→ Stay connected to the Exhibitionistas flow, SIGN UP to the Newsletter–or to my Substack.
→ Do you want to support our third season? Donate HERE.
EPISODE: End of season episode where curator Joana P. R. Neves uncovers the richness of new perspectives on contemporary art through the ethos found in podcasting. Joana also shares insights from her attendance at the International Women Podcast Awards, highlighting the non-hierarchical nature of the podcasting community. Looking ahead, she teases new formats and changes for the upcoming season, while opening up about the need for engagement.
Exhibitionistas Podcast • June 27, 2025 • Episode 2x21 • 44:25
What You'll Learn from This Episode
Key Questions Explored:
- The podcast celebrates its two-season journey with 33 episodes.
- Joana reflects on the two origins and evolution of the podcast.
- Podcasting is transitioning into new formats and technologies–Joana reveals how this instills a new energy into art reviewing.
- Inclusivity and non-hierarchical structures as essential feminist values intersecting with podcasting.
- The role of the art critic is re-assessed and redefined.
- Biographical data should be used against the elitism plaguing art in a non-deterministic way.
- Museums contribue to elitism with the tools that should counter it.
- Engagement and feedback from listeners are learned but necessary behaviours.
- Joana sees podcasting as potentially extending the job market for art, provided there is financial sustainability.
Key Themes Explored in This EpisodeThe unexpected relation between art, podcasting and feminism. The importance of inclusivity within feminism for the host. How critical thinking can be accessible through artist biographies and avoiding myth-making through superlatives. Audience engagement is crucial for podcasting; there is a relation between the podcaster and their audience. Podcasting fosters connections and breaks the unilateral aspect of contemporary art experiences and discourse. The reasons why there is a difficulty in turning a podcast sustainable are varied: audience habits are analysed as well as the audience awareness of podcast work.
Major Themes: The Digital Format of Art Content, Ethics of Feminism in Podcasting, Museum Communication Strategies and Failures, Potential of Connectivity through the Accessibility of Podcasting, The Love and Respect for Art and Artist's time Dedication to Art, The State of Art Criticism Today, Contemporary Critical Thinking, Audience Engagement, How to Engage with a Podcast, The Importance of Paid Work in Podcasting. The importance of Understanding Podcasting with Critical Thinking and Writing, Art & Elitism, alienating audiences.
Measure Pleasure examines the love and dedication to contemporary art, by spectators, curators, critics and, conversely, its reputation of elitism.
Perfect for: Art students, gallery visitors, anyone curious about art discourse and critique, and fans of philosophy of art, contemporary art audience engagement strategies, podcasters and more specifically art podcasters.
Intro: 00:00:00
The feminism of podcasting: 00:03:24
Is the art critic obsolete?: 00:07:46
The value of biases: 00:08:48
Audience engagement: show your bias!: 00:12:24
Biography: 00:14:38
Do museums alienate audiences with declarations of greatness?: 00:20:06
Insights into art podcasting: 00:29:54
EXPECT SUMMER EPISODES!
NEXT SEASON: SEPTEMBER 2025 - JUNE 2026
For behind the scenes clips, links to the artists and guests we cover, and visuals of the exhibitions we discuss follow us on Instagram: @exhibitionistas_podcast
Bluesky: @exhibitionistas.bsky.social
exhibitionistaspod@gmail.com
00:00:04
I'm Joanna Pierre Nevis, your host, and this is exhibitionist
00:00:09
this. I'm an independent writer and
00:00:15
curator with a wide-ranging 2 decades career in contemporary
00:00:19
art, from commercial galleries to art fairs, from research to
00:00:23
curating, from Lisbon to London through Paris.
00:00:28
But when I'm asked what I do outside the out world, the
00:00:32
inevitable reaction is, oh, I don't know anything about
00:00:35
contemporary art. Ouch.
00:00:38
So call it a midlife crisis, call it arrogance, but I gave
00:00:42
myself the task of trying to fill that gap with Co host
00:00:46
conversation episodes centered around a genuine exchange of
00:00:51
thoughts, feelings and precious context around solo exhibitions,
00:00:57
interviews and special episodes based on a particular topic to
00:01:03
keep you alert and on your toes. If you want to read further into
00:01:07
some of the topics discussed in the episodes and more, you can
00:01:11
also find me on sub stack under my name, Joanna Pyroneves.
00:01:20
All right, hello, hello, and welcome to the last episode of
00:01:25
season two. Yes, this is the last episode,
00:01:29
and it has a weird title. It's called a Measure Pleasure,
00:01:33
and I'll tell you why. So I'm going to look back into
00:01:37
the reasons why I decided to do the podcasts.
00:01:41
I'm going to share a few thoughts that I don't think I've
00:01:43
ever shared with you and to explain my thinking behind each
00:01:50
format, behind the very idea of podcasting in this way and
00:01:57
designing the content that I've designed.
