The Russi Hive

Alejandra Russi
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Society & Culture

The Russi Hive is a podcast about creativity—unfolding in conversations with expected and unexpected people; not only artists, but anyone with a practice, a system, or an obsession that shapes how they think and live. Presented by Ricco/Maresca and hosted by Alejandra Russi, The Russi Hive is filmed and recorded in the gallery’s New York City space. This show is a place for those drawn to the unseen mechanics of making, the inner weather reports, invented languages, and the way an idea arrives at the "wrong" time and still changes everything.

  1. 5d ago

    Kate Berry Brown: Holding Form — Motherhood, Repetition, and the Shape of a Life

    Kate Berry Brown joins The Russi Hive to discuss her new body of work: painstaking drawings made from thousands of marks that build forms at once flat, swollen, folded, stretched, and strangely alive. Her path through fashion, floral design, motherhood, drawing, and wood sculpture has shaped a practice defined by repetition and interruption—work that can be picked up and put down as life demands, and a sculptural sensibility that now returns to paper. In this conversation, Brown reflects on abstraction rooted in lived experience; on forms that hover between portrait and vessel; and on the desire for labor to remain visible while countless separate gestures resolve into a single, inevitable whole. Music excerpt (00:03:43–00:05:10): “Broken Doll” by Shaun Frearson, licensed through PremiumBeat. License #8129841. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  2. Sep 17

    ChatGPT: Questionable Guest — A Voice Without a Body, a Body Without a Voice

    Season 2 of The Russi Hive opens with its first Hive Construct: part interview, part performance, part conceptual experiment. Alejandra collaborates with Canadian artist Max Streicher, placing one of his inflatable figures across from her as a physical proxy for ChatGPT. Streicher provides the body, ChatGPT provides the voice, and the resulting arrangement turns the interview itself into material—playing with presence, simulation, embodiment, and the uneasy fascination of talking to something that is emphatically not a person. The conversation moves from how AI actually produces language to the places where machine intelligence and human thought resemble one another—and where they decisively part ways. From there, things get stranger: human inefficiency as creative fuel, the danger of outsourcing the difficult parts of making, AI as collaborator rather than replacement, and the possibility of a new cognitive territory emerging between people and the responsive systems they increasingly think alongside. This episode is an independent project by The Russi Hive. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by OpenAI. ChatGPT’s responses were developed through prior conversations with Alejandra Russi and delivered live during the recorded interview. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  3. Sep 3

    Creative Dispatch 3: The Restless Form — Range, Disruption, and the Hive Construct

    In the final installment of a late-summer Creative Dispatch trilogy closing Season 1 of The Russi Hive, Alejandra considers what a filmed podcast might be “allowed” to become and why the format still feels widely underdeveloped. Dispatch 3 is about disruption, restlessness, and the creative freedom that comes from refusing a single default shape. As Season 2 comes into view, Alejandra thinks through the filmed podcast as something more elastic than documentation: a form that can make room for performance, objects, staging, strange encounters, and experiments like the Hive Construct, a new category for episodes that bend the interview format itself. The episode also widens into a meditation on appetite: the desire for different worlds, moods, formats, and encounters—and the point of view that holds them together. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  4. Aug 27 ·  Bonus

    Creative Dispatch 2: The Thursday Machine — Nothing Happens. Then the Work Begins (Bonus)

    In the second of three late-summer Creative Dispatches closing Season 1 of The Russi Hive, Alejandra moves from the thrill of launching a project to the stranger, less glamorous reality of keeping it alive. Dispatch 2 begins with anticlimax: after months of private significance, the podcast enters the world—and everyone else has the nerve to keep living their lives. Then the biweekly promise takes over, and repetition becomes the method: deadlines, production pipelines, editing, email blasts, Instagram grids, and the systems that turn something you were trying to make into something you simply do. Alejandra looks at how gallery life shaped her operational brain, why patterns can be soothing, and what might happen when a useful structure starts to feel a little too settled. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  5. Aug 20

    Creative Dispatch 1: The Spark — Perfectionism, an Imaginary Assistant, and Doing the Obvious Thing

    In the first of three late-summer Creative Dispatches closing Season 1 of The Russi Hive, Alejandra rewinds to the podcast’s private prehistory—the research labyrinth, the tug-of-war between desire and avoidance, and the self-hacking required to turn a long-carried idea into a living project. Dispatch 1 is about perfectionism, visibility, and the elusive line between preparation and procrastination. It looks back at the semi-imaginary ship that was set in motion anyway, and ends with a question for anyone carrying around a project they keep postponing: what is the next most obvious and urgent thing you could do? Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  6. Aug 6

