media Lab)

New Media Caucus Symposium

Rhizome

New Media Caucus Restoration and Regeneration at ASU in Phoenix

NEW INC
Leah & Channing Smithson NEW INC member

DEMO 2024 Leah Smithson Exhibit & Talk
Leah Smithson (demofestival.org)

Find us online:
Website:
http://www.clss.studio

Email:
leah@leahsmithson.com
channingsmithson@gmail.com

Hang out with us on Instagram:
@leahsmithsonart
@justglazechanning

Earn up to $2000 off of TESLA
https://ts.la/channing763286

Transcript

Channing 0:12

Hey, this is Channing

Leah 0:13

And this is Leah.

Channing 0:14

Hey, you've reached Vessel, Art is a Doorway.

Leah 0:17

Welcome to episode 42. We're so happy you're here with us today. In fact, we have some people that we're really excited to introduce you to. We've talked to you a little bit about our participation with NEW INC., which is the incubator of the New Museum. This year, there were so many people from Los Angeles and the West Coast that were participating with New Inc. that we got approval to organize an LA chapter. And when we say LA chapter, that's very like loose. In fact, some of the people with us are actually living in from New York. But of course, if you're from New Inc. and you're in Los Angeles, then you know we just consider you part of the LA chapter. And what we're doing today is that we are at Wilshire Online, which is this incredible office building. Almost it looks like it just came right out of the 90s, maybe the early 2000s, and it's filled with so much energy. In fact, there's a 99 cent store that's been abandoned and it's been revitalized by Barry McGee and Deitch Projects into this sprawling high-low flea market style installation.

Channing 1:36

And next door to Wilshire Online is a decommissioned Sizzlers restaurant that was actually turned into an exhibition and curated by the artist Cole Case. And really talking about Cole, it was so much fun working with him. We were invited to join him at Wilshire Online on the third floor to have a small exhibition with the New Inc. LA chapter and panel discussion.

Leah 2:04

Yeah, the name of the activation that we all put together was called Shared Circuits, and it was part of the satellite show's orbiting Frieze Los Angeles during LA Art Week.

Channing 2:14

In addition to Leah and I, five other artists joined us in this intimate salon style installation and conversation that we were able to have at Wilshire Online. These other artists are Camila Galaz, Jonah King, Chester Toye, Joshua Dawson, and Bobby Joe Smith III.

Leah 2:33

Yeah, it was really fascinating hearing everybody talk about their projects and what they're excited about and what they were showing at Wilshire Online this weekend. We're so happy that most of the artists were able to come and join in the conversation. In fact, here, meet the artist.

Channing 2:55

Well, hey guys, so good to have you all here. LA from New York and all over. But um yeah, let's go ahead and get uh get everything going. Maybe we can go ahead and get started uh recording because we know we have uh so much to talk about. But uh just uh just to think about you know each of us uh practices where we're coming from. Let's just get a little introduction. Bobby, let's start us off.

Bobby Joe Smith III 3:16

Hello, I am Bobby Joe Smith III. I just got done riding motorcycle for like all days, so my brain's a little frazzled, but uh um I'm from the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. I'm currently living in Los Angeles. Um my practice mainly focuses on my identity as a black and indigenous person, as well as engagement with various decolonial projects. So I consider that to be things all the way from trying to prevent oil pipelines from being built across our homelands to helping revitalize aspects of our culture and language, developing typefaces and writing systems for our language, since we don't have a standardized writing system, or just supporting artists and projects that matter to me. So that's primarily what my practice has been about. Um being at New Inc. this year in the cooperative studies track has allowed me to really take my work kind of out of this academic sphere where I've been mainly working on it through MFAs at RISD and UCLA, to thinking about what does it mean to engage in a larger, not only artist, professional artist community, making work outside of the classroom and the crit room, to trying to bring my work into more movements, into the communities that I come from and figuring out how does this practice translate to those spaces in which I feel like it's needed most. Um certainly in galleries and places like this. I think this is fantastic to have this opportunity, you know, to be showing at the same time as freeze, to have this space that's been set up and getting to present with all of you. Um but also thinking about how does my work get back to the communities that I want to serve most and what does that mean to have an arts practice that's meant to serve a community and a movement rather than perhaps fill a gallery or be sold in a commercial market. So those are the things that I'm working out through New Inc. and through the cooperative studies track that I am that I'm in.

Camila Galaz 5:14

Hi, I'm Camilla Gallas. I'm uh interdisciplinary artist, researcher, nonfiction editor. I make sort of video art, I've made podcasts, I make paintings, all sorts of things, but all based on kind of research into sort of media archaeologies, um sort of how we understand identity and culture and history through technology and media. Um I'm sort of interested in kind of women's roles in the history of technology. Um I also look at a bit of sort of political histories of Chile, thinking about kind of socio-technical networks and how they've been used sort of to protect democracy and things like that. Um there's kind of uh an element of my practice that is sort of public-facing kind of like research work that usually runs alongside sort of more maybe aesthetic presentations of of sort of paintings and things like that. So I had a podcast for a couple of years about sort of global histories of technology that ran alongside a you know a interactive browser-based artwork, things like that. And yeah, I did in the context of this, I was a year 10 new anchor in the art and code track. Um, and I've since then I've been a community member, and it's been a important part of my career. I I moved from Australia to New York in uh during the pandemic, so it's it's been a it's been a wild ride since then.