00:02:00
But I'm also going to look into the future.
00:02:02
So two things. Firstly, the season's over, but
00:02:06
I will be dropping a few special or summer special episodes where
00:02:12
I will be testing some formats or also jumping on occasions on
00:02:17
opportunities that were too good to say no to.
00:02:21
Secondly, I'm also going to introduce the third season.
00:02:25
So we believe it or not, we're going into the third season and
00:02:30
I am really happy to share the first thing, which is that I
00:02:34
counted all the episodes, there's 33 of them.
00:02:38
So if you'll allow me, I am self congratulating here, I am
00:02:44
celebratory. I am celebrating this
00:02:47
substantial amount of recording, of editing, of content, of
00:02:54
sharing, of chatting, of conversing, exchanging ideas,
00:02:59
and mostly of trying to deliver artistic experiences,
00:03:06
information, feelings, critical thinking around arts.
00:03:11
And thanks to arts, without exhibitions, without artists and
00:03:17
their work, there wouldn't be exhibitionists, right?
00:03:22
So let's start this. The first thing I want to share
00:03:25
with you is an event I went to. I think podcasting is in a
00:03:31
transitional phase. Some people don't quite know how
00:03:34
to handle it. It's not radio, it's not TV, but
00:03:38
you can watch it because now there's video.
00:03:40
And I don't think a lot of you, dear listeners, and apologies
00:03:45
for saying this, realize the work that is behind it, the
00:03:52
technological challenges, softwares are changing, the
00:03:55
format itself is changing. Now there's video, for example,
00:04:00
I had to move from being a strictly audio experience to
00:04:05
having video sound on offer. So that's why I decided to go to
00:04:14
the IWPA, the International Women Podcast Awards that took
00:04:21
place last week. And dear listener, I'm going to
00:04:26
be very, very candid with you and tell you that Samantha
00:04:32
Baines was an amazing presenter, by the way.
00:04:34
Just just wanted to say that I was expecting to feel a green
00:04:40
with envy, you know, to look at all those women who have teams,
00:04:45
who have editors, who have producers.
00:04:48
Literally, I have had dreams that I had a producer.
00:04:52
So I was really expecting at some point to think, OK, it's
00:04:55
time to go home. You've done this, you know,
00:04:57
congratulate yourself for having been to an event of the
00:05:02
industry, but now it's time to grab some chips and go home and
00:05:08
drown your sorrows. Well, no, it was not at all like
00:05:13
that. These are the independent
00:05:15
podcast awards and of course, women, trans women, non binary
00:05:21
inclusive. That also contributed to warm
00:05:26
Michael Hart in the UK. You never know.
00:05:29
You never know what kind of feminism you're going to be
00:05:33
interacting with. And this was right up my alley.
00:05:37
I was very happy to see all that inclusivity and that was really
00:05:43
heartwarming. But the most important thing of
00:05:47
the event was the non hierarchical aspect of it.
00:05:53
The values of feminism really correspond to podcasting.
00:05:58
So podcasting is accessible. It is less formal than ATV show
00:06:06
or then radio. It has its own rules, of course,
00:06:09
and there are hierarchies everywhere.
00:06:12
If not for the fact that some people have teams and others
00:06:15
don't. Some people have means, others
00:06:17
don't. Some podcasts are much easier to
00:06:20
fundraise for than others. Some podcasts are immediately
00:06:25
supported by their listeners, others aren't.
00:06:28
So of course there are hierarchies, but I would say
00:06:30
they're organic. And so we were all talking to
00:06:33
one another and I was really blown away by the transparency
00:06:38
of everyone. We were not hiding numbers, We
00:06:42
were not hiding or fudging our follower numbers on social
00:06:48
media. It was with huge transparency
00:06:51
that we had really interesting conversations and that we
00:06:55
exchanged tips with each other. I wanted to share this with you
00:06:59
because I asked myself what is this profile that I have?
00:07:04
The feminism, inclusivity and the non hierarchical aspect.
00:07:09
And this has implications in the way I introduce the artists and
00:07:15
also the way I think critically about an exhibition, about an
00:07:20
artwork, about a particular context in which an exhibition
00:07:24
is organized or a solo exhibition is delivered to
00:07:29
audiences. And of course I am going to
00:07:32
check, I'm going to see, OK, is someone excluded from this?
00:07:36
Why is this person here? From what platform are they
00:07:40
speaking? How comfortable are they in this
00:07:43
platform? These are concerns I have.
00:07:46
I don't think that the figure of the art critic is contemporary
00:07:51
anymore. I think it's quite obsolete
00:07:54
because the art critics supposedly is this persona, this
00:07:59
neutral, unbiased entity giving an opinion.
00:08:04
Nonetheless, of course it is a specialist's opinion.
