It’s slime time. In 2022, artists Christopher Michlig and Oliver Payne released, respectively, the book File Under: Slime and the film A Brief History of Slime. At the time, each was completely unaware of the other’s slime-related research. On this episode, they join to discuss peak slime culture of the 1980s and 90s, the recent resurgence of slime…

Filmmaker and artist Adam Khalil joins the podcast to talk collaboration, nonlinear time, irony’s extant potential, and the aesthetics of Indigenous cinema. Among Khalil’s many film projects are Nosferasta: First Bite (2021), Empty Metal (2018), and INAATE/SE/ (2016). Khalil is a co-founder of the public secret society New Red Order, which you can …

New York writer Elvia Wilk joins to discuss her recent collection of essays on ecologies, “Death By Landscape” (Soft Skull Press, 2022). Using an accessible approach she calls “fan-nonfiction,” Wilk’s latest book catalouges and considers a diverse group of writers, while ruminating on plant-becoming, slow apocalypses, mysticism, LARPing, trauma, th…

Humor and the Abject has a special treat for all you screedlers out there: an interview with Japanther co-founder Ian Vanek. He’s about to release “Puppy Dog Ice Cream,” a new book all about Japanther’s 13-year run, published by Outlandish Press. We talked about buzzing, vibing, and dancing; Brooklyn DIY in the mid-00s; one-man motorcycle/sampler t…

Ohhhhhhhhhhh, babyyyyyyyy. It’s the lucky thirteenth episode of the DSA Podcast, starring your pals Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe. To celebrate, the power trio ripped into some of the most important topics of the day including Jeff Bezos delivering packages to the moon, raccoon roommates, fighting a cat, Alec Baldwin sightings, and more. The outro musi…

New York writer Charlie Markbreiter (@BerlantBro) has written about contemporary art, humor, and edgelordism for The New Inquiry, Artforum, Baffler, Momus, and Garage, among others. On this week’s episode, we talked about their interest in comedy and humorlessness; a recent interview they conducted with scholar Lauren Berlant; why the NYMPHOWARS po…

Janet40 is the Mexico City-based curatorial and production platform of Patricia Siller and Luis Nava. They’ve been in Austin for the last month as part of the Unlisted Projects residency program at the Museum of Human Achievement. While in town, they’ve been working on prototyping and fabricating objects for artists Canek Zapata (Mexico City) and H…

It’s my big birthday week, babies. To celebrate, I caught up with an old friend, artist Beth Campbell from New York. She was visiting Austin this past week to unveil a new public art project as part of the Landmarks collection at the University of Texas. I got to see Beth do a great conversation with philosopher Timothy Morton, who also wrote a nic…

Azikiwe is finally back from his travels all around North America, so it’s time for another installment of everybody’s favorite podcast within the podcast, the DSA Podcast (Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe). With the remake of “Pet Sematary” dropping this week, we thought it only appropriate to do a comprehensive review of the original film that is now 30…

New York writer Mike Pepi makes his debut on the Humor and the Abject podcast to talk about the important topics currently ripping up your mind: the smooth jazz rock of Steely Dan; parvenus; the Mueller Report; restaurant lighting design; why museums are failing to confront platform capitalism; how many times one can legally donate to Bernie; that …

March is apparently Toronto month, because we’ve got artist Bridget Moser joining this week. Bridget is currently an artist-in-residence in Cleveland at SPACES, where she’s got a solo exhibition of brand new work, generated in-residence, opening up next month. Over the course of this episode, we got to talk about many important topics including: th…

Toronto artists Amy Lam and Jon McCurley have been collaborating for 13 years as Life of a Craphead. On this week’s episode, we talked about their current exhibition, “Entertaining Every Second,” which has toured throughout Canada to its current site of Montreal; self-organizing a 30-show live even series called Doored; why cutting your teeth on st…

It’s episode 100 of the Humor and the Abject podcast! To celebrate this unholy milestone, we brought back our very first guest ever: Darcie Wilder. THIS IS NOT JUST A DSA PODCAST WITHOUT AZIKIWE. Over the course of this latest conversation, Darcie and I discussed her weekly conceptual newsletter, “sentences”; the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos scandal; …

Western Mass artist Emma Kohlmann was visiting Austin for a printmaking residency at the University of Texas last week, and was kind enough to drop by to record an episode. We talked about zines and doing book fairs; bakeries and why sourdough is printmaking; liberal arts colleges; Scooby Doo; flirting with anti-civ tendencies; punk festivals; assu…

As part of fabled collective Paper Rad, artist Jacob Ciocci co-produced animations, video collages, and HTML works that have had a profound influence on almost every artist working with technology today—whether they realize it or not. On this week’s episode, Jacob joins from his new home of Chicago to discuss fatherhood; his early days as a student…

Performance artist Jordan Wayne Long moved to Los Angeles in 2013 with his collaborator Matt Glass. Over the last six years, they’ve written, directed, and produced multiple film projects and taken home numerous Emmys as HCT.Media. On this week’s episode, Jordan joins first to talk about shipping himself in a crate across the country, tackling PTSD…