Jonah King 6:33

Hey everybody, so I'm Jonah King. I'm a immersive media artist, filmmaker, essayist from Dublin, from Ireland, and I live now in Brooklyn, New York. All of my work is a kind of thought experiment where I find different ways to articulate uh new developments in science and technology uh in a way that destabilized like central cultural beliefs. Um I'm interested in things like, for example, the project that I showed today is a project about mycelium. And mycelium, the more you study it, the more you realize it really undermines a lot of our conceptions about what it is even to be an individual. Um and so, yeah, so I've explored a bunch of things like from uh how digital material materiality, geological materiality, is actually a kind of force of um global like time generation to ways in which like intimacy can be sort of erased and disappeared through digital systems. Um and yeah, and so I use now primarily game engines, um 3D software, I work with actors, but now a lot more with motion capture. And I was in year seven and eight of New Inc. And now I'm a community member, and it's been a really foundational part of my practice over the last five or six years. I met amazing people who are weird in similar ways, and and I love the community around it, so very happy to be here.

Channing 8:10

And we just wanted to mention too that Jonah and Camila are here from New York, so uh they just flew in just on a whim, and you know it's so so good to have them. But uh we'll continue the conversation up with Joshua.

Bobby Joe Smith III 8:21

Welcome to the Best Coast.

Joshua Dawson 8:25

Yeah, Best Coast indeed. Um I'm from the Midwest, I don't even know what I'm saying. It's because you live here now. HA! Um yeah, I'm Joshua Dawson. Um I'm an architect-trained filmmaker and speculative designer. So I was born and raised in Bangalore, India, uh during the um early 90s through the aughts. And um it was at this very pivotal time when Bangalore was sort of transitioning from being known as the Garden City of India to the Silicon Valley of India, and that led to this excessive rate of development that ended up having a huge impact on the city's ability to supply and distribute water to um its citizens. And coming here now to Los Angeles, after I pursued my master's degree uh about 10 years ago, I've noticed the same patterns here. And I'm really interested in kind of like understanding uh all of the forces that kind of shape the built environment. You don't necessarily always get to see that when you're uh in a service professional like architecture. So being able to sort of use media like film and being able to sort of distill and and synthesize a lot of these systems into something that's sort of linear through the practice of building these future fictional worlds that play out the impact and implications that climate change has on the built environment and the disproportionate impact that that in turn has on marginalized communities, uh low-income communities, etc., like allows allows you to sort of you know uh turn up the dial on certain things and kind of examine it and study it in a more uh detailed sort of manner. And that's what a lot of my work does. And uh the project, the pro some of the projects that I presented here today as part of this exhibit are very much a framing of that and are an example of that. Um yeah, I'm part of uh the year, I'm a current member, year 12 member uh of NEW INC, I mean the Creative Sciences track. And um it's been really incredible. The show today was really incredible, getting a chance to sort of network and meet a lot of people that I had only kind of heard of or you know, uh admired their work from afar, but them coming here to this exhibit and be me being able to kind of engage in a dialogue with them was uh really great. So I feel super fortunate. Uh living here in Los Angeles, you don't necessarily always get a lot of opportunities uh to exhibit work in these sorts of formats. A lot of my work kind of like exist has existed in film festivals. You screen it once and that's it. No one's really going to talk to you about it, which is why um New Inc. has really allowed me to sort of find these, you know, uh find a way to kind of frame my practice in a way that uh I'm able to connect uh with the larger, you know, with the with the sort of different art community, um, and kind of finding these alternative ways to screen my work as well have been really interesting. So that's one of the biggest things that New Inc. has given me. Um so yeah.

Channing 11:31

Yeah, so cool. So last night we had dinner audience, and we were just talking about like what are some of the things that we want to discuss? Thinking about like this week is the week of Frieze in LA, one of the busiest art events that actually happens on the West Coast, and it's just buzzing with activities. So we're thinking about like how some of the work that we're doing, how it aligns and sometimes how it misaligns with the traditional art market. Uh, you know, what are you guys' thoughts about that?

Bobby Joe Smith III 12:03

Let's go this way with that.

Leah 12:07

Well, it's interesting because we saw with Art Basil this year, they're honestly, it's been slowly over the past few years, a lot of large art fairs have been um trying to figure out a place or make a place for more emerging uh art made with emerging technologies. And so we were kind of talking a little bit about that. We have seen some overlap, but then like Jonah and I and Camila, we were all talking about how with some of the gallery spaces we found that they kind of still don't really know what to do with it. And it's i they've well, I won't I won't say what you had to say. Where where have you found the most interest in that?

