Interviews

Installation view: Bernadette Mayer, Memory, 1972. [Image description: A photo of a gallery-goer sitting on the floor and silhouetted against a grid of photos from Mayer’s original installation of Memory at 98 Greene Street.]

Bernadette Mayer on Memory

In July 1971, poet Bernadette Mayer set out to complete what she called an “emotional science project” by setting a set of constraints for herself: to shoot one roll of Kodachrome film on a 35mm camera each day of the month while simultaneously keeping a set of journals. The photo and sound installation that resulted, entitled Memory (1971-72), has long occupied a cult status in Mayer’s wider oeuvre. In September 2017 in New York, CANADA re-installed Memory to its original specifications and with its original snapshot prints for the first time since its 1972 opening at Holly Solomon’s 98 Greene Street loft in SoHo. The week before the opening, I spoke with Mayer about photography, collaboration, and conceptual art and poetry.

Harmony Hammond, Bandaged Grid, 2015. [Image description: A rectangular, nearly monochrome painting with stiffened strips of canvas and grommets applied to the surface.]

Harmony Hammond on Monochromes and Grommetypes

I corresponded and met with artist Harmony Hammond to talk about martial arts, the painting body, and violence in her work, on the occasion of her latest exhibition (Alexander Gray Associates, May 19 – June 25, 2016).

Reprint in Still Dangerous! The Harmony Hammond Reader, ed. Tirza True Latimer (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2026)

Wayne Koestenbaum, Água Viva, 2014. [Image description: A painting by Koestanbaum of crowded abstract shapes and bright colors including pinks, purples, and yellows.] — Wayne Koestenbaum, *Água Viva*, 2014. [Image description: A painting by Koestanbaum of crowded abstract shapes and bright colors including pinks, purples, and yellows.]

Wayne Koestenbaum on the pink trance notebooks

A week before his September 21, 2015, Sprechstimme performance at the Kitchen, Wayne Koestenbaum and I discussed his new book, The Pink Trance Notebooks (Nightboat, 2015), as well as poetry and painting, trance, the French language, and “fag ideation.”