Doryun Chong: Tell me how your work on Jikken Kōbō [Experimental Workshop] started. Miwako Tezuka: I specialize in contemporary Japanese art, which basically means post-1945. While doing some ground research, I realized that in the history of post-1945 Japanese art, … READ MORE

This conversation took place at the ICA Boston on April 28, 2010. Jill Medvedow, director of the ICA, asked the artist Taylor Davis to interview the then newly appointed chief curator Helen Molesworth.

Taylor Davis: I was looking at curate and “curate” came up, the archaic definition of a minister with pastoral responsibility. I was surprised because the stereotypes—a soft-handed, rosy-cheeked Anglican biking from cottage to cottage in some BBC version of the English countryside, and the slim-hipped, couture-wearing tastemaker jetting from one urban hotspot to another—couldn’t be farther apart.

Then I started thinking about artists you’ve worked with, and a few came to my mind immediately (Sharon Hayes, William Pope.L, Moyra Davey, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and so on), and exhibitions you’ve created so far (Work Ethic, ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987–1993, Part Object Part Sculpture, and many more), and the perceived distance between responsibility to a community and curating contemporary art collapsed. I like this collapse very much. My questions come from thinking about possible similarities between what seem to be two very different cultural leaders. READ MORE

If the world’s a stage, then Liz Magic Laser becomes its director and all passersby are forced to perform. In 2009 Laser staged chase; the following year she produced Flight: in both works, action was registered on video and video begat action. To produce Interact, this project for Art Journal, Laser and her cast met at the East River Park Amphitheatre on two mornings last autumn: the first time to talk in the bleachers and the second time to relive the first conversation on stage. READ MORE

David Wojnarowicz was thrust into the national spotlight in 1989 when the National Endowment for the Arts rescinded its financial support for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, curated by Nan Goldin for Artists Space. I described … READ MORE