Jonah King 12:51

Yeah, so this is the first VR work that I've done like a complete project. Um and it's lived primarily in this kind of emerging film festival space for immersive technology. Uh there seems to be a kind of convergence of people whose background are in film or tech or art or um like a real plethora, a lot of experimental theater people um who are converging and using these tools to make new things. And actually it's been a wonderful space to be part of. It's like really fertile and feels really new and weird and open because I think you can't make a lot of money or get famous off it. So people are there because they're kind of excited about it artistically still. Um though I think like I feel like there's these things like it happened a lot with um like video art and kind of uh video installation that they kind of artists find ways to glob onto existing structures. I mean, I think we've done that well with academia. Artists have found like ways to kind of hold a space within an existing structure so as to support what we do. Um, but nothing is really perfect, and as like economics shift or things change culturally, you'll notice migrations of the same kind of uh impulse moving to different fields. And so I think like the traditional gallery space, I feel lucky in that I've been supported by traditional gallery spaces at times. Um, but certainly there's been a sense that not everything I'm trying to do is easy for the for the slipstream or the natural current of those kind of structures, right? So it means that sometimes I begin to think, okay, well, if I want to do this, then I'll have to do that, or if I want to do this, then it'll have to be in this shape. And that is a limit on, like I suppose, the artistic vision. Um, but it's also an opportunity to find structure and uh constraints, which I think is really useful for artistic practice. So I I feel like it's this open-ended question where this space will constantly reinvent itself, depending on who will feed it. Um but yeah, right now I think there is a sort of collective question mark over where it's going next, yeah.

Camila Galaz 15:04

I think it's interesting showing at Wilshire Online because it does feel like more like a project space, you know. So, and I I kind of I guess grew up in the art world in Melbourne very much um showing in like artist-run spaces, and you know, as I sort of professionalize my practice, I definitely um kind of I I noticed some shifts in my practice within those constraints, as Jonah said, and it's been really exciting to um yeah, to sort of explore what it means to show work in kind of more dynamic spaces that are like a one-off pop-up, or you know, I've been doing that more and more lately, and it's been um it's been great. And I think that like every practice has different parts of it, and I definitely have parts of my practice that really want to be in a gallery space and really feel good there, and that's like the best place for them to show. But then at the same time, like I I want to make more experimental works that that maybe sit alongside those works, and um being able to show them to like a maybe a slightly different audience is really yeah, invigorating for me for certain parts of my practice, and you know, when a certain part of your practice is sort of invigorated, that always feeds back into the other parts as well. And I think I don't know, as an artist, we're sort of whole creatures, and it's nice to remember all of those parts of ourselves.

Bobby Joe Smith III 16:24

Can we first work on this configuration? It's making me very uncomfortable. It feels like closed off a little bit, and it is a little bit more of an intimate talk, and hi, welcome. Um yeah, join the group. Um Yeah, I mean if you have if you have thoughts that any other questions, feel free. Um I think that there is I think throughout media art or art that's being used with new and emerging technology, there's been sort of this concern of how does it fit, right? From what I've learned from the very beginning, oftentimes the artwork that's being made on this emerging technology is done at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. after it's done doing the processes for businesses or doing the processes for missile guided systems, or like, okay, we'll let this computer scientist come in and play around and see if it can if they can make art on this machine that we're technically trying to build for war, or we're trying to build for companies. So it's always tried to find room. Um, and at the same time, uh our artwork has been used with these sort of technologies to soften them. So we see examples of you know, in common day like robots, you know, being used uh primarily for military purposes or security purposes, but then they'll make them dance, you know, to soften the effect of like what this technology is about, or look at the work that AI can do. Um, look the here's the artwork that we can do, but really, you know, there's uh some other elements to it that are the main driver of the business of it. So I feel like media art has always kind of been a little confused as to where it should be, and it tries to fit in where it gets in. And so I think that feels the same way here with Freeze a little bit too. Like somebody understood that this feels important in some way. They might not fully understand what it means, but they're willing to create space for it just as an experiment. And I think they often see media art as an experiment into something bold and new that we're still grasping and trying to figure out. I feel like that also feels very much like the ethos of new Inc. too, where they're trying to get people together, provide space, provide training for us to figure out how we fit in and sustain our practices. Um, but I think there's also an element of like the current political moment that feels really important too, about like what does it mean to be making art and what does it mean to be aligned with certain art institutions. So the maybe the more fine art element that we're used to seeing that's being you know purchased and sold at freeze proper, you know. Um I think that's a little bit more ingrained as to how you show your work and how you sell it. And there's this element of feels like the the wealthy buyers get to go through first and like pick through and decorate their home or whatever. Um, and then the rest of us get to like you know enjoy what's left, what hasn't been picked over. Um, but there's obviously concerns with the alignment as like who's funding the arts in this way. And I think with the release of the Epstein files, it's just one example of exploitation that's happening in a way that's you know morally reprehensible to so many people in our society, and we're seeing the names that are in there. Oh, these are also the major benefactors of the fine arts practices. These are the ones that are you know buying you know this artwork, and they're doing it because they're investing in it. A lot of that art ends up in offshore shipping containers if they even make it into their mansions, you know. Um, and I think media art has a bit of a challenge with that too, because our alignment has tended to be with tech companies, and a lot of the people that are running those tech companies are in you know these files and are we're seeing how they're shaping our society, and a lot of people don't like the way that things are being shaped. So we have this sort of weird alignment in in that space too. Um but I feel because we're a little less established as to how you make media art as opposed to how you make um fine art or like how that's produced or bought and sold and commercialized, we have the ability right now to like adapt and figure out. We have sort of like an open source ethos. We have we've since we've been having to scrabble together and try to find where we fit in, I think we're much better able to pivot to build our own collectives, to build our own resources the way that we want. And certainly within the cooperative studies track, which I'm in, people are thinking about artwork that's meant to build community. And while we're all concerned with how do we finance this practice, repeatedly, the thing that sort of reverberated through everybody is we don't want to go through the same capitalist with a capital C track that you know other people seem to go through as becoming artists. We want to find more sustainable methods, we want to look towards nature, we want to learn from mycelias like maybe that's a a way that we can sustain our practices and sustain our communities. I think there's much bigger room for experimentation for how we make our work and how we show our work. And to me, that's what's exciting in this particular moment where a lot of people are challenging the ways that you know art is currently made and consumed, um, how it's produced and sort of this factory style, um the desire to make these celebrities out of particular artists and sort of the things that they go through in to do that, to having a relationship with the making practice, to having a relationship with the communities that it's meant to serve, to having a real relationship with the tools. Like they're I'm sensing with the cohort that I'm in right now, and maybe it's just a unique group at New Inc. in terms of the people that they select. But that feels very much reverberating in the conversations that we're having. We want a different way of making this work that feels good to us. We got into this for a reason, and we feel like we're diverging from that path. If you want to professionalize, you have to diverge from the path that felt good to you in the first place for making. So I'm hoping that's something that we continue to explore in conversations like this and like how we have over dinner and formal and informal I think are helping to emerge those ways that we make and our practice and who it's for. That was a very long ramble.

