Episode 065 Salome Asega
Show Notes
On today’s show we are visiting with Salome Asega, a true multihyphenate who not only leads New Inc, the New Museum’s incubator for people working at the intersection of art, design, and technology, but who has also maintained a vibrant artistic practice all throughout the years that her career as an arts administrator has been thriving. This might be due to the fact that when you look at Salome’s work as a professional, it really is just an extension of her work as an artist — delightfully speculative, collaborative, participatory, critical of technology’s role in society, and in many ways engaged with questions of expanding access and inclusion. In our chat we hear about Salome’s hijinks as a teen growing up in Las Vegas, pretending to window shop in high end shops and casinos so that she could sneak glimpses at the Marilyn Minter and James Turrell installations. We delve deep into Salome’s participatory and community oriented artistic practice, and we also hear about her role in co-founding POWRPLNT, a digital art collaboratory in Bushwick.
Links from the conversation with Salome
> Demo 2023: https://www.demo2023.org/
> Iyapo Repository: http://www.salome.zone/iyapo-repository
> POWRPLNT: https://www.powrplnt.org/
> http://www.salome.zone/about
> https://www.newinc.org/
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Cass: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host Cass Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. And today we are visiting with a true multihyphenate.
[00:00:17] Salome: Hi, I'm Salome Asega. I'm an artist and I'm the director of New Inc at the New Museum.
[00:00:23] Cass: I was so excited to have Salome on the show not only because she's the director of New Inc, the New Museum's incubator for people working at the intersection of art design and technology. And not only because previous to that, she was the director of POWRPLNT, a digital art collaboratory in Bushwick. But also to talk about her artistic practice. Salome is one of the few people I know in the art world who is leading a thriving career as a leader and administrator and miraculously has also managed to maintain an artistic practice. And this might be due to the fact that when you look at Salome's work as a professional, it's really just an extension of her work as an artist, which is delightfully speculative, collaborative, participatory, critical of technology's role in society. And in many ways is engaged with questions of expanding access and inclusion. We covered so much ground in our chat and I am so thrilled to share it with you all. Today's episode and the many more artists interviews coming your way was made possible thanks to the generous support from the wonderful folks at the Kramlich art foundation. Now without further delay, let's dive into this week's chat with Salome Asega.
[00:01:34] Salome: I grew up in Las Vegas to an Ethiopian American family. We had very much an open door policy, and so on a weekly rhythm, people would just come in and we would have coffee ceremonies. We would play music, we would tell stories, we would tell jokes, and I feel like I was very much nurtured by this kind of intimate, close-knit Ethiopian American community in the desert. And then I also, as a kid, fell in love with contemporary art, but didn't have many avenues or venues for experiencing the work in person. Vegas is such a funny place. We don't have a contemporary art or modern art museum. We don't have much of a gallery scene. When I would want to experience I would have to do this funny thing as a teenager and go into the malls in casinos and go into stores where I definitely could not afford anything like, the Louis Vuitton store or the Prada store and like, catch a James Turrell installation, or like a Marilyn Minter piece, you know, I was hungry for it. I did the performance of walking into these stores to like just learn. I would like, shop, touch some things and like slowly make my way to, you know, where, the light installation was or the photographs were placed or where there was like a sound piece, just to like witness for myself what was happening in other cultural centers across the country.
In high school I was totally the AV nerd. I was in the broadcast journalism class. It was my responsibility to write and edit and produce a daily 10 minute show that went to every homeroom classroom, and it was like a team of six of us we took it so seriously. I remember like daily, running with the VHS tape to the principal's office to ensure it's gonna play out to every classroom. I loved the experience of making daily announcements more fun and writing skits and editing them. Later, by the time I got to NYU it was very easy for me to fall in to video art. A lot of my early work was experimenting with media and also experimenting with the presentation, you know, so starting to play with projectors, multiple projectors, multiple monitors, and then also starting to build context for things that were screen screen-based. I was always in the wood shop welding. And so starting to like, bring out sculptural elements in front of projections or in front of monitors build a kind of more immersive world for what was happening in video. and so by 18 I was fully immersed. I feel like in some of the things I was witnessing in Vegas here in New York. In the desert I was like this little kid that didn't have access to like museums or galleries and, but it was like going to the mall to like see Art.