Comedian Lorelei Ramirez returns to the podcast to talk about why founding—and sustaining—their monthly show NOT DEAD YET was important; the behind-the-scenes process of producing an 11-minute infomercial epic called “Pervert Everything” for Adult Swim; collaborating to identify resources for community organizing through the event series Incite Act…

With partial federal government shutdown over, the Humor and the Abject furlough comes to an end. We’re kicking off 2019 with the 11th episode of the podcast within the podcast, the DSA Podcast, which stands for Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe. Get yourself into the groove of reopened national parks, a funded TSA, and federal I-9 work verifications court…

Humor and the Abject is taking a little holiday break, but to celebrate the end of 2018, it’s episode 10 of the podcast within the podcast, The DSA Podcast (Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe). On this Christmas-themed episode, the comrades discuss their holiday plans, recent encounters with cinema, a super obscure book about Jesus that Darice has, screamin…

New York poet Peter BD is about to release a new mixtape, “Milk & Henny,” a follow-up to his 2018 book of the same name from Inpatient Press. Peter and I connected to talk about accidentally channeling Jack Handy, his broad animal care skills, the “Milk & Henny” origin story, writing in Gmail drafts, studying biology, JC Chasez, inadvertently becom…

Dena Winter, FKA May Waver, is an artist and production designer known for her audiovisual explorations of intimacy, environment, memory, and selfhood in the so-called digital age. She joins Humor and the Abject this week from the frozen tundras of her home in St. Paul, MN to talk about the advent of her online alter ego May Waver, the value of ten…

Are you feeling experimental? I am. On this week’s episode, I’m trying out something that I hope to do more of in the future: writers reading their work. To break the ice, I’ve opted to offer myself up as the sacrificial lamb and read two pieces of my own. The first, “Jalipaz Kirkham: In Profile,” is something I wrote for the release event of poet …

Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe are back for another podcast-within-the-podcast, and this time they’re talking about cheese—and animals! The outro music is “Cheese Roll Call” from Pinky and the Brain.By Sean J Patrick Carney

Photographer Matthew Leifheit’s most recent body of work, “Fire Island Night,” is on view at Deli Gallery in Brooklyn through December 2nd. He joined Humor and the Abject this week to talk about his independent photo journal MATTE, trying to maintain a practice while juggling multiple adjunct teaching gigs, the importance of building trust and allo…

Joshua Citarella has a phenomenal new book out, "UNTITLED (Post-Left Politigram)," that you can read an excerpt from via his website linked below. It’s a collection of his research, writing, and artwork over several years related to accelerated political identities in adolescent online culture. He joins from his efficiency living unit in New York C…

Fresh off her solo exhibition, “Utopia Without You” at Williamson | Knight in Portland, OR, artist Tabitha Nikolai linked up with me to talk Nightcore, earnest rites of suburban occult, post-cataclysmic world-building, junk food asteroids, crust punk elves in the Pacific Northwest, a general malaise with liberalism and prescriptive visibility, isol…

New York comedian and artist Alex Schmidt has a solo exhibition, “Group Fail Pony Play,” on view through October 28th at Leslie-Lohman Museum. We connected this week to talk about her Midwest roots, loving queer culture enough to satirize it, why they don’t make movies about Chicago anymore, what constitutes an actual family reunion, how breaking a…

Philly comic Kyle Harris visited Austin recently for a gig at Altercation Comedy Fest. He kindly made time to join me in the kitchen for an historic meeting of the minds that examines his dislike of not only his chosen art form, but also the city that he calls home. We chatted about sleep paralysis, Good Good Comedy (the only good thing in Philly, …

The DSA Podcast is back and bicoastal! If you count the Gulf of Mexico as one of the two coasts, that is. Your trusted hosts—Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe—are back after a brief hiatus to bring you all the hottest takes on things that have almost no impact on your everyday life. And it’s the introduction of a brand new game never before played on the p…

Austin writer and director Yen Tan released a powerful film this year, “1985.” It tells the story of Adrian, a young man living through the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York who returns home for the holidays to his conservative Texas family. Yen dropped by the kitchen to talk about the development and production of the film, telling every day stories p…

It’s time for some sound art. Don’t read below unless you’ve actually listened to this entire thing. LOL. 02:00 - AFI - Miss Murder05:15 - Gorilaz - Feel Good Inc08:55 - Oasis - Wonderwall 13:00 - Misfits - Hybrid Moments14:34 - At the Drive-In - One Armed Scissor 18:17 - The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps23:03 - HIM - Right Here in My Arms…

Los Angeles comedian and non-fine-dining guru Danny Palumbo, a Prodigal Son of Austin, returned to town this weekend for a couple of headlining dates at the Velveeta Room. He dropped by Humor and the Abject to talk about his new food podcast Meatball Party, living in Los Angeles, cooking across a spectrum of kitchens, high concept online food prank…

Photographer Oliver Leach, notorious as BAKOON on Twitter, joins Humor and the Abject over Skype this week all the way from San Francisco. We talked about his love of horror, rent-controlled apartments, his weird photographic processes, teratoma twins, Texas beef, circumventing the gallery system and selling directly to his audience on Twitter, pra…

