High Sci-Fi: Recent Episodes
SwellSeason Surf Radio Station
Wednesdays â A show about contemporary art, imagination & science fiction. Through interviews with artists, authors, and curators, we fathom the making of new myths, borrowing examples from sci-fi literature and art, and imagine different realities.
I'm thrilled to talk with one of the world experts on Afrofuturism, Race & Science-Fiction: Professor Isiah Lavender III. We'll talk about how science-fiction and racism were interwoven in his personnal life, how and why he became interested in the study of race in science fiction. The essay "Black to the Future" written by Mark Dery in 1994 coined the word "Afrofuturism" and proposed a groundbreaking way to look at the African-American diaspora, a milestone for Pr Lavender, although he has critiques and additions. Endlessly fascinating. Tune in!
Author Phoebe Lovatt recently wrote "Work Ethics: 20 ideas for 2020 and beyond," which prompts us to question our relationship to productivity, work, and creativity. Phoebe and I talk about the necessity to imagine a new society beyond capitalism and mutual exploitation. Through the writings of Naomi Klein and Joseph Campbell, she fathoms what these new myths' foundations for our productive self could look like, especially when it comes to disentangling our identity with our working self. It's time to think of our own identity as transcending all capitalistic-related categories such as work, salary, hierarchy, and imagine new forms of achievements, more immaterial, or more emotional. All music: (c) High Sci-Fi original interludes, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita's "Clair de Lune" (1974).
Will Benedict talks about his work and influences, in particular, the Californian art scene (e.g. Jim Shaw) since he grew up in Los Angeles. Will explains how he lives within the reality that he depicts in his works (painting and video), a world that Baudrillard would call "hyperreal": a simulation of a reality fabricated by the media. The eerie, apocalyptic, uncanny, Lovecraftian atmosphere that Will explores unfolds in his short films, whether it is in his video work for the Balenciaga Summer 2020 campaign, or in his music videos for the Detroit-based noise band Wolf Eyes. He also talks about his love-hate relationship with the French culture, and Paris, where he currently lives. All music: (c) High Sci-Fi original interludes, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita's "Clair de Lune" (1974).
In this episode, we explore the uncanny world of legendary artist Mike Kelley with one of his biggest fans, New Museum's artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni. Kelley grew up in Michigan and was the son of a public school janitor. He was very early on attracted to underbellies from the forbidden underground areas of public structures to the basements of middle-class American homes. The underbelly is a metaphor for the suppressed trauma, which comes back as an uncanny art form, production of the artist himself. With Massimiliano, we learn that during Kelley's lifetime, the artist developed a critic of white America, through the accumulation of peculiar objects, a fascination for comics and subcultures, weird folklore, noise music, and hypnotic, shamanic-punk choreographies. Kelley foresaw American culture as a violent dystopia that systematically traumatizes its children. All music: (c) High Sci-Fi, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita's "Clair de Lune" (1974).
I'm thrilled and honored to have Seo-Young Chu on High Sci-Fi this Wednesday. Seo-Young is a Science-Fiction theorist who got her English Literature Ph.D. at Harvard, and a #MeToo activist/survivor of sexual violence. Her book "Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep" (Harvard University Press, 2010) is a groundbreaking milestone in Science-Fictional Theory. She writes that trauma is always science-fictionalized, citing time-traveling (reliving the trauma) and out-of-body experience. She also shows in her book that music and poetry, both canals of transcendence, are very powerful forces at work in SF, that unravel fantastic realms of new imaginary worlds and a deeper understanding of the universe, and our human condition. For example, regarding music, she writes "in Stapledon's 1937 'Star Maker,' the narrator learns from a vision that space itself originated as an evolutionary novelty in a primitive universe whose structure was not spatial but musical. In 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (1977), star shipped aliens communicate with humans through a wondrous five-note diatonic theme." and the list continues. Seo-Young is currently an associate professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. More this Wednesday at 8 PM EST on wax.radio, with trippy musical interludes (including an alien harp solo) by yours truly. All music: (c) High Sci-Fi, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita's "Clair de Lune" (1974).
We fathom the science-fiction of the Metropolis with Enrique Ramirez, a historian and scholar of modern and contemporary architecture, urbanism and landscape who currently teaches a class of history of interior design at Yale University. Listen to Enrique as he dives into the science-fiction of urbanism and architecture, putting into perspective mythological collossus like The Tower of Babel, invoking Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" (1998), dwelling on the history of the Crystal Palace (1851), the visions of HG Wells and Jules Verne, the legacy of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927) and Hugh Ferris's "Metropolis of Tomorrow" (1929), to the architecture seen in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982), Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989) and Luc Besson's "5th Element" (1997) as well as the fantastic imagination behind cities like New York, Baghdad, Los Angeles and Chandigarh. The original utopia gradually becomes a metropolis, a cosmopolis, an eucumenopolis, a galactic city. But there's always hope: go see Rem Koolhaas's current exhibition at the Guggenheim: "Countryside, The Future." All music: (c) High Sci-Fi, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita's "Clair de Lune" (1974).
Writer and ARTMargins' editor Raino Isto talks about monuments in science-fiction, referring to his groundbreaking essay "In the Valley of Time Tombs" recently published in "Science Fiction Studies," in which we learn about the symbolic and poetic power of monuments in SF: what do they represent? A riddle? A gate to another dimension? A testimony of an unknown civilization? An alien weapon? From this mental wandering, we come back to reality to discuss the problematic case of Confederate monuments.
References include H.G. Wells's "The Time Machine" (1895), H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" (1936), Jack McDevitt's "The Engines of God" (1994), Robert Charles Wilson's "The Chronoliths" (2001). All music: (c) High Sci-Fi, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita "Clair de Lune" (1974), and score excerpt from "First and Last Men" (2020) by Jóhann Jóhannsson's, read by Tilda Swinton.
Artist and author Olivia Erlanger talks about her rhizomatic practice, imagining new technologies and reflecting on alternative realities. She talks about her interest in contemporary YA Science-Fiction, a more diverse playground for imagination than traditional, old school SF, often scarred with conservative tones, to say the least. Olivia recommends reading: "The Deep" by Rivers Solomon, "The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Lu, "Gideon the Ninth" by Tamsyn Muir, "The Light Brigade" by Kameron Hurley, "Children of Blood and Bone" by Tomi Adeyemi, "Akata Witch" by Nnedi Okorafor, "A Memory Called Empire" by Arkady Martine, "We Set the Dark on Fire" by Tehlor Kay Mejia. All music: (c) High Sci-Fi, except intro and outro: (c) Isao Tomita.
A brief history of Science Fiction, and an introduction to the purpose of this show: through interviews with artists, we will fathom the making of new myths, borrowing examples from sci-fi literature and art, and imagine different realities.