In this roundup of 10 recent podcast episodes featuring members of the Pratt community, including faculty and alumni, learn about the complex histories of art materials, using humor in serious work, and how a major career or life pivot can transform creativity.
The Materials of Art
Launched this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s podcast Immaterial is produced and co-created by Benjamin Korman, BFA Writing ’11. It traces the stories of what makes up and gives meaning to art with each episode hosted by poet Camille T. Dungy concentrated on one material and its global history, such as recent examinations of paper, concrete, and linen.
Listen on the Metropolitan Museum of Art site.
“5,000 years of art, one material at a time: What can everyday materials reveal about the world around us?”
Description of the Immaterial podcast.
A Career Shift from Media to Technology
Arem Duplessis, MS Communications Design ’96, joined the Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) podcast to discuss why he shifted from a career in magazine design for high-profile publications like The New York Times Magazine and GQ to one in technology where he now works as a creative director at Apple. Duplessis was recently honored at Legends 2022.
Listen on the Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) site.
“I want to bring a lot more Black creatives into the world of design. Like my mother did for me. I just want to educate, at a young age, the possibilities of what a design career looks like.”
Arem Duplessis, Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!)
The Issues Shaping Schools
Co-hosted by Mark Winston Griffith, visiting assistant professor in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE), and former faculty member Max Freedman, School Colors is a documentary podcast on how education is shaped by race, class, and power. This year, NPR’s Code Switch presented the podcast’s second season which focuses on a school district in Queens and questions around a diversity plan.
Listen on NPR’s site.
“In my work, I’ve tried to mobilize whole groups of people to challenge, then transform policies and practices. I’m not saying it’s easy. Feeling that change is possible ebbs and flows.”
Mark Winston Griffith, School Colors
Designing for a More Equitable World
On the podcast Beyond Ray: Women Led Conversations on Industrial Design, designer Ana Mengote Baluca, visiting instructor of industrial design, shared her dedication to social equity, the value of cultural preservation, and striving towards work that reflects your values.
Listen on Spotify.
“We keep on driving innovation so that the pie would get larger, but our pie is already large. Our problem is actually making sure that everyone gets a share of the pie.”
Ana Mengote Baluca, Beyond Ray: Women Led Conversations on Industrial Design
Art, the ’90s, and Appropriation
As the inaugural guest on a new series hosted by curator Helen Molesworth as part of Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast, Steve Locke, professor of fine arts, considered the return of ’90s aesthetics in visual culture and the issue of appropriation in art.
Listen on David Zwirner’s site.
“Something that happens to an individual gets memorialized by their family. … When we talk about a tragedy that happens to a people … how do we memorialize that? Who does that belong to?”
Steve Locke, Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast
Advancing New Perspectives in Disability Storytelling
On an episode of Forum presented by KQED, filmmaker Nasreen Alkhateeb, BFA Sculpture ’07, joined other Ford and Mellon Foundation 2022 Disability Futures Fellows for a conversation on the future of disability storytelling in film, visual art, dance, and more. Alkhateeb is featured in the latest issue of Prattfolio.
Listen on KQED’s site.
“After I became aware that I was disabled and that I could actually use disability in my own work, I started to broaden the peers around me and my community to bring in more disabled filmmakers and storytellers so that I could also use their firsthand POV knowledge to enrich the content I was creating.”
Nasreen Alkhateeb, Forum
An Experience that Changed Everything
Samantha Hunt, professor in the Writing Department, joined LitHub Radio’s Thresholds podcast, which features conversations with writers about moments that changed their lives or practices. With host Jordan Kisner, she shared how grief and believing in ghosts informed her recently published The Unwritten Book.
Listen on Apple Podcasts.
“There’s a lot of different ghosts. I was thinking about, what are the things that we carry in our body that we can’t get rid of?”
Samantha Hunt, Thresholds
Better Living Through Design
Jeffrey Kapec, adjunct professor of industrial design, discussed the process of designing a device to help physically compromised people move better and live more freely on the Healthy By Design podcast co-hosted by Alecia Wesner and Professor Emeritus Bruce Hannah, BID ’63.
Listen on Spotify.
“A designer should understand the methodology and techniques of a method actor because if you want to get into the head of the user, you have to become that character.”
Jeffrey Kapec, Healthy By Design
Building Ever Upwards
Stefan Al, visiting associate professor in Graduate Architecture and Urban Design (GAUD), joined the Slate Money podcast hosted by Felix Salmon to discuss Supertall, his new book about the world’s tallest skyscrapers.
Listen on the Slate site.
“It’s to some extent maybe innate that we’re trying to reach towards the sky. And it’s maybe part of a larger human ambition that we’re trying to break new ceilings.”
Stefan Al, Slate Money
Dialogues Between Art and Writing
James Hannaham, professor in the Writing Department, and artist Nina Katchadourian joined in a conversation for the Artists on Writers, Writers on Artists series presented by Artforum and Bookforum. They shared their interests in creating work imbued with real life and the experiences of change.
Listen on Apple Podcasts.
“People think that serious literature can’t be funny … I knew early on this was a complete falsehood and that I was never going to be able to write anything if I had to suppress humorous things because that’s how I got through my life.”
James Hannaham, Artists on Writers, Writers on Artists