00:08:09
But you know, critics had a lot of power back in the day, they
00:08:13
don't anymore. So that is the first symptom,
00:08:16
isn't it? Before critics could break
00:08:18
someone's reputation. I do value critical thinking
00:08:22
rather than saying from the get go I like it or I don't, which
00:08:25
odd critics don't do of course either, but underlyingly so they
00:08:31
do. So for me, the positioning is
00:08:34
very different. The difference being that, and
00:08:38
this is really interesting, I was listening to a podcast that
00:08:43
spoke exactly about the same thing.
00:08:45
So I'm going to draw a parallel here.
00:08:48
We are bringing a bias and I'm interested in what bias you
00:08:53
bring and I'm interested in making you aware of it.
00:08:57
So, for example, in the Dido Moriyama episodes in the first
00:09:02
season, I had to explain right off the bat a very specific bias
00:09:09
I have, which is that I have a hard time with photography.
00:09:14
You know, he talks of himself as a hunter, which, you know, is an
00:09:18
attitude. And so that turns the subject
00:09:22
matter of his photographs praise.
00:09:26
And in some ways, he talked about that poster of it's a
00:09:31
diagonal of torsos of male torsos bathing in the sun.
00:09:36
It's a beautiful photograph. And I kind of think, what if it
00:09:39
was me in that photo? It's.
00:09:42
But by talking about it and by having to research the artist, I
00:09:49
was able to expand and to question and to kind of fight my
00:09:58
bias a little bit and to be able to position myself again within
00:10:05
it with the information that I brought into it.
00:10:08
So I was listening to a show called Creators, which is
00:10:13
specifically for podcasters and for a specific kind of
00:10:17
podcasting called 2 Point. O will not go into it.
00:10:22
If you want to research it, do because it's really interesting
00:10:25
and it might be, or at least some aspects of it, the future
00:10:28
of the industry. And so this podcast is led by
00:10:32
the lovely Claire Waite Brown, who interviewed me for it and
00:10:36
Sam Sethi in the True Fans platform.
00:10:42
And they were chatting with a podcaster.
00:10:44
So the purpose of these interviews is to situate these
00:10:49
new developments in podcasting, but also to ask podcasters about
00:10:55
their struggles, their successes and how they operate, you know,
00:11:00
podcasting in general. And so they were interviewing
00:11:04
Fariba Nawa. He was an investigative
00:11:07
journalist and she has a podcast that sounds incredible.
00:11:11
I'm, I'm following her now called Onspec.
00:11:14
She's an investigative journalist, right?
00:11:17
And nevertheless, she says that the specificity of On Spec, her
00:11:23
podcast, is that she's interested in working with
00:11:26
people, bringing topics, investigation topics where they
00:11:33
have or that they're part of. So they bring their bias, but
00:11:37
they announce it. And I thought that was so
00:11:40
interesting. And I'm wondering if that's
00:11:42
specific to podcasting because podcasting kind of breaks the,
00:11:47
the, the, the, the 4th wall, doesn't it?
00:11:49
There's something about it that is very connected to you.
00:11:54
We kind of interrogate our relationship as we go along.
00:11:59
There is a lot of engagement, audience engagement in
00:12:02
podcasting, which is something I want to talk to you about as
00:12:05
well. By the way, it's in the notes.
00:12:09
So I found that very, very interesting.
00:12:12
I think there is a relation there with podcasting and this
00:12:15
idea of biases. I want to share, you know, a bit
00:12:21
of my thinking behind this because I think there's some
00:12:26
engagement missing. I think it's also the content.
00:12:31
Perhaps it might be the field of contemporary art itself.
00:12:35
So where can you engage with the podcasts?
00:12:38
Sorry, of course, I was forgetting the crucial bit of
00:12:42
information. So I don't know how many of you
00:12:45
know, but Spotify is changing quite a bit.
00:12:48
They are trying to be a bit more like YouTube, hosts platform
00:12:55
competitions, overthrowing each other, each other's platforms.
00:13:00
But Spotify is changing quite a bit.
00:13:02
So they have added videos. You can leave comments under the
00:13:06
episode. There's an area where you can
00:13:10
leave suggestions, ideas, You can just react.
00:13:13
You can congratulate the the podcasters, which is honestly
00:13:18
the feedback I've been having. And thank you so much to those
00:13:21
who leave comments and celebrate their joy and their pleasure in
00:13:24
listening to the episode. That means a lot.
00:13:27
I can tell you that it may seem ridiculous to you on the other
00:13:30
side of things, but when you put an episode out there, crickets.
00:13:39
You don't know. You don't know how people are
00:13:41
listening. It is incredibly meaningful when
00:13:44
you leave a comment and when you just say that you loved it or
00:13:47
that you liked it or that a certain angle was innovative,
00:13:52
original, blew your brains out. You know, it just blew your mind
00:13:56
that no, your brains out, sorry, blew your mind.
00:14:00
That is gold. It is the biggest of joys.
