Left to be Desired

UCL PACT
  • 0.0 (0)
  • VISUAL ARTS
Left to be Desired

A Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts Podcast. Tune in to hear Maja & Reuben Fowkes talk to artists and researchers about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.

Episodes

  1. 21 OCT

    Left to be desired episode 7: 60th Venice Biennale with Vlatka Horvat, Șerban Savu, and Oto Hudec

    Episode 7 of the SAVA podcast Left to be Desired features a conversation with artists Vlatka Horvat (Croatia), Oto Hudec (Slovakia), and Serban Savu (Romania) in their respective pavilions in the Venice Biennale 2024.    Left to be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy. You can also access it via the podcast website:  https://lefttobedesired.libsyn.com/site    Left to be Desired podcast explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global Socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes will invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.    60th Venice Biennale with Vlatka Horvat, Șerban Savu, and Oto Hudec.   In episode 7 of Left to be Desired, Maja and Reuben Fowkes visit the artists Vlatka Horvat (Croatia), Șerban Savu (Romania), and Oto Hudec (Slovakia) in their respective national pavilions in the 60th Venice Biennale 2024.  The conversations aimed to discuss issues around ecology, sustainability, the legacies of socialism, and how they relate to the Biennale's theme of the year "Foreigners Everywhere", as a focus on artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, exiles, and refugees, particularly those who move between the Global South and the Global North.  Vlatka Horvat talked about the potentialities of circulating art through alternative logistics of migrant networks.  The conversation with Șerban Savu was focused on his artistic project around the relationship between work and leisure. And finally, Oto Hudec's proposal showcased the protection of trees and crucial role of protestors against deforestation.    About the Speakers   Vlatka Horvat (Croatia)  Vlatka Horvat is a Croatian-born London-based artist who uses a range of media such as sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, video, and writing. In her work, she explores the relationship between the body and its surroundings, as well as questions related to presence and the ways in which things occupy and share space. She has had exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, PEER (London), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), Hessel Museum – Bard Center for Curatorial Studies (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), and MoMA PS1 (New York City), and her work has been included in the Croatian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2018 (Venice), Aichi Triennale (Nagoya), and the 11th Istanbul Biennale.   Șerban Savu (Romania)   Șerban Savu lives and works in Cluj, Romania. He attended the University of Art and Design in Cluj, Romania (2001), after which he was awarded a two-year postgraduate research grant to Venice. Considered part of the group of painters known as the Cluj-school, Savu's figurative paintings skilfully rendered canvases capture the daily existence of contemporary Romanians at work and leisure. Savu's works were exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, Rome; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague; Museo Pietro Canonica a Villa Borghese, Rome; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Le Lait Centre D'art Contemporain, Albi; PLATEAU, Samsu.    Oto Hudec (Slovakia)   Oto Hudec is an artist and activist lives and works in Košice, Slovakia. His projects often use stories and utopian visions to explore climate change, globalization, migration, and the life of minority communities. SOLO SHOWS: 2019: “We Are All Carbon,” Gandy Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2017; “House of Isabel,” Gallery OFF Format, Brno, Czech Republic; “Archipelago,” Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia; “Prague Day after the Air Raid,” Artwall Gallery Prague, Czech Republic; “The Man Who Travels with Bees,” Gandy gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia; 2014: “Nor Tortoise Shell nor Blades of Grass,” MMCA

    29 min

  2. 12 JUL

    Left to Be Desired Episode 6: How Plants Practice Politics with Zheng Bo

    Episode 6 of the SAVA podcast Left to be Desired features a conversation with artist Zheng Bo on the politics of plants on the occasion of their work Bamboo as Method at Somerset House in London.  Left to be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy. You can also access it via the podcast website:  https://lefttobedesired.libsyn.com/site  Left to be Desired podcast explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global Socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes will invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.  How Plants Practice Politics with Zheng Bo  In episode 6 of Left to be Desired, artist Zheng Bo talks to Maja and Reuben Fowkes about their ecological art practice, artistic perspectives on the histories of socialism and the installation Bamboo as Method at Somerset House. Meeting Bo again in London was an opportunity to find out about their distinctive approach to breaking down the barriers between humans and nature by reconnecting with plants. Of particular interest from a SAVA perspective are works that deal with the complex social and environmental histories of Chinese socialism, including the period of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. The discussion also broached the issue of the particular forms of instrumentalization of nature under socialism and the extent to which plant resistance and agency was a factor in these entwined more-than-human histories. As the podcast suggests, the radicalization of their approach to botanical politics is driven by the urgency of the climate crisis of the Anthropocene.     About the Speaker  ZHENG Bo is an ecoqueer artist of ethnic Bai heritage. Through drawing, dance and film, they cultivate kinship with plants: ferns in Taiwan, moss in Scandinavia, beech trees in Germany, an umbrella thorn acacia in the Arabian Desert. For them, art does not arise from human creativity, but more-than-human intimacy. Their ecological practice contributes to an emergent planetary indigeneity. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Gropius Bau and Göteborgs Konsthall, public commissions at Somerset House and Jameel Arts Centre, and participation in the 59th Venice Biennale. Their works are in the collections of Tate Modern, Power Station of Art, and Hammer Museum, among others. https://zhengbo.org/

