This episode was recorded live on March 3rd, 2022. EJ and Paul have an incredible, deeply reflective conversation about EJ’s art practice. They discuss his reluctance to speak about his work, how his demanding performance work of previous years has affected him, and the challenges of visibility. EJ tells Paul about teaching, learning to play the piano, and how he is trying to take care of himself in this moment in a moving and fascinating episode.

Wherever we will to root: https://oxyarts.oxy.edu/exhibitions/wherever-we-will-root

Lena and Oliver go on to discuss Oliver’s incredible book, Chasing the Light, published last year in July 2020. They dig deep into Oliver’s personal history, from his first job to his experiences in Vietnam to his film career. Lena and Oliver offer a thoughtful examination of the many lies that run rampant in American history in their fascinating and engaging conversation.

Paul and Forrest have a beautiful discussion on poetry, the environment, and much more, touching on the work of Barry Lopez, Jack Gilbert, and Bertolt Brecht. Forrest reads poems from his recent books, Be With and Twice Alive and explains his fascination with lichen and his work as a translator, including the moving experience of working on his upcoming translation of Carol Bracho’s poetry.

Nato explains what excites him about the possibilities this online-only school creates and discusses their mission to approach art as a life project. They discuss some of the artists Nato has worked with, from Trevor Paglen and Tracy K. Smith to Werner Herzog. Paul and Nato dig into the issues with existing structures in the art world, from museums to non-profits, and go back and forth about the problems and potential of virtual space.

Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and what he describes as “cultural infrastructure builder”. He has worked as Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary, and Creative Time as Artistic Director and as Curator at MASS MoCA. He is currently the founder of an online global art school titled The Alternative Art School which began after the summer of 2020.

Thompson organized major Creative Time projects including The Creative Time Summit (2009–2015), Pedro Reyes’ Doomocracy (2016), Kara Walker’s A Subtlety (2014), Living as Form (2011), Trevor Paglen’s The Last Pictures (2012), Paul Ramírez Jonas’s Key to the City (2010), Jeremy Deller’s It is What it is (2009, with New Museum curators Laura Hoptman and Amy Mackie), Democracy in America: The National Campaign (2008), and Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans (2007), among others.

He has written two books of cultural criticism, Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century (2015) and Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life (2017).

Credits:

Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA Director
Anthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA Director
Alejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, Composer
Christian Pitt - Production Coordinator 
Erin Cooney - Copy, Production
Dublab Team

They discuss Nico’s model of investment and how it differs from traditional investment models. Max emphasizes the relationship to the community in Nico’s work and their desire for the people in a neighborhood to be the financial stakeholders in their communities. Paul and Max break down the problems with landlords, the inspiration that they drew from the Green Bay Packers, and the unique measures that Nico took to support their community during the pandemic.

Max is co-founder and CEO of Nico, the Neighborhood Investment Company. Nico has pioneered a new model for community wealth and is the sponsor of Nico Echo Park, Benefit Corp., the world’s first Neighborhood REIT. Nico is a certified B-Corporation and was named as one of Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas” in 2020. 

Max has worked in real estate investment and the hospitality industries for 15 years, including as CFO of Storage Deluxe/Uovo Fine Art and a principal of Mile End Delicatessen in Brooklyn. 

Max enjoys exploring neighborhoods, spending time with his family, and cooking. He is a renter and lives in Silver Lake with his wife Kari, son Oliver, and dogs Bako and Remy.

Credits:

Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA Director
Anthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA Director
Alejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, Composer
Christian Pitt - Production Coordinator 
Erin Cooney - Copy, Production
Dublab Team

Wallace tells Paul about his upcoming endeavors into podcasting and they discuss the joys of podcasts and the human voice. Wallace shares from some of his recent projects, including a streaming production of Waiting for Godot. They dig into this moment politically and socially, discussing the need for optimism, the problems with making symbols out of our leaders, and the hope they see in the younger generations.