00:14:06
So measuring pleasure. So if you could leave comments
00:14:11
on Spotify, Instagram, follow us on Instagram.
00:14:14
I put a lot of little clips in there of exhibition visits and
00:14:20
suggestions. If you're too shy to leave, you
00:14:22
know, public, you know, publicly read comments, you know, just DM
00:14:26
us and and make some suggestions.
00:14:28
That's that's also great. And in the show's notes, you
00:14:32
have the e-mail, so you can also write to us.
00:14:36
So what else is there? Biography.
00:14:39
So in academic circles, biography, particularly in
00:14:43
visual arts, also in literature, very frowned upon.
00:14:46
You, you mustn't do it. You mustn't.
00:14:49
Which is very interesting in terms of position because it
00:14:54
means that the artwork should speak for itself.
00:14:58
But there are many reasons why I feel that it's not such a great
00:15:05
idea. And one of the reasons is
00:15:10
because there is there's a problem with the visual arts
00:15:17
sector. And that's one of the reasons
00:15:19
why I started the podcast, which is the elitism that some people
00:15:25
feel when they visit exhibitions, when they hear the
00:15:30
discourse about arts and presenting artists as if they
00:15:36
lived in the sort of a crystal tower or in the sort of cloud.
00:15:40
And they just produce these incredible cryptic objects or
00:15:45
images placed in incredibly grandiose sometimes art spaces
00:15:54
or exhibition spaces. It it turns the artwork into
00:16:00
something that is disconnected from an embodied experience.
00:16:05
And I think strategically for me, talking about the artist is
00:16:09
really important. Secondly, because I love
00:16:14
artists. It's as simple as that.
00:16:16
I mean, I don't know why I'm looking for another way of
00:16:18
saying it. That's that is it.
00:16:20
You know, I love and I admire artists.
00:16:23
Artists dedicate their whole lives to creating work, to
00:16:28
communicating. It's their way of communicating
00:16:31
and they dedicate their time to that.
00:16:33
And so of course, embodying and naming artists is really
00:16:38
important. It doesn't mean that it's
00:16:40
deterministic. So what do I mean by that?
00:16:43
It doesn't mean that providing at context, storytelling is a
00:16:50
direct explanation of the arts through the life.
00:16:55
A life isn't going to specifically produce that
00:16:58
artwork. And I have an example.
00:17:00
So going back into Season 1 and Season 2, there were two
00:17:07
Japanese artists that we focused on the first season, Yoko Ono,
00:17:12
and in the second season, Onkowara.
00:17:15
SO2 Japanese artists, 1 male, another female.
00:17:19
Both artists went through the horrendous experience of the
00:17:23
atomic bomb in Japan, and I refer to that.
00:17:29
But Onkowara had the reaction of suddenly retrieving himself from
00:17:35
meaning. He went back to school and he
00:17:38
would constantly say he didn't understand.
00:17:40
And he was embracing of existentialism even more
00:17:50
philosophies that would embrace, you know, the Theatre of the
00:17:53
Absurd, you know, all these philosophies and art movements
00:17:59
which were on the verge of using words to kind of strip them of
00:18:06
their meaning as opposed to using words to fill the
00:18:11
experience or the story or the object with meaning.
00:18:15
So for him, it was really a kind of backing away from any
00:18:20
possible explanation. Yoko Ono lived the same
00:18:26
experience, had a completely different reaction to it.
00:18:29
So she had to move away from where she lived, from the big
00:18:34
city, went to the countryside and would spend hours and hours
00:18:37
and hours on the ground, lying on the ground with her brother,
00:18:40
looking at the clouds, trying to imagine and design menus.
00:18:49
And so they would eat in their imagination.
00:18:53
And she discovered the power of imagination as perhaps in the
00:18:58
beginning as a form of escapism, but then as a form of
00:19:02
empowerment and of living something through the sheer
00:19:09
force and energy of the mind. And so I mean quickly, very
00:19:15
quickly explained. And so here the biographic
00:19:18
information is interesting because it does say something
00:19:22
about the methods of each artist.
00:19:25
So on Kowara kept to a repetitive practice that
00:19:31
stripped everything of anecdotes or would use anecdotes
00:19:38
repeatedly as a way of conveying a sort of raw, energetic,
00:19:45
existential feeling of presence and of being alive.
00:19:51
Completely different reaction. So biographical data is
00:19:56
interesting in as much as we use it in a non deterministic way.
00:20:03
This choice is also a bit strategic because I have a sense
00:20:08
that when you visit exhibitions. And the promotion of the
00:20:14
exhibition especially, I mean, you know, parenthesis, if you
00:20:18
visit exhibitions and you're not used to going into art spaces,
00:20:22
of course you're going to go to the Tate, you're going to go to
00:20:24
the Haywood Gallery, you're going to go to the big museums.
