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The ArtiFact Podcast is a long-form show on books, culture, painting, and music hosted by Alex Sheremet, Joel Parrish, and a revolving door of co-hosts and guests. Each subject is covered in depth and at length, with past shows featuring the Epic of Gilgamesh, Charles Johnson's "Oxherding Tale", Leonard Shlain’s "Art & Physics", John Williams's "Stoner", and more. Opinionated, controversial, and prone to making enemies and friends of friends and enemies, ArtiFact delivers new perspectives on the arts by artists of talent.
Episodes
Tuesday Jul 13, 2021
Tuesday Jul 13, 2021
Taking up Mark Twain's mantle, then expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1972's Breakfast of Champions, a novel Kurt Vonnegut had abandoned several times, even as it remains a clever examination of America’s money-obsession, corporatism, sexual dynamics, artistic fraud, and more. Imparted by a (potentially) unreliable narrator, these lessons come to a twist ending in the book's last few scenes of philosophical slapstick.
You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/InsbL7cxJ_Q
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Timestamps:
0:23 – Kurt Vonnegut + Breakfast of Champions in context
23:00 – Joel makes sense of Kurt Vonnegut’s plotting
27:42 – Is Philboyd Studge an unreliable narrator?
36:45 – Kurt Vonnegut describes great writing with a metaphor
41:40 – Ch. 1: political preoccupations in Breakfast of Champions
01:01:24 – Ch. 2: sexual dynamics & Wide Open Beavers
01:10:02 – Is Kurt Vonnegut an anti-humanist?
01:17:02 – Ch. 8: what the Pluto Gang says about white liberalism
01:26:24 – Ch. 10, 11, & 12: Nelson Rockefeller vs. a truck driver’s free will
01:44:45 – Joel on Kurt Vonnegut's use of ellipses
01:47:40 – Kilgore Trout turns beautiful language into a liability
01:54:45 – Ch. 15: a bottleneck in Breakfast of Champions
02:00:00 – The Reindeer Problem: how Kurt Vonnegut tackles race relations
02:08:46 – Joel tries to escape his artistic responsibilities to watch a soccer game
02:09:12 – The narrator meets his (alleged) creations
02:13:55 – Is Kurt Vonnegut criticizing Abstract Expressionism?
02:24:06 – The last chapter, epilogue, & terrible criticism from "the failing New York Times"
Thursday Jul 08, 2021
Thursday Jul 08, 2021
Alex is joined by painter Ethan Pinch to discuss a variety of topics: growing up on the precipice of the Internet’s mainstreaming, the role that media censorship (and thus self-censorship) play in everyday decisions, the Golden Age of rap music, Alex’s rap-to-politics-to-art pipeline, NFTs vs. Abstract Expressionism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s absurdist film “Satan’s Brew”, and Clement Greenberg’s classic essay on kitsch.
More specifically: is kitsch a legitimate part of artistic judgment, or is it merely an aesthetic object? Do Clement Greenberg and other Marxist critics fall into an anti-Marxist idealism trap? Is E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” an example of kitsch, and if so, is every example of great children’s writing by definition kitsch? Do NFTs fall into the same category, and what does blockchain technology mean for the art world? Finally, Alex and Ethan go over some of Ethan’s abstract drawings.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4O594Rqu5w
Read the latest essays from the automachination universe: https://www.automachination.com
Subscribe to Ethan Pinch’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnthropomorphicHorse
Timestamps:
0:24 – The 1990s: growing up in the analog/digital transition, today’s Internet culture, & speech-policing
25:00 – Rap, artistic competition, Eminem, “conscious” hip-hop, UK grunge-rap, and where reflexive artistic genres fail
01:03:00 – Overlap(s) between art, politics, and meta-ethics: “art for art’s sake, and what that means politically”
01:26:15 – Origins of the automachination channel name; responding to Nietzsche’s “art’s purposive purposelessness” vs. Nietzsche’s “additive” morality
01:37:00 – Debating kitsch as an aesthetic concept; debating Clement Greenberg’s classic 1939 essay, “Avant-garde and Kitsch”; Greenberg’s “medium-specificity”; is E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” an example of kitsch?