    Gallerinas: A Beginner’s Reality Check — Chic Illusion vs. Clockwork Machine

    For the last interview in Season 1 of The Russi Hive Podcast, Alejandra turns the mic toward the team behind Ricco/Maresca, the Chelsea (NYC) gallery where the podcast was born, sitting down with Suzy Bucky and Chloe Kohlhoss for a loose, funny, behind-the-scenes conversation about what gallery work looks like from the inside. The episode begins with the fantasy: white walls, openings, polished outfits, clever conversations about art. Then comes the reality: logistics, checklists, emails, sales tax, artist submissions, client relationships, front-desk triage, and the constant translation required to make an exhibition feel effortless. They talk about the gallery as both workplace and creative ecosystem—a place where taste, trust, timing, social intelligence, and teamwork all matter. They also get into what Ricco/Maresca teaches them about self-taught art, communication, responsibility, and the emotional attachment that forms when you help bring an artist’s work into public view. The episode closes with hot takes on art-world clichés, opening nights, red dots, art fairs, email sign-offs, and the unofficial rules that everyone somehow learns on the job. Subscribe for new episodes every other Thursday, plus bonus drops in between. Follow @russihive on Instagram, TikTok, and Substack. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  7. Jul 23

    Natalie Crist: Ecosystem Builder — Bloom, Decay, and Designing for Awe

    In Episode 11 of The Russi Hive Podcast, Alejandra sits down with landscape designer Natalie Crist for a conversation about gardens as sensual, unruly worlds—places where beauty, ecology, pleasure, and human intention are constantly negotiating with one another. Crist came to her practice by way of medicine and horticulture, and that double perspective runs through the episode. She talks about plants not simply as material, but as active presences—edible, therapeutic, sensory, seasonal—and about the ways a landscape can work on the body before the mind has fully caught up. At the center of the episode is a different way of thinking about design: not as control, but as attention. Crist speaks about shaping outdoor spaces while allowing nature to lead—working with impermanence, surprise, and the restless intelligence of living things. They move through neuroaesthetics, edible landscapes, and the intertwined beauty of bloom and decay—less as opposites than as conditions a garden sustains simultaneously. What emerges is a philosophy of designing for flux: spaces that are intentional, dynamic, and alive enough for the maker’s hand to recede. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

  8. Jul 9

    Alejandro Triana: Dude with the Oud — Passion, Place, and Playing Between the Notes

    In Episode 10 of The Russi Hive Podcast, Alejandra sits down with Alejandro Triana—her nephew, almost-sibling, and the musician behind Dude with the Oud—for a conversation about obsession as creative fuel, the worlds we build as children, and the strange, crooked routes by which a life begins to sound like itself. The episode opens with family lore: two Alejandros, a Disney autograph book, a missing set of Ninja Turtle pages, and a childhood "crime" that somehow becomes a theory of creative temperament. For Triana, obsession was never casual. As a child, it meant entering a world completely; as an artist, it becomes a way of listening, practicing, and following a sound until it changes the shape of your life. At the center of the conversation is the oud: the ancient, fretless, microtonal instrument Triana calls the grandfather of guitars. After hearing it in a Lower East Side club, he bought one the next day and began chasing a sound that would lead him through Arabic music, flamenco, Andalusian histories, diasporic identity, and a musical language of his own. They talk about skateboarding through New York as a kid, subway musicians as early influences, the tension between practice and play, and the challenge of making music in an era that asks artists to become content creators. The episode also circles back to childhood world-building: toys with names, elaborate plots, vanished little universes, and the creative muscle that forms before anyone knows to call it art. What emerges is a conversation about self-invention, discipline, detours, and living on your own timeline. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube Instagram TikTok Substack

See All (18)

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

The Russi Hive is a podcast about creativity—unfolding in conversations with expected and unexpected people; not only artists, but anyone with a practice, a system, or an obsession that shapes how they think and live. Presented by Ricco/Maresca and hosted by Alejandra Russi, The Russi Hive is filmed and recorded in the gallery’s New York City space. This show is a place for those drawn to the unseen mechanics of making, the inner weather reports, invented languages, and the way an idea arrives at the "wrong" time and still changes everything.

Information

  • Creator
    Alejandra Russi
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Russi Hive
  • Show Website
    The Russi Hive

You Might Also Like