Vija Celmins - Background Sound

Here are two clips of the artist Vija Celmins talking about two pieces of artwork, one a painting and the other a small sculpture work. These clips were produced by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for their audio guides for visitors.

I saw "To Fix the Image in Memory" at the museum, which looked like a pile of small brown stones in a glass box, and I would have completely passed it by and not realized what she'd done if I hadn't listened to her talk about it in the audio guide.

Even though these clips are very short you get a good sense of her approach to making art.

Gun with Hand #1
The picture Vija Celmin's is available here, on the MoMA website.



To Fix the Image in Memory
This work is viewable here.





PHOTO: David C. Foster

Interview with Guillermo Del Toro

I really admire how Terry Gross can turn a minor starting point, like the release of a new movie, into a thoughtful, far-reaching conversation. A lot of credit goes to the interesting people she interviews, but it seems like she goes in to every interview with the assumption that the interviewee, no matter how minor, has something fascinating to talk about.

I recently remembered this excellent Fresh Air interview from 2007, with Mexican movie director Guillermo Del Toro. The conversation begins with his movie, Pan's Labyrinth, but goes on to talk about fairy tales, horror and the psychological function of dark stories. He explains how his approach to stories and art came out of childhood experiences of fear and trauma. Del Toro is articulate and heartfelt and the interview is one-of-a-kind.



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NPR page for the episode

IMAGE: JOSEF STUEFER

"It was not love, and it was certainly not a momentary weakness. It was an attempt to ward off chaos."

The New Yorker's monthly fiction podcast gives me a fluttery feeling whenever I see a new episode materialize in my itunes. When the shows are good, they're very good- the voices, the story, the language and the analysis. When they don't work, it's usually because the reading is halting or stilted, and I often don't finish those episodes.

I'm posting this one because the story, a quasi-personal history by Sergei Dovlatov, amazed me with its deceptively straightforward writing. Dovlatov finds a way to write about mixed emotions, odd circumstances, and contradictory characters in a way that feels realistic, sometimes humorous, and quietly reverent.

It's read by David Bezmozgis with an accent carrying Russian and Canadian inflections (I think?). His pacing harmonizes perfectly with the story.




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Page for the podcast episode on the New Yorker website.

PHOTO: BOLSHAKOV

Chirping

I tracked down this brief NPR story from 2005 because I remember how it crossed topics, covering both a biological field science subject and a human interest subject. You get a chance to listen closely to dialects of birds and the dialects of people. It's worth listening just to hear the accents in the second half.

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NPR page for the story.




PHOTO: claudiogennari

This I Believe: Creating Your Own Happiness

Wayne Coyne of the band The Flaming Lips wrote one of the only "This I Believe" submissions that I liked.

He has a gravelly, rich reading voice, and the story he begins the essay with is simple and touching.

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Page for the episode on NPR.

PHOTO:Katharine Kuhl