At nyu, I studied in Gallatin, which was the School for Individualized Study. Which was an experience I loved so much because I feel like it gave me a lot of confidence as a young person to of self determine my curriculum and concentration. I landed on social practice. I was very much interested in participatory design methodology, working with community and community. I had a minor in sculpture at Steinhardt and was studying under a painter, Kathy Burkhart who noticed how I was making and not just what I was making, and kind of introduced me to the world of social practice, socially engaged art. the summer of my junior year, I landed a fellowship at Creative Time. And so that fully immersed me in the process of making very thoughtfully, intentionally again, with people and in community. I graduated from NYU and was like, okay, I learned all these things and I'm miss smarty pants, but how do I actually build a life off of the things that I was thinking about so deeply? And I didn't have an answer and so I quickly fell into nightlife organizing with my friends and that was like a place where I could make money quickly, but also apply some of the skills I have in my toolbox, like video and editing and installation making. So I was just like a party person and I would take on gigs that I didn't have the skills for sometimes like I didn't know how to projection map. I didn't know how to do any kind of live coding, but I would just say yes and spend evenings and evenings, on forums trying to teach myself how to do these things for the gig. And after about like a year, year and a half of doing that, I was like, think I'm like, okay at this, I'm pretty good. maybe I should take this more seriously. Maybe this could be something. I started applying to grad schools that were in this art and technology space I applied for Parsons. I built my first website myself and got in.
I knew that there was a community of practice around doing this work, and I wanted to be immersed in that first, but also I just wanted access to the better tools and resources to really take it to the next level. My first couple months in the MFA program, I was like a kid in a candy store. I was just like, what? You can do this, you can do that. I was like, what's VR? That's coming back? What? And I was just trying everything. But I quickly fell in love with physical computing and playing with hardware, playing with software and thinking about these as artistic mediums. Also I was becoming just extremely self-aware of the privilege I had in being able to access all of this equipment and was thinking about how I could leverage my access institutionally outside. And so I started to host more and more workshops, physical computing workshops in partnership with organizations. And I think I fell very quickly into a STEAM space. Yeah, it was hard for me to play with all of these things and make cool things and feel like hmm, there are not enough people who look like me in this program. How can I also do the work of sharing what I'm excited about with other people who I know would be down if they just had the door open for them?
[00:07:31] Cass: So at some point after Parsons, I know that you were at POWRPLNT as their director. And from what I'm hearing, it seems like that's also kind of a big inflection point for you. Before your MFA being really active in, nightlife kind of stuff, and then after your MFA it seems like that's the beginning maybe of your like, administrative career in the arts?
[00:07:54] Salome: Mm-hmm. That's true. POWRPLNT is a digital Art collaboratory based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It started as like a pop-up space as part of various residencies at Stream Gallery and then Red Bull Studios, and then Hunter College. I came in when as a group we were thinking more seriously about starting our own kind of brick and mortar space. We found a bright orange beauty salon on Craigslist that had Rihanna on the awning and we were like instantly like, yes, this is it. We were, we feel called to this space and we began the work of renovating. Materials for the Arts is this amazing resource, in a warehouse in Queens where arts organizations or, all kinds of cultural institutions would donate unused materials furniture, equipment for then other organizations who had a membership to be able to come in and kind of shop for free. That is fully how we renovated this beauty salon and turned it into essentially a community computer lab. And so all of the tiles we got from there, all the soft seating, all the tables all the paint. everything came from there. We put out a $5,000 Kickstarter campaign to buy used computers. I think we bought six or seven iMacs that was it. We had a friend paint a mural on the outside. We had a carpenter friend build a kind of like welcome desk area for us and some storage, it was like very little resources, but we made it happen quickly. It was scary because we were a small team of people but ambitious, we had big ideas and it was scary because the dream felt so close, right? But like the path to getting there was totally unclear for us. We were like, how do we fundraise how do we build a kind of strategic plan for this a business plan? What are fair hiring practices? All of these things that we had never had to really think about and had to professionalize very quickly cuz we wanted our work to be seen and taken seriously. Although we had experiences in our own kind of, various internships, fellowships and like entry level jobs, this was like, okay, we're building a new thing together and we wanna create new protocols, and we also wanna do a bit of model making, right? Like we don't need to look like what the rest of the field is doing. But it was also important for us to like, know what the rules were to be able to break them. For anyone starting anything, it's such a vulnerable experience to say We believe X, and like to say it boldly and proclaim it and then like, put your weight behind it. I was also 23 or 24, I was really young. Yeah so funny when I think back now, just having, a much more professional experience under my belt. Just oh yeah, of course I was confused about how to start a board and how to vote. Of course.
