Momus: The Podcast

Paul Chan – Season 8, Episode 5

Paul Chan is an artist, writer, and former publisher. For this episode of Momus: The Podcast, Chan’s self-made automated doppelganger reads “Sade Today (after Judith Butler),” a piece he wrote for Evergreen (Spring/Summer 2025). He speaks to Sky Goodden about the implications of AI on writers (though they agree that criticism could present a special resistance) and his recent efforts to increase accessibility to his writing through audio recordings, while “hemlocking” its content against AI co-option. Chan also discusses the challenges of independent publishing, how he perceives writing as a form of daring, and how writing informs making. But in either case, he says, “ Choices are real choices when they're neither given nor self-evident. That, to me, is the core of what it means to think creatively.” Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Plug In ICA, for supporting our work.Thanks to Paul Chan for his contribution to this season.And thanks to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Meghan O'Rourke – Season 8, Episode 4

In this episode, Meghan O'Rourke, poet, author and editor of The Yale Review, speaks frankly about pursuing a creative and professional life with chronic illness. Joining Lauren Wetmore in conversation, and following a reading from Susan Sontag's pivotal text "Illness as a Metaphor" (The New York Review of Books, 1979), which O'Rourke updated for the 21st century with her medical memoir The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books, 2022), O’Rourke speaks to how "The way you make work might not look as consistent as a kind of late-capitalist notion of productivity insists." She also touches on her experiences as a critic and editor of criticism, insisting that both require one to be "capable of generosity and describing love."Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts), for their support of our work.Thanks to Meghan O'Rourke for her contribution to this season.And thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Legacy Russell – Season 8, Episode 3

In this episode, we feature Legacy Russell, the writer, curator, and Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen, an artist-driven non-profit space in New York City. As a cultural critic she has published the books Glitch Feminism (Verso Books, 2020) and Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us (Verso Books, 2024), which questions how we define Blackness through mediated material. For the podcast, Russell reads from Lorraine O’Grady’s iconic essay “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity,” first published in Afterimage in 1992, and collected in New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action (Routledge, 1994). Russell speaks with Sky Goodden about her relationship to O’Grady’s essay—one that “came before its time and carried us into the future”—and touches on the central conceit that perhaps also explains its controversy: “Lorraine truly believed in a culture that would allow for contestation.” But, Legacy reflects, perhaps our culture hasn’t caught up to her yet. Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, the artist Cui Jinzhe, for her support of our work.Thanks to Legacy Russell for her contribution to this season.And thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Nizan Shaked – Season 8, Episode 2

Nizan Shaked is our guest this month! Shaked is Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum, and Curatorial Studies at California State University, Long Beach, and most recently the author of Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary Art Collections (Bloomsbury, 2022). She speaks to Lauren Wetmore about the resources offered by criticality, writing for ”liberals that I want to become more radical,” and researching her forthcoming book Art Against the System, for which she recently won a Warhol Arts Writers Grant. Shaked offers artist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s book The Notion of Family (Aperture, 2014) to consider the devastation perpetrated by imperial industry, its connection to art systems, and how artists provide models for how to deal with authoritarianism.Many thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Centre PHI and Night Gallery, for their support of our work.Our deepest thanks to Nizan Shaked for her contribution to this season.And a big thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Ajay Kurian – Season 8, Episode 1

Season 8 of Momus: The Podcast launches with Ajay Kurian, an artist, critic, and co-founder of New Crits, a platform for artist mentorship. Kurian speaks with Sky Goodden about a text by Robert Pogue Harrison on the art of the zen garden (Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 2008), and about his artist-writer influences including Robert Smithson, Paul Chan, and Hannah Black. He also touches on his recent response (in Cultured Mag) to Dean Kissick's screed on identity politics (in Harper’s), and what it required to “clean the public restroom” in the wake of Kissick’s feature going viral. “I think I was more upset by how bad the piece was than the ideas in the piece. […] I think especially for artists of color, like none of that stuff is new to us. And to think that there was massive progress … it could all be taken away in a second. I'm not holding it as new solid ground.”Kurian’s solo exhibition Peanuts (Deluxe) is on view at 47 Canal in New York through March 22.  Many thanks for this episode’s sponsors, CONTACT Photography Festival, Plural Art Fair, and Workman Arts, for their support of our work.Thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.