Jacqueline talks about how Acumen engages with investment and how the pandemic drove them to understand their role in community-building on a deeper level. They talk about the need for moral imagination and the essential role of reading in building understanding, touching on Mary Oliver, Gabriel García Márquez, and more.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Acumen. In 2001, Jacqueline founded Acumen with the idea of investing philanthropic patient capital in entrepreneurs seeking to solve the toughest issues of poverty. As a pioneer of impact investing, Acumen and its investments have brought critical services like healthcare, education and clean energy to hundreds of millions of low-income people. 

After supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs, Jacqueline and her team recognized character as the crucial ingredient for success; in 2020, they launched Acumen Academy to instruct others in global social change. Under Jacqueline’s leadership, Acumen also has launched several for-profit impact funds designed to invest at the intersection of poverty and climate change, and has spun off 60 Decibels, founded on the principle that serving all stakeholders is as important as enriching shareholders.

Jacqueline is the New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Sweater and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World. She has been named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, one of the 25 Smartest People of the Decade by the Daily Beast, and one of the world’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds by Forbes, which also honored her with the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Entrepreneurship. 

Credits:

Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA Director
Anthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA Director
Alejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, Composer
Christian Pitt - Production Coordinator 
Erin Cooney - Copy, Production
Dublab Team

Paul and Nathalie continue to dig into the challenging questions that explore how to be human in a dehumanized world, and how we experience the fullness of life, in the face of death and disaster. Nathalie also shares a passage from her new book called Shades of Black, soon to be published in April 2021, by Seagull Books, and the pair discuss further ways we create the connection to living with history, and the need to find a way to get along, to live together and share it.

Nathalie Etoke is Associate Professor of Francophone and Africana Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures, French Politics and Culture, Nouvelles Études Francophones, Présence Francophone, the International Journal of Francophone Studies, and the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy. 

She is the author of L’Écriture du corps féminin dans la littérature de l’Afrique francophone au sud du Sahara and of Melancholia Africana the Indispensable Overcoming of The Black Condition which won the Frantz Fanon Prize from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. In 2011, she directed Afro Diasporic French Identities, a documentary on race, identity and citizenship in contemporary France.​​Her upcoming book Shades of Black will be published in April 2021.​

Additional links:

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/French/Faculty-Bios/Nathalie-Etoke

https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/03/17/review-of-nathalie-etokes-melancholia-africana/

Credits:

Paul Holdengraber - Co-Creator, Host, OLA Director
Anthony Audi - Co-Creator, Researcher, OLA Director
Alejandro Cohen - Co-Creator, Producer, Composer
Christian Pitt - Production Coordinator 
Erin Cooney - Copy, Production
Dublab Team

These luminous voices speak to the despair of the beginning of the pandemic and look forward with hope to what we might be able to change when we come out of this moment. These clips address the many topics that have been on our minds this past year, from the books that kept us company to the moment the world turned off last March to the reckoning of last summer’s protests. The reflections from our past guests range from moving to funny to heartfelt in this unique look back at one year of The Quarantine Tapes.

---------

Part 1 Symphony of voices features the following Quarantine Tapes Guests: Pico Iyer, Elif Shafak, Daniel Mendelsohn, Simon Critchley, Julian Sands, Henry Rollins, Lynette Wallworth, Naomi Shihab Nye, Werner Herzog, Maira Kalman, Joy Harjo, Romila Thapar, Lynell George, Sister Judy Vaughn, Naveen Kishore, Rosanne Cash, Baz Dreisinger, Kwame Dawes, Patton Oswalt, Jackie Goldberg, Viet Thanh Ngyuen, Isabella Rossellini, Mona Eltahawy, Howard Bryant,

“No sé lo que dicen las plantas, porque todavía el diálogo inverso no lo hemos conseguido decodificar, pero sé que cada una de ellas, cuando han estado allí asistiendo a ese concierto, habrá sufrido un cambio en su estrategia vital de alguna forma, al estar en ese concierto.”

“One thing that this pandemic has laid bare is the inequities in our healthcare system and the undue burden on the poor, on people of color. The disproportionate impact that it has had on poor communities is telling, is shocking... I think moves to address that are paramount to moving forward.”

“People are really feeling agency and power, not just how they show up to the rally or the riot, but how they show up to themselves.”

“I’m not here to produce architecture. I’m here to produce meaning in the city.”