Rebecca Cleman
April 21, 2026

Rebecca Cleman (b. 1975, Flagstaff Arizona) is a writer and the director of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). She was raised by a pianist mother and a composer father who kept a slim but choice selection of rock-n-roll albums within their prodigious collection of classical music, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, and the American Graffiti soundtrack were as formative as Rossini, Bach, and Bartók.

Professionally, Rebecca has enjoyed a long career at EAI, a leading distributor and archive of artists' videos from the 1960s to the present, which includes videos by previous Selection Committee guests Robert Buck, Michael Smith, Jake Brush, and Phyllis Baldino. She has published essays on video art and film, with a focus on infrastructure and artists television, and programmed many screenings and curated a few exhibitions, including VHS: The Exhibition at Franklin Street Works and, with Alex Klein, Broadcasting: EAI at ICA. Recently, she co-edited The New Television: Video After Television with Rachel Churner and Tyler Maxin, published by no place press.

Highways, hot rods, and hockey are particular non-professional subjects of interest.

1. The Ecstasy Of Gold, Ennio Morricone, 1967
   
2. Why Am I so Tired All the Time? Eggs, 1994
   
3. Oscillations, Silver Apples, 1968
   
4. Advertising, George Carlin
   
5. Don't Believe The Hype, Public Enemy, 1988
   
6. Potholes in My Lawn, De La Soul, 1989
   
7. Mr. Veedle (Live At The Ice House,) Lily Tomlin, 1971
   
8. Clampdown, The Clash, 1979
   
9. Lonesome, On'ry and Mean, Waylon Jennings, 1973
   
10. Egg Man, Beastie Boys, 1989
    
11. Big Mess, DEVO, 1982
    
12. Highway Star, Deep Purple, 1972
    
13. Hey Jane Mansfield Superstar, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, 1989
    
14. Backslider, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, 2010
    
15. Gasoline, Britney Spears, 2011
    
16. Candy's Room, Bruce Springsteen, 1978
    
17. Pine Box Derby, Beat Happening, 1992
    
18. No Particular Place To Go, Chuck Berry, 1964
    
19. Teen Angel, Mark Dinning, 2021
    
20. The Day The Earth Stood Still, Bernard Herrmann, 1951
    

Matlok Griffiths in conversation with B. Wurtz
March 10, 2026

For this episode of the Selection Committee Radio Show, former guest B. Wurtz joins me in conversation with Matlok Griffiths, an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Both artist-musicians, the two first became acquainted when Griffiths approached Wurtz to do a book project with his imprint Tutto. This began an ongoing conversation about art and music between the two that we get to join.

Griffiths’ wonderful exhibition “And My Unnamed Corners” recently closed at Gordon Robichaux in New York City. The show featured a selection of modestly scaled paintings on sculptural canvases as well as a series of gouache paintings on crossword puzzles. We discuss the New York connection to this work—in 2016 Griffiths spent four months in the city doing a mentorship with painter Stanley Whitney. He began picking up free newspapers and using the crossword puzzles as a found grid to make gouache paintings. Through time and inspiration these crossword paintings found new form in the sculptural canvases.

The conversation also touches on his ceramic practice which began when a neighbor gave his family a bag of clay during Melbourne’s intense Covid lockdown. Inspired by a figure his daughter made of a girl sitting bolt upright in bed, Griffiths created an entire body of work that is a meditation on that strange time.

Throughout the program, Griffiths shares a semi-autobiographical set of songs including selections from his own band, Big Supermarket, formed with his wife Katrina and his friend Travis.

This three-way conversation is a window into a practice that is remarkably open to opportunities, collaborations, and the unexpected. It was a pleasure to spend the afternoon with Griffiths and Wurtz!

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

1. Old News, Big Supermarket, 2019
   
2. The Boy In the Bubble, Paul Simon, 1986
   
3. Blue Flowers, Dr. Octagon, 1996
   
4. Black Death, Big Supermarket, 2019
   
5. Lost Mi Love, Yellowman, 1982
   
6. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others, The Smiths, 1986
   
7. Frenz, The Fall, 1988
   
8. Loose Fit, Happy Mondays, 1999
   
9. Desire As, Prefab Sprout, 1985
   
10. Waterloo Sunset, The Kinks, 1967
    
11. Shadazz, Suicide, 1999
    
12. Diary of a Young Man, Television Personalities, 1981
    
13. Bottles, Samizdat & Michael J. Blood, 2023
14. Rinsed, Dean Blunt & TYSON, 2023
15. Peter, Big Supermarket, 2019
16. Big Jean, Big Supermarket, 2019

Matlok Griffiths (b. 1983, Perth, Australia) is an artist and occasional musician who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He has presented solo and two-person exhibitions at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2025), Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney (2022, 2019, 2107, 2016), and ReadingRoom, Melbourne (2024, 2022, 2018). His work has been featured in numerous group shows, including at Wolford House, Los Angeles (curated by Nichole Caruso-Siebers, 2024) and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023).
In 2016, Griffiths completed a four-month mentorship with artist Stanley Whitney through the support of a Skills and Development Grant awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia). His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Artbank, Australia. In 2018, Griffiths released a music album, 1800, with his collaborators (Katrina Griffiths and Travis MacDonald) under the name Big Supermaket.

