Barbara London: My guest today is María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Born in 1959 in Matanzas, Cuba, she trained at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Havana between 1976 and 1979. She went on to study at the Havana Instituto Superior de Arte during the period of 1980 to 1985 and attended the MFA program at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Bunting Institute Radcliffe College Harvard University 1993- 1994. Magda is an active and very much in-demand artist and speaker. She is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She recently received the ARTnews Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing her for her contributions to art and for her outstanding retrospective that opened in 2023 at the Brooklyn Museum, went on to the Frist Museum in Nashville, the Nasher Museum, and will now be presented at the Getty in Los Angeles. Last year, she was honored with a MacArthur Fellowship. 

Our conversation is the grand finale of the entire Barbara London Calling podcast series, which I launched four years ago. It began in 2020 during Covid when, like me, artists were all in lockdown and stuck at home. It was the perfect moment to dialogue with such artists as Anri Sala, Tracey Moffatt, Lorraine O’Grady, and others from around the world. I wanted to know what was on their mind during such a challenging moment of enormous change. I continued the project over the next few years, still interested in understanding what the changes to art practice were. With this third and final series, I’ve now spoken with a total of 34 artists, and each has generously shared insight into what their art is about. Magda, thank you so much for joining me for the Season 3 finale—and the series finale—of Barbara London Calling. 

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Barbara, I am so honored to be in such great company and that you have chosen to invite me for the grand finale. You called me many years ago, when you invited me to be part of your project at that moment. I received a letter from you in 1994, and that, too, was sort of a calling. So, I am happy to be back here in conversation with you. Thank you so much.

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Barbara London: My guest today is Marco Fusinato, the Australian artist and musician whose work explores noise and duration. As a musician, his approach is conceptual rather than technical. Born in 1964 in Melbourne, Marco released his first solo record in the ’90s. He has said he uses the guitar as a signal generator, and uses amplifiers as an instrument creating improvised noise guitar performance that can run for hours, days, even months. His work has been shown across the world, including the 2022 Venice Biennale in the Australian Pavilion. We first met in Melbourne about 15 years ago when I had a residency at the Gertrude Contemporary Studio. As soon as I arrived, I knew I had to meet you. Marco, thank you for joining me.

Marco Fusinato: Hi, Barbara. Nice to be here.

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Barbara London: My guest today is the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Born 1967 in Mexico City, Rafael emigrated to Canada, where he is now based. His work has been shown across the world, including at the 2007 Venice Biennale, where he was the first artist to represent Mexico. Rafael’s interactive digital work examines social and political issues using technologies that include surveillance cameras, artificial intelligence, projection mapping and robotics. His survey exhibition “Obra Sonora” is on view at the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida, through June 15th, 2025. Rafael, thank you for joining me.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: It’s my pleasure, Barbara.

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Barbara London: My guest today is the artist, Josh Kline. Born in 1979, Josh studied film at Temple University in Philadelphia before he relocated to New York in 2002. Still based in New York, Josh is well known for creating immersive installations using video, sculpture, photography, and design to question how emerging technologies are changing human life in the 21st century. His art has been shown at the Whitney; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art; and at many other museums and galleries around the world. Josh, thank you for joining me.

Josh Kline: Glad to be here.

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Barbara London: Today I’m speaking with Brooklyn-based artist, Matthew Ritchie. Born 1964 in London, Matthew received a BFA from the Camberwell School of Art, before he moved to the United States in 1987. He works in installation, painting and public art, drawing from ideas as varied as creation myths, particle physics, thermodynamics and art history. His artwork has been shown around the world, including in the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Architecture Biennial. It is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Matthew, thank you for joining me.

Matthew Ritchie: Such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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Barbara London: My guests today are Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, two sound and installation artists who began collaborating in 1995. Based in rural British Columbia, they often travel internationally to develop and install their artwork, which explores the idea of narration and the plasticity of noise, sound, music, and poetry. Their work has been shown in many exhibitions and in major museums around the world. Janet and George, thank you both for joining me.

Janet Cardiff: Oh, thank you for inviting us.

George Bures Miller: Yeah, it’s great to be here.

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Barbara London: My guest today is Stan Douglas, the acclaimed Canadian artist who reimagines the mediums of photography, film and video while looking at technology’s role in image making and how those media apparatuses infiltrate and shape our collective memory. Born 1960 in Vancouver, where he still works, Stan has shown several times in Documenta, at the Venice Biennale, and in the Whitney Biennial. Stan’s work often pulls from his interests in music, movies, television and theater, aiming for what he sees as the small moments that are a local symptom of a global condition.

One function of art, Stan says, is to see things we think we know in a different way. Often, he will take an existing narrative and restage it, revealing what he calls the tension between different forces at play. Stan’s latest show, “The Enemy of All Mankind” is currently on view at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York through October 26. Stan, thank you so much for joining me.

Stan Douglas: Thank you. Nice being here.

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