Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
Speaker: Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
Speaker: Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver, and Joseph Wilcox.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I want to be like you.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I don't know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I want to be like you.
Speaker: This week's guest is Anika Todd, The Return.
Speaker: We're rolling.
Speaker: Just one set of headphones, huh?
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: We don't have enough to split the others.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: No, it's fine.
Speaker: You can play God for this one.
Speaker: How do we sound?
Speaker: You guys got to be as close as possible.
Speaker: You'll let us know if... Actually, this makes me feel better that I can't hear it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Close.
Speaker: Yeah?
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: A little closer.
Speaker: Is that okay?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: So, Annika, Todd, you're back.
Speaker: I'm back.
Speaker: A year later.
Speaker: A year and some.
Speaker: You know you have the most popular podcast of ours.
Speaker: That's because I watched it many, many times.
Speaker: We had a theory about it.
Speaker: We actually think it's your dad.
Speaker: We think your dad watched it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's probably my dad.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: We figured he had some kind of bot or something that he programmed to listen to it from different IP addresses.
Speaker: Which, if he could continue to do that for our other... Okay, I'll get him.
Speaker: I'll see him tomorrow.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, you've got to pump up this one.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: Because I listened to it maybe a month ago.
Speaker: And I think we were talking about it just before we started podcasting.
Speaker: It was like, this is... It encapsulated a certain...
Speaker: aspect of your trajectory.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it'd be interesting to hear where you've gone from there.
Speaker: But I was also, it's like, it was perfect.
Speaker: It's like, if somebody wanted to know more about you, you could say, Hey, you could just listen to this podcast.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's good marketing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't have to do that.
Speaker: You don't have to say, Oh, you know what?
Speaker: Just here.
Speaker: I wish they would do that.
Speaker: Here's my elevator space.
Speaker: Everyone wants it fresh, you know?
Speaker: You're going to do a proper intro?
Speaker: I don't know if she needs one.
Speaker: Do you think so?
Speaker: I mean, you could say our guest this week.
Speaker: Oh, besides saying it on the thing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I guess we'll probably... No, our guest this week is Anika Todd.
Speaker: The return.
Speaker: The return.
Speaker: Part three.
Speaker: Part three.
Speaker: And the last time it was post...
Speaker: The first exhibition we ever did.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And pre the three-person exhibition that we did, which was like fun because that was the fall of the show was work that we had talked about in the podcast.
Speaker: And then we got to do the exhibition about it, which was cool.
Speaker: Yeah, a lot's happened for a lot of us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now you're going away to St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For a teaching gig.
Speaker: For a teaching gig.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: I didn't know you were...
Speaker: A teacher?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Teacher type?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't know yet.
Speaker: It's on.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: But I think my theory is that I think I'm going to get it.
Speaker: I think it's going to use more of the part of my brain I use when I make art than fabricating does.
Speaker: Because that's my other job.
Speaker: And like learning, making things is great.
Speaker: And that's like half my work.
Speaker: But it's like super exhausting.
Speaker: So I'm hoping that teaching just like feeds the tea.
Speaker: the thinking brain more.
Speaker: Is the fabricating stuff like pretty like, um, mechanical, like, is it like following directions?
Speaker: Is there decision-making happening?
Speaker: Is it problem solving?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fabricating is always problem solving.
Speaker: You're always learning something about material, but I think the way my work has gone, it's like more useful to use the other part of my brain than like the learning minutia about how to best build things.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, which I feel pretty fluent in at this point.
Speaker: So there's a way in which, yeah, I'm just hoping teaching fills that other part a little bit more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: I just hope it doesn't take too much of your time and your mental capacity.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: And that's sort of part of the jury's out feeling.
Speaker: I think it's, it's about primarily like creating the most time for the work.
Speaker: So we'll see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because everybody's got to get paid.
Speaker: Everybody's got to eat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you want to do that and be able to make work.
Speaker: For now, I got, there's got to be a hustle, so we'll see which one it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll say this much.
Speaker: You will be an awesome teacher.
Speaker: I can imagine being around her energy, like as a young student.
Speaker: That must be.
Speaker: I mean, I think the classes will be enjoyable.
Speaker: Whether like she'll be a good teacher, I think.
Speaker: I think just being around Anika is going to be something.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I don't have to do anything.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Hey, guys.
Speaker: Let's go outside.
Speaker: I'm kidding.
Speaker: I have a very broad definition of good teaching, and I think that it depends a lot on
Speaker: the person and the personality and the yeah and the ethos for sure yeah yeah i think the second annika is like you guys notice the sun like uh miss todd i thought we were gonna learn about wood you just you just had a well please you guys want to make balloons um so yeah what have you been doing for the last
Speaker: 365 days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you don't have to do all that, but maybe the last six months.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You can start with balloons.
Speaker: I'm going to... Also, just so everybody knows, we like dropped this podcast session on Annika at the Brooklyn Ice House without prepping her at all.
Speaker: Drinking a beer.
Speaker: Drinking a beer.
Speaker: Which is similar to the first one, but... But you knew we were coming.
Speaker: But I knew you guys were coming.
Speaker: You knew we had equipment.
