Interviews
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Seychelle Allah Talks Space Slave Trade & His Aggregate Style

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

One of the figures behind Space Slave Trade, Seychelle Allah discusses his brand of afrofuturism that layers the visual culture around him into a world in which the aggregate plays an important role.

Allah’s relationship with social media has been complex. Space Slave Trade, named after a friend’s band, started after he was kicked off Facebook for sharing images deemed inappropriate by the service. The resulting blog is NSFW and careens from porn-like images with young Asian girls to absurd representations of starving Africans. The aesthetic is young, fresh, and aggressive without being violent.

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Loren Munk Talks Social Network Paintings & James Kalm Report

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

Last Saturday, #TheSocialGraph was honored to host the first-ever retrospective of Loren Munk’s popular online video channel, the James Kalm Report.

Started as a conceptual performance of sorts, Munk and his alterego, James Kalm, have over the course of four and a half years garnered a cult following in the art world (particularly outside New York). The painter turned video artist has demonstrated his savvy in the world of social media and fit in perfectly to the types of conversations we are attempting to have in the social media art show.

To honor Munk, I asked another art visionary Austin Thomas to curate a selection of video since I knew she shared the same respect and passion for Munk’s project as I did. And this is what she had to say in person (and on her blog) about the short videos she chose:

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Jennifer Dalton Talks Social Media Consumption

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

This is the second in a series of interviews with artists, writers, and personalities involved with #TheSocialGraph, which opens today (November 12, 6-9p). For more information, visit hyperalleric.com/thesocialgraph.

Jennifer Dalton stepped right into the heart of New York’s social media art movements when she, along with artist William Powhida, organized #Class at the Winkleman Gallery earlier this year. The exhibition was as much a social media event producing a constant stream of Facebook content, Twitter conversations, livestreams, and Flickr images, as a IRL one.

Since then she has completed “What Are We Not Shutting Up About? (Five Months of Status Updates and Responses from Jerry Saltz’s Facebook [Profile] Page)” (2010), which she exhibited this past summer at the FLAG Art Foundation. I interviewed her in July about that social media profile turned art work and she talked about the reasons she makes art …

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“Concerned New Yorkers” Hatch Poster Project for Park51

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

It’s impossible to escape the heated rhetoric around Park51 in lower Manhattan. And now Adam Wissing, Kenny Komer, and Boris Rasin, who have been making a name for themselves for their clever and in-your-face street interventions, have joined the very public fray with a poster campaign that invites people on the street to voice their opinions in writing. We caught up with them to ask about their latest project.

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Peeking Behind the Veil: Princess Hijab

by Janelle Grace

I sit down with my laptop in a quiet, central Brooklyn café, not far from Prospect Park on a slightly overcast day in August to interview the mysterious Parisian street artist Princess Hijab. I order a San Pellegrino with lime; she abstains from any snacks or beverages. Despite the time difference from France, she’s alert and ready to engage with me. I go into the interview knowing how she guards her anonymity, and the concrete details of her identity remain elusive — this is an email interview after all.

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Mr. Dropout Is Serious

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

Nate Hill is at a crossroads. After a series of performances steeped in childhood imagery, he’s ready for something new. For an artist his age it’s amazing that he’s already become the subject of posts on Gawker, Time Out NY and other mainstream blogs, an article filled with anger in the Daily News, and never mind the general snarkiness of online citizens (he accused me of being one of those). Yet, Hill feels that Mr. Dropout, his new performance, is about turning a page. Starting a few weeks ago, Hill has been walking the length of Manhattan via Broadway wearing all white, including a gauze veil tucked into a white balaclava.

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Jennifer Dalton is “Making Sense” of Jerry Saltz’s Facebook Page

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

Now that Jerry Saltz has proven himself — yet again — to be an attention whore with his stint on Work of Art, I’m starting to like him more … yes, I love a car crash. And just when we were all jonesing for another fix of “What is crazy uncle Jerry up to?” Artist Jennifer Dalton is opening a show today at the Flag Art Foundation called “Making Sense,” which (among other things) is an “ … attempt to make sense of … New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz’s incredibly popular Facebook page.” Let the games begin …

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Honoring US Freedoms Through Dissent: Interview with Dread Scott

by Janelle Grace

In recognition of the Fourth of July, I interviewed groundbreaking artist “Dread” Scott Tyler, whose work is directly engaged in challenging public perception of and reactions to US politics and history. He answered my questions about his desire to engage, America’s relationship to freedom of expression today, nationalism, and the lack of critical discourse around his work.

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Census Art: Anita Glesta Reflects on the History of Counting

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

In 2004, Brooklyn-based artist Anita Glesta was commissioned by the General Services Administration’s Art in Architecture Program to create a permanent seven-acre landscape intervention for the Census Bureau Headquarters Building in Suitland, Maryland. Six year in the making, on July 12 Glesta will inaugurate her artistic meditation on the idea of counting and numeric order with a global perspective.