Momus: The Podcast

This episode features Abbas Akhavan, a Tehran-born artist based between Montreal and Berlin, who is representing Canada at this year’s Venice Biennale. In a conversation recorded a few days before the opening, Akhavan discusses art as an ethics of encounter, the limits of language and representation, and the challenge of engaging non-human life without collapsing it into symbol or metaphor. Reflecting on institutional pressure, artistic refusal, and the importance of maintaining balance within one’s practice, he describes art as “a rehearsal, not re-enactment.” Framed by a reading from Charles Siebert’s 2016 New York Times Magazine feature “What Does a Parrot Know About PTSD?,” the conversation explores trauma, presence, and the possibility of holding intimacy without possession. Host Sky Goodden also reflects on attending a strike organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance during the Biennale’s preview week, during which the Canadian Pavilion was one of many that closed in solidarity. 

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

Thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Coach House Books and Esker Foundation, for supporting our work.

This episode features Camille Bacon, a Chicago-based writer, editor, and the co-founder of Jupiter Magazine. In a far-ranging conversation with Sky Goodden, Bacon discusses the potential and power of a “criticism in the commons,” the Black feminist constellations she’s participating in more broadly, and, as a publisher, her metrics for success. “ For me, success would be someone coming through the doors of our publication coming out the other side and being more audacious about what they demand.”

Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.

In this episode of Momus: The Podcast, Lauren Wetmore speaks with Line Ajan, a Franco-Syrian curator and translator and member of the editorial, artistic, and curatorial collective Qalqalah. The conversation unfolds through a reading of Iranian artist Ashkan Sepahvand’s text “Showing Without Revealing,” written for the 2017 exhibition he curated at Berlin’s Schwules Museum, which presented a decolonial perspective on institutional histories of homosexuality. Ajan discusses translating Sepahvand’s text into French with Qalqalah, whose members work across English, French, and Arabic. Reflecting on the process, she considers translation as a collaborative and situated practice and speaks about her own work across languages shaped by different colonial histories. She also brings forward the intimacy of translation as a form of reading, and the influence of writers including Sarah Rifky, Karim Kattan, Etel Adnan, and Gayatri Spivak.
Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.
Thanks to Line Ajan for her contribution to this season.

Jeneen Frei Njootli joins this episode of Momus: The Podcast from their ancestral homelands in Old Crow, Yukon, a Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation community north of the Arctic Circle. Frei Njootli reflects on how life in Old Crow has shaped their artistic practice, which is deeply intertwined with community, land, and language—including the Gwich’in language, Dinjii Zhuh k’yuu.
Frei Njootli shares an excerpt from fellow community member Brandon Kyikavichik’s forthcoming book, Gijiint’aii: Try Your Best, reflecting on Elder Erwin Linklater’s teachings about the generational significance of the night sky and constellations in Gwitchin life and culture. Frei Njootli describes “witnessing and being witnessed by the stars,” illustrating the intimate relationship between sky, land, and cultural knowledge in their practice. They also speak about writing as inseparable from making: a constant consideration of language that informs both thought and form, “It’s something that I don’t know how to not do.”
Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.
Thanks to Jeneen Frei Njootli for their contribution to this season.

Season 9 of Momus: The Podcast launches with Luther Konadu, an artist and publisher based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Reading from an influential book in his practice—The Narrow Door (Graywolf Press, 2016), subtitled “A Memoir of Friendship,” by Paul Lisicky—Konadu speaks with Sky Goodden about the intricacies, influences, and productive frictions of working with your friends. “I think because we've known each other [a long time], any kind of criticism that can come our way is seen as a sign of love… holding each other ahead of time before we step into the world.”
As the publisher of Public Parking and co-founding publisher of Carnation, Konadu also reflects on the pressures and rewards of producing art publications that respond to a regional context while operating within an international discourse—reaching beyond borders and speaking to diaspora. Threading that needle, alongside an art practice that features and involves members of his community, requires clarity, care, and a commitment to honesty. “I think maybe that's part of what attracted me to Paul's work. The very notion of talking about friendship in a book-length form is a way of talking about something that isn't talked about.”
Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.
Thanks to Luther Konadu for his contribution to this season.