00:20:27
And these big museums have a way of promoting their exhibitions,
00:20:31
which is always to say major exhibition, major artist,
00:20:37
pioneer in whatever most influential of their generation,
00:20:44
first female, Asian artist 2, etcetera, etcetera.
00:20:48
So you're presented with grandeur, you're presented with
00:20:52
greatness. And suddenly you see in a one or
00:20:57
two exhibitions, or maybe you're a tourist and you decide to go
00:21:00
to the Tate and you think, OK, I was so lucky.
00:21:05
I came to an exhibition of a really important artist.
00:21:09
You visit the exhibition, you don't agree, you don't
00:21:13
understand. You can read the texts, you look
00:21:16
at the art, there's no connection.
00:21:19
And suddenly you feel rejected. You feel removed from that space
00:21:25
because you don't get why that person is so influential, why
00:21:29
that person is the major artist of their generation or the major
00:21:35
exhibition from that specific angle.
00:21:38
And that's why art feels elitist in my opinion.
00:21:43
It's that way of presenting things.
00:21:46
I mean, the tape will always have visitors.
00:21:50
And it's funny because I was told in a master class, I did
00:21:52
again, you know about podcasting, a specific aspect of
00:21:55
podcasting, which was promoting podcasts and doing clips to for
00:22:00
social media to attract new listeners.
00:22:03
And this person said something really interesting, which is
00:22:07
don't be too seductive. Don't be too savvy in in your
00:22:15
marketing because then you're going to bring people into your
00:22:21
podcast and your field or your particular angle who have been
00:22:26
seduced by something that they will not find there.
00:22:29
And she said you can bring the horse to the river, but you
00:22:33
can't make it drink. And it's true, you don't want
00:22:36
people to go and see something but then not deliver what you've
00:22:41
promised. And that's why I think, again,
00:22:45
biographic data just shows you the the artist is just a person.
00:22:49
And the artist is a person who communicates through that
00:22:54
language. That's where they're comfortable
00:22:57
anyway. So in the third season, we will
00:23:02
continue having exhibition discussions with different
00:23:05
guests. So again, this time going back
00:23:09
to this idea and this interaction between an art
00:23:16
insider myself, he will have done the research and the art
00:23:19
outsider. Unless the art outsider wants to
00:23:22
do the research, why not? And so I have a few people lined
00:23:26
up, quite a few new people actually, with different
00:23:30
backgrounds, with different profiles, different age groups.
00:23:34
Biases. You're supposed to say biases.
00:23:37
That's the idea. Then of course, I have guest
00:23:41
interviews. So why do I do those?
00:23:43
Because no one really knows what the heck people do in the art
00:23:50
industry. In the visual art industry, you
00:23:53
vaguely know what a curator does.
00:23:56
Obviously an artist gallerist. OK, that makes sense.
00:23:59
But Even so, you know, what are the new challenges of galleries?
00:24:03
Go back to the last episode, listen to Sarah Lekong Sung talk
00:24:07
about her gallery, which has a very specific goal of promoting,
00:24:12
showcasing queer and female artists.
00:24:16
So that's a novelty, you know, in history in the UKI don't know
00:24:22
of any galleries that have done that.
00:24:23
And so there is a response to current times and to the modern
00:24:30
world and the contemporary world.
00:24:31
So you see the outward reflects topics.
00:24:35
And I think that's one of the things also that this format
00:24:39
allows you to do, which is to perhaps, you know, interpret the
00:24:44
artwork, but also send it back to real life, to real topics,
00:24:48
real subjects and and see what the art is, allowing you to
00:24:55
navigate that it you didn't before.
00:24:57
What does it mean to write for a newspaper or a magazine about
00:25:04
art? What does it mean nowadays to be
00:25:06
an art critic? I did touch upon that in the
00:25:08
beginning of the episode. What does it mean to be a
00:25:10
curator? What is an art advisor?
00:25:13
Another episode that you can listen to with Lee Bertinuti.
00:25:17
He explains what she does. You know, I am an art fair
00:25:22
artistic director and still have questions for her.
00:25:25
I think we would also profit from and benefit from sharing
00:25:30
more things about our challenges because mainly one of the things
00:25:36
that really, really, I mean, it's a thought that I have
00:25:41
almost every week is the the amazement, especially if you go
00:25:45
on TikTok, you know, people making fun of performance arts
00:25:49
or abstract art. There's a lot of accounts there,
00:25:51
but also on Instagram and the comments you hear is, oh, and
00:25:55
these people are millionaires. That's what the media is saying
00:25:59
about visual arts is that we're all millionaires and we're all
00:26:02
selling and being paid in the millions, which is just a very,
00:26:08
very small parts. And usually listeners who are in
00:26:12
the art industry and who are listening, you know what I'm
00:26:15
talking about. It's a very small part of us.