    39 min

  3. 5 JUL

    Left to Be Desired Episode 5: Art in the Age of the Anthropocene with Linda Kaljundi

    Episode 5 of the SAVA podcast Left to be Desired is now live, and takes the form of a walk around the exhibition Art in the Age of the Anthropocene at KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn with curator Linda Kaljundi.   Left to be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy. You can also access it via the podcast website:  https://lefttobedesired.libsyn.com/site  Left to be Desired podcast explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global Socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes will invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.  Art in the Age of the Anthropocene   In episode 5 of Left to be Desired, Linda Kaljundi talks to Maja and Reuben Fowkes about the exhibition Art in the Age of the Anthropocene at KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn. The recording was made during a special tour of the exhibition for members of the SAVA Research Team during the SAVA Baltic Research Trip. Art historian Linda Kaljundi, who is both one of the curators of the exhibition and Professor of Cultural History at the Estonian Academy of Arts, began her walk through by pointing to the variety of approaches to Soviet Estonian ecological art. Emblematic of the diversity of such environmental engagements, she spoke about Ilmar Malin’s Fading Sun (1968) as bringing together dystopian visions of the future, fears of nuclear Armageddon and concerns over soil pollution. Extractivism and the history of the Estonian shale gas industry as a motor of Stalin era industrialization were also addressed, embodied in socialist realist works such as the Rise of Industry in the Estonian SSR. Further points of discussion included how and when environmental concerns appeared in official art of the Soviet era, the relation between the visibility of Indigenous communities in art and the velocity of resource extraction in Siberia, and the intersection of gender and ecology in representations of agricultural work. The transformation of the countryside emerges as a key site of environmental contestation, with Olga Terri’s individualized portraits of cows countering their resourcification in industrial farming and a greenhouse overflowing with cucumbers alluding to the chemical pollution that was a poisonous byproduct of monocultural agriculture.  About the Speaker  Linda Kaljundi is a professor of cultural history at the Estonian Academy of Arts and a senior research fellow at Tallinn University. Specializing in Baltic history, historiography, and cultural memory, as well as in environmental history, she is first and foremost interested in finding new, transnational, and entangled perspectives on the region’s history and heritage. Kaljundi has published and edited collections on history and history writing, historical fiction, and images. At the Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, she co-curated the exhibitions History in Image—Image in History: The National and Transnational Past in Estonian Art (2018), The Conqueror’s Eye: Lisa Reihana’s In Pursuit of Venus (2019–20), and the new permanent exhibition Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art, 1700–1945 (2021).

    1h 10m

  4. 12 JUN

    Left to Be Desired Episode 4: Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu on the Ecological Socialism of the Future

    We are pleased to announce that episode 4 of Left to be Desired is now live. Maja and Reuben Fowkes converse with Romanian theorist Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu on the Ecological Socialism of the Future.  Left to be Desired is available to listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music/Audible and Audacy.  Left to be Desired podcast explores the distinctiveness of the socialist path through the Anthropocene by bringing together artistic and scholarly insights into the ecologies of global Socialism. Maja & Reuben Fowkes will invite artists and researchers to talk about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.  Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu on the Ecological Socialism of the Future  For episode 4 of Left to be Desired we followed up on Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu’s presentation at the SAVA Research Week, exploring in more depth his proposal for an Ecological Socialism of the Future. The conversation with Maja and Reuben Fowkes addressed the west-leftist disregard for the lived experience of actually existing or real socialism, here in the case of Romania, touched on his autoethnographic recovery of the eco-socialist potentialities of life in Cluj during the 1970 and 1980s, and meandered through the specific case of a river-based ecozonal economy experimented with during the period. Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu is a Romanian philosopher, translator and culture theorist, writing on critical social theory, decolonial thought, alternative epistemologies, histories of senses and cultural history. He is editor of the journal of contemporary art and critical theory IDEA arts + society and co-founder of the fluid curatorial collective Committee for Resurrection.