Joshua Dawson 22:38

But yeah, um I I've been thinking a lot about that uh especially today, because a lot of the talks that were taking place here, uh where we're seated um at at Walshore Online were very much about uh, you know, obsolete media. It was about media like floppy disks, uh media like the kind of lip sync machine that uh uh that was that was made in uh by Peggy Weil in um the Architectural Machine Group, which is now the MIT Media Lab. And uh she was talking about how a lot of these projects, these uh art tech projects that she used to make happened to exist within technology that now no longer exists. So it's obsolete technology. She didn't have a position where she could actually show this work. Um and now uh she she isn't able to kind of show that work either because that technology doesn't exist, the infrastructure didn't exist at first, now the technology doesn't exist. And all of a sudden we were having a discussion after, and uh the reason why this sort of like topic of obsolete media is sort of like coming back uh in terms of you know, like in these computational spaces is because of the fact that a a lot of the younger generation is really exhausted by social media. We're exhausted by these spaces that were meant to sort of be places of community. So we're going back to kind of like the early days of the internet and looking at how those places were a lot more communal in the very first place. So somebody was talking about MySpace, somebody was talking about how MySpace should have been the sort of dominant uh social media platform as opposed to Facebook or Instagram, because you know, while it had its own problems, it would have gone through the powers of regulation in a far more kind of uh critical manner. And um I think that that kind of you know, re-revisiting, you know, like the the time pre-uh social media dominance and AI is really interesting. And I think that what we're talking about is is pretty cyclical. I think this idea that, okay, we're using technology now, like VR has existed, you know, like early 90s, late 80s, you know, it's been a technology that was, you know, kind of talked about and talked about a lot. And then, you know, it's had its moments of ups and downs with the metaverse and and what have you. And then I think that these uh these technologies, the cyclical way in which this is kind of coming in, and artists sort of sticking to that medium, and then trying to say, okay, well, the new generation of attack, what can we build in here? The kind of platform agnostic aspect of a lot of the practices that we're kind of building is really interesting. And I think the core tools, right, like the Unreal Engines, the Maya. Uh, you know, I started working in Maya, but predominantly because architects said, oh, let's start adopting animation software to start designing buildings. But then the minute you start putting a camera to do an architectural walkthrough, you're not allowed to call that a film. You're supposed to call it architectural visualization. And I think that that kind of divide that exists, you know, by trying to categorize art has never been helpful. And I think this ability now for us to be able to kind of like say, okay, well, this particular project can exist on multiple platforms is really beneficial. And I'm not sure I I I think the the the art I'm I don't know much about the art market, but definitely the film festival circuits, you know, there are some film festivals that have started an immersive program and completely, you know, uh done away with it. But South by Southwest and and Tripaca, you know, they've kept they've kept to it. Sundance got rid of theirs, but like a lot of others have sort of kept to it. And I think that uh, you know, you'll notice that the artists that they first started to feature to the artists that they're featuring now, whenever I ask curators what they're picking, uh the kinds of project, they say it's about the voice. It's not so much about how the media is being used uh in an innovative way, but it really is about what it is they're trying to say with their projects. So I think that that somehow really um resonated with me.