00:26:17
And and there's always also the instability of jobs even in art
00:26:25
organizations. You know, art organizations
00:26:27
depend on funding. They in some, a lot of countries
00:26:31
depend on politics and local politics and they depend also on
00:26:35
government money. So, you know, sponsors as well,
00:26:38
you know. So that's an added difficulty.
00:26:43
Nothing is guaranteed. Who would have thought that
00:26:46
Trump would go after universities and museums?
00:26:51
He did. And he fired the director of the
00:26:55
National Gallery in Washington, DC.
00:26:58
There was a whole thing. And then she ended up quitting.
00:27:01
It was actually the National Portrait Gallery in DC.
00:27:07
OK, so guest interviews and I don't do artist interviews and
00:27:12
kudos to the people who do that. Ben Luke is an amazing
00:27:15
interviewer from the podcast a brush with, you know, if you
00:27:19
want to listen to artist interviews, that's I think for
00:27:22
me is one of the the most engaging ones.
00:27:24
They don't make for a Sonic experience, for an audio
00:27:28
experience that is compelling as sometimes, you know, listening
00:27:33
to these serial episodes about a particular topic.
00:27:36
But most of all also because that's a tapped market.
00:27:39
I mean, there are so many great artist interviews out there.
00:27:42
This is not to say that I'm not interesting interested in
00:27:46
collaborating with artists, but I so one of the things to come
00:27:50
probably in the third season, I'm still working with three
00:27:54
artists to see where that leads me.
00:27:56
So a specific format where there's a collaboration.
00:27:59
So there may be an epistolary relationship with the artist
00:28:03
where I read my letter, they read their letter, some sound
00:28:07
suggestions, texts to read, stories to tell.
00:28:12
I don't know, you know, a creative format maybe that will
00:28:17
allow the artist to expand creatively and to also talk to
00:28:22
also have a voice. But maybe framed in the way
00:28:25
where they're not, they don't have that feeling of being
00:28:28
pinned down suddenly. So that's one of the other
00:28:32
formats that I want to bring in. I will continue with the shorter
00:28:35
episodes where I share parts of my lectures or texts that I'm
00:28:40
working on and that I adapt to an audio format.
00:28:43
So what else is there? What haven't I said?
00:28:48
And then I'm going to do another type of episode, which is a
00:28:52
focus on a theme and an angle, again in conversational form,
00:28:56
but this time with specialists. So specifically on purpose,
00:29:01
bringing people who are specialized in a in a specific
00:29:05
topic and trying to bring it home.
00:29:09
For example, the history of exhibitions.
00:29:11
Exhibitions have a very recent thing.
00:29:14
You know, we complain that people are not into it.
00:29:17
You know, they think it's, you have to be knowledgeable to go
00:29:19
put in some ways, you know, this is there.
00:29:22
There isn't a huge tradition of exhibition going and exhibition
00:29:27
visiting and exhibition making. Of course, the counterexample
00:29:30
would be the prehistoric caves. First exhibitions.
00:29:34
Who knows? All right, so I think we're
00:29:37
coming to the end of the episode and what else can I tell you?
00:29:41
So perhaps, what do you, what did I write in my notes?
00:29:47
Yeah, maybe letting you know how this podcast works.
00:29:52
The first thing to know is that, as I said before, this is an
00:29:56
independent podcast. So I don't belong to any
00:30:00
platform of any kind, radio or any distributing and paying
00:30:08
platform, obviously not affiliated to a magazine or a
00:30:12
newspaper. I'm absolutely, completely
00:30:16
independent. I started it on my own and the
00:30:22
first season was a sort of a test pilot.
00:30:25
I wanted to know if it was a pleasure that I would measure
00:30:31
positively and it was. And also if you would be
00:30:37
engaging with it, if you know if if I would have an audience
00:30:41
basically. And I did.
00:30:43
So all good. Continued doing it, continued
00:30:47
really doing the work. And so one of the things that I
00:30:52
think I've talked across this episode and that I really want
00:30:59
to bring home is Marshall Mcluhan.
00:31:02
Not theorists of last century, famous for saying the medium is
00:31:09
the message. The medium really is the
00:31:12
message. And what does he mean by that?
00:31:15
He means that the podcast as it is, as a format, the way it's
00:31:20
delivered, the way it's listened to and the way it's produced.
00:31:23
So the whole technology makes it what it is.
00:31:28
And so the message delivered is in the technology itself.
00:31:32
And that's what I really loved about it because there is this
00:31:39
exchange and there is this malleability of the format.
00:31:44
So you will have noticed that in some episodes, maybe I forgot
00:31:50
the break, maybe the episode was too long to go for a break and
00:31:53
to even use those 3 minutes. But that's fine.
00:31:59
You know that we are not contained by a very rigid
00:32:02
structure. And I think that that's the, and
00:32:06
I thought at the time when I thought of doing the podcast
00:32:10
that that was the best medium to the mystify the art field and
00:32:17
exhibitions and art and visual arts and contemporary art and
00:32:21
artists. Because this informal
00:32:24
relationship that we have myself with you, dear, dear, dearest
00:32:30
listener, is that we understand each other.
