The Garden Lingered
<p>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 (<em>Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition</em>, 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 <i>Cultured Mag</i>) to Dean Kissick’s screed on identity politics (in <i>Harper’s</i>), 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.”</p>
Host: Sky Goodden, Lauren Wetmore
Guest: Ajay Kurian
Editor: Jacob Irish
Assistant Producer: Chris Andrews
Part of: Momus: The Podcast