Happy Art and Labor Day! On this week’s episode, I connected with artists and art workers OK Fox and Lucia Love, hosts of the excellent podcast Art and Labor out of New York. We talked about shitty jobs in the art world, what led them to launch the podcast, the value of art in revolutionary thinking, not being an authority but still participating, …

Seven is God’s number, and the seventh episode of the DSA Podcasts is positively divine. This time around, Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe have another pointless conversation, this time regarding Hawaii’s Big Island, bogs, the Hamptons, wedding DJs, people who get fired from their jobs because of social media, Bernard Sanders, The Wing, regional museums,…

Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly is gearing up to celebrate the band’s 20th (!!!) anniversary. He joined me in the kitchen this week to talk about Thursday’s origin story, some of his fondest memories from their two-decade career, the anonymous supergroup United Nations, a year of drama involving Lostprophets and Martin Shkreli, approaching age 40, a…

Mothmen! Yetis! Chupacabras! Oh My! Artist Laura Bernstein drops by this week to talk about alternative genetics, cryptids, imagined future beings, circus aesthetics, the paradox of zoos, growing up in the Bronx, materiality and texture, funky wool, recent exhibitions at the Anytime Dept. in Cincinnati and NURTUREart in Brooklyn, and what’s gonna h…

Recorded inside of one of Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses at Dia:Beacon, comedian Ana Fabrega is back in her second appearance on Humor and the Abject. Earlier on the day this was recorded, Ana was a visiting artist for the teens I teach at the museum, performing a live comedy set for them and then helping them workshop one-act plays they’ve been …

Journalist Adrian Chen has covered the darkest corners of internet culture for years. He’s been a staff writer at the New Yorker and Gawker, and has bylines in practically every publication and on every platform you’ve ever heard of. On this week’s episode, he stops by to discuss his early writing on the Silk Road and the dark web, his sociological…

I think that Christin Bailey is the funniest person on all of Twitter. She joined me over Skype this week from sunny San Diego to talk about her recent visit to Europe, her outrageous astrology column, the Animaniacs, why The Departed is the most complicated piece of cinema in the 21st century, her family bonds, and more. The outro music is “Bells …

Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House drops by this week to talk about his humble Midwest origin story, what gets him riled up most, the unending quest to post, whether political satire is dead, the millennial move towards socialist politics, why sophistication is stupid, and his morbid predictions about the supposedly imminent Blue Wave. The outro mu…

You’re probably already following Jenson Leonard on Instagram. He’s Cory in the Abyss, the hilarious and pointed poet, digital artist, and meme producer. Jenson dropped by the kitchen this week to talk about antiblackness in meme culture, the ways in which vernacular is appropriated for material capital, building layers and layers of comedy into hi…

Artist Lex Brown makes videos, drawings, sculptures, and performances that mix science fiction with a healthy dose of dark humor. Recently, she and Aaron Fowler collaborated on a performance work called “C.E.” that debuted at the New Museum. After getting the chance to see it, I just had to invite her over for a conversation! Lex dropped by to talk…

Exactly what it says in the title. Nice.By Sean J Patrick Carney

Ross Simonini’s debut novel, “The Book of Formation,” is a fascinating exploration of the cult of personality in an age where mass media has replaced traditional spirituality. But Ross isn’t just a writer, he’s also an accomplished visual artist, a musician, and a gifted interviewer. And his novel, appropriately, is told almost entirely through the…

Happy Knife Month, screedlers! On this episode of the DSA Podcast, Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe got together to talk about their shared love of knives, and further covered topics as diverse as parental sex, what’s in the fucking news, why Thomas J Gamble is a style icon, Mystic River, the greatest breakups of 2013, astrological signs, True Detective, …

Providence-based artist and activist Sheida Soleimani was recently in town for her solo exhibition “Medium of Exchange” at the CUE Foundation. She stopped by the kitchen to talk about how this recent body of work uses comedy and queer identities to critique the relationship between oil production in the east and military industrialism in the west. …

Hollywood Handbook’s best co-host, Hayes Davenport, happened to be in New York recently on a trip back from Italy and stopped by the kitchen. First of all, I’m SORRY about the scrappy audio quality. I explain what happened in the intro. ANYWAYS, this was a really fun and informative episode. Hayes and I talked about the origins of Hollywood Handboo…

Writer Erin Schwartz drops by the kitchen this week to talk about her new gig as assistant editor at VICE imprint Garage. We also talked about why the Jersey Shore reboot is a Greek tragedy, the nonfiction publication she co-produces called Natasha, writing about culture using a lateral but rigorous approach, class appropriation in high fashion, th…

We've UNLOCKED the latest episode of The DSA Podcast (Darcie, Sean, and Azikiwe), the podcast within the podcast, usually only available to our Drip subscribers. On this very public episode, we discussed Darcie's new dog psychic, explored the lyricism of the Mars Volta and At the Drive-in, learned about what Azikiwe's been eating, and staged a heat…