In recent years, my interest has grown in how art can help tackle the environmental devastation of our planet. During that time, I’ve begun following the artist and educator Ellie Irons, both for her work and her thinking.
Ben Valentine
Ben Valentine is an independent writer living in Cambodia. Ben has written and spoken on art and culture for SXSW, Salon, SFAQ, the Los Angeles Review of Books, YBCA, ACLU, de Young Museum, and the Museum of the Moving Image, to name a few.
Government Pressure Forces Closure of Vietnamese Artist Residency
What started as a series of unexpected visits from Vietnam’s Cultural Police has left one of Southeast Asia’s most respected artist residency programs temporarily stalled.
A Museum for Our Postnatural Age
The Center for PostNatural History’s mission is to collect, document, and study living organisms that have been intentionally altered by people.
The Stories of Content Moderators, Hosted on the Darknet
Eva and Franco Mattes’s latest work, Dark Content (2015–ongoing), is a series of videos only viewable through the Tor Browser and hosted on the darknet.
A Floating, Abandoned Building Will Become a Space for Khmer Art
Located in what was a massive floating hotel in the Kingdom of Wonder, The Boat could become a thriving center for arts and culture in Cambodia.
Plastiglomerate, the Anthropocene’s New Stone
The new stone is a fusion, through fire, of molten plastic and natural materials.
An Artist Collects the Stories of Cambodian Refugees
LONDON — Artist Dayanny So left Cambodia when he was 24 years old.
The Surreal Beauty of Feedlots by Satellite
Quarantined into rectangles, tiny dots litter the landscape.
Artists Interpret a Colonial Collection of 125,660 Indonesian Specimens
Intended or not, the words used around collections set agendas, and what is collected and what remains absent is always political.
A Chess Set in Homage to Marcel Duchamp, with Mustaches
Last year artists Scott Kildall and Bryan Cera collaborated on a project called “Readymake: Duchamp Chess Pieces,” which reconstructed a chess set designed by Marcel Duchamp with a 3D printer.
One Artist’s Quest to Turn Beach Plastic into Art
Confronting and unraveling the intimate relationship that contemporary society has with plastic is at the heart of artist Pam Longobardi’s mission for the Drifters Project.
An Artist’s Engineering Feats with Flimsy Materials
BERLIN — Walking into the Hamburger Bahnhof brings back a very formative moment in my art education.