• 6' 21'' Explain Me's episode Related Utopias: Bitcoin and the Artworld with Kevin McCoy.
• 7' NFT definitions and the blockchain
• 13 Do artists need to care?
• 21' The Guardian features Marina Galperina's Vine Show.26' Beeple Mania and aesthetics discussion - Liberal Jon McNaughton or early digital art maximalism in the style of Cliff Evans and Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung?
• 40' NFT platforms and markets. Massimo Franceschet and Sparrow Read's The Inconvenient Truth About Secondary Markets, Part II 43' Legacy Russell tweets about the toxic white male culture dominating NFT conversation. Follows up with a shout out to QTPOCIA+ and female-identified people engaging NFTs.
• 44' Who is the face of NFTs? Kenny Schachter. His NFT article on Artnet. 
• 47' Kenny Schachter's "Scam Likely" on Nifty Gateway.51' Alternatives - Casey Reese's Artist-to-artist exchange with Bitmark.com, Feral File. Goes live March 19.
• Also relevant: Reese's Medium article, Collecting Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction 
• 57' - NFT and blockchain carbon footprint1 hour 10' Reasons for optimism1 hour 16' Art pricing and Greg Allen's Facsimile Objects
• 1 hour 22' Amy Whitaker discusses valuation and commensuration sociological studies

• Amy Whitaker, A New Way To Pay Artists, TEDXfoggybottom
• Amy Whitaker and Roman Kraussl, Fractional Equity, Blockchain, and the Future of Creative Work, Management Science, July 2020
• Amy Whitaker, Art and Blockchain: A Primer, History, and Taxonomy of Blockchain Use Cases in the Arts, Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts. Summer 2019
• Amy Whitaker, Hannah Grannemann, Artists’ Royalties and Performers’ Equity: A Ground-Up Approach to Social Impact Investment in Creative Fields, CMSE Vol 3, no 2, pg 33-51.
• Memo Atkin, The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of #Cryptoart, Dec 14 2020
• Rea McNamara, How Crypto Art Might Offer Artists Increased Autonomy, March 2, 2021

In this episode of Explain Me, we continue our conversation with Artnet's National Critic Ben Davis as we take stock of 2020. 

In this episode: 

• We discuss the biases of algorithm sorting
• Ben Davis coins the term cultural inflation, a term that refers to franchise media properties.
• We examine the relevance of ART CLUB 2000 the recent subject of Ben Davis' review, Why the New ART CLUB2000 Retrospective Offers Lessons for Today’s Artists That Transcend Pure ’90s Nostalgia
• We name check Davis' The State of Culture, Part One.

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In this episode of Explain Me, we take stock of the year in art with Artnet's National Critic Ben Davis.

What happened in the art world in 2020?  We ask this knowing that we obviously have not seen a lot of art or attended anything remotely like a normal opening. But, a lot happened this year, even if we experienced it all at a distance.

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In this episode of Explain Me we talk to Andy Adams (@FlakPhoto on instagram) a culture producer, and long time digital director. Andy is the founder of FlakPhoto Projects, an international community of photographers that operates in a parallel path to the one Powhida and Johnson come from—the New York based studio and museum world. Andy, William, and Paddy began working online around the same time—2003-2005, so we start our conversation there. We track through the exuberance and possibility we saw online in the early aughts, the economic collapse of the late aughts, and fraught political environment we’re now navigating. Subjects include: The signature FlakPhoto style, the ethics of documentary photography, and the the postponed Guston show at the Tate.

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In this episode of Explain Me, critic and curator Antwaun Sargent joins us to discuss the effects of the pandemic and Alex Greenberger’s Zombie Figuration, a confusing essay that appeared earlier this month in ARTnews. In the first half hour we discuss the disparate effects of the pandemic and general politics. Then we move on to art, zombies,  race,  and why art has limits. Listen on Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.

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Artist Nayland Blake joins the podcast to discuss the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer, mass protests, and the resurgence of COVID as the backdrop for public art and how museums are addressing diversity.  Spearheaded in large part by Blake, we discuss all of these issues  through the lens of what people need and how art makers, art workers and arts institutions answer that need.

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This week on Explain Me, co-hosts William Powhida and Paddy Johnson talk to arts organizers and activists Heather Bhandari and Nikki Columbus about the challenges for mothers during the pandemic, and the challenges for arts workers seeking to make changes to a system that no longer works for them. 

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Jack Whitten, Black Monolith II (For Ralph Ellison), 1994

Donna DeSalvo assembles some of Andy Warhol’s greatest work for his retrospective at the Whitney Museum, while revelations that Whitney Vice Chair Warren B. Kanders owns a company that sells tear gas used at the border shake museum staff. Soul of a Nation at the Brooklyn Museum looks at the history of political activism, while Jack Waters offers a mix of bag of awe inspiring abject art paired with groan inspiring sculptures and paintings. Jack Whitten at the Metropolitan Museum dazzles, Art and Conspiracy flops, and Amazon is going to drive Queens residents out of their homes. Podcast and relevant links below.

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In this episode of Explain Me William Powhida and Paddy Johnson discuss the horrific business practices of Peter Brant and Interview Magazine, a fundraising campaign at University of North Carolina so misguided that firing is in order, and the latest headscratching Creative Time project. To help us discuss all of this, and how the new tax code will affect artists accountant and painter Hannah Cole joins us.

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