Cultivar

Colleen Hargaden joins us for this episode of Cultivar. We discuss anthropogenic minerals and her work with Fulcrum, her exhibition at Hunter Shaw Fine Art, rockhounding, prepper subcultures, and more. Colleen Hargaden is a Los Angeles based artist working in film/video, sculpture, and installation. Her work uses time-based media to explore future-thinking and themes of ecology, art, and utility. Employing the forms and techniques of contemporary “survivalist” culture, science, and engineering, Hargaden’s work responds to ongoing developments in technology, as well as the systemic social, ecological, and economic pressures that prompt their creation. Central to these concerns is a tension between humankind’s historical narrative of dominance and the resurgent possibilities of nonhuman ecologies. Hargaden’s work reckons with this precarious relationship, exploring potential alternatives through research-based practice and pedagogical exchange. Follow Colleen Hargaden: @colleenhargaden / https://colleenhargaden.com/  

Los Angeles-based artist Jeffrey Stuker joins us for this episode of Cultivar. We discuss his video work on view in Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, as well as the concept of second nature, butterfly mimicry, contemporary image culture, and the shared algorithms of 3D graphics and ecological modeling. Jeffrey Stuker is an artist and is currently a coeditor of the journal Effects and the director of the Seeld Library, a project bringing together a community of thinkers whose scholarly and artistic practices explore the phenomenon of second nature. A central focus of Stuker’s work is mimicry—both in nature, where it provides a strategy for the survival of certain species, and in digital imaging, which can manifest hyper-lifelike representations of reality. Stuker creates carefully rendered computer-generated images, planting coded historical, scientific, and industrial references within. These images exist as part simulation and part documentation; their factualness remains elusive or, rather, allegorical. Current and upcoming exhibitions include: Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum; Painting Stone at Villa Lontana, Rome; The International Biennial of Photography, Thessaloniki Greece; and Objects of Desire at LACMA. Follow Stuker: IG @jeffrey_stuker / https://www.jeffreystuker.com/

Istanbul-based architect, designer and thinker Aslihan Demirtas joins us for this episode of Cultivar. Demirtas discusses her use of soil as an artistic medium. Through her practice of “earthing,” Demirtas removes dirt from urban abstraction in the megacity of Istanbul and reframes it as history—histories of bacteria, microorganisms, fungi, spent plant life, moisture, texture, and color. Demirtas discusses denizen caretakers of soil and how human intervention in the land has a unique history in Istanbul. Aslihan Demirtas is architect and principal of the interdisciplinary studio Aslihan Demirtas Design & Research Office, based in New York and Istanbul. Her practice crosses disciplines in the forms of building, research exhibitions, and art projects. Often landscape becomes installations in her work. Follow Demirtas: IG @aslihan_d / TW @uskumru / https://aslihan-demirtas.com/

Themba Alleyne and Genevieve Belleveau join us for the sixth episode of Cultivar. Alleyne and Belleveau discuss ecofetishism, Sacred Sadism - their line of ecofetish impact play objects, latex vacuum bed human/flower pressings, and the practices of gardening, homesteading, and rewilding. Themba Alleyne received his training in theatre and modern dance. Experimental & movement based performance have had an abiding influence on his artistic practice. As an autodidact & polymath, Alleyne's work has expanded to sculpting wood, photography, aerial cinematography, brewing experimental beer, and the exploration of re-wilding humans. Genevieve Belleveau is a relational artist whose work encompasses live performance, objects, writing, video, photo, and new media investigations. Her work has been included in numerous galleries and publications, including Art511 Mag and Artforum who have said her practice "slithers through some of the deepest grooves of the modern psyche" and her "intimate, physical performances might liven the super-organism that is the social body." She is known for her critically acclaimed relational and performative works which take the whole of everyday life as their raw material, transforming experiences into critical, curious, and complicated social sculptures. She is a student of prison abolition, believes sex work is work, and embraces anarchist principles in pursuit of a more equalitarian earth ecology. Follow Alleyne and Belleveau: IG @sacredsadism / @dendrowoodworks / @gorgeoustaps TW @sacredsadism / @gorgeoustaps TikTok @sacredsadism_ / @gorgeoustaps  www.sacredsadism.com Follow Cultivar: IG @cultivar___ / TW @cultivar___

