Bless the Phone with Ross Simonini
5/13/202620 min
Ross Simonini is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. Read his essays Bless The Phone here and Through the Fire here. Check out his essential interviews with so many modern masters at The Believer! Noa on using our phone less. Dapne on using our phone less. Rabbi Yoni on the bathroom blessing.
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Ross has held solo presentations of his work at the Sharjah Biennial (UAE), Francois Ghebaly (NYC), anonymous gallery (NYC), Et Al (SF), SHRINE (LA), suns.works (Zurich), Shoot the Lobster (LU), and Human Resources (LA). His novel, The Book of Formation (2018, Melville House) chronicles the rise of a fictional philosophical movement. His essays appear in the New York Times, McSweeneys, ArtReview and The Paris Review. He releases music under his own name and has released music as a member of the bands, NewVillager and Trespassers William. He has performed at Performa, Andy Warhol Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. As a professor, he has taught seminars on experimental process, writing, art, sound, and dialogue at Columbia University, CA College of the Arts, and UCLA. He served as an editor at The Believer for a decade and has created audio programs for SFMOMA, KCRW, and ArtReview. He ran ALICIA, a gallery & performance space on his property in Altadena before the fire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsZach· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hey, it's Zach. This is Weirdly Helpful, I hope. We've spent a lot of time on this show talking about how to use our phones less.
Mike Pesca0:11
Don't look on your phone when you're bored.
Zach· Host0:13
And what do, what should you do instead?
Mike Pesca0:15
Write a letter to someone.
Zach· Host0:18
That was my daughter's advice from last year. And then the artist Dafna Silberger offered this one: "Just don't take your phone into the bathroom. Do something else with that time."
Dafna Silberger· Soundbite0:28
So okay. Well, in the bathroom [laughs] in the bathroom I have started to put art on the wall directly in front of the toilet.
Zach· Host0:39
Uh-huh.
Dafna Silberger· Soundbite0:39
And so now I just look at the art on the wall.
Zach· Host0:43
[laughs] Do, is it like you, you actually like switch it out?
Dafna Silberger· Soundbite0:45
Switch it out. They're all on like little, um, binder clips.
Zach· Host0:49
Oh, okay.
Dafna Silberger· Soundbite0:50
And so, and so if- So with my guest today- ... yeah, it's pretty easy to like switch them out ...
Zach· Host0:53
we're not talking necessarily about using our phones less. This isn't about creating resistance to our phone. It's really about sanctifying our relationship with it.
Ross Simonini· Guest1:04
Uh, my name is Ross Simonini. I'm an interdisciplinary artist. I write and make paintings and make music.
Zach· Host1:16
Talking to Ross genuinely changed the relationship I have with my phone. It started after I read an essay that he wrote. Here are the first couple paragraphs.
Ross Simonini· Guest1:25
[gentle music] Last year I developed