[00:10:38] Cass: Wow, that's incredible. You were saying During your time at Parsons, having all of this access to, resources and tools and technologies and people and networks and wanting to make that accessible to other people. Of course POWRPLNT is one really big way you did that. But it seems that this also was an influence in your actual artwork that you were making. And I'm thinking in particular about your piece Iyapo Repository. I was hoping you could share that with our listeners so they can begin to get a sense of the work that you were making and that you continue to make and how that manifests itself.
[00:11:15] Salome: Yeah, so I'm an artist who makes work with technology about technology to critique technology. Right now there's a small group of mostly white men in Silicon Valley who are designing futures for us to all live in, without our consent. And I'm interested in leveraging the power of radical community imagination to dream up new futures for us that are plural and inclusive. So Iyapo Repository is a speculative archive that houses art and artifacts made by and for people of African descent. And the way we develop these artifacts are through a workshop series where people play a card game they're given parameters for which to think about the future. And so you can be given a card that asks you to think about the future in a utopian sense. You can be given a card that asks you to think about the future in apocalyptic sense. And then from there you have a couple cards that ask you to narrow in. There's a card that asks you to design for a specific domain. And so that can mean things like you're designing for healthcare, education, fashion farming, many things. And then from there it gets even more granular and you're asked to consider specific design qualities or physical qualities this artifact must have. So thinking about its shape, maybe it's spherical maybe there's some kind of technical quality, it blinks lights, and so from there our workshop participants draw their future artifacts on these very official documents that we then encase in acrylic and preserve in what we call the manuscript division of the Iyapo Repository. And what I love about this workshop series is that most people come in cuz they're excited about the kind of speculative nature of our work, they're excited about Afrofuturism or futurism generally, but oftentimes our workshops reveal that people are bringing in with them present anxieties about our world. So it's not so much about the future as it is about what they wanna change right now. In our first year we stopped at this card game And when we were developing this project, we were focused on the participants drawing their future artifact idea. And then slowly we started expanding the workshop to make room for prototyping and iteration. So like bringing to life the things people were drawing on paper. And so we would introduce three different tracks for doing that. One was a physical prototyping class where people could bring to life their artifacts through basic computing materials. So thinking about servo motors LEDs, simple things where people could develop a circuit and then like use soft materials like fabrics and cardboard or other things to construct their artifact. And then we had a VR engineering class where people would get into a headset and use a, tilt brush to draw their artifact in 3D space. We had a digital fabrication class where people could either laser cut or 3D print some aspect of their future artifact. And then from there, what would happen is that we would take these prototypes back to our studio, and then we would make them more robust. So their artifacts were like, in the end, final polished technically working artifacts.
[00:14:44] Cass: Wow. That's amazing. Everything is just like completely immersed in this idea of, rethinking paradigms with technology and then also rethinking access and what community looks like around access. Perfect background for stepping up as the director of New Inc. But what ultimately led to that? How did that come to be?