00:32:34
We're here for each other. You support me, I support you,
00:32:38
you understand the challenges and I deliver the best content
00:32:43
that I can deliver. And on that note, what I want to
00:32:49
share with you is how I work. The recording is about two
00:32:55
hours, very often much more than that.
00:32:59
So editing takes at least 8 hours.
00:33:02
So it's a huge yes. Foggly maybe, I don't know, who
00:33:08
knows? I mean, the Italians do.
00:33:10
Your body, your body. Sorry.
00:33:20
I'm going to cut knowing that to get to the episode, I will have
00:33:24
done a good four hours of research.
00:33:28
It's the specific informations that you need to get when you're
00:33:31
preparing an episode on an artist, on or on a specific
00:33:35
topic or on the artist that brings specific movements,
00:33:43
specific theories that I also have to investigate or revisit.
00:33:48
So another thing that I would love you to pay attention to if
00:33:51
you're still listening, because I'm not sure this episode is
00:33:54
going to get through to a lot of people, but the ones who are
00:33:57
interested, I think, you know, if you're a bit geeky, like I am
00:34:01
a bit nerdy, I think you're a bit curious, right?
00:34:04
So for those who are still here, another thing that is really
00:34:08
time consuming in podcasting is all the information that goes
00:34:13
with the episode. So you don't just drop an
00:34:16
episode. There's hours and hours of
00:34:18
writing show notes correcting the thankfully AI produced
00:34:28
transcript of the of each episode.
00:34:31
But you have to correct it. I've been having a conversation
00:34:35
with one of my sons about the dangers of AI, the menacing
00:34:39
presence of AI, and the menacing, successful and highly
00:34:48
performative capacity of AI that will replace people in several
00:34:54
industries. But when it comes to certain
00:34:58
more contained uses of AI, it is so helpful.
00:35:03
The argument against AI it's that it's learning and it will
00:35:07
surpass our capacities very, very quickly.
00:35:10
In here it's impossible because the way we pronounce words, not
00:35:16
everyone is has English as their first language as is my case.
00:35:22
And in my Co host, guest Co host, my people I interview.
00:35:27
And also there's different accents.
00:35:29
Sometimes we speak quickly, sometimes we are a bit muffly
00:35:33
and mumbly. And so the AI cannot understand
00:35:36
everything as your ear can't understand everything.
00:35:40
So you need to go over the transcript, you know, regardless
00:35:45
of how perfect the AI is going to become, closing parentheses,
00:35:51
I need to go over the captions. The captions, you know, confuse
00:35:55
creating with curating, curating with creating.
00:35:58
So I need to correct all the time.
00:36:01
And so that's the first time, very long time.
00:36:04
Can you imagine an hour and a half of episode correcting every
00:36:08
sentence of the transcript? So that's a lot of time.
00:36:11
Then you have to produce the show's notes.
00:36:14
The show's notes are really interesting because you have the
00:36:17
situation of the algorithm which works with keywords.
00:36:21
So you have to use keywords. Basically you have to speak
00:36:25
computer speak, algorithm speak. And so you have to write show
00:36:30
notes that are interesting for people to read, but there are
00:36:34
identifiable by the the browsers and the algorithms.
00:36:41
It's hard to write them. You're so tired of editing,
00:36:45
You're so tired of correcting the transcript, thinking what
00:36:49
clips you're going to do, and then you have to write that damn
00:36:54
horrible text that now is also problematic if you're want to be
00:37:01
discovered through your website because you also have a website
00:37:05
for the podcast. And so now chat bots are being
00:37:09
used incrementally. So very soon Google is going to
00:37:14
be set aside and we will be asking questions to an AI that
00:37:19
will deliver us content. You can just say, what are the
00:37:22
independent podcasts about visual arts?
00:37:25
And the AI is going to tell you, oh, there's this.
00:37:28
And then describe what they do. And then you'll see, oh, but
00:37:30
these are, I don't know what single person episodes and I
00:37:35
want conversation. So you say, oh, but can you find
00:37:38
the ones that are conversational?
00:37:40
And then you can say, oh, but can you find the ones that are
00:37:43
more experimental? And then it will deliver.
00:37:46
So it is a conversation that you have and you have to adapt your
00:37:50
show's notes for your website with chatbot speak and no longer
00:37:56
algorithmic speak. So we're already on two
00:37:59
different texts, but then you have YouTube, but then the
00:38:02
show's notes cannot be the same. So third time writing your
00:38:05
show's notes and so on and so on.
00:38:08
Instagram, blue sky, whatever, TikTok whatever.
