Interviews

A selection of interviews I’ve conducted with artists, researchers, philosophers, and more.

Josh Cohen: Not Working

February 21, 2019
“What I feel like we’re seeing so much of in the age of the internet and social media is the workification, monetization, or commodification of every aspect of the human being that could once be seen as outside of the grind of activity.”
—Josh Cohen (Riding the Dragon)

Pierre Liebaert: Kissing Madness

June 28, 2016
“It’s sad to see people whose lives think for them, instead of the inverse. We have to think our life, we have to build it, we have to sculpt life. And time. We have to do something interesting with time.”
—Pierre Liebaert (GUP Magazine)

Rina Mae Acosta: The Happiest Kids in the World

August 23, 2017
"School is supposed to be a place to learn, not a place to compete and get the highest scores. It’s a place to let a child discover who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are.”
—Rina Mae Acosta (John Adams Institute)

Lake Montgomery: Art Is a Deep Love of Humanity

March 14, 2017
“It’s weird, though, because I’m not doing this for fame and glory. I don’t want to do it for myself, I want to be a vehicle. I want to be the vehicle through which speaks little whispers of God.”
—Lake Montgomery (Riding the Dragon)

Hettie Judah: The Artist-Mother Paradigm

October 20, 2022
"There is no artist mother paradigm. So, when I, as a middle-aged woman, make art, people assume it’s my nice hobby. They don’t take me seriously because it’s not a paradigm that we celebrate or that’s particularly visible, culturally. But being an artist mother is an identity that, once it’s articulated, people feel very strongly." —Hettie Judah (Riding the Dragon)

Holly Krieger: The Creativity and Structure of Pure Mathematics

October 7, 2017
“One moment, you have no clue what some piece of mathematics is saying or how it’s working, and suddenly there’s like this neurological shift and it clicks into place.”
—Dr. Holly Krieger (John Adams Institute)

Lisa Johnston: There but for the Grace of God

February 24, 2017
“Every sex worker wants to use a condom. Come on. It’s the clients. And if you’re in a desperate situation, you’re willing to take more money to not use a condom. These are vulnerable populations.”
—Lisa Johnston (Riding the Dragon)

Lauren Greenfield: The Influence of Affluence

May 15, 2017
"The effect of seeing affluent lifestyles on television has been proven to a) make people think more people have that kind of lifestyle than really do, so it’s a distorted view of what’s normal but b) it also stimulates desire for those things."
—Lauren Greenfield (John Adams Institute)

Debi Cornwall: State-Created Realities

July 20, 2020
"Even setting aside the critically important project of battling truth against lies, if we understand the exercise of state power as a performance, the focus shifts. What is the goal of this performance?"
—Debi Cornwall (Riding the Dragon)

Elizabeth Heyert: The Bound

January 3, 2017
"Somebody wants the experience of completely giving up responsibility – in every way. [...] You give it up, and you can go to this place they call ‘subspace’, which is somewhere in your head apart from your body."
—Elizabeth Heyert (GUP Magazine)

Sage Sohier: Witness to Beauty

March 31, 2017
"It’s easier not to be so beautiful, to be able to move through life a bit under the radar, and to be able to focus on what you feel really matters, rather than have to deal with the distraction of other people’s intense focus on your appearance."
—Sage Sohier (GUP Magazine)

David LaChapelle: An Optimistic Apocalypse

April 8, 2018
"As an artist you have a choice what you create, and I always wanted to make pictures that would use beauty and touch people and move them and inspire them."
—David LaChapelle (GUP Magazine)

Jay McInerney: Brightness in a Marriage

September 1, 2016
“We all have to deal with the deepest and most difficult questions in life – no matter how nice our wardrobe is, or no matter how good our education is, or no matter how packed our social schedule is.”
—Jay McInerney (John Adams Institute)

Ruben Jacobs: Artists as Adventurers

September 21, 2018
“I saw, in all these different practices, some kind of artistic creature who uses science but also design and technology to re-investigate the relationship with the Earth.”
—Ruben Jacobs (Riding the Dragon)

Julie Phillips: On Creativity, Motherhood and the Mind-Baby Problem

March 20, 2023
"In a way you do have to turn off your higher faculties to engage with a baby—who has intense use for your creativity and resourcefulness and problem-solving skills, but who is not interested in what interests you intellectually." —Julie Phillips (Milk Art Journal)

Mandy Smith: The Use of a Blank Piece of Paper

November 8, 2016
“I guess with any creative person, you’ve always got this bombardment of insecurity when you’re analyzing your own work. So there’s always some sort of insecurity with it, but that’s what pushes you to your next project because you’ve never really solved the use of the blank piece of paper.”
—Mandy Smith (TEDxAmsterdam)

Coralie Vogelaar: Pattern Recognition

September 14, 2016
"When an image is duplicated a lot, then we recognize it as an archetype, so then we duplicate it a lot. And then because it’s duplicated a lot, it’s being viewed a lot, and this has an influence in our brain."
—Coralie Vogelaar (GUP Magazine)

Stephen Shore: What Looking Looks Like

September 1, 2016
"I wanted a picture that was more the visual equivalent of speaking."
—Stephen Shore (GUP Magazine)

Alain de Botton: Art as Therapy

June 21, 2014
“Why should art always be so silent, always be so meek in its desire to change the world…? I think it’s a disaster to leave it so that the only people trying to change existence are large corporations and bigoted polemical groups."
—Alain de Botton (TEDxAmsterdam)

Max Pinckers: Outsourcing Creation to Machines

August 29, 2017
"A computer doesn’t emotionally interpret the picture. It sees a woman, it sees a child, and maybe it can recognise ‘grieving’ because it knows from all the other pictures that it’s supposed to be grieving, but it doesn’t feel anything."
—Max Pinckers (GUP Magazine)

Amy Webb: Reading the Future

February 15, 2017
“The future is our shared responsibility in the present.”
—Amy Webb (John Adams Institute)

Jessica Dimmock: Trying to Get Along in Your World

June 15, 2017
"They’re in a lot of ways trapped not only in male bodies but in male identities. [...]They did a really good job of putting a masculine identity on themselves, because that’s what was dictated. At Esprit, they’re taking it off."
—Jessica Dimmock (GUP Magazine)

Klaus Pichler: This Will Change Your Life Forever

July 25, 2017
"Some scientific discoveries have come from looking at something that seems to be – at that moment – irrational and then discovering that it’s not that irrational. So, the earth isn’t flat, it’s a sphere."
—Klaus Pichler (GUP Magazine)

Audrey Tautou: The (Un)importance of a Famous Face

March 14, 2018
"I will always have problems because I’m a self-made photographer. When you are an autodidact, you learn only from your mistakes. So, I learn a lot."
—Audrey Tautou (GUP Magazine)

Katrin Koenning: Traveling the Limitless Mind

June 23, 2017
"It’s not my aim to make statements about the idea of distance, but rather to question it. Much of my work is personal and comes from a point of feeling. To me, practice is a means of sense-making, and of being-in-the-world."
—Katrin Koenning (GUP Magazine)

Lera Boroditsky: Language Shaping Thought

September 11, 2016
"By the time you see the world, you’re seeing it through the lens of your language."
—Lera Boroditsky (John Adams Institute, 2016)

Further reading

An extended (not comprehensive) list of my published interviews, sorted A-Z by surname




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