Skip to main content

Ross Simonini – Subject, Object, Verb

Ross Simonini began his podcast, Subject, Object, Verb, in 2020, with the desire to “express the sonic dimension of contemporary art, and an audio show seemed like the best format for doing that.” 

 Produced by ArtReview magazine, the show’s title is a kind of manifesto that joins the dots between artist, art, and the life driving them.

 

“Art is not created in a vacuum,” Simonini says. “The personality and the life of the artist are connected to the work. We live in an era where people want to understand those connections more than ever - the rise of social media, activism, the #MeToo movement, identity politics.

 

“Even if an artist wants to stay out of the work and hides in the woods, and completely rejects the capitalist system, their hermetic life is reflected in the work, and people will consider the artist’s refusal when they see the work. Think about Lee Lozano or David Hammons or Thomas Pynchon or JD Salinger - known as much for their work as their obscurity. 

 

“This desire is in all of us. Who can consider the work of Van Gogh or Kahlo, James Baldwin or Joan Didion, Beethoven or Beyonce without thinking about the way they lived, the time in which that created the work, and how they presented themselves to the world? For me, the show is a way of reconciling all of it.”

 

Over its two series’ so far, Subject, Object, Verb has seen Simonini engage with sound in various ways, with the likes of Ariel Pink, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, and Flying Lotus featured alongside others more recognisably rooted in the art world. Given its investigations of sound, the aural tone of the podcast itself is key.

 

“For me, listening to a podcast is intimate experience. It’s a way of temporarily replacing the voice in your head. It's an honour to have that kind of close communication, so I try to create the voice I would like to hear.”

 

Like his interviewees, Simonini is something of a polymath.

 

I like variety,” he says, “so I work in different forms: painting, music, essays, novels, dialogue, audio design, performances, and pedagogy. It feels right to keep trying new things. I try to break up these activities to be both inward facing, like art, and outward facing, like dialogues, to keep things balanced.” 

 

With attitude in placeSubject, Object, Verb looks set to continue pulsing its way onwards. As Simonini puts it, Into ears, into minds, into hands.”

 

https://uk-podcasts.co.uk/podcast/subject-object-verb

 

The List, June 2022

 

ends

 

 

 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...

Andrew Midgley obituary

Born October 26th 1965 Died October 28th 2010 Andrew Midgley, who has died of a heart attack during a session in a Musselburgh gym aged forty-five, didn’t look like a pop star. Neither did this most garrulously playful of raconteurs particularly enjoy talking about his brief time in the charts during the early 1990s. Yet, while there was far more to this most singular of autodidacts, as one half of club-dance duo Cola Boy, Midgley caught the pop-rave zeitgeist with appearances on Top of the Pops performing the band’s infectiously catchy top ten hit, Seven Ways To Love. Even here, however, just as he would later apply diligence and care behind the scenes as a sub-editor on the Edinburgh Evening News, creating two of the funniest websites on the planet or managing an award-winning comedian, the man nicknamed ‘Boy Naughty’ preferred to stay in the background, allowing former Wham! backing singer turned Radio Two DJ Janey Lee Grace to bask in the day-glo spotlight of the period. Mid...