Channing 26:49

Yeah, that's awesome, and it's so good to hear you know your thoughts. Um thinking about like the new ink program, the new museum, whenever we try to speak to curators, people within the traditional art market, and we're trying to describe new ink, it's such a different concept for them. You know what I mean? You know, you're like, what museum? We're like the new museum, and they're like, is a new museum? And just thinking about like new ideas, new things. I think Paul John he really crafted us uh really well when he said that we're just like a bunch of misfits, you know. How do you think that really aligns with what we're seeing with your art practice? Uh I'm thinking about Camila with her rose paintings, but then also she has these beautiful, this beautiful video as well, and thinking about the work that we're doing, but we're starting to see like this draw also to the digital as well. What what do you guys what are your thoughts about that?

Camila Galaz 27:50

Sure. Um, yeah, I mean I studied painting and then I was like started making video art, kind of video installations, and then in the pandemic, uh I was like traveling internationally a lot, and then in the pandemic sort of was stuck in Australia and I didn't want to make like physical objects. I wanted to feel like I when I could, I could kind of move. Um and I started making more video work, stuff that was like meant to be experience within the browser or within um I made like a piece that was inside of YouTube and things like that. And so now that that I'm sort of more situated in New York, I've been particularly thinking about like how do you bridge that gap a little bit so it's not one or the other. And I think like being at NEW INC., that really helped me think through these questions. And it's not that it's oh it's digital work, it's that it's it's like art that you can experience physically, you can experience online, like what are the questions involved in that? And I mean the new museum has such a strong history that isn't necessarily connected with like new media and and technology, and so it's it's really nice that they have this like incubator program that's sort of specifically for that. You're right, that like not many institutions have that, um, alongside kind of a established history as well. So, yeah, I mean I think that I've always felt a sort of a little, you know, I make work about technology, I make work with technology sometimes, but I'm not I wouldn't necessarily call myself like a new media artist. I call myself an interdisciplinary artist. Um, but there's definitely kind of spaces and conversations to be had around these things, and um it's been wonderful being around people uh that maybe make more work in like VR, AR, you know, um is it XR? Is that the the overarching term? Yeah, yeah. Um and it's sort of definitely like opened my eyes a little bit to to what's possible. Um and I think that I've always made work that's sort of been within my skill set or within kind of the I don't know, the space that I had. So, you know, online if I was moving a lot or if I have a small student space, I make a small thing, or I use kind of the skills that I have, and it's been I think being at New Inc. has been a sort of expansive experience. I can kind of open up my practice to to more things, and I think that's the joy of it, um, with the different tracks and and sort of being exposed to other people within a sort of yeah, art environment was really nice since I come from art.

Jonah King 30:22

Um yeah, I think I think that I think that like for me personally, I was always just really in love with moving image. I grew up in Dublin, kind of small village in Dublin, and for some reason there was an experimental video shop. I have no idea. It was like there was a grocery uh bank and an experimental video shop in like five pubs. Um and and so by the time I was like 12 I'd been through all these like strange Eastern European arthouse films and all the kind of you know, the the EAI cat back catalogue and all that kind of stuff, and I was like, I love this. I think it was strange to grow up and try to understand the kind of economic model for the artist that sustained making those. There's it's very cloaked, and when you kind of peel back the veil, you realize there's a lot of like independent wealth and money laundering and like just odd, nefarious activities going on that somehow results in this beautiful, sublime material. Um, and I it kind of reminds me today. A lot of the conversations I was casually having with people who were waiting to try the VR on, especially friends maybe who live in LA I hadn't seen in a long time, they were talking about essentially like a feeling of being squeezed. That like things have just gotten so expensive, um, that galleries are shutting en masse. Um there a lot of people here working in Hollywood, but there are there pretty much so many people were talking to me about how they thought they worked in Hollywood, but it seems like they can't work in Hollywood anymore. It's like things are shifting, and there's this articulation of just a general tide change, um and it's unclear what that means. It's opening up a lot of things with new technologies and a kind of blurring of institutional boundaries, but clearly there's like a scarcity and a nervousness around it, obviously. Um, and then I think you know, with the Epstein files, we realized not only were we living inside a pyramid scheme, but we were living in a pyramid scheme actually run by pedophiles. And so, and so like the kind of like large-scale mega galleries that you're sort of trained to try to attain, like you know, the love of uh turned out to be like really, really problematic. And so there's this line, there's this thing I've been thinking about a lot this year in that book that came out by Omar Al-Akhad, I think, the The One Day Everyone will have been Against This about the genocide in Palestine. And he says that there's these moments, cultural moments, where you realize that the uh overarching kind of culture or like institutions of the country culture certainly are so implicitly uh cynical that you sort of walk away from their entire value system. And I feel like to a large part, there's been a kind of strain amongst artists to try to figure out how to work inside a system that never really welcomed them. And I hope we learn soon that it's a false promise and that there is in fact other ways to sustain ourselves as creatives for each other and for the joy of the work that isn't about getting patted on the back by like one of Epstein's pals, you know.