00:38:12
Such a huge time consuming enterprise to drop one single
00:38:21
episode. It's at least 20 hours of work
00:38:25
per week. So in the US, quite a few
00:38:29
research based independent podcasters earn quite a
00:38:35
substantial amount of money in part of their income through
00:38:39
podcasting. And that's because in the US
00:38:42
there is this mentality of paying for what you consume.
00:38:47
It's a very simple mentality that we do not have in Europe.
00:38:51
So here podcasting is a bit frowned upon, confused with
00:38:57
social media, confused with influencing, which honestly, I
00:39:02
don't know why, but some people have told me that.
00:39:06
And so when you say that you're podcasting, people presume that
00:39:13
you're either doing it because it's a hobby.
00:39:15
And again, the visual arts sector is plagued with people
00:39:20
thinking that what you do is a hobby.
00:39:21
You have no idea. And the mentality here, and I
00:39:25
have the same I'm again, not extracting myself from the
00:39:29
conversation. I'm not leaving the chat.
00:39:31
I'm I'm firmly in it. We will more willingly pay for
00:39:40
an exceptional pleasure then we will pay for the things that we
00:39:44
use every day, such as online newspapers, such as available
00:39:51
content out there in archives. So the idea is that probably
00:39:56
it's because it's not a direct thing.
00:39:57
You don't click on a button and that's it, you've paid for it.
00:40:01
You have to go to the show's notes, you have to go to the
00:40:03
website and then decide how much you want to give and understand
00:40:10
what it means to have a membership.
00:40:13
And so paying every month, it's not something that is yet
00:40:20
understood as something that makes sense.
00:40:23
That is called for that is deserved by the person who's
00:40:27
putting the content out there and also accessible it might be
00:40:32
in the future. So the whole podcasting 2 point
00:40:35
O that I'm not going to talk about is creating platforms.
00:40:39
One of them is called true fans. You can go there.
00:40:43
You can either use Bitcoin or your currency and you can define
00:40:50
how much you want to pay per minute of your listens.
00:40:53
And so it's a bit like Spotify used to be for musicians, which
00:40:58
was that as soon as you played something that they would earn
00:41:02
0 P per minute. Apparently now it has changed
00:41:08
for musicians as well. But you must know that on
00:41:10
Spotify, which is my host platform, I'm not entitled to
00:41:16
ads and to monetization because I don't have enough listeners.
00:41:21
And that's normal. You know, niche podcasts like
00:41:23
mine, young podcasts, I don't, I haven't had time together a huge
00:41:28
audience. There's a bunch of you, but not
00:41:30
like the 10 an episode that I would need to monetize through
00:41:35
ads. And second thing, I don't want
00:41:38
to have ads on my podcast. If I do, and when I do, which I
00:41:43
will probably have to, I want them to make sense for the
00:41:46
industry and I want them to be helpful and to choose the right
00:41:51
people to place their ads in the podcast.
00:41:54
In exhibition Estes, let's imagine if 100 people paid £1.00
00:41:59
per episode. So amongst the people who listen
00:42:01
to the episodes, each time I would have £100 per episode.
00:42:09
I have two episodes in the month.
00:42:11
So 200 lbs. Imagine if you paid 2 lbs.
00:42:17
Double that. Imagine 1000 people paid.
00:42:20
And the idea is not only to earn money.
00:42:22
Obviously this is hard work. This is what I studied for, what
00:42:26
I paid university for. When I paid my PhD, well, then I
00:42:29
had a scholarship, but I did pay for a substantial amount of my
00:42:34
PhD. There's a Latin saying in cauda
00:42:37
venenum. So the poison comes in the tail,
00:42:40
as in the scorpion's tale, but also at the end of a letter or
00:42:44
at the end of an episode. I'm not being a negative here.
00:42:47
I'm really being open and sharing how the industry works,
00:42:52
what we're talking about in the background and just letting you
00:42:55
know that apart from a few of you who are, who have been
00:42:58
really nice and kind and I've had donations.
00:43:01
Thank you so much to those who have donated one or two
00:43:06
memberships. I don't want to have to pay to
00:43:08
work. I don't.
00:43:10
You the the people who contribute have allowed me to
00:43:15
not pay to do a podcast, which is I think the minimum.
00:43:19
But what I would love to do more than earn a living from this,
00:43:24
which of course amazing. If I can get some of my income
00:43:27
from the podcast, great. But I would love to create jobs.
00:43:31
I would love to hire someone. I would love to make it possible
00:43:35
in the industry to have independent initiatives that
00:43:40
have enough support from the consumer.
00:43:45
Sorry, we're we are in the capitalist society from the
00:43:49
listener, from the audience, so that this industry can thrive
00:43:56
and can create work. All right, so measured the
00:44:00
pleasure, haven't we? Stay tuned.
00:44:02
Don't forget summer episodes and the next brand new season in
00:44:08
September of 2025 until June 2026.
00:44:13
That's going to be the new season.
00:44:15
Season 3 take care. Bye bye.
00:44:17
Thank you.