
Hosts: Tori Hoover and Emma Vendetta Salt: Homer called it “a divine substance.” Plato considered it as the element most dear to the gods, a distinction awarded for its central role in human life. Indeed, our bodies cannot function properly without it. But as the climate changes and warms and shifts in response to industrialization, the role of salt is shifting, too. Salts from human activity, like those in fertilizers and de-icers, are contaminating waterways and changing freshwater ecosyst...
Jun 2
53 min

Host: Lutz Koepnick In today’s episode of Art of Interference we speak with Ursula Biemann, a Swiss artist based in Zurich. Her work over the last decades has explored forests in the Amazon and the Andes as critical engines of planetary life. In her widely exhibited films and installations Biemann continually seeks to bridge existing divides between Indigenous knowledge systems and Western science. We also hear from biologist and conservation ecologist Malu Jorge about the wonders of car...
Feb 27
59 min

Soil is the foundation of life, but how often do we recognize it as such? On this episode of the Art of Interference, we speak with visual artist Allie Horick about her soil quilts—works that stitch together earth from family burial sites across Tennessee to tell a story of dispersed legacy and delicate connection. We also talk with regenerative farmer Maxwell Patterson and Vanderbilt professor Chris Vanags about the science of soil and the benefits of climate-smart agriculture. Whether used ...
Dec 23, 2025
47 min

In this episode of Art of Interference, we explore the medium of wood as a means of rethinking traditional ideas of human and nonhuman being amid a world of planetary emergencies. “People are really more like wood than we might think,” carpenter, artist, and scientist Seri Robinson insists in our conversation. Wood is influenced by the weather, by climate change, and by its proximate environments—and we, as humans have much to learn from it. And in our interview with artist Shinji Turner-Yama...
Dec 3, 2025
46 min

Lithium plays a key role in the green energy transition. Its extraction, however, comes at considerable costs for the environment and for local communities, particularly in the so-called lithium triangle in Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. In this episode, we speak with artist and curator Guely Morató Loredo and her collaborator, sound artist Victor Mazón Gardoqui, about two projects that engage with the mining of lithium in South America today, its devastating impact on Indigenous people and s...
Aug 28, 2025
48 min

Diné artist and photographer Will Wilson has been photographing hundreds of abandoned uranium mines and remediation site on the Navajo Nation over the last few years. In this episode, we speak with Will about this project, called “Connecting the Dots for a Just Transition,” and the power of photography to reveal and remediate environmental injustice. We also hear from Leah Lowe, the director of Vanderbilt University’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, which exhibited Will’s ...
Dec 6, 2024
48 min

In this final episode of season 2, we talk with dancer and dance scholar Mariama Diagne about the art of “heavy hovering”—the ability of modern ballet and dance to teach us a different way of moving and being on Earth. We discuss efforts to relocate human life to other planets to escape the effects of climate change, the beauty of meeting the challenges of terrestrial gravity, the environmental legacy of Pina Bausch’s dance theater, and the transformative qualities of West-African dance pract...
Nov 2, 2024
56 min

Smoke is a beautiful—yet sometimes strange, or even terrifying—phenomenon. In today’s episode, we explore how the mysterious qualities of smoke open up possibilities for exploration and better understanding of human relationships with the earth and air. First, we get to know the multi-colored, pyrotechnic smoke sculptures of esteemed artist Judy Chicago, who began producing these works in the late 1960s as a response to the male-centric land art movement. Then, we hear from Bill Fox, the Dire...
Oct 17, 2024
50 min

“Wind, wind, wind. If you repeat the word wind often enough, then it will blow by itself.” These are the poetic words of this episode’s featured artist, Theo Jansen, who has spent the last three decades creating and evolving his strandbeests—massive PVC creatures that walk down the Dutch coast powered by the wind alone. Wind propels sail boats, kites, turbines, and strandbeests alike, all with invisibility. Join us as we explore how climate change is actually changing winds, discuss on-shore ...
Sep 13, 2024
45 min

Our air and atmosphere require 21% oxygen to sustain life as we know it. Human-induced climate change has put this ratio under pressure. In this episode of Art of Interference, we feature Santiago Sierra’s work 52 Canvases and Ted Chiang’s short story Exhalation as two recent interventions that draw our attention to the precarity of the air around us. We talk with curator Meredith Malone about the strange beauty of Sierra's toxic images and we discuss what can be learned from marine mammals a...
Aug 16, 2024
56 min
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