Joshua Dawson 33:37

Yeah. Um, I mean, I for me, this is this is all new, right? The the art world, everything about the art world is sort of new. I was working, I I don't teach, I'm not in academia. Um, and I think that a lot of the kind of models that I've seen for how artists are able to sort of sustain their practices, predominantly, at least in my experience, I've seen the most experimental projects come out of people from having a job within an academic institution, having a practice that's sort of aligned with that, and those two kind of having a conversation with each other. Uh that's how my professors were. Uh, but then I decided, you know, as soon as I graduate, that's not a model that I want to sort of, you know, follow. But at the same time, this idea of what is an artist, like I don't know. Like I've never called myself that. I've tried my best not to. Uh, I always have thought of myself as a sort of um a designer uh or a speculative designer, critical designer, because the work that I do, uh, I've never I've never thought I've always thought of artist as someone who does work and then sells it or or gets it acquired or gets has that piece acquired by a museum or an institution. A lot of the work that I do wants to sort of just, you know, it it's it's very much about the process of how I'm kind of opening up systems through my practice and trying to examine them and then just disseminating it to the in to the world at large through these different uh, you know, like platforms that we have. And, you know, Hollywood is an interesting one to be talking about, especially given the fact that we're here in Los Angeles at this moment. A lot of my friends they began by saying, okay, let's do conceptual design work uh for, you know, the Marvel studios, or let's do that for uh at a time when streaming was sort of booming, they graduated and said, Okay, let's work on these world-building projects that they can then take as IP and start breaking it up into like a screenplay or a graphic novel or uh or TV show that you can then kind of like make money off of. And I think that that there was a big rush to that. You know, everybody was getting their screenplay kind of purchased by by a big uh streamer or studio, but that consolidation now that's sort of happening with all of these big major players is opening up the opportunity for a lot of art for a lot of writers and and designers from Hollywood to start exploring these other spaces that they can start taking their skills. So a lot of uh my friends are taking up jobs at you know Google or they're taking it up at Silicon Valley companies that that want to sort of imagine futures for where their sort of companies would live and how they would make money there. So these are more applied ways in which these practices that I'm have an experience in are kind of like finding ways to generate revenue for themselves at this extremely unsustainable time. And um but yeah, and then they have uh, much like me, they have practices on the side that are kind of making work that uh is less service-based and less service-driven and more critical and conceptual uh and just experimental in many ways.

Channing 36:46

And to wrap things up, could you guys maybe give the audience you know a description about some of the things that you have uh lined up here in the new feature, maybe shows or any exhibitions or anything like that? Sure.

