How the Debates Over Art, Race, and Tech Have Changed

Aria Dean· Guest0:00

[instrumental music] Right now I'm feeling like, uh, making objects and works doesn't feel sufficient.

Ben Davis· Host0:04

Mm. Sufficient to what?

Aria Dean· Guest0:05

Like, I think sufficient for, like, how much research I like to do, how much I want to be engaged with by a public or by, like, whatever the audience is, however small or large in terms of, like, critique, I guess.

Ben Davis· Host0:17

[upbeat music] I'm Ben Davis, and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News. If you had to pick two conversations that defined the last 10 years in art, one would certainly be about digital culture and online life. The other would be about race, racism, and representation. The critic and artist Aria Dean has been at the center of both these conversations. As a theorist, Dean's essays on these topics are much cited. You can find them gathered in the recent collection Bad Infinity from Sternberg Press. She also worked for some years at Rhizome.org, one of the most important venues advocating for digital art. As an artist, Dean has been in many important shows, from the Hammer Museum's Made in L.A. Biennial to the Whitney Biennial here in New York. Recently, for the Performa Biennial of Performance Art, Dean staged The Color Scheme, a two-person theatrical work which is also set to tour to Berlin later this year. The Color Scheme focuses on an imagined meeting in the 1920s in Berlin between