Intersections: The Art Basel Podcast

Fresh from the mud-spattered, Santiago Sierra designed catwalk of the Balenciaga Spring 2023 collection, Artistic Director Demna talks to Marc Spiegler about cutting his teeth at Martin Margiela and Louis Vuitton to the lasting effects of having been a refugee of the Former Soviet Union. He also warns of a brand becoming more powerful than a product - ’popularity is always very dangerous’ - and reflects on his relationship to artists and his need for silence. Ultimately, he says, ‘I no longer think about making the fashion industry understand what I do,’ he says, ‘I just do it.’

Hot on the heels of the publication of her book The Story of Art Without Men, author, podcaster, and curator Katy Hessel joins Marc Spiegler to discuss all things women and art. Her focus on the gender gap in art began in 2015, when she visited a fair with no women artists represented. From there, she launched an Instagram account (@thegreatwomenartists), a podcast, and now a book. Here, she broaches everything from forgotten Renaissance masters like Sofonisba Anguissola to the controversy surrounding the creation of the readymade: Did Marcel Duchamp make the Urinal or was it, in fact, made by his contemporary Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven? “What I’m trying to do,” she says, “is turn upside-down what we’ve known as art history.”

Jonathan Anderson is one of today’s most visionary minds in fashion. Founder of an eponymous label, JW Anderson, and Creative Director of LOEWE, the Northern Ireland-raised designer came to the industry via theater: ‘I’ve always been fascinated by character building,’ he says in this episode. ‘If I hadn’t gone to drama school, I don’t think I would be able to produce the collections I do today.’ Beyond his beginnings, Anderson speaks to Marc Spiegler about his love of ceramics, the timelessness of a Renaissance masterpiece, and the importance of artistic production today. ‘To me,’ he says, ‘the artist is the most exciting person in the social ecosystem, because they should be allowed the freedom to tackle the things we can’t.’

LOEWE currently have applications open for the 2023 edition of the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize. The winner will be announced in Spring 2023, following which they will stage an exhibition in the summer. And finally, LOEWE Women’s SS23 show is taking place in Paris on 30 September 2022.

Video- and performance-art pioneer Joan Jonas and jazz pianist Jason Moran have collaborated for almost 20 years, and it all began with a call. “I phoned him, which was very unusual for me to do. I was very shy,” Jonas remembers. From there, the pair had six weeks to develop The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things (2005), a now-iconic performance based on the writings of Aby Warburg. In this episode, Jonas and Moran reminisce on that very first collaboration, what they’ve learned from each other since, and the importance of performance—not just for an art audience in a white cube but for civilization at large.

“As a young architect, I hated photographs where you saw people. And now I hate photographs where you don’t see people,” Jacques Herzog says. Throughout the last three decades, Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have designed some of today’s best-known buildings and museums, including London’s Tate Modern and Hong Kong’s M+ museum. In this episode, Herzog speaks about the development of architecture over the last 30 years, what it was like to collaborate with Ai Weiwei and Miuccia Prada, his early fascination with artists like Joseph Beuys and Donald Judd, and if the era of the starchitect has come to a close.

The podcast “Talk Art [is] about is encouraging people to switch lanes, to take up space, and to embrace your interests,” says cofounder Russell Tovey. Since 2018, Tovey and Robert Diament have cohosted Talk Art, producing over 175 episodes with guests across all fields of art, from Jeff Koons to Radiohead to Lena Dunham. Here, the trained musician and actor talk about how they met (nerding out on Tracy Emin’s work), collections as self-portraits (“you can pop-psychoanalyze an individual by the things they have in their house,” Tovey says), the fight to break down elitist structures, and their fundamental beliefs that no one should ever apologize for enthusiasm or be afraid to ask questions, and that is never too late to learn. “Our motto,” Tovey says, “is ‘art is for everyone.’”

He opened for acts like Sufjan Stevens, James Blake, and Solange even before releasing his own album, but Moses Sumney is much more than a musician. He is a film director, a visual artist, a creative multi-hyphenate. He’s a storyteller who has mastered a variety of media to express his narratives. In this episode, the California native speaks about branching out from the music world to use different sets of tools to express himself, his appreciation of isolation, and his belief that “artists are channels for something bigger and a lot more esoteric than words can describe.”

Can tech change social structures, or does it just amplify them? What role can NFTs play in activism? And will the volatility in the crypto market stabilise? These are just some of the questions answered in this podcast featuring three pioneers in the NFT and Web 3 worlds: the artist Olive Allen, the NFT studio founder Melissa Gilmour and the head of Pace Verso Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle.

Rapper, songwriter, and record producer Kim Nam-joon—better known as RM and a founding member of BTS—joins Art Basel’s Marc Spiegler to talk about everything from meeting Eminem to the formation and rise of BTS to the first artwork he ever bought. Collecting, he says, “really gives me the standard to live as a better man, as a better adult, and [as] an artist.”