Bobby Joe Smith III 36:59

I'd I'd like to actually talk speak to the last question. Is that okay? Take it a little bit. Sorry, I know we're trying to wrap up here. Um but I think it is very much core to the type of work that I'm doing and the type of work I'm trying to work through at New Inc. and that I've been working through theoretically at least through my MFA programs, about how you use art and design to help advance decolonial projects or uh help the advance the movements, right, that are a part of these sort of decolonial um endeavors. I mean, I think not fitting or feeling like a misfit or something is very core to that response. I grew up, and I say this you know with my partner every day, like we're very lucky to have grown up in an indigenous culture, to have had Lakota aunties and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers teach us traditional ways. Even if we don't live them, or if we're not able to live and practice them, they at least spoke about them. And we got to feel it at some level, what it means to live our culture in some way. And they they've gone to great lengths to try to protect as much of their culture as possible. And I I kind of grew up in what I would call a decolonial project. My mom worked at a um magnet school that was for indigenous students in Minneapolis, and that was started by the American Indian Movement. So a lot of Native people, due to policies from the U.S. government, were forced to kind of leave the reservation to sell their land, and the idea was to assimilate. So go to the city, get a job, and then of course they go to the cities, and then they're immediately discriminated against in terms of getting loans, in terms of getting housing, discrimination from the police, discrimination in terms of getting jobs. So you have large native communities in urban centers who need protection in some way or need some sense of community that they've now left from their reservation. Um so that school was just their attempt to say, how can we teach at least our children part of our culture, part of our language? Let's let's have a space where they can come and learn what it means to be Lakota, what it means to be Dakota, what it means to be a Nishinabe in some small way while they're learning the curriculum that they need to be able to get a job afterwards or go into college, right? So I consider that a decolonial project, even though they didn't talk about it in those terms, it was native people coming together, just average people, teachers, like how do we save a part of our culture for us? And because of that, I got to receive the narrative of like what it meant to live in this country. We got a different narrative of what American history is. So that when I went to school, that was my first feeling of something not fitting is oh, the narrative we're being taught in the history book is very different than the narrative that you know my Lexhi in uh Willie Mailbear taught me. You know, since there's this dissonance, I have to at an early age reconcile what that means. I can't immediately trust what's here, right? So I already I'm sitting in class and I'm already not feeling like I fit in with the curriculum that we're supposed to learn, even with the structure of how education is supposed to happen, where you have this educator who knows all, who's teaching us the facts, and now I feel like I can't trust that in some way, right? Fast forward, uh I'm learning philosophy and political science. I was taught that you're supposed to go into federal Indian policy. That's where you help create sovereignty for our tribe, right? And I'm going to Washington, D.C. every day, and or I'm doing I'm working on the hill and I'm also studying in school. And the feeling that I have, and the feeling that I have amongst my my friends and my peers are from other countries, is like everything that the US does, I would do it opposite. Whatever they choose for their political structure or their cultural structure or how they set up community seems backwards to me. So, what what why am I trying to operate in the system that already feels backwards to me? And it was in that process of working in Washington, DC, that I by chance picked up photography. I had never tried to do any type of creative practice before at all. Um, it was not seen as something that was sustainable. It just was never connected to me, even when I went to galleries, because you're just looking at paintings of you know old dead white people from Europe, which meant nothing to me at that time, you know. Um but I felt something in that process of making a photograph, of taking something that was in your head and learning the technical skills to then bring that into reality that felt way more empowering to me than going to Capitol Hill every single day, begging people to care about issues that they don't care about. And I think that sense of empowerment has really stuck with me because it became we're not gonna make a change through the system that's already here. It's working as it's supposed to. There you won't see a change unless there's rupture. And that's very hard to come by. You know, it's not meant to, well, it is rupturing in some pretty profound ways, but not necessarily in ways that are helpful to us. So I think that feeling of not being able to fit in is pretty core to what I'm doing right now and maybe why I found myself at New Inc., where I'm trying to decide how do we take this creative power that we have. So I feel like artists and designers are some of the few people left in our society who take something from, you know, soup to nuts, as they say, from from nothing all the way to the completion. Some of the few people that actually know how to make something from nothing, who have this sense of comfort and relationship to the unknown, but still forage forward and iterate and fail and continue to make until they get something that resonates with them in some way. That's a skill and a practice that's sadly lost because of the way that labor has been divided, you know, in our country. So I feel that that's super important when we're thinking about how do we take our movements forward, how do we make them more effective? Because if we're going to look to the civil rights movement, there's already been strategies how to disrupt the tactics that were used at that time. So, how do you envision an alternate to the way that this system that maybe you don't feel like you fit into? I don't fit here, I need to create an alternative, and I feel like creatives are some of the few people to do that. So I'm finding myself trying to like, how do we harness this work to create these alternatives, not to just sit in galleries, not to sit in the system that already you know consumes our work, but puts it towards this this alternate that maybe in which we can fit better. You know, I think the Zapatistas, they they talk about it where they're interested in a world in which many worlds fit. And I think that's a very powerful thought instead of a a univ you know, I I'm trying to think of what's the name, uh you know, one way, a monoculture or whatever it is, uh a universal. How do you create an environment in which diversity is at its core and it's what makes it robust and sustainable? So that's really what I'm trying to figure out here. And maybe that's even already in a l misalignment somewhat with New Inc., where they are pushing ideas of like how do you approach venture capital to you know sustain your artwork, how do you get your work into galleries, all important information to know. But I already feel like that's not where I want my work to be. I'm trying to make a world in which I feel like I fit better. And I want to do that with other artists because I've learned that my favorite artists didn't work in isolation. They worked with community. They were inspired by the people around them and they were inspired by the time in which they worked. And I I feel inspired to make an alternate, and I feel inspired when I'm with you all and how you're pushing forward. Like even if I don't my work doesn't fit someplace, this is an important practice for me. That's what I get a sense from all of you. And so maybe that that's what I'd answer. So my future opportunities as to what you're saying, I'm gonna be presenting a demo, uh, the showcase that's being uh curated by Mindy Sue, which is really excited. I'm gonna be working with my girlfriend Rachel White on a project together, which it'll be new for us to make an artwork together, and I'll also be talking at demo around a working group that I'm establishing with another new Inc. member who runs the underground art and design um collective in New York, her name's Amy. Um and we're both thinking through like what are some frameworks that we can help artists that we work with in this working group to think about how do I bring the our work into movements or how do we bring our work into communities in sort of powerful social, cultural, and political ways.

Camila Galaz 45:32

Yes. Um what have I got coming up? Well, I just released a printable Valentine's Day card card for your computer with the Media Archaeology Lab, which you can still go and download. Um I'm speaking at the New Media Caucus Symposium next weekend. I'm not sure when this is coming out. I'll be speaking about in Arizona, I'll be speaking about the Roses project that I presented here today. And then this Roses project is also in an ex exhibition in Kentucky at Second Story in July, I think. Um I'm working on a video installation project looking at um some Chilean political history with Rhizome that will a sort of version of it will be presented sort of mid-year. And then I am an editor at the Millennium Film Journal, and we're doing in May in New York City, we're doing a um kind of event looking at I guess like alternative distribution models for video art. So if you're interested in that, come along. Yeah.

