Dara Birnbaum’s Note(s): Work(ing) Process(es) Re: Concerns (That Take On/Deal With)

By Jennie Waldow

DEC 21-JAN 22 | Art Books

Materially detached from Birnbaum’s finished products, her working documents chart the theoretical motivations behind each piece, along with the novel technical solutions she devised to translate thorny concepts into external space. While this is not a publication for the casual reader, its complexity and resolute physical presence dovetail with the concerns of Birnbaum’s body of work, linking means and ends.

Tom Lin with Blake Sanz

MAY 2023 | Books

I met Tom Lin at the Napa Valley Writer’s Conference this summer, where we spoke about our debut books. His debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, about a Chinese orphan raised by a white man to become an assassin in the post-Civil war western United States, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction. Having thoroughly enjoyed our panel and the book itself, I asked him if we might talk—about the book, about the genre of the Western, and also, about the fiction writing process in general.

Janne Sirén with Joachim Pissarro & Jennifer Stockman

JUNE 2023 | Art

Janne Sirén is the director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, a 161-year-old institution with one of the most important collections of American Abstract Expressionism. He was named director in 2013 and guided the organization through a major building project in which the concept of partnership was the cornerstone of the process. Sirén joined Guggenheim President Emeritus Jennifer Stockman and Rail Consulting Editor Joachim Pissarro for a conversation about the history of the Buffalo AKG, the fascinating career path Sirén created to arrive where he is, and the visionary work that goes into building a venerable collection.

Worldbuilding

By Clara Che Wei Peh

MAY 2023 | Critics Page

As virtual landscapes and experiences become increasingly corporatized, artists constructing intentional realities through digital worldbuilding offer urgent alternatives for our collective imagination. Worldbuilding refers to the process of creating a new or imaginary world, both its physical environment and the social structures which will govern narrative and gameplay.