    53 min

  5. 25 APR

    Left to be Desired | Swamp with us: a podcast with Nomeda and Gedimidas Urbonas

    Left to be Desired

    48 min

  6. 19/06/2023

    Left to be Desired: Saodat Ismailova

    In episode 2 of Left to be Desired, Paris and Tashkent based artist Saodat Ismailova talks to Maja & Reuben Fowkes about her work and the turbulent legacies of Soviet power for Central Asia. The conversation flows through the ecological disaster caused by the damming of the great rivers of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya and the social and environmental consequences of turning biodiverse agriculture into a cotton monoculture, to the motives of Soviet campaigns for the emancipation of women. Emerging from the discussion of films such as Two Horizons, Stain of Oxus and Her Five Lives is the layering of twentieth century Soviet and much more ancient histories and cultures in the life of the Eurasian Steppe.                         Saodat Ismailova grew up in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and is now based in Tashkent and Paris. Ismailova’s filmography addresses themes of national memory, women’s sovereignty, ritualism and mortality. Drawing from ancestral knowledge, folklore, animism and traditional spiritual practices of the region, her films have a mysterious, hypnotic quality, emphasising long takes reminiscent of the slow cinema aesthetic. In 2021 she founded Davra, a research group devoted to the study, documentation and dissemination of Central Asian culture. In 2022 her work was selected for both the Venice Biennale and Documenta. Three of her short films were recently screened in Tate Modern, London.                                              Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts is the first large-scale interdisciplinary research project that institutes the Socialist Anthropocene as a new field of study within the critical corpus concerned with challenging and decentring the West-centric discourses of the Anthropocene, asserting the constitutive role of the twentieth century environmental histories of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. The SAVA project was awarded in the ERC Consolidator Grant competition and is funded through a UKRI Frontier Research grant. It will run at the Postsocialist Art Centre UCL from 2022 to 2027. It is led by Maja and Reuben Fowkes.  Maja and Reuben Fowkes are art historians, curators and co-directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. Their publications include Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020), Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (Sternberg Press, 2021), The Green Bloc: Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (CEU Press, 2015) and a special issue of Third Text entitled Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism (2018). Recent curatorial projects include the exhibitions Colliding Epistemes at Bozar Brussels (2022) and Potential Agrarianism at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021). Their Horizon Europe project on the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts is supported by a UKRI Frontier Research grant. For more, see: www.translocal.org

    39 min

  7. 19/06/2023

    Left to be Desired: Oliver Ressler

    For the first episode of Left to be Desired, Maja & Reuben Fowkes interview Vienna-based artist Oliver Ressler on the occasion of his solo show Barricading the Icesheets at The Showroom. They discuss Oliver’s work, climate change & justice, capitalism & extraction, Extinction Rebellion, the ecologies of post-socialism and the potential of eco-socialist futures.                                             Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives. Ressler has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project Space, Taipei; Kunsthaus Graz, Graz and comprehensive solo exhibitions at Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville; SALT Galata, Istanbul; MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; and Cultural Centre of Belgrade. Since 2019 Ressler directs Barricading the Ice Sheets, a research project on the climate justice movement, funded by the Austrian Science Fund, that lead to an exhibition at Camera Austria in Graz in September 2021.                      Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts is the first large-scale interdisciplinary research project that institutes the Socialist Anthropocene as a new field of study within the critical corpus concerned with challenging and decentring the West-centric discourses of the Anthropocene, asserting the constitutive role of the twentieth century environmental histories of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. The SAVA project was awarded in the ERC Consolidator Grant competition and is funded through a UKRI Frontier Research grant. It will run at the Postsocialist Art Centre UCL from 2022 to 2027. It is led by Maja and Reuben Fowkes.  Maja and Reuben Fowkes are art historians, curators and co-directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London. Their publications include Art and Climate Change (Thames & Hudson, 2022), Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020), Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (Sternberg Press, 2021), The Green Bloc: Neo-avant-garde Art and Ecology under Socialism (CEU Press, 2015) and a special issue of Third Text entitled Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism (2018). Recent curatorial projects include the exhibitions Colliding Epistemes at Bozar Brussels (2022) and Potential Agrarianism at Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021). For more, see: www.translocal.org

    43 min
  • 7 Episodes

About

A Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts Podcast. Tune in to hear Maja & Reuben Fowkes talk to artists and researchers about their practice and exchange ideas at the intersection of ecology, climate change, art and the Socialist Anthropocene.

Information

  • Creator
    UCL PACT
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2024
  • Episodes
    7
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2023
  • Show Website
    Left to be Desired

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada