8.1K
Downloads
63
Episodes
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
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
In ArtiFact #4, Joel Parrish and I discuss growing up religious, the literary questions surrounding the Bible's Ecclesiastes, and other works of art by Rembrandt, Countee Cullen, and Robinson Jeffers.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWgEDn4TXIY
Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:14 - Joel amidst the wildfires
5:48 - Some peculiarities of Russian Orthodoxy
9:40 - Joel's religious upbringing
17:05 - Religion will continue compromising with itself
27:34 - Joel: religion still sticks to the atheist
34:03 - Christian Marxism in action
41:37 - Religious sublimation, or sublimating religion?
45:14 - Alex: healthy atheists don't obsess over religion
50:26 - Loren Eiseley as spiritual literature
55:04 - Is religion explanatory or prescriptive?
01:06:46 - Alex: God is an after-thought in Ecclesiastes
01:09:00 - Joel on Biblical structures
01:13:11 - Reading Ecclesiastes, Ch. 1
01:17:12 - Robinson Jeffers vs. Ecclesiastes
01:25:25 - Ch. 2: Solomon's (missing) labors
01:34:32 - Solomon's sophistries
01:40:08 - Ch. 3: where does the narrator truly stand?
01:47:06 - Ch. 5: Schopenhauer explains Ecclesiastes
01:57:00 - Ch. 7: against gatekeeping
02:04:19 - Ch. 9: cutting God out of the equation
02:08:06 - Ch. 10: redemption arcs
02:11:09 - Ch. 11: for the love of melancholy
02:22:22 - Ch. 12: whose epilogue?
02:25:05 - Ecclesiastes as a work of art
02:33:32 - Critiquing Rembrandt's "The Prodigal Son"
02:49:24 - Encore: Robinson Jeffers, Countee Cullen
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
Saturday Jun 26, 2021
ArtiFact #3: Art & Art's Object | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider
In this episode of ArtiFact, Alex Sheremet and poet, critic, and novelist Dan Schneider discuss the foundations of art. Unfortunately, tech issues cut the conversation short, but there is ~10 minutes of episode outtakes near the end.
You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xse5XbhH7aE
Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com
Dan Schneider's website: http://cosmoetica.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:13 - Introduction
3:39 - Will Dan write essays again?
5:22 - Do prose and poetry writers filter the world differently?
8:23 - Why competing definitions of art have led to confusion
13:13 - Definitions of art can't *just* be additive...
15:20 - ...because most stories are not worth telling!
17:54 - A Darwinian explanation of the arts
28:52 - Why the generic is generic
33:27 - Alex: in time, society will improve its artistic baseline
36:28 - Dan: but there will always be regression
53:17 - Generic "specialness" might paradoxically explain a deeper "uniqueness"
01:02:24 - Sexual selection and the arts
01:10:54 - ArtiFact Outtakes: 9 Rants About 9 Things
Tuesday Jun 15, 2021
Tuesday Jun 15, 2021
In the first episode of ArtiFact, Alex Sheremet and co-host Joel Parrish discuss art and artists in light of Abraham Maslow's classic text, "Toward A Psychology of Being" (1962).
This discussion can also be viewed on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUooBvJAOo
Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com
Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com
Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Timestamps:
0:14 – Introducing Joel Parrish, co-host of ArtiFact
4:02 – Why was Joel drawn to the arts, but not other pursuits?
6:52 – How artists get stuck in “preparation mode”
8:10 – Alex: knowledge is/was my defense mechanism against insecurities
10:50 – Joel defines Abraham Maslow’s primary argument
17:17 – How do artists perceive their inner world?
23:27 – Alex: art is communication, with an emphasis on “how”
24:55 – The problem with Vladimir Nabokov and Albert Camus
28:45 – Joel: art emphasizes – and requires – some sort of hierarchy
30:54 – Alex: our definitions of art exclude so much from the discussion
36:10 – Maslow says not every feeling of insight is an insight
38:28 – Bela Tarr’s “The Turin Horse” (2011)
42:31 – Growth and regression in the artist
47:15 – Do we really have “options” in life?
54:18 – Joel: artists must cultivate a filter
59:54 – Alex: I’ve given into too many “deficiency needs” these last few years
01:09:11 – Joel: self-actualization is especially hard for artists
01:19:15 – What does the word “high” in “high art” really mean?
01:28:40 – Resolving the artist’s internal contradictions
01:31:12 – Maslow: artists must be selfish and un-selfish at the same time
01:45:03 – Alex: artists must rehabilitate bad works of art for deeper purposes
01:49:07 – Do flow states imply artistic unity?
01:55:02 – Nietzsche and Maslow make similar arguments
01:57:07 – Joel enthusiastically eats a banana
01:57:50 – Critiquing Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo”
02:10:46 – Critiquing Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel
02:28:52 – Alex: beauty and art are separate concepts, though they do overlap
02:34:41 – Joel: beauty is a slippery slope to “art is subjective”
02:36:58 – Critiquing Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights”
02:59:52 – Bosch’s connection to El Greco
03:02:11 – Alex: great artists build infrastructure for the next generation of artists
03:05:15 – Critiquing Wallace Stevens’s “A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts”
03:20:03 – Critiquing Walt Whitman’s “As I Ponder’d In Silence”
03:26:34 – Joel: artists must enjoy, poke fun of, and take liberties with art