02:41:43 – Debating Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Satan’s Brew”
03:03:44 – Patreon & the balkanization of the art world
03:13:00 – Alex: NFTs are doing what the AbEx world once did, but with math, statistical parameters, and even more greed
03:23:18 – Assessing Ethan’s abstract drawings
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist who’s written a number of pop science classics: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and more. In 2011, he waded into the culture (if not political) debates with Better Angels of our Nature, a text whose basic premise – that the world has been getting more peaceful for millennia, and that the advent of a powerful state can be credited here – has shaped this podcast's political thinking.
Although an excellent writer at his best, in 2014, he published a book about writing well – The Sense of Style – which was loaded with haphazard advice, and then 2018’s more explicitly political Enlightenment Now, a mixed bag that has the overall correct argument (the world gets better over time) but lots of overstatement, understatement, and poor framing of a number of issues. It also suffers from its straitjacket reliance on the Great Enlightenment as a thematic/unifying writerly tool, since Steven Pinker only superficially touches upon the movement, and ends the book with a bizarre attack on Friedrich Nietzsche as a Counter-Enlightenment anti-humanist.
In this video, we assess Steven Pinker's claims and offer up some of our own. For example: if GDP is a sloppy way to measure human development, what does GPI say? Should we prefer one criminal cartel over another? Why HAS institutional trust eroded, anyway? And many other questions, as well.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1oSwpfcxmbM
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Read Alex’s essay on Steven Pinker’s “The Sense of Style”: https://alexsheremet.com/review-of-steven-pinkers-the-sense-of-style-the-thinking-persons-guide-to-writing-in-the-21st-century/
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Steven Pinker’s Language Instinct, Better Angels of our Nature, Blank Slate, Sense of Style; where Enlightenment Now fits into his oeuvre
16:15 – What does it mean when billionaires like Bill Gates want to blurb your book?
27:46 – How Steven Pinker misuses his two opening epigraphs
40:08 – Steven Pinker primes the reader early on for the book’s least plausible arguments
53:00 – Does Steven Pinker downplay the Enlightenment’s skepticism of reason?
01:06:08 – Yes, we’re more rational than ever, but what are today’s witches and werewolves?
01:10:50 – “Misfortune may be no one’s fault”: does Steven Pinker boost the status quo?
01:17:06 – Is it true that “justice” has killed more people than “greed”? How can we even know?
01:24:40 – Why has institutional trust eroded? Is Steven Pinker’s answer satisfying?
01:36:51 – De-framing + re-framing Enlightenment Now while still accepting its core claims
01:49:48 – Have we reached “peak stuff”?
02:10:05 – Study: GDP vs. GPI to measure human progress & wealth
02:16:04 – Alex goes OFF on the childish capitalism/communism debate & Western hypocrisy
02:37:45 – What Steven Pinker gets wrong about Korea and Taiwan
02:48:50 – Income inequality, colonialism, & post-colonialism: the Steven Pinker, Bill Gates, Jason Hickel, Branko Milanovic debate
03:53:06 – How Steven Pinker depends on Friedrich Nietzsche’s arguments, then misreads him
04:28:25 – Enlightenment Now is (mostly) correct about existential threats
04:35:12 – Steven Pinker offers remarkably thin political analysis
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Taking up Mark Twain's mission, then greatly expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the best comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to dramedy to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1963’s black comedy, Cat’s Cradle, a 127-chapter novel split across a mere ~300 pages, best typifying Vonnegut’s idea that his books “are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny little chips, and each chip is a joke”. Featuring an artificial religion and carefully built-up philosophy (Bokononism), WMDs familiar (the atomic bomb) and strange (ice-nine), well-phrased doggerel that serves any number of functions, and a subtly rich set of characters, the novel remains one of Kurt Vonnegut’s best.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/mrJyyTFaHYg
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Cat’s Cradle: structure, density, value systems, political lens(es)
09:20 – Bokononism, black comedy, Kurt Vonnegut’s artistic choices
19:40 – Keith on the degeneration of the novel
21:56 – Alex: will shortened attention spans kill the arts during this cycle?
