Banned, Withdrawn, and Refused: The Art We Don't See Shapes Everything
The Intersect of Tech and ArtShow Notes
Chelsea and Georgia dive deep into the powerful theme of "Banned, Withdrawn, and Refused," exploring how the art we don't see fundamentally shapes our cultural narrative. The episode opens with African diaspora artists revealing weaving's inherent computational logic through sensor-connected looms, demonstrating that craft has always been technology. They discuss Amy Sherald's principled withdrawal of her entire National Portrait Gallery exhibition rather than allow censorship of a trans-affirming artwork, and Comic-Con's dramatic 24-hour reversal to completely ban AI art after artist backlash. Through Juergen's personal journey from 1980s special effects photography to AI art, the hosts illustrate technology's repeated disruption of creative careers. The conversation spans from Greenlandic TikTokers using America's opioid crisis imagery as political satire, to Trevor Paglen's "techno sublime" photography of invisible surveillance infrastructure, to the troubling reality of "human-centric design" as extraction in disguise. Throughout, Chelsea and Georgia examine who controls artistic narratives, how institutions self-censor to avoid controversy, and whether technology truly serves human creativity or simply optimizes its extraction.
More from The Intersect of Tech and Art
The companion podcast to Issue No.90 of The Intersect, with a twist: this time the curator, Juergen, is the one being interviewed rather than discussed. The animating question is what we gave up when our first reflex became suspicion instead of delight, and who pays the fine when proof lands on the artist and arrives too late. Candid, unresolved, and worth sitting with before you read the full issue.
The companion podcast to Issue No.89 of The Intersect, with a twist: this week the curator is the one being interviewed, answering in his own voice rather than being discussed. The animating question is whether the loudest creative protest only ever reaches the already convinced, while the quietest work slips inside a trusted frame and tilts it from within. He keeps circling the gap between who a work is made for and who it actually finds, and he is honest that he cannot always close it.
The companion podcast to Issue No.88 of The Intersect, with a twist: this time the curator, Juergen, is the one being interviewed rather than discussed. He answers for a title he has to defend, and for the question underneath it: when machines can make anything in seconds, why would anyone choose the hardest, silliest path on purpose? A conversation about stubbornness, craft, and whether all of this is charming or quietly poignant.
The companion podcast to Issue No.87 of The Intersect, in a different shape this time: rather than the usual two-host conversation, the host interviews the curator, who speaks in his own voice about the issue and his own experience. The animating question: once images stopped describing the world and started acting on it, what are we actually still looking at, and can art make those tools tell the truth again? Forward-pointing and candid, it sends you back to the newsletter for the full picture.
The companion podcast to Issue No.86 of The Intersect. Chelsea and Georgia wrestle with a quietly unsettling question: when did our digital work become more fragile than a photographer's glass plate, and is the infrastructure we've handed artists even capable of saving it? A conversation about permanence as a choice you design, not a promise the cloud keeps for you.