Editor’s Picks: A ‘Time Sensitive’ Podcast

Frieze Editor’s Picks is a fortnightly column in which a frieze editor shares their recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to.

'Time Sensitive'



'Time Sensitive' (2019–ongoing) is one of those shows that even the most casual podcast listener can enjoy. For each episode, host Spencer Bailey interviews a new guest – I’ve particularly enjoyed the episodes featuring Jancis Robinson on wine and Tom Dixon on sustainable design – about how their profession has shaped their perspective of time. The topic has been on my mind since I edited the ‘Time Warp’ columns section for issue 235 of frieze, and this podcast is a trove of insightful takes on the nature of time, specifically in craft-based practices, and how global capital seeks to distort it for nefarious ends.

Hal Foster, What Comes After Farce?, 2020

The title of Hal Foster’s most recent collection of essays riffs on Karl Marx’s remark that historical events happen twice: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Published during the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the book covers the preceding four years through an art-critical lens. Considering figures ranging from Claire Fontaine and Marcel Duchamp, to Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen, Foster once again incisively demonstrates the ways the US’s far-rightward swing has affected image production and reception, and presents practices that ‘offer a “utopian glimmer of fiction”’.

Edward Yang, Yi Yi, 2000

Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, streaming on the Criterion Channel along with his Taipei Story (1985) and A Brighter Summer Day (1991), is a meditative drama following a family of four living in Taipei. The Jians seem destined to repeat generational errors, but Yang’s camera draws attention to their environment’s inextricable impact on their fate.

The characters’ lives are framed by the infrastructure and architecture of a rapidly changing cityscape, while their actions betray their struggles to adjust to new and difficult circumstances. It’s an essential film that I couldn’t recommend more highly.

_{Main image: Microphone in a professional recording or radio studio. Courtesy: Getty Images}