Speaker: But did the first one have a dead mouse?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Not that I knew of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I think I'll start closer to now with like working backwards just to jog my memory because it seems intimidating to go back that far.
Speaker: But I, what I just was describing to you guys a little bit is that I, so I, in the last podcast talked a lot about this kind of
Speaker: body of work that developed from being out in the desert and like thinking about surveillance and looking down from above in order to understand space and then how that shifted in coming to New York and thinking about the same concepts, like in the sort of structure of ownership in New York city.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: One thing that I'm noticing like in the transition time is that the next kind of like chapter of what I've been thinking about sort of began when I moved again and I went to Chattanooga for a residency last, just this year.
Speaker: So in February, March, I was there for two months and I,
Speaker: I think the contrast in being in that place sort of like brought to light some things about New York that I wasn't aware of that had been like affecting my psyche.
Speaker: And that is sort of this like relationship to sun and sunlight that I had in the city and that shifted greatly.
Speaker: So when I was in Chattanooga, I was like in a studio that was like full of light all day and I found myself responding to it and just wanting to like be present with it and sort of make work that,
Speaker: captured something that or articulated what I was feeling about it.
Speaker: And, and that that kind of impulse was directly related to having no light in my spaces in New York.
Speaker: And I think interested in, you know, some of my past works, a lot of them sort of think through like elements, but through kind of also with our policy that shapes how we use and define those elements.
Speaker: And so, Sunlight proposed this thing in terms of New York of
Speaker: you know, our, our access to sun is largely defined by like other things outside of us, including like development and like, but then written into, you know, as you look into it, like there's all these laws in about airspace, which I had been thinking about before.
Speaker: And a lot of that has to do with sunlight too.
Speaker: When, when airspace is bought up on a block and a building gets built, that's when all of a sudden it changes someone's space without them
Speaker: having any control or it really being defined in that way.
Speaker: So there's a way in which sunlight became this like articulating of some like nebulous thing that was happening in terms of development in New York of like that a lot of the people I knew
Speaker: in my kind of bracket of income, let's say other artists, were sort of without access to it.
Speaker: Anyway, so that that but it's interesting because before this moment, I guess I hadn't I guess I described this to you earlier today.
Speaker: I hadn't like
Speaker: connected that I think something happens for me when I move from place to place that's really important, which is part of why I move all the time.
Speaker: There's like this perspective looking back on where you've just been that sort of expands your relationship to the to both places.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: But it's also it's a fresh look at the place you're going to, right?
Speaker: Because a lot of times, oftentimes, the wacky stuff that happens in New York, you just kind of get used to it.
Speaker: And it's not until somebody comes from outside and says, did you just step over a person, like going to the train?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I love leaving New York for that reason.
Speaker: I think it like is one of the biggest contrasts I ever feel like the shift in perspective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Being in this place.
Speaker: But yeah, I just walked past a building yesterday that had I think it was like a condo building and some of the condos had
Speaker: like patios that have been built over, like covered, not even patios, they're just like covered rooms that have been built over the building next to them.
Speaker: And we were like, we were like, they must have bought the airspace above that building or they bought that building, right?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Because otherwise, like you can't, you can't do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You like need to get permission or whatever.
Speaker: But you don't like need permission to block people's sunlight.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Like it's like one of those residual effects of like,
Speaker: both like legislators and like wealthy folks that like affects people who have lower income that they have no control over how that happens.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Didn't you have a project about airspace?
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I had, I tried to convince my landlord in Chicago to sell me the air rights temporarily of the building that we were living in for like a dollar.
Speaker: But he was super nice guy, but he was just like, I mean, he knew better.
Speaker: I mean, how do you convince somebody to sign a contract for art?
Speaker: It was just really strange conversation that went nowhere.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because he was like thinking about how you were going to screw him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Which like you're not.
Speaker: I don't even know how you could.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But like, why risk it?
Speaker: Right, risk it, yeah.
Speaker: But in my research, I found out that churches typically are one of the ones that sell their air rights.
Speaker: There's no other way they're going to go higher.
Speaker: But they're really wide, so they have a lot of space.
Speaker: And then I did a project where it was like a science poster where because they sold the air rights, the church cut the... So God no longer had access to that church because they sold the air rights above the church.
Speaker: Yeah, they were around.
Speaker: Wait, where did you hear this?
Speaker: No, I was just conjectured.
Speaker: Wait, why do the churches sell air rights?
Speaker: Because they're not going to build up anymore.
Speaker: But here's the question is then, like, why do places?
Speaker: Who wants to buy those air rights?
Speaker: Anybody who has, like, new construction, any kind of, like, any building, they can go higher depending on how much they get as far as air rights.
Speaker: Adjacent, and in New York City, I think it's the whole block.
Speaker: No, the whole city.
Speaker: They changed the law.
Speaker: I forget how many years ago.
Speaker: So you can buy air rights.
Speaker: You can buy somebody else's air rights and transfer them to your building and go up.
Speaker: That's how you make a high rise in a neighborhood that's not slated for that big a building.
Speaker: You buy the other rights.
Speaker: That's insanity.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Unless I'm like not thinking of it.
