X-TRA’s Artists and Rights podcast debuted on audio platforms in the Summer of 2020, inviting the public to listen in on four critical, convivial conversations about the social, political, and philosophical dynamics of art-making in Los Angeles. After the series wrapped, Sara Ellen Fowler, our Artists and Rights intern, invited co-producers Shana Lutker and Mario Ontiveros to reflect on the initial impetus of the project and consider how it might be a resource for those seeking a rigorous and intimate dialogue about the roles of contemporary art in public life. Their conversation was recorded on October 23, 2020, and has been edited for clarity.

Recording session of Artists and Rights, Catatonic Studios, Los Angeles, December 19, 2019. From left to right: Mario Ybarra Jr., Arshia Haq, Mario Ontiveros, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, and Latipa (née Michelle Dizon). Photo: Shana Lutker.

Sara Ellen Fowler: This invitation comes as a space for reflection and resolution. Could you speak to the phrase what art can do that became a kind of engine for this project?

Mario Ontiveros: For me, what art can do has always been an organizing principle for my teaching and my research. As an art historian working in a department of art that is about practice, one of the ways I invite people to think differently about the history of art is to not get caught up in the question what is art? but to really understand what art can do.

Shana Lutker: We attached that phrase to the series after the sessions had been recorded. It wasn’t the kind of question we could start with. But it was a question we could end with. Even if it seems obvious, there was a reason we had to go around the whole circle. We saw the kind of humanity that came through the participants’ art practices, that these citizens of the world had found that art was a way they could really build community, build affinities, and sometimes, make change.

MO: Listening to the conversations, the important thing was to trace how these panelists have transformed our notions of what an artist is, and the different types of spaces we can find art in, and the different ways that artists can organize. And so, what can art do becomes a way to think beyond thing-making, or beyond an object-driven practice. What art can do is sensitize us to the world around us, help us understand our place in the world, and maybe give us a different perspective about ourselves in relationship to that world.

SEF: So much collective distress and tragedy has transpired in the last twelve months. What meaning did the dialogues accrue in the intervening time between recording the conversations in winter 2019/2020 and publishing Season 1 in summer of 2020?

SL: Another reason the question what art can do became so crucial after the fact was the time lag. We recorded the sessions before COVID-19 was a global phenomenon, but we released them during the lockdown, and the fear and panic and upheaval of that time. We were talking to the artists to decide how the podcast made sense in this moment, despite the fact that the conversations didn’t acknowledge or struggle with what was going on. And then came the murder of George Floyd, and we entered a new phase of upheaval and uncertainty. Again, we had to ask ourselves, in the moment when we’re locked down, and when there are mass protests in the name of racial justice and social justice, do these conversations still make sense? How are these conversations going to be received by the audience? What can art do? And the feedback was—yes, these conversations carry water.

You know, May and June of 2020 was a very sensitive time. And as an artist, I didn’t quite know anymore what art could do. Listening to these conversations really helped me remember the ways that art can make meaning and navigate some of the hardest questions we were dealing with. Re-listening to the conversations in June was, again, proof that these artists were already dealing with these urgent issues. It was a reminder that none of this was new strife, that the upheaval was the result of hundreds of years of problems deeply woven into the fabric of our society. It was useful for me to remember again the mission to decolonize the mind was already at work in academic and art circles, and then to feel a new global acknowledgment of white supremacist thought and culture.

SEF: Mario, as you were listening and fielding the conversations, how did you build a collaborative moment? How did you find opportunities to further the discussion?

MO: I often find moderators tend to contribute more than they moderate. But I think one of the very productive things about the space that we were in is that so much of the interaction happened through gestures and eye contact. You can feel or experience someone who’s encouraging you to go forward, a sort of smile and nod—“That’s right,” you know? What was nice about that was giving people a chance to go in different directions, rather than proclaiming something.

SL: I think Mario was a very good listener. That was key. You really gave people space—and made them feel like they had the space—to say what they needed to say.

MO: If you want a space of generosity, then you have to try to create what you think is generosity, to perform or invite that. So much of the work that we talked about involved creating supportive conditions and opportunities for others, but also for the self. When we hear, “What’s urgent for you?” most will turn to a larger political condition, a larger urgency. But what we originally had in mind for the series was much more open-ended. It was so important for me when Nao Bustamante immediately personalized the opening question. She said, “Well, what’s urgent for me is…” It felt very close to the heart.

SEF: What did the earliest iterations of this project look like?

SL: “Artists Rights” was our first working title. The year before we had commissioned a series of new essays by artists called Artist Writes. So when we wanted to have a series dealing more directly with politics and social justice issues in relation to artists and art practice, Artists Rights was already there. But that was leading people to associate or read it as discussions about the rights of artists. And we were collectively interested in the rights of humans and citizens.

MO: We got some really wonderful feedback from some artists who didn’t want to participate in a project called Artists Rights. We took the artists’ feedback into consideration rather than just moving forward. I think that stalled us in a really productive way. The initial rejection of those artists, that failure, allowed the opportunity to rethink what we were talking about and be clear about some of our expectations. We really wanted to move away from the question of, “Do artists have rights?” Artists have other identities engaged with issues around rights, whether it’s organizing for access or against white supremacy. I think the “and” provided enough conceptual, formal, actual space to see the ways in which artists and rights intersect and depart, how artists create opportunities for individuals to exercise their rights, to talk back, for example, to fight back, to argue back.

SEF: What ethos does this podcast carry forward?

SL: The initial invitation stated that these are our questions right now. We want to hear your questions, and we want to leave with a new set of questions. And I hope that carries with it a kind of openness. And of course, always with the acknowledgment that there are no answers, or very few answers—but that by asking questions we can move forward together.

MO: The invitation was to take these larger ideas and then personalize them, take them in different directions, reformat them, throw them out and start with another question. Working collaboratively was a means to keep an invitation at the center of what we’re doing—an invitation to participate, redirect, pose something different. x

Sara Ellen Fowler is a writer and artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Offing, Full Stop, Hysteria, and Office Hours Los Angeles. A Community of Writers alum, Sara holds a BFA in Sculpture from Art Center College of Design and is an MFA candidate in Poetry at UC Riverside.

Shana Lutker is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture and performance. She is the Executive Director of Project X and an editor at X-TRA.

Mario Ontiveros is a member of the X-TRA editorial board and teaches in the Art Department at California State University, Northridge.