This essay argues for a different approach to On Art and Artists, one that delves into the social and political mechanics of the “artist interview” — as an object and form integral to the history of art — and the historically specific stakes of Blumenthal and Horsfield's distribution of the tapes to universities, museum libraries, and art festivals in the 1970s and 1980s. In what follows, I argue that the videotaping of artist interviews during this early period of the VDB’s development was itself a unique and important act, contributing to the understanding of artistic labor as a vehicle for ethical engagement.

The interview with the artist was conducted by Museum of Modern Art curators Eva Respini and Ana Janevski for Projects 100: Akram Zaatari by email in April 2013. The essay was published in conjunction with the exibition Projects 100: Akram Zaatari is the North American premiere of two of Zaatari’s video installations. Composed of videos made by Arab youth that the artist found on YouTube, Dance to the End of Love (2011) examines the role of social media as a space that is both intimate and public. On Photography, People and Modern Times (2010) tracks photographic records that Zaatari researched and collected for the Arab Image Foundation in its early years (1998–2000); it is a meditation on the intimate past moments evoked by photographs and an environment that secures their preservation. Cutting across temporal and geographic borders, these two works probe the nature of human relationships and assert the permeability of memory.
This exhibition is organized by Ana Janevski, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, and Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, with Katerina Stathopoulou, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography. The Elaine Dannheisser Projects Series is made possible in part by the Elaine Dannheisser Foundation and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.

In this interview, Macdonald talks with Wojtasik about the importance of facing fear and challenging taboos in his work, and about Wojtasik’s use of emotionally charged imagery to expose the necessary relativity and contingency behind all manifestations of ideology, as well as to explore the simultaneity and codependence of beauty and ugliness in all things.