Jonah King 46:32

Um so what am I up to? Next week I'm also speaking at the New Media Caucus uh Restoration and Regeneration at ASU in Phoenix. Um I'll be speaking about the animistic uh lineage in magical puppetry practices that relate to motion capture technology. So that's a kind of performance lecture I'm gonna be giving. Um I am showing Honey Fungus. Honey fungus continues to spread its mycelial tendons across the world. Next week it's gonna be in Amsterdam at the science, a science film festival. Um, it's going to be in the Poppy Jasper Film Festival in in California in March. Um, it's going to be in a large animation festival that happens in Colombia uh in a few months. And it's going to be shown for I think five or six months on Governor's Island in New York with new new sphere, Noosphere uh arts who are setting up a kind of ecologically themed art program on Governor's Island, which is very exciting. I run a symposium called Synthetic Narratives, which happened in October and will be happening again uh in October, and it's about the emerging like uh use of spatial computing and AI in filmmaking and storytelling, but we're also doing a kind of off-site in Newburgh, upstate New York in April. In the meantime, I'm working on two new projects. Uh one of them, well, I'll talk about one of them, which is a another VR first-person experience uh film which is about detainment and the mostly American prison industrial complex, but also the rise of detain as political tactic uh in the West, in America in the West, I suppose.

Joshua Dawson 48:30

Yeah, those all sound really cool. Um I uh I will be also uh presenting a um uh I'm gonna be releasing a new project or launching a new project at uh the demo festival, but through the talks, uh not as part of the showcase. So I'll be uh on June 5th as part of the Creative Sciences track. Uh we'll be launching the project then. This is a project that I've been working on for the last three years. It's a massive world-building project with costumes, uh digital assets, um, and yeah, we're going to probably have a zine that's going to be part of the new museum's gift shop as well. Is some that's something I'm working toward. Um but yeah, Brad Bowery is a project uh that I'll be launching that touches upon a lot of what uh you know Bobby Joe was sort of talking about with respect to trying to find ways in which um you know ancestral systems uh can help kind of address how you respond to contemporary or you know future issues, future uh urban issues, urban design issues that um that seem to keep creeping up with respect to uh climate change. So uh trying to see what codes exist in ancestral uh systems, hydrological systems. Most of the uh hydrological systems that I've been examining are uh from India, and I'm trying to find ways in which you can envelop them with the kind of aesthetic of Los Angeles to use the mechanics of what functioned well there uh and try to kind of uh respond to issues here, not necessarily as a solution, but just as a sort of thought experiment. But coming back to uh sort of exhibitions, like there is a part of the research that I just uh presented at uh the arena uh annual uh launch at uh Plot that a lot of uh the people here at uh Wilcher Online were also present at, um, so which was great. And yeah, and I will also be um part of the Film and Architecture Forum taking place at the Architectural Association in London uh in July. And looking for, you know, obviously Brad Bowry will be on the festival circuit, but it will also uh be a part of the the WEHO MIMA program uh that I know Leah, your work was a part of as well. So it'll be at the now um uh screens on Sunset Boulevard, and we'll be screening there. Uh so uh we'll make sure uh to take some good documentation of that uh when that happens here in Los Angeles. But um those are the sort of immediate ones that come to mind. I'm sure there's more, but I can't seem to remember. But um yeah.

Channing 51:18

Well, that was awesome. It was a pleasure having you all. Um, you know, I just admire each of your works. Looking forward to hearing what the audience has to say about the show. But thank you guys.

Bobby Joe Smith III 51:28

Thank you.

Jonah King 51:29

Thank you for helping set this up for so and likewise your work is interesting. Yeah.

Channing 51:39

Man, what a conversation. Being here doing Frieze week just on the block from all this spectacle, and then sitting in this room with artists who are really questioning the system itself. It really feels like it's a part of history.

Leah 51:52

Yeah, what I love about tonight was that it wasn't just about showing work, but it was it was about asking hard questions like who is art for, who does it serve, who should it serve, what kind of worlds are we actually trying to build?

Channing 52:05

Yeah, there's something powerful about gathering all these misfits in one space. You know, uh people working across VR, AR, painting, films, speculative design, and decolonial practices, none of it fits uh really into one box. And maybe that's the point.

Leah 52:24

Yeah, we're really in a moment where a lot of structures feel unstable, like the art market, tech, institutions, and the lot of other systems, honestly. And instead of trying to squeeze ourselves into them, I really like that conversation about how maybe our work is about building new containers and new ecosystems.

Channing 52:45

Yeah, you know, I I have to agree because I think that's what shared circuits felt like tonight. It wasn't just like some exhibition, but it felt like a network to a certain extent. Uh, we saw ideas crossing and practices overlapping and people showing up for one another. That was something different for me.

Leah 53:06

Especially because on the same property was the 99 cents store and that sizzler and all the dynamic, really unusual and incredible and also controversial artworks. And then in this building was like this overlapping or this chasm of time built on top of each other because we had there there were like artworks, we didn't get a chance to like talk a whole lot about it, but there were artworks that were used with very old or sometime now people are almost using the term dead tech, and with that, it was like a mix of new technology and art. It was actually really, really interesting being in this type of atmosphere. So we hope that wherever you're listening from, that this episode helps you feel a bit of that energy that we all felt here today. And maybe you're encouraged to think about some of the systems that you're part of, or maybe new ones you might even imagine into being.

Channing 54:12

Yeah, in addition to the LA chapter, we're really excited to tell you all about some of the things that we're working on with our land-based project and some of the other projects that we've been able to participate with. But really, we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being here with us today. We know there's so many different things that you could be doing with your time, but you're here with us. Thank you for being a part of Vessel Art as a doorway.