29:29 – Ch. 1: “Call me Jonah”, Ch. 2: the karass & Vonnegut’s ‘good’ doggerel
51:40 – The Bokononist compulsion to “write things down” + artistic mystique
55:40 – Alex: how art helped me introspect & make better decisions
01:00:52 – How Cat’s Cradle tries to resolve the object/subject dilemma
01:02:40 – Understanding the Bokononist vocabulary
01:28:46 – Ch. 5: Newt/Felix Hoenniker + how Kurt Vonnegut builds Cat’s Cradle upward
01:47:12 – Keith on Felix Hoenniker’s “saint” (‘miracle’) function
01:52:42 – Ch. 11: “Protein”: how Kurt Vonnegut generates character capstones
01:56:58 – Who is Mona? Wherefore is Mona?
02:05:00 – Hoosier + the concept of a “granfalloon”
02:13:46 – Why did Kurt Vonnegut choose ice-nine as his WMD?
02:26:32 – Reading the final 3 chapters
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Charles R. Johnson (b. 1948) is a scholar, cartoonist, and writer who approaches literature from the Buddhist tradition. His best-known novels – Middle Passage and Oxherding Tale – offer a unique philosophical twist on slave narratives that go well beyond ‘redemptive’ and Abolitionist writing, and have still remained fresh decades after publication.
Oxherding Tale, especially, is a highly dense, character-driven work, which is obvious not only by the weight of individual sentences, but also in its complex, self-referential structure. What, exactly, makes the novel work so well, and what does it say of (and beyond) slavery? Is Andrew Hawkins a “wanderer” akin to wanderers of today? What is moksha and samsara in the context of the book? Who is the Soulcatcher, and what is his role beyond the most obvious one? Please join us for an in-depth look at one of the greatest novels ever published.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/vOi55Cs1xAk
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Introducing author and scholar Charles R. Johnson
4:38 – Oxherding Tale as a Buddhist slave narrative…for 2021
10:02 – Explaining the “10 Ox Herding Pictures” from Zen Buddhism
19:34 – Joel on the importance of cutting + condensing
22:45 – Chapter 1: George Hawkins, Jonathan Polkinghorne, & the master/slave relationship
39:40 – Joel on Ezekiel, the book’s “half-privilege” & speed of characterization
49:50 – Chapter 2 + 3: Flo Hatfield, Siddhartha’s “Kamala”, & the book’s sexual conflicts
58:20 – Why Alex used a passage from Oxherding Tale to tackle Red Pill ideology
01:05:40 – The function of samsara in Oxherding Tale, introducing Reb the Coffinmaker
01:24:55 – Joel: Flo extends Andrew’s more ‘privileged’ experience of slavery
01:27:00 – Alex & Joel interpret the Soulcatcher’s deeper import
01:34:20 – The veterinarian’s “life-assurance” policy vs. objective values
01:39:15 – What is Karl Marx’s role in the wider narrative?
01:55:04 – Joel asks whether Andrew Hawkins copies Ezekiel’s false charity
01:59:15 – The Soulcatcher vs. human craving for mediocrity
02:12:40 – Spartanburg, Dr. Undercliff, and Andrew Hawkins’s marriage to Peggy
02:23:40 – Charles Johnson on the despair of black vs. white history
02:43:30 – Moksha: the final confrontation in Oxherding Tale
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1200 BCE, Standard Babylonian) is based on Gilgamesh of Uruk, a historical king subject to centuries of cult-worship and mythmaking before his exploits were written down. Although this was not unlike the fate of many ancient rulers, the Epic of Gilgamesh separates itself by its poetic modernity and psychological complexity.
In this video, Joel Parrish and Alex Sheremet discuss Gilgamesh’s failed quest for immortality, the ‘wild man’ Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s foil and savior, proto-feminist characters such as the prostitute Shamhat, as well as structural questions and the power of specific passages before critiquing a Christian reading of Babylonian polytheism and Great Flood myths.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/Ldg1wfTuenY
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Comparing two translations of the epic (Andrew George vs. David Ferry)
4:58 – History of the Epic of Gilgamesh + competing versions
13:16 – A synopsis of the Epic of Gilgamesh
17:38 – Appending Tablet XII
22:12 – Tablet I: Gilgamesh, Ecclesiastes, and goodness vs. greatness as Nietzschean concepts
35:48 – Tablet I (cont.): The creation of Enkidu
46:30 – Tablet I (cont.): Is Shamhat a proto-feminist icon?