[00:15:03] Salome: I have a long history with New Inc. So when I was starting POWRPLNT with my friends Angelina Dreem and Anibal Luque, we were members actually in the early New Inc days. And this is where we learned how to set up a board how to become a non-profit organization. Just all the kind of important, 1 0 1 s of running a non-profit we learned at New Inc. We were a member of New Inc for two years and then I took a break and then came back as a mentor for a little bit. I worked at Ford Foundation for a number of years helping Ford and other foundations understand the landscape of art and technology. So, New Inc was very much an important actor in the landscape of art and technology nationally, so would often reference and point to New Inc as a case study. And then when this job opened up, I, felt so close to New Inc. In many ways it feels like a homecoming. I've been here since year three of the program. New Inc. Is the new museum's cultural incubator that supports creative practitioners working across art, design, technology, science, architecture and so much more. I like to say it's a home for the misfits, for the people who don't neatly fit into any one discipline. The more hyphens you have in your practice, the more lonely it gets in your work. And so I think we're very much community space for the people who have a lot of hyphens. New Inc has four main offerings. We offer professional development. We have a pretty rigorous curriculum that covers the kind of nuts and bolts of building a sustainable practice. But also we have workshops that make room and space for timely conversations about what's happening in our fields of design and technology. We have a mentorship program that is often cited as like the number one reason people join New Inc. You're very cared for in our program, you have a dedicated mentor, so someone you work with one-on-one. We have a whole crew of people who come in for office hour mentors, so they stop in for either in person or virtual studio visits with. And then we also split our members onto tracks our tracks act as sub thematic lines of inquiry, each one of these tracks has a track mentor. So you have lots of mentors in the program. We also host community programs because we are more than our work. We are people first. We're not just incubating projects, we're incubating people too. And so we make time to connect as humans. We take field trips and go to galleries or studios or museums. We have happy hours, we listen to music. And then lastly, all of this magic happens in a shared workspace. So typically we're right next to the museum, but currently while the museum is undergoing a renovation, we're in a temporary space on Hudson and Spring.
[00:17:52] Cass: It must be incredible to be at the helm of such a, a community like that, and just to see the constant flow of ideas and projects and people. I know it's hard to pick favorites, but I'm curious you know, if over the years there have been any residents or past projects that have been personally most impactful or memorable for you.
[00:18:17] Salome: Yeah, definitely. Movers and Shakers are alumni of our program. They developed an AR app called Kinfolk, essentially builds a second layer to the city. They replace existing monuments in New York City with people who we should be instead celebrating and it's just a beautiful soft protest, these physical monuments exist, but here are other people, women and people of color that we should be celebrating in New York City instead. I love, this project so much they're now fully incorporated. They received an amazing, I think 1.8 million grant from Mellon Foundation to take this project nationally. They're currently showing in MoMA's, New York New Public's exhibition. They're a New Inc success story.
[00:19:05] Cass: It seems like there is this beautiful symbiosis between your artistic practice as this very socially engaged and collaborative mode, and your work as a professor and your work in arts administration in these spaces that are fundamentally about building community and collaboration. Taking a big step back, I'm curious to hear, how do these things feed each other and then inform each other and enrich each other?
[00:19:32] Salome: I think I'm naturally a curious person I'm there to ask questions. I feel like I brought my professor hat here to New Inc. I'm here to help people think through their work, think through their projects, think about what they need, and be able to articulate that. the same energy I bring to an MFA studio critique is the same energy I bring into like a New Inc workshare. It's the same energy that I would bring into when I was working in philanthropy It's the same energy I would bring to a grantee who is working on a new initiative or a new project. I've always been there to poke and prod and ask questions and be a cheerleader.
[00:20:09] Cass: So coming back to your work as an artist, this social practice and very community oriented mode of creation. I would guess, can sometimes be at odds with institutional models of collection and acquisition and all of that. How do you navigate that and questions of authorship?
[00:20:29] Salome: So when we would show Iyapo Repository projects or any of my projects really that were made collaboratively, everyone who contributed their name is on the wall text, they're part of the placard, they're named on the website they're listed. I think this has always been slightly a struggle in my practice because it doesn't neatly fit into traditional model of supporting an artist. I have definitely been approached by institutions about collecting. It's kind of a non-starter conversation for me because the work wasn't made to be collected or preserved in that way. It wasn't made to be sold it has not happened.
[00:21:10] Cass: I love that. In light of that, how do you think about preservation when it comes to your artistic projects? How do you envision that happening? Or do you not think about these projects as something that need to necessarily exist for 200 years?
[00:21:28] Salome: I've always been inspired by Linda Good Bryant, and Just Above Midtown. I think, JAM was a space where small, incredible things were happening every day that added up to be this kind of incredible, rich, big history and story. In my practice right now in working with people, I'm not quite sure what the big story is yet. So I'm holding onto things and I'm like a bag lady. I've collected all these things from all these projects, I don't have enough space from everything yet to know how I want it to be preserved yet but I am holding onto everything.