Speaker: Well, I am curious about the citywide thing because I mean, I guess it keeps the overall hype down.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: By a block, you know, like in the logic I was they were like, well, it will it will all equal out in the wash if like these buildings all stay at certain.
Speaker: There's a certain level that all the buildings could be at, but these buildings are going to sell all that to this one building.
Speaker: so that building will be the only tall one so like average height will stay the same exactly and that would make sense but i think it's changed and that's why no it is because now you can transfer it from like queens or something and now that's that's allowed some of these really ridiculously high high rises right next to another high rise where there were no air rights available before you buy like air rights from west virginia and transfer no it has to be new york city i'm sure that'll change yeah it's just like developers need
Speaker: more height so they're gonna get it somewhere and and also like higher is not necessarily bad right housing is a problem we do need like more housing affordable housing and if that's a high-rise cool it's usually not affordable but but that was an interesting case study you said with your friend's apartment right the more development cut off that literally cut off the access to the sun
Speaker: So yeah, I was talking earlier that I live in this building in downtown Brooklyn, which is definitely usually not a residential neighborhood historically, and it was kind of rare.
Speaker: We live in like an old commercial space, but I live in a co-op there that's been around for 15 years, and when they first moved in, they had sunlight all day in these two floors of the apartment.
Speaker: And now it has become similar to like Long Island City where all the glass development, it's these like glass residential towers, which
Speaker: you know, hit all the things because they're not affordable housing and they're sort of just directed at like shifting the purpose of the neighborhood pretty fundamentally.
Speaker: And anyway, those have started to go up in downtown Brooklyn.
Speaker: And so there's like no sunlight anymore in the space I'm in.
Speaker: So it's kind of a kind of a case example of like the things we're talking about.
Speaker: When I went down to Chattanooga, I sort of just like was thinking about the effect of like living in a space without light and there's like 10 minutes a day in that space where we have light in the kitchen and was thinking about what could I do to kind of make a sculpture about that moment during the day or just kind of call to attention like the effect of having that light in that short period of time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was going to mention before, so Trump had built this stupid building in Chicago and it cut off
Speaker: So it was so high, it cut off the lake view of another fancy building behind it.
Speaker: It was like a Mies van Drou IBM building.
Speaker: It was like one of the first class skyscrapers.
Speaker: And they were pissed.
Speaker: Multi-million dollar residencies are like, we had a direct view to the lake.
Speaker: And the lake is the thing in Chicago, right?
Speaker: Did they make a new law?
Speaker: He sent them pamphlets for if they wanted to buy in his place.
Speaker: But I thought, why not build a video?
Speaker: I mean, there's probably tons of lawsuits, right?
Speaker: Oh, they had to be.
Speaker: But what can you do?
Speaker: So they cut off the visual sight line to this thing that was cherished.
Speaker: But I was like, why don't I sell them a video feed?
Speaker: Of the real time of the lake, and they could put it on the beautiful flat screen monitors.
Speaker: I mean, I've talked about windows that are real looking for people who live in basement apartments, right?
Speaker: If you could get a real...
Speaker: like a real feeling video feed of outside that could change people's lives.
Speaker: Add to that the light that you use for like that.
Speaker: It could be built in.
Speaker: Seasonal depression where you actually get like sunlight.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Transform basement apartment.
Speaker: Should we start a company?
Speaker: I think we just did.
Speaker: We don't need to change the legislation.
Speaker: We can just make new products.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The market will sort it out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Lydian, Sator, Windows and more.
Speaker: So I have a great story that I just learned the other day about this topic.
Speaker: And the so the Sky the Skyrim, the Terrell Skyrim that's at PS1.
Speaker: They recently rebuilt the entire thing down the hall from where it originally was because of this building.
Speaker: The high rise was built and it was like poking into the space, which is great.
Speaker: And then it's going to happen again.
Speaker: It's perfect.
Speaker: Yeah, it's going to happen again.
Speaker: And I just I think that that moment of art being like, no, it's not.
Speaker: But isn't that the problem with the white gallery to begin with?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's like this fictitious notion of like pristine whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In the middle of chaos.
Speaker: I mean, but at least Terrell's not pretending to not be that.
Speaker: They're like, he's like saying this is what this is.
Speaker: It's like a fictitious moment that is constructed.
Speaker: I wonder what his take is on that, though.
Speaker: I mean, I'm sure they had to get his go ahead to move it, right?
Speaker: I'm sure it was, I wonder, it would be interesting what the conversation was, you know, between the institution and him.
Speaker: I wonder if he was pushing for it.
Speaker: He might have been.
Speaker: As like, it's not the work anymore.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's such a cool version of that work, you know, being like, oh, it's actually about this.
Speaker: I could see him not being interested in that context.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Where I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting now.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: I love the background music.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to have to like do some crazy editing.
Speaker: Flip it backwards and make it slow so we don't get caught by the filters.
Speaker: And then have Hanukkah speak in the robot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just feed it into like the hello.
Speaker: Is that how it goes?
Speaker: Copyright stuff.
Speaker: I think only YouTube does that.
Speaker: Situation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: But it's to go back to the sun.
Speaker: So this is still from above.
Speaker: The sun is an above thing shining down.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: This is your thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, this is great.
Speaker: I mean, also, like, you know, it's easy to make connections between a lot of topics because life overlaps a lot.
Speaker: And that's like what you do as an artist with your interests.
Speaker: And that's like what.
Speaker: critics and curators do is like make these connections and you're like oh yeah sure but i mean that i do think that's a pretty one-to-one with uh the way that like um systems kind of like play into the lives of regular people in different ways whether it's surveillance or like sunlight access or whatever yeah yeah and i think these like
Speaker: the ways in which they're sort of made invisible to us by habit and also on purpose a lot of times.
Speaker: And like, I think sometimes the premise is like just to call attention to it as a way of sort of like,
Speaker: resensitizing us to like things we forgot about.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: I think I asked you the first time I was like, what are you trying to do here?
Speaker: Which and I was like, that's not a very fair question or like not a good question.
Speaker: But you said something about kind of like calling attention to or like re re exposing the senses to these things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I think is really valuable.
Speaker: What I notice about what I,
Speaker: in a very simple sense, that's what the sunlight does to me in general is makes me sort of present.
Speaker: I mean, you think about like our obsession with sunsets and like, um, sort of like every photographer's like obsession with light because that's like what is being captured and what is creating, um, form in that instance.
Speaker: And it's like, sort of, it zooms you into this, this moment.
Speaker: It's actually like very particular to that space.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: there's like an interesting question of how to do that with sculpture, whereas a lot of times that's not a focus of sculpture.
Speaker: And so it's been fun to like turn over in my head to think about.
Speaker: what it would be to sort of make sculptures that are about that like present tense with light.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's kind of what I've been trying to solve with myself.
Speaker: We haven't talked about what I've been actually making, but that's sort of the transition, I guess.
Speaker: So the piece that you made on Governor's Island with the kind of like mural size photograph in the room.
Speaker: Would you call that a sculpture?
Speaker: Yeah, it feels like a site specific installation, you know, which is maybe not a sculpture, but it's in closer relationship to like that than like a photo would be where a photo is like a record or like a capture of the moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's meant to interact with the space.
Speaker: Yeah, it's meant to interact with the space.
Speaker: And the people in it.
Speaker: And it shifts meaning a lot when it's not in that space.
Speaker: I think that's sort of the definition of site work.
Speaker: It does have meaning outside of that, but it loses a lot of the original form when you're not in the real world.
Speaker: Right, it becomes the documentation of a thing that happened in real time that was the actual artwork.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is kind of fun to think that the documentation can be embedded in the work.
Speaker: when you make it and then it's this like takeaway.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That's a half formed thought.
Speaker: We could cut that off.
Speaker: You're very, I mean, if anything, you're very good at calling attention to these small moments on these, these situations or moments or ideas that pass people by all the time.
Speaker: Like I think back to that project you did where you kind of found that little
Speaker: Was it the house that you kind of rebuild?
Speaker: I mean, that was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then that one guy that remembered it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was like, that was awesome.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For that to have.
Speaker: But to find those situations.
Speaker: I don't think you're actively looking for them, but you're just, you're creating situations like moving from place to place so that you kind of like, you're more aware.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I, so just to describe, I think the story of when I, so as a thought of how I was going to approach making work about this, when I got back to New York, I was like, cool, well, I want to,
Speaker: I've been, I guess I'd never described, we're talking about it in the abstract, but I was experimenting with in Chattanooga, I was like making these photographs that essentially I was taking time-lapse and then I'd have like a hundred photographs of a sunlight moving through a room and then I would composite them into one image, like trying to sort of like capture time passing in one image.
Speaker: And when I got back, I was like, well, it'd be interesting to try to do that in people's apartments to sort of like...
Speaker: make a description of like essentially how they don't get light in their apartment.
Speaker: And I did three of the shoots and what I found was that they weren't very interesting and what was most interesting was that
Speaker: For weeks after and before this, I was in conversation with these people about I asked them, well, do you get sunlight in their apartment?
Speaker: And they would be like, I don't know.
Speaker: And then they'd be like, no.
Speaker: Or they'd be like, you know, they started noticing and being present in their space in a very different way just because of the question.
Speaker: And the shoots that I did do, I would spend eight hours with them and we're just sitting and looking at the space with them and sort of talking about light.
Speaker: always at the end of the shoot, we'd be like, I'd be like, oh, well, we should have shot this.
Speaker: Like, this is the moment.
Speaker: Would have been the moment.
Speaker: And I haven't reshot any of them.
Speaker: I don't know if I will.
Speaker: And I just think that that sort of...
Speaker: I haven't figured out quite where the translation is going to end up or how this is going to become an artwork, but there's something really interesting going on about people being brought into presence into their space just through the prompt of us doing this together in their space.
Speaker: Yeah, so we'll see.
Speaker: I haven't used any of them yet, but... It was great to hear the process.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm hyper aware of kind of like...
Speaker: the way in which systems work and especially economic systems and how it affects lower income folks and the advantages that higher income folks have.
Speaker: But when you asked me about the light in my apartment, I had never really thought about light as being one of the advantages of living in the neighborhood that I do, where the neighborhood is very much associated with upper middle class wealth.
Speaker: And there's lots of reasons for that, like beautiful trees and it's close to the park and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And it's clean and all those things.
Speaker: But I hadn't really thought about light as being one of those things.
Speaker: But it is.
Speaker: I mean, that's just like and we were just, you know, talking about basement apartments, which are always cheaper because the light sucks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guarantee you that neighborhood has stringent.
Speaker: laws protecting those brownstones from being taken down.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then it's brought to the utmost extreme with these like 360 views that people have in those buildings that, um,
Speaker: I think New York is such a fascinating place because it's like these things exist everywhere, but they're like in such specific like polarized.
Speaker: They're wildly heightened.
Speaker: Yeah, they're so heightened about.
Speaker: And I think very visceral, like the basement apartment thing is like an epic.
Speaker: It's huge epidemic in the city of like I and I remember last year during the flood of like people I knew getting
Speaker: losing everything because they lived in illegal spaces.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like half the basement apartments in New York are illegal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're all legal, but they're forced into these spaces because of rent stuff.
Speaker: And then they have no rights.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a but you're right that it light is not how we usually talk about it.
Speaker: We usually talk about in all these different ways.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Even though you like look at real estate listings and they're like beautiful light corner unit.
Speaker: It's like it's very much up front, but it's not necessarily the thing that gets talked about directly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And there's no like legislation about that.
Speaker: I mean, there's legislation about windows and but there's no legislation about like sunlight.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it makes it kind of nebulous and like interesting to try to articulate, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would love to see sunlight legislation.
Speaker: They'd be installing mirrors everywhere to like bounce light into apartments, which would be fantastic.
Speaker: You'd have to have a certain amount of mirrors hitting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then we'd start a mirror business.
Speaker: I was just thinking about it.
Speaker: I mean, that is so interesting to go about it from that angle because even on the opposite end, so you live, let's just say you do live in the upper echelon and you have access to all this amazing light.
Speaker: These people don't even live in their apartments for like the whole time.
Speaker: So it's like, it's such a joke.
Speaker: Well, and I've been collecting obviously these stories because I bring this up with lots of different people.
Speaker: And one of my...
Speaker: Someone I met the other day works in a, I forget where, but they work in a building downtown where they work on the 40th floor in like a, you know, there's light all over the office.
Speaker: But they experience it as like, they were describing, I was asking them about sunlight and they were like, well, we get light all day and I see the sunlight, the sunset from my window.
Speaker: But it makes me, like, excruciatingly claustrophobic because there's no way for me to open the window.
Speaker: And there's, like, they're completely airtight spaces, most of those buildings.
Speaker: And so there's this relationship.
Speaker: They feel like this, I should be outside in this moment.
Speaker: Like, they're being brought into the present, and then they feel even more trapped than usual.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I just thought it was so interesting.
Speaker: They had that, you know, at first when I asked them about like, they didn't have any idea about it.
Speaker: And then they were talking about this moment of them feeling trapped.
Speaker: That's kind of the description of what I think about those tall buildings is they're sort of this polarized and like they're outside, but they're also so inside, you know, and so isolated.
Speaker: I wonder how much that has to do with it being work also, like being able to like see outside while being stuck at a place as opposed to like living in with windows that like begin to feel like part of your house.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If you can like see out.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker: I haven't.
Speaker: I haven't met anyone who lives in those buildings yet, so maybe I should ask them.
Speaker: I have a book, if you haven't read it yet, for summer reading.
Speaker: High Rise.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: You ever read it?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: J.G.
Speaker: Ballard.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: It's about a new construction building in England, and it goes to shit.
Speaker: And the whole building complex turns into tribes.
Speaker: So the bottom...
Speaker: People kind of like the ones that get the least sunlight.
Speaker: They kind of get together and the architect lives on the top floor.
Speaker: Did they make a TV show out of this?
Speaker: I think they made a movie.
Speaker: I think I saw the movie.
Speaker: It's horrific.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: So everyone's like warring at each other.
Speaker: Everyone's like...
Speaker: The bottom is the tribe, the middle is the tribe and the top is a tribe.
Speaker: And they hunt the dogs from the people that because they have a little piercer.
Speaker: But if they put it up.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: That sounds great.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I feel like if you made my art into a horror movie, it sounds good.
Speaker: You know, Parasite is kind of like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, I.
Speaker: I loved that movie because it really articulated the stuff so viscerally when that apartment.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You kind of feel that class distinction with real intensity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I was going to say, well, one project that
Speaker: This is like the never came to fruition yet.
Speaker: Well, maybe that's the description of like these things are, I'm sort of, I feel like I'm at the beginning of the process and I'm starting to figure out how they're turning into formal language.
Speaker: But I, at the beginning of the summer, I was like, I'm going to find a window washer.
Speaker: Who's going to take my camera and put it on his arm and then go up in these buildings and make images of
Speaker: the like and that the image would then be looking in the windows and also like defined by the motion of the person who's doing the labor and in relationship to like the piece that actually I shared with you guys of this balloon that was like looking in the windows of Wall Street.
Speaker: I called everyone.
Speaker: Nobody wants to talk to me.
Speaker: So we'll see about that.
Speaker: It sounds like maybe you just need to get a new job as a window washer.
Speaker: I don't think a phone call.
Speaker: You'd have to be in person with your ID.
Speaker: In person.
Speaker: You think I need to make the video?
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: You'd have to be in person with the people doing the windows because I don't think they're going to take you seriously.
Speaker: No, there's no one over the phone.
Speaker: You tried Craigslist?
Speaker: I should check Craigslist.
Speaker: I think Craigslist can be a pretty good point of entry.
Speaker: Would you commission them to do drawings as well?
Speaker: Like temporary?
Speaker: Because literally you can draw while you're taking away the silk scum.
Speaker: That's like really messing with...
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Her process and her work.
Speaker: I just injected myself.
Speaker: It has no place in anything that she does.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Can I make a drawing?
Speaker: He's like, so if this was my project.
Speaker: If you find the window washer, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because I am down.
Speaker: Help me with the connect.
Speaker: And I got you.
Speaker: I don't know if they speak Spanish.
Speaker: I'm sure a lot of them do.
Speaker: Actually, I called one company and the woman was like, they're all Ukrainian.
Speaker: They don't want to talk to anybody right now.
Speaker: I was like, okay, fair enough.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: But I bring that up as sort of an idea of how it might, some of these ideas might like come into like visual, like another video piece that would kind of like be closely related to what I've made, but sort of extend into thinking about these like the labor involved in cleaning the structures too and like these residential spaces, but yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to take a pause so you guys can get more beer and I change the batteries.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, are we still recording?
Speaker: We're recording right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What time are we at?
Speaker: 30 minutes.
Speaker: You know, I mean, sure.
Speaker: I just want to ask a couple more questions.
Speaker: I'm sure you do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We don't want to take up too much more of your time.
Speaker: We're going to go on the record now.
Speaker: Back on the record.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Balloons.
Speaker: I know the project that you did with us with the balloon looking into the.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: like Wall Street building, which we meant that SNF too was pretty, I thought it was pretty epic.
Speaker: In the sense that you're constantly trying to, you're almost like, I don't know if you're trying to get access to something that you knew wasn't happening or it's just like what's happening inside there.
Speaker: But it also ties to the balloon project you were doing in Governor's Island as well.
Speaker: And I got the sense
Speaker: you have all these cisgendered billionaires taking off to space.
Speaker: Like being an astronaut is now a thing.
Speaker: Like they can do readily because they have the means.
Speaker: And you're like, I'm here too.
Speaker: You know, like I can go to space.
Speaker: And it's with this like mylar that heats up with the sun.
Speaker: It's sort of sad and silly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it kind of calls into attention this whole thing about
Speaker: you guys could probably pick a thing and cure it or you can go to space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I guess there's two things.
Speaker: The first thing that comes to mind about balloons that I was particularly... It started with the video that I made where I was, you know, they were a mechanism to lift the camera, but the thing that was important about them about articulating the image, they end up defining the way the camera moves and therefore affects the video in a way that, like, what's sort of the center of that video is that it moves differently than a drone.
Speaker: And that is affected by the wind and by like weird air poles that happen because of the buildings down there and all these like unseen forces that the balloons kind of make visible.
Speaker: And and I think I became sort of.
Speaker: further interested in them from that process because there's a way in which they were always surprising me with with that it sort of felt like they were moving on their own accord but really they're just making unseen things visible because they're like moving in terms of these like conditions that I can't I don't have access to unless I am trying to operate which is a silly task which is a futile a futile task yeah also I think that work
Speaker: works so well because like obviously the like the shtick is fun and interesting in and of itself like the novelty of the balloons but then like the actual result is interesting on like a very different level that you're describing right um and a lot of times work doesn't get past the shtick part yeah not your work but like work in general yeah there's like um and i think that's the the the
Speaker: Something in what you just described is like the goal with responding to the billionaires going to space too.
Speaker: It's like, it's not just total, it's not, the aim is not to totally discount them because there's a really central human impulse to explore and to know beyond.
Speaker: But, but when you add like, there's something magic that happens when you're having this like absurd humor to what they're doing because it is absurd that they're going to space at a time like this, you know, and it's actually not absurd.
Speaker: It's pointed and like specific that they're doing that.
Speaker: And so that when you have, like, if you can find a place to be silly and sincere about it, it feels like a good counter to what's going on.
Speaker: Where you don't oversimplify by just being like, you're an asshole.
Speaker: But it can be both, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, humor's good at that.
Speaker: Yeah, humor's good at that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the balloon, the big balloons, the, like, solar-powered balloons, in particular, I felt this was the ones I built on Governor's Island.
Speaker: And then I did it again in,
Speaker: in Chattanooga as a workshop with people.
Speaker: And what's really fun about them is the way they, when you do like public workshops with them, there's this expectation like, okay, now the thing's gonna perform like work and it doesn't work at all.
Speaker: Like it flies, but there's no control.
Speaker: It's complete chaos.
Speaker: which is not something we're used to doing as like a public together is trying to like orchestrate chaos.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So they're sort of objects that show the wind and the way we're not in control and they rip into pieces.
Speaker: And that's like they're not precious, but they're huge.