53:48 – Has the Adam and Eve story been misinterpreted?
01:01:15 – Gilgamesh dreams of Enkidu
01:03:45 – Tablet II: Enkidu confronts Gilgamesh in Uruk
01:12:53 – Tablet III: Gilgamesh is given more dimensions
01:16:36 – Tablet IV: What explains Enkidu’s overly sanguine interpretation of dreams?
01:24:46 – Tablet V: is Humbaba merely a stock villain?
01:30:20 – Tablet VI: Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven
01:41:18 – Tablets VII & VIII: the death and funeral of Enkidu
01:51:14 – Tablet IX: Gilgamesh mourns Enkidu
02:00:36 – Joel: these are some of the most modern lines in the epic
02:05:50 – Tablet X: a Christian lecturer on Gilgamesh’s Great Flood
02:18:30 – …but what does Genesis ACTUALLY say of such interpretations?
02:43:18 – Alex: monotheism concentrates polytheistic dualities into one being
02:48:12 – Tablet XI: Gilgamesh fails to gain immortality
02:54:41 – Tablet XII re-visited
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Joel Parrish and I are joined by Ethan Pinch, a painter and art critic from the UK, for an interview (and debate) on his perspectives. In previous videos and comments, the 3 of us took some divergent approaches to visual art, with Ethan distinguishing “meaning” from “interpretation”. Ethan’s video (and my specific comments under the video) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN9k5YHcpdM
The point of contention had to do with Ethan’s painterly criticism vs. our more narrative/literary critique of visual art. It’s a criticism worth responding to, as even the most objective person has a number of biases and blind spots. For us, since technically good fiction is empty without depth and characterization, a painting can easily fall into the same trap without some narrative heft to latch on to. In this video, such orientations lead to disagreements about the painter Zhiwei Tu, differing judgments on Matisse’s “Moroccans”, and more.
Among the questions asked: are we simply tallying up all the clever parts and inversions in a painting if exclude narrative? If so, when (and how) does the tally cross over into artistic greatness? How would we know? Is Salvador Dali ‘merely’ kitsch, and why has his style (if not results) been so prone to bad emulation? Plus: What makes Tintoretto’s “Susanna and the Elders” the greatest painting of all time?
It’s interesting to note, however, that many of our conclusions about individual paintings are quite similar, despite taking different avenues for getting there. After all, there are many ways to reach greatness in the arts – even if there are even more ways to fail.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/YWEg4uWqUGY
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Ethan Pinch's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnthropomorphicHorse
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Introduction
5:20 – Alex: the difference between ‘balance’ and ‘an ongoing balancing act’
12:45 – Joel: on the layers of meaning within great art
15:54 – Ethan: Patrick Heron vs. Clement Greenberg
24:00 – The boyz argue about Soviet-style art
41:40 – Alex and Ethan argue about Zhiwei Tu’s “Frontier Girl”, Joel goes turncoat (UH-OH….)
01:19:19 – Ethan on why he doesn’t have a “theory of painting”
01:24:00 – Ethan contrast Zhiwei Tu with Chardin’s “The Young Schoolmistress”
01:40:00 – Ethan contextualizes his favorite painter, Paul Cezanne
01:48:50 – The boyz on Cezanne’s “Lac d’Annecy”
02:16:30 – Is an artwork’s subject the first thing that ought to “fall away”?
02:22:00 – Ethan agrees/disagrees with Dan Schneider’s POV
02:44:23 – Is Salvador Dali merely kitsch?
03:08:18 – Paul Cezanne’s “Madame Cezanne in the Greenhouse”
03:19:18 – Ethan: why Tintoretto’s “Susanna and the Elders” is the greatest painting ever
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
Sunday Jun 27, 2021
John Williams (1922 – 1994) is best remembered today for his 1965 novel, STONER. Mostly ignored during his lifetime, the book has become a cult classic after being re-issued in 2006 by the New York Review of Books. But is the novel worthy of its more hyperbolic praise (“perfect”, “almost perfect”, “the most beautiful book in the world”)? Is the text misogynistic, as claimed by the feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter, or do such charges merely paper over some deeper problems in the novel? Finally, what can we say of John Williams’s understanding of his own work? Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish discuss these questions, and more.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/wgT8RX0pZW0
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – What is a “cult classic”, anyway?