Born 1948 in Pasadena, California, B. Wurtz is best known for his playful and compelling sculptures constructed from discarded materials like produce packaging, construction lumber, and plastic bags. He received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1980. The sculptor and painter currently lives and works in New York, New York.
B. Wurtz's repurposing of everyday flotsam into joyous, humorous, and beautiful objects undermine grand artistic gesture while elevating the commonplace. The artist's transformative amalgams of found materials have tended to coalesce around the subjects of "sleeping, eating, and keeping warm"—the foundational human needs named in his 1973 drawing Three Important Things. While his sculptures are often modest in scale, in 2018, the artist created his now iconic Kitchen Trees for the New York City Public Art Fund, transforming City Hall Park with towering columns of colorful colanders exploding with plastic fruit.
Wurtz has been the subject of over 52 solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including: Feature Inc. (1987, 1991, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2006, New York); Gallery 400 (2000, Chicago); White Flag Projects (2012, St. Louis); Kunstverein (2015, Freiburg, Germany); and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, (2015, Ridgefield, Connecticut). In 2015, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom mounted a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work that traveled to La Casa Encendida, Madrid through 2016. In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles mounted a major solo exhibition of his work, This Has No Name.
His work has also been included in over 174 group exhibitions including: Pandora's Box: Joseph Cornell Unlocks the MCA Collection (2011, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago); Building Blocks: Contemporary Works from the Collection (2011, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence); and Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s (2018, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC).

Phyllis Baldino
February 24, 2026

The great artist Phyllis Baldino graduated from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford as a dedicated sculptor. But a few years later, a chance encounter with a generous subletter with a trunk full of video cameras changed the course of her life.

She began making video pieces on her Sony Handycam in the early 90s in what would become the remarkable Gray Area Series. Inspired by books about fuzzy logic, each video records a sequence of actions by Baldino on common household objects that are—sometimes aggressively—deconstructed and repurposed. In Wine Rack/Not Wine Rack, for example, a wooden thrift store wine rack is sawed up to accommodate a 4L jug of blush wine. In April 1994: The Gray Band, Baldino gathered together four musician friends, Dez Cadena, Lynn Johnston, Tom Watson, and Mike Watt, to reconstruct instruments that she disassembled and play a single song: Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive.”

Baldino's musical selection for the show includes great songs from each of these artists as well as music that has influenced her work or been included in her work.

Baldino's abiding interest in the intersection of science and the everyday has led to fascinating works about nanotechnology (Nano-cadabra, 1998), quantum mechanics (Baldino-Neutrino, 2003), and parallel universe theory (19 Universes/my brother, 2004). She has been exploring issues of climate change in works like u_n_d_e_r_w_a_t_e_r, 2019 and Fake Nature Box, 2021.

It was through research on the Little Ice Age (1300 - 1850) that Baldino arrived at the process that is powering her current body of work. Learning about horrific stories of women accused of witchcraft and weather magic instilled in her the desire to speak firsthand with witnesses to the events. So she turned to an experienced friend and a Ouija board to find out what really happened: whether weather what was the result. Continuing this process led to Hit thegroundrunning, 2025, about immigrants to the US who came through Ellis Island in New York as children. What is it like communicating with the dead? Listen in to find out!

We discuss all this work as well as some of the vicissitudes of making video art. It’s a fascinating conversation with a truly unique artist. Information about the work can be found on www.phyllisbaldino.com.