Speaker: There's something really nice about that as like they've become for me.
Speaker: They're like very much about like doing it with a bunch of people and being together out of control.
Speaker: Like, um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Was there ever, like, a perfect moment with one of those balloons?
Speaker: Like, it just worked?
Speaker: Oh, very fleeting.
Speaker: Only when I'm by myself, right?
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Like, never when people are around.
Speaker: Well, also, like, the intention is to make them work.
Speaker: It's not like you're going into it, like, let's, like, make these things that malfunction.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But it's just, like, any kind of, like, collaborative, messy thing that happens where there's a goal.
Speaker: It, like, doesn't.
Speaker: work like it's supposed to, but it does work on a level, right?
Speaker: So I think it can be a nice metaphor for a whole lot of things that are collective and collaborative that don't end up being what they're supposed to be, but there's like kernels there and there's inspiration there that's like really...
Speaker: Important.
Speaker: And the journey or the process is the thing.
Speaker: Is the thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, they fly.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: They always fly.
Speaker: And maybe I'll just describe something about them that's interesting.
Speaker: Is they...
Speaker: The reason they don't work is because you're trying to tether them to the ground.
Speaker: If you let them go, and this happened by accident, they go to New Jersey.
Speaker: They're just gone into outer space.
Speaker: Specifically New Jersey, though.
Speaker: Something about a magnetic pole of that particular region.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Just love Jersey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So when you're trying to hold them down, the wind, if there's any wind, it will drive them sideways.
Speaker: So there's this relationship of trying to let them go enough that they'll go vertical and then hold them down.
Speaker: Every time you try to hold them down, they start to hover near the ground and become precarious.
Speaker: like they're gonna rip or something and it's because you're putting tension on the rope.
Speaker: So yeah, there's like this give and take of that when you're doing it with people that's really fun to like feel as a group.
Speaker: So many metaphors there, like when you let go that's when something happens.
Speaker: Yeah, they take off and they don't listen anymore.
Speaker: And they have like the potential to like get stuck in airplanes propellers.
Speaker: Yeah, I get stuck by helicopters.
Speaker: Give me a panic attack.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Powerful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think balloons are they've been a I don't know if I'm the balloon girl.
Speaker: Maybe I'm moving to a different place, but I'm definitely they were a surprise and I was like,
Speaker: they do a lot of interesting things in terms of how they articulate stuff.
Speaker: I used to be the balloon guy.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Because I did a lot of work with twisting balloons.
Speaker: Well, were you in that residency when I came?
Speaker: We were in grad school together.
Speaker: You know, like, so we had a low residency program where you bring all the work you did in semester, you put it up on fake walls and then you get critiqued or whatever.
Speaker: This particular one, I came in with nothing but a bag of empty balloons.
Speaker: Not big ones, like clown ones.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I spent the whole day blowing them up, talking to people, and it's like making these structures and everything was like gridded.
Speaker: And then eventually the whole space was filled with these balloons.
Speaker: But that's one of the things, like you can fill a space quickly with a balloon.
Speaker: Take up form.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, the whole time everybody was like, is this going to be garbage?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, is he going to like, is he going to like pull this off?
Speaker: Like, is this like, is this like him slacking?
Speaker: Is this a joke or is this actually like good?
Speaker: And what's your, you don't get to answer.
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: I mean, it's like little column A, little column B for sure.
Speaker: Uh, the, the resulting installation was cool.
Speaker: Uh, but it was because he was a slacker that he showed up with empty balloons.
Speaker: In my defense, I spent two months making things like in houses and in my apartments.
Speaker: So I bought I brought documentation so people could see all these forms that I made.
Speaker: You can't bring them with you because they're fleeting.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But yeah, it was a lot of practice.
Speaker: It must be fleeting.
Speaker: Must be fleeting.
Speaker: I appreciate that.
Speaker: But I have a soft spot for balloons because of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He also like he like apprenticed with a twister.
Speaker: Did you?
Speaker: To do that piece?
Speaker: Yeah, I had gone, Chicago has a balloon shop that you go in, not very fun, you go in with like a clipboard and you have to pick the balloons and they're like all like each one has a different size and a different gauge and a different like thickness and it's like it was a learning process and while I was in line a guy looked at me he goes, he goes, are you a twister?
Speaker: I'm like,
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I'm like, I'm an artist.
Speaker: I'm just learning how to do balloons.
Speaker: And he goes, whatever you call yourself.
Speaker: Yes, I love that.
Speaker: And he showed me all.
Speaker: He goes, let me show you something.
Speaker: And he made a tiger.
Speaker: He goes, that's my D game.
Speaker: He goes, you've got to pay me to see my A game.
Speaker: I'm like, wow.
Speaker: So he talked a little bit.
Speaker: So you have a long way to go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You would be very upset that you'd never pursued the balloon.
Speaker: That was your one and done.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: There's still timing.
Speaker: I went to go get a pigeon from a pigeon guy for that piece I just made.
Speaker: Because I've kind of been thinking a lot about these pigeon guys because they... Lots of whole others.
Speaker: Wait, the ones on the motorcycles?
Speaker: Pigeon guy?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The ones in Bushwick.