[00:22:09] Cass: I really love that and I think that's a really astute and wise way of thinking about an artistic legacy. I'm curious if you have any advice for artists who are just establishing themselves in terms of how to balance practice with a day job or a career.
[00:22:26] Salome: I'm not gonna lie. It's hard finding the balance and there are gonna be times where it's not balanced and that's okay. Be gentle with yourself. When the nine to five takes over for a little bit, that's okay. But then there will be moments where the nine to five is slowing down a bit and that's when maybe you can ramp up what's happening in your studio practice. I feel really committed to my personal practice. And so that means even when it's hard finding time after hours or on the weekends to just do a little bit, I don't need to make everything all at once. I'm not producing with the same kind of speed I was before this role, and that's okay. That just means I'm making different kinds of things right now, and that's okay. my expression at this moment. That's where I'm at, and that's okay.
[00:23:13] Cass: I'm so curious to hear where you're taking things next. What's on the immediate horizon for New Inc and for you and any big ambitious plans for the future?
[00:23:23] Salome: So at the end of each cohort year, there's a culminating event called Demo Day. It's New Inc's flagship event and historically has always been hosted by the New Museum, and it's been an invite only audience of creative directors, curators, philanthropists, investors, people who can really help push our members projects to the next. Something I was thinking about a lot when I was at Ford Foundation and I think generally in our community, we talk about this in art and technology that we're oftentimes just talking to ourselves and we can do a better job, I think of storytelling and reaching people outside of our network. So what I am doing now is expanding Demo Day to become Demo 2023, a three day festival hosted at the New Museum. But we've also built now a stakeholder group of peer organizations who are hosting installations, exhibitions, performances by our members spread across the city, mostly in lower Manhattan. And so this festival will happen June 21st to the 23rd. the schedule will be announced this month it's free and open to the public, and we hope it becomes a reoccurring festival for people interested in this kind of nebulous world of design, science, art, and technology to come check out what our members are doing, but also check out what distinguished field leaders are up to. At demo you can expect to catch talks and panels, keynote lectures DJ sets, parties. We're hosting something called a Flash Everything party that's building off of like a flash tattoo party. And so you can come and have a quick exchange with six to 10 of our members. You can make something very quickly and take it away with you. So playing off of the idea of a flash tattoo party you can make like a flash zine. It feels very horizontal. It feels artist for artist, maker for maker, and there's a real spirit of what can we do together and let's problem solve together, and it feels good. There's a constant questioning of the kind of power dynamic between our administrative staff and the members in our program. And I think because there's an openness there and a transparency there's a closeness. There's a familial energy.
[00:25:42] Cass: One question I have in addition to demo 2023, which I am absolutely gonna go to, cuz it sounds amazing. What's coming up for you personally any, other exciting stuff?
[00:25:53] Salome: Yes, so last year I worked on a project about risk assessment tools. I interviewed a bunch of Black researchers about risk and how it's determined by algorithms and by humans, and how much of our social services are being now being determined or co determined by algorithms. In those interviews, this funny phrase kept coming up, they would call risk assessment tools, rats, cuz there are these pesky little things that have infiltrated social service delivery. And so I built a monster truck rat that housed the interviews an audio piece with the interview. With the Black researchers it had a double premier. It premiered in Toronto and then also premiered in Oslo at the Munch Museum as part of a new media triennial. I am now working on expanding the audio component and interviewing more researchers and more artists who are engaged in this space. And then I wanna hopefully this year release the audio component as a kind of audiobook on tape.
[00:26:51] Cass: That sounds incredible. Well, Salome thank you so much for coming on the show and giving us your time and telling your story, and I just can't wait to see what you do with your next year and a half at New Inc!
[00:27:05] Salome: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:27:07] Cass: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this conversation with Salome Asega. As always, if you like what you're hearing on the show, listener support is hugely important to making it all happen. You can always join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence. Or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York foundation for the arts, you can always do so at artandobsolescence.com/donate. And there you can also find the full episode archive, Including transcripts and show notes. And last but not least, you can always find us on social media @artobsolescence until next time take care of my friends. My name is Cass Fino-Radin, and this has been Art and Obsolescence.