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

1. Indeterminacy (clip), John Cage and David Tudor, 1959
   
2. Guitar Solo at Toad's, The B Willie Smith Band   
   
3. Merle Rock A Bye, Steve Baldino   
   
4. Another Day, Another Night; Steve Baldino, 2005   
   
5. You Know I Love You, The B Willie Smith Band   
   
6. No More (Dez Cadena Version), Black Flag, 1982  
7.  Walking The Cow, Firehose, 1991
8. The Letter, The Red Krayola, 1995
9. Little Rootie Tootie, CRUEL FREDERICK, 1991
   
10. Love, More Love; The United Society of Shakers, 1996
    
11. Who Will Blow and Bend Like the Willow, The United Society of Shakers, 1996
12. Auber: Manon Lescaut - C'Est L'Histoire Amoureuse, Amelita Galli-Curci, 1917
    
13. Nessuno, Mina, 1959
14. Stars (Live – Montreux Jazz Festival 1976), Nina Simone, 1976
15. Nell'Ufficio Di Produzione Di Otto E Mezzo, Nino Rota, 1962
    
16. Tighten Up, Archie Bell & The Drells, 1968
    
17. Kimberly, Patti Smith, 1975
18. 96 Tears, ? & The Mysterians, 1966
19. Chan Chan - Dúo con Elíades Ochoa, Cuba Segundo   
20. The Wind Cries Mary, Jimi Hendrix, 1967
21. For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1966
22. They're Red Hot, Robert Johnson, 1937  
23. Andy Warhol - 2015 Remaster, David Bowie, 1971
24. I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, Hank Williams, 1954
25. Mercedes Benz, Janis Joplin, 1971

Phyllis Baldino is a conceptual artist whose work merges performance, video, sculpture, and installation combining an exploration of perception ranging from the everyday to scientific inquiry with extensive research to make work that creates its own logic. She has had one-person exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio and Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York. Baldino’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Baldino received a Preservation Grant from the NEA to digitize her video work in 2021 and was nominated for the Anonymous Was A Woman award in 2020. Baldino earned a B.F.A. in sculpture from the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, Connecticut.

Alexander Dumbadze
January 27, 2026

I first met the charming art historian Alexander Dumbadze when he was my TA in a Richard Schiff class at the University of Texas at Austin. In the years since, Dumbadze has produced a focused body of work, including his two books “Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere” and the just-published “Jack Goldstein: All Day Night Sky.” Combining biography, traditional art history, and theory, these books are eminently readable portraits of two remarkable people.

Both artists died prematurely—Ader was lost at sea during a transatlantic solo voyage at 33 and Goldstein by his own hand at 57— and both are big, mythic figures in the art world. What happens when the idea of the artist dominates the work that they make, when the myth precedes them and hovers around their art? Both artists were searching for a fundamental truth—Ader by making art that was unmediated and could communicate without representational systems and Goldstein through deep exploration of the possibilities of the representational image.

Dumbadze walks us through Jack Goldstein’s life and times, from his early student days at Chouinard and Cal Arts, to his social circles and his time in New York City, and ultimately to the end of his life in California. We discuss Goldstein’s major bodies of work and his tendentious relationship to artistic mediums. Most of all we talk about Goldstein’s efforts to make an ideal image, something pure that is also a fundamental experience: an unsustainable moment of intensity.

Dumbadze considers the books on Ader and Goldstein to be part of a trilogy of works, and he is currently working on the third and final book in the series: a novel set in the 1970s about a conceptual artist who only makes works in his head. I am very much looking forward to seeing how this book will continue the questions, problems, and possibilities that Dumbadze is dealing with in art history!

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

1. The Headmaster Ritual, The Smiths, 1985
   
2. Save It for Later, The English Beat, 1982
   
3. Ceremony, New Order, 1987
   
4. O Superman, Laurie Anderson, 1982
   
5. Uncertain Smile, The The, 1983
   
6. Freak Scene, Dinosaur Jr., 1988
   
7. Death or Glory, The Clash, 1979
   
8. What the World Is Waiting For, The Stone Roses, 1989
   
9. Star Sign    , Teenage Fanclub    , 1991
   
10. Rattlesnakes, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions    , 1984
    
11. Anesthesia, Luna, 1992
    
12. 6’1”, Liz Phair, 1993
    
13. Miss Modular, Stereolab, 1997
    
14. That's Entertainment, The Jam, 1980
    
15. The State I Am In, Belle and Sebastian, 1996
    
16. Sooner Or Later, The Feelies, 1991
    
17. Corona, Minutemen, 1984
    
18. Our Lips Are Sealed, The Go-Go’s, 1981

Alexander Dumbadze is Associate Professor of Art History. He is the author of Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere (University of Chicago Press, 2013; paperback 2015) as well as co-editor and co-author of Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013; Korean translation, 2015). He is currently writing Jack Goldstein: All Day Night Sky. His essays and criticism have been published in a variety of national and international publications. A recipient of a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Dumbadze was a Visiting Professor of Art History at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis in 2012. He is also a co-founder and former president of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians. He teaches courses on contemporary art, theory, and historiography.