Lauren Halsey joins us for the latest episode of Cultivar. Artist Lauren Halsey lives and works in Los Angeles and is the founder of the Summaeverythang Community Center. Halsey’s art practice rethinks the possibilities for installation, architecture, and community engagement particularly in her South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where her family has lived for several generations. In this work Halsey addresses the crucial issues confronting people of color, queer populations, and the working class. In this episode Halsey discusses her art as temporal mapping, her family establishing Los Angeles roots early in the Great Migration, recently founding the Summaeverythang food program, her enduring connection to Funk-inspired futurisms, art in- and outside the white cube, and otherworldly inspirations Halsey takes from everyday life, whether it is LA’s Crenshaw district or the travertine terraces of Pamukkale in southwestern Turkey. Follow Lauren Halsey: IG @summaeverythang / www.laurenhalsey.com / summaeverythang.org Follow Cultivar: IG @cultivar___ / TW @cultivar___

Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy joins us for the fourth episode of Cultivar. Roy discusses his work in prisons, the covid crisis in prisons, anti-recidivism and more. As a professor of English at Cal State LA, Roy directs a BA program at Lancaster State Prison, as well as his own organization, Words Uncaged. These programs provide platforms for men sentenced to life sentences to dialogue with the outside world. Roy’s projects offer opportunities for rethinking incarceration as well as imagine alternatives to the current prison industrial complex in the United States. Follow Roy and Words Uncaged: IG @wordsuncaged / https://www.wordsuncaged.org/ / https://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/dr-bidhan-chandra-roy Follow Cultivar: IG @cultivar___ / TW @cultivar___

Kade L Twist joins us for the third episode of Cultivar. Kade L Twist is an artist, co-founder of Postcommodity, and a professor of art and social practice at Otis School of Art. Twist is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, born and raised in Bakersfield. His interdisciplinary art examines the unresolved tensions between tribal histories, market-driven systems, and American Indian cultural self-determination. Twist discusses growing up in Bakersfield, co-founding Postcommodity, the collective’s enduring connection to music, making meaning outside the Judeo-Christian worldview that persists in American museums, and recent projects that explore midcentury architecture as an anxious land stewardship project built upon a disembodied desert ecology. Follow Kade L Twist: IG @kadeltwist / http://postcommodity.com/ / https://www.otis.edu/faculty/kade-l-twist Follow Cultivar: IG @cultivar___ / TW @cultivar___

Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, architect and architectural historian, joins us for the second episode of Cultivar. Shvartzberg Carrió discusses his forthcoming scholarship on settler-colonialism through mid-century modern architecture, land and water use in Palm Springs. We learn about hydro-diplomacy in the Coachella Valley, including the checkerboard pattern of the Agua Caliente reservation, the legacy of the Annenberg’s Sunnylands estate, and the technology of Whiteness. Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió is Assistant Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego. He researches histories and theories of architecture and geopolitics, particularly how modern architectural technologies and territorial infrastructures mediate regimes of settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and processes of decolonization. You can learn more about Shvartzberg Carrió on his UCSD website Follow Cultivar: IG @cultivar___ / TW @cultivar___ Follow hosts: @matthew.schum / @johnnyfungalspore

Lee Pivnik, artist and founder of the Institute of Queer Ecology, joins us for the first ever episode of Cultivar. Lee Pivnik (b. 1995) is a Miami-based artist who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Sculpture with a concentration in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies. Working predominantly in sculpture, video and social practice, he has a deep reverence for networks, care practices, and other species. In 2017 he started the Institute of Queer Ecology, a collaborative organism which broadens discussions around environmental issues by synthesizing queer and feminist theory and decolonial thinking into exhibitions and publications. In his artwork and curatorial projects, he attempts to help produce the world he wants to see emerge from this ripe socio-environmental crisis. Follow Lee Pivnik / Institute of Queer Ecology online: @eelpicnic  https://leepivnik.com/ / @queerecology https://queerecology.org/ Follow Cultivar: IG @cultivar___ / TW @cultivar___ Follow hosts: @matthew.schum / @johnnyfungalspore