Ai Weiwei
 First broadcast June 25, 2010
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In May 2010, Chinese conceptual artist and activist Ai Weiwei spoke via Skype with BAM/PFA's Lucinda Barnes and The San Francisco Chronicle's Kenneth Baker at San Francisco's Haines Gallery. Weiwei is among the most prominent and influential artists of his generation. Much of his work traffics in cheeky, variously veiled social commentaries; his artistic and critical treatments of the Chinese government, which heightened in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, has garnered him wide acclaim internationally and led to numerous confrontations with Chinese authorities. In these excerpts from the event, Ai discusses several of his works and exhibitions as well as the state of the individual in contemporary China, the effects of globalization on his work and what it means to make art--and be considered a dissident--under the current government. He also broaches notions of conceptual art, political usages of art and artistic usages of politics (20 minutes).
Our thanks to Haines Gallery, which provided the recording from which these excerpts were taken.
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Almagul Menlibayeva
First broadcast May 7, 2010
or listen to Pt. 1 with iTunes (33 minutes)
or listen to Pt. 2 with iTunes (27 minutes)
Leeza Ahmady speaks with photographer and video artist Almagul Menlibayeva, whose 2010 exhibition, Daughters of Turan, took place at New York's Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. Joining them for the conversation is Priska Juschka, founder of Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. Juschka offers an account of the history of her gallery and her interest in Menlibayeva's work, which examines the cultural, political and ecological history and growth of the artist's native Kazakhstan. Melibayeva discusses how the Soviet occupation of Kazakhstan informed her artistic growth and interests, alongside traditional Kazakh culture, and gives a brief introduction to the economic, geographic and political history of the country.
This event took place on April 29, 2010 and was presented by Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in collaboration with ArteEast's Across Histories: Artist Talk Series.
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Yun-Fei Ji
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First broadcast April 9, 2010
In this conversation at James Cohan Gallery, Don J. Cohn, Senior Editor of ArtAsiaPacific Magazine, interviews artist Yun-Fei Ji about his new body of work and his relationship with China. Yun-Fei Ji’s 2010 exhibition Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts, his second solo exhibition at James Cohan, was the inaugural showcase of his 32-foot-long narrative scroll, The Three Gorges Dam Migration, as well as numerous new works on paper. The calm and thoughtful Yun-Fei Ji fields Cohn’s pressing and often provocative questions with great consideration, tackling everything from Yun-Fei Ji’s understanding of the state of contemporary China to his graphic, fantastical (and at times critical) portraits of Chinese history. The artist discusses how affected he was on a recent trip to the Three Gorges region of China, where he witnessed the immense cultural and physical displacement caused by the building and subsequent flooding of the Dam. The experience inspired him to conceive his latest works as a platform to create consciousness and understanding about issues facing China. The artist stresses, however, that forced migration, displacement and increasing consumerism are a global concern, and are not unique to China (1 hour 6 minutes).
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Lee Mingwei, The Mending Project
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First broadcast December 11, 2009
Working behind a stunningly large, custom-built wooden table covered with used clothing, New York-based Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei speaks with Leeza Ahmady during the performance of his 2009 exhibition The Mending Project. The interview takes place at Lambard-Freid Projects, host to the installation, where visitors would come with an article of clothing or house garment and have the artist personally mend the piece over the course of a conversation. Mingwei discusses the intentions behind making the focus his work a mundane task and turning a private act into an intimate one, stating, "I am interested in opening up beautiful moments of connection." He also speaks of his past works and how each seeks to highlight the banal elements of quotidian life, allowing for a transformative experience for both the artist and the participant (30 minutes).
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Yeondoo Jung
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First broadcast November 22, 2009
South Korean artist Yeondoo Jung talks with Leeza Ahmady about his art and how his childhood exposure to Traditional Chinese Medicine, and early 19th century photographers continues to inspire his artistic thinking. He discusses his latest video, Hand Made Memory, where he has juxtaposed interviews of real life characters with entirely staged interpretations of their stories. He likes to offer transparency to his viewers about the process of his image construction. “The process is what is so exciting and I want to share how I play with multiple elements: fiction, truth, documentary and pure fantasy.” In his first ever-live performance event Cinemagician, commissioned by Performa 2009, Jung integrates sound, camera feed-back, cinematic tricks, and the energy of a live magician in performance to create a magical experience for the audience (37 minutes).
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Bose Pacia
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First broadcast November 9, 2009
Leeza Ahmady in conversation with Bose Pacia gallery director Rebecca Davis. Find out about the gallery's exciting new space in Brooklyn, about their global reach, just what it takes to score a show at the place, and what it's like to be one of the only institutions to exclusively feature South Asian art. It's been a long road but, despite the economic downturn, Davis says Bose Pacia is thriving (30 minutes).
Rebecca Davis, Director, joined Bose Pacia two years ago, after completing an M.A. in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bose Pacia has launched the careers of some of the best known artists from South Asia who have now been included in the most prestigious museums and curated events worldwide. In this conversation, Leeza and Rebecca talk about Bose Pacia’s growth as a gallery, the increased academic, institutional, and commercial interest in art from the region, and what lies ahead for the gallery. Rebecca gives us details on Bose Pacia’s recent move from Chelsea to DUMBO and how they have been handling the recession. We also learn how the gallery started to build its impressive roster of artists and positioned itself at the forefront of contemporary South Asian avant-garde.
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Guy Ben-Ner
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First broadcast November 9, 2009
Guy Ben-Ner, is an internationally renowned Isreali artist living and working in Tel Aviv and visiting New York to launch his latest video: Don’t Drop the Monkey, commissioned by Performa 2009. In this conversation with Leeza Ahmady, we hear about the artist’s process of making videos, the intentions in his work, and his thoughts on how art and personal life mutually affect each other. Ben-Ner shares details about the making of the video--which he admits he titled with no real reference in the piece--in which the artist holds a telephone conversation with himself over a period of twelve months as he flies between Tel Aviv and Berlin. Ben-Ner’s storyboard is life itself, the film is completely live and unedited, and each scene occurs in real time although with significant lapses in between. Shot in Hebrew, and dubbed in English, the film presents a conversation in rhyme, which discusses how art can be at the service of life and the repercussions of such a unified relationship. Mixing sophisticated cinematic devices and crafty, do-it-yourself elements, Ben-Ner’s videos brim with witty cross-references to specific episodes and genres within the histories of cinema, video, and performance (31 minutes).
Ben-Ner’s Don’t Drop the Monkey is on view at the PERFORMA Hub at 41 Cooper Square in New York City through November 22, 2009
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Crossing Borders: Contemporary Art in Troubled Places
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First broadcast September 21, 2009
The Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia often dominate the headlines, but rarely because of the burgeoning art scene. But art is alive and well in the region. So how are artists negotiating all that new attention? And how are cultural expectations affecting their work? Moderator Savita Apte, Chair of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, and curators Leeza Ahmady and Carol Solomon sort out the issues in a panel discussion at the Museum of Arts and Design in September 2009. In association with the Abraaj Capital Art Prize exhibition. Produced by Asian Contemporary Art Week (61 minutes).
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