Speaker: They're like in Brooklyn and they just raise birds.
Speaker: There's a big culture of people that raise birds on their roots.
Speaker: And I went there to... So there's a place called Pigeons on Broadway.
Speaker: It's a pet store there and they only sell bird stuff.
Speaker: And I went in there months ago.
Speaker: Because I think they're really interesting like...
Speaker: use of public and private space like and also they like in terms of using roof space and they have like a pretty tender relationship with natural world in the middle of New York City.
Speaker: And like pigeons are gorgeous, but people hate them.
Speaker: Yeah, like they're like
Speaker: quote, disgusting, but like, they're actually like really beautiful birds.
Speaker: And these guys are like largely working class people that just like love birds.
Speaker: It's pretty fascinating.
Speaker: Anyway, I got a lesson from him on how to use, how to capture pigeons.
Speaker: And he was pretty upset when I didn't pursue it.
Speaker: It was like a full time career.
Speaker: He was like, why did I spend time on you?
Speaker: He could have been investing in somebody who, yeah, who like actually wanted to take care of pigeons.
Speaker: But you're, I've heard of this method.
Speaker: It's like a way to kind of like know where the pigeon's going to go.
Speaker: You like put your hand up above your head.
Speaker: And then it looks pretty violent, but you have to be quick with it.
Speaker: Is it because they're like paying attention to your hand and then you swipe them?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then you just come in quick.
Speaker: That's how I get my cat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: See?
Speaker: Well, cool.
Speaker: So then you're going off to St.
Speaker: Louis to teach, right?
Speaker: And then you're going to pursue light.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to see about light in St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: I mean, I'm excited about St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: It's very strange architecturally, and it has a really kind of long and dark history in terms of the city.
Speaker: And it's very physical in terms of the way it's in the built landscape there.
Speaker: All things that I'm very interested in.
Speaker: So I visited for the first time last week just for a couple of days.
Speaker: But I was like, this is an interesting place.
Speaker: So I'm excited to dig in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Any other questions?
Speaker: You know, I did have one question that I didn't ask earlier, which was, do you ever do guerrilla installation sculptures that you don't document that you just leave places?
Speaker: or have, did you used to?
Speaker: She just left.
Speaker: Um, and maybe not even like officially, but like, you know, you happen to like you're at a thrift store or something.
Speaker: And you just rearrange things.
Speaker: Um, no, actually, I think it's interesting because I think the answer no has to do with, um,
Speaker: Like it, it doesn't, there's a way in which my process completes when I document something that's because of the kind of installation artists I've, I've sort of become and built.
Speaker: And now like, unless I take a photo of it, it feels like unfinished in my own process outside of showing it to other people.
Speaker: So maybe that's an answer for it, but I actually have, yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: I was just curious.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Follow-up question.
Speaker: So the documentation for you is just the binding endpoint to a project?
Speaker: Yeah, and that's kind of
Speaker: I can't extract that from the way that my work is mostly seen, you know?
Speaker: I sort of wish that wasn't true, but at this point in my time, most people see it through a document.
Speaker: So I've become very concerned with that.
Speaker: And in a way that doesn't feel cheap.
Speaker: It feels like it, but it has to be it.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: It sounds like a problem to overcome for you.
Speaker: Because it's like... Sure.
Speaker: We met, remember Maria Gabler?
Speaker: We met at the, she has a problem with that because she wants you to experience the installation.
Speaker: And she hates the fact that the documentation is the only thing that lingers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it doesn't even equate or come close to the walking through a position.
Speaker: There's also something to be said for pragmatism, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I like the idea that you can kind of work through that.
Speaker: I will say, too, that just as a consumer of conceptual art and as someone that obviously I care about that work and...
Speaker: I've gotten so used to and some of my favorite art, most of it I haven't seen and I've largely like read a sentence of what it was and that's still my favorite art.
Speaker: So I have appreciation for the fact that it can hit even if you're not there.
Speaker: So I guess I have a little of both in me.
Speaker: Like I'm not a stickler for it, but obviously I would like to do both.
Speaker: I like to make things that people see all the time.
Speaker: Sounds good as a visual artist, but yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: I think that's a good ending point.
Speaker: That's an excellent ending point.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker: Good luck with your teaching gig.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Hope you get what you want out of it.
Speaker: Thank you for doing what you do.
Speaker: You're an inspiration.
Speaker: My daughter, the fact that she knows and has said the words Annika Todd like several occasions when asked about artists.
Speaker: I mean, that's you've completed my.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I'm not going to add any more thank yous to that flattery.
Speaker: That's pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker: That's going to carry me for a while.
Speaker: Well, yeah, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.
Speaker: You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at Lydian Stater NYC on Instagram, and follow us at Lydian Stater on Twitter.
Speaker: Thanks to Anika Todd for taking the time to speak to us this week.
Speaker: If you'd like to learn more about her work, visit our website at anikatodd.com.
Speaker: Big thanks to Tall Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
Speaker: His albums are available at tallwan.bandcamp.com.
Speaker: And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I don't know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.
Speaker: I know what to do.
Speaker: I don't know what to say.
Speaker: I just know I don't want to be like you.
Speaker: you