4:12 – Context & introducing John Williams’s life
12:20 – William Stoner’s first big gamble
18:32 – Implied characterization in STONER
21:18 – The novel’s risky (but successful) opening
29:18 – Alex: John Williams takes no real position in the novel
33:10 – Joel: despite the author’s claims, William Stoner is not a “saint”
34:50 – Why was it a good choice to set the book during WWI, not WWII?
41:10 – Is Gordon Finch a total piece of shit?
46:40 – Edith as (unintended) caricature
54:50 – John Williams’s excellent use of sexual inversion
01:01:18 – Edith guilts Stoner into having a child
01:10:40 – How John Williams slips into stereotype
01:15:52 – Joel: Edith is not given any redeeming qualities
01:25:00 – Katherine Driscoll & William Stoner’s romantic affair
01:34:45 – Alex: Katherine, like Stoner & Lomax, never indicates that she “gets” art
01:45:30 – Critiquing some of the novel’s best passages
02:18:22 – Is William Stoner a failure?
02:38:58 – Debunking Elaine Showalter’s criticisms of STONER
03:26:30 – Jack Kerouac + closing remarks
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
Leonard Shlain (1937 - 2009) was a surgeon, inventor, and author whose 1991 book "Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light" shaped much of our artistic thinking. Shlain’s core argument is: the great (visual) artists are visionaries who are able to presage discoveries in other fields by cultivating their own, more individualistic work. But how can we actually use Leonard Shlain’s theories for understanding individual works of art? And is this form of analysis enough?
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nbQp9mGnHs
Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:00 – Defining Leonard Shlain’s core argument
5:20 – Does art ‘merely’ organize one’s perceptions?
9:28 – Joel: people don’t want to parse out ambiguous terms
11:05 – Alex: nonvisual artists prefigure reality, as well
19:38 – Why society laughs at innovators
25:12 – Joel opines on the mutual benefits of art/science
29:30 – Euclidean geometry in ancient art
34:40 – Alex: art over-compensates for new knowledge
39:30 – Mosaic in the Middle Ages: Shlain’s “just-so” story?
44:00 – Giotto’s proto-perspective
48:57 – Joel on the need to contextualize Giotto & period art
55:05 – Alex: every artistic “problem” forces its own solution
57:50 – A few words on Leonardo da Vinci
01:05:56 – Joel shows off his woolen lamb
01:09:47 – Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro
01:13:54 – Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass”
01:36:21 – Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series
01:50:04 – Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows”
02:01:32 – Henri Matisse’s “The Dance”
02:12:21 – Leonard Shlain’s argument for Cubism
02:17:38 – Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”
02:29:50 – Alex: Marcel Duchamp was a lot more mature than big-name Modernists
02:32:52 – Marc Chagall's "I And The Village"
02:36:43 – Leonard Shlain on Asian art
03:01:49 – Hokusai's "36 Views of Mount Fuji"
03:43:17 – What does today’s art tell us about society?
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
In ArtiFact #5, Alex and Joel are joined by Dan Schneider to discuss his picaresque novel, The Custodian's B****.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45J0Upz1_x0
Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Dan's website: http://cosmoetica.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:14 - On Richard Linklater's "Tape", Christopher Nolan, Terence Malick, Martin Scorsese
8:28 - Introducing Dan Schneider's "The Custodian's Bitch" + prologue
17:01 - Dan's use of humor and concision
24:10 - Joel: there is an (implied) Vonnegut influence
26:26 - Dan's advice for episodic writing
30:24 - How can writers avoid "idealized" characters?
45:17 - Alex: insights from ALL characters should be harnessed
01:01:12 - Dan's 2-minute tour of CISD
01:01:51 - Joel: "typewriter ribbons?"
01:02:25 - Dan excerpts "Sept. 26, 2016"
01:03:28 - Alex: only the Bull Toad gets its just desserts
01:07:57 - The book's caste system creates reader anxiety
01:12:08 - Do episodic novels "need" a climax?