The Selection Committee
RADIO SHOW
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LIVE every other Sunday from 2-4pm
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Past shows can be streamed below, or on Mixcloud.
Upcoming shows:
2/19: writer Douglas Martin
3/5: artist Clynton Lowry
4/2: artist Noel Anderson
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Douglas A. Martin
February 19, 2023
Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.
- Bedtime Story, Tammy Wynette, 1971
- Pony Ride, Olivia Newton-John, 1976
- Cha Cha Cha, MC Lyte, 1989
- Shoot, Sonic Youth, 1992
- Fire and Ice, Pat Benetar, 1981
- Here in My Head: Live from Colston Hall, Bristol, UK, 3/7/1994; Tori Amos, 1994
- Manic Monday, Prince, 1984
- Super Hero Vibe, Anni Rossi, 2020
- Cicada, Ajax Caravan, 2018
- The Showstopper, Salt-N-Pepa, 1985
- Red, Belly, 1995
- My Side of the Bed, Susanna Hoffs, 1991
- Star Me Kitten, R. E. M., 1992
- Wolf, Veruca Salt, 1994
- Little Digger, Liz Phair, 2003
- Community of Hope, PJ Harvey, 2016
- Mr. Bojangles, Nina Simone, 1971
- Can You Feel the Beat? Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, 1985
- The Voice of Love, Julee Cruse, 1993
“How can you continue to live if you look directly at what is happening to you?”
Poet, novelist, and short story writer Douglas A. Martin joins the show with a selection of songs by artists who have been formative to him and his work, even if some of them are slightly embarrassing. We learn about his early dance routines, entering the Sonic Youth music video contest, and his many, many attempts to become a member of MTV’s The Real World. Martin's early life has provided fertile source material for his work, and we consider how complicated it is to talk openly and honestly about childhood experiences.
Martin describes the development of his unusual, impressionistic prose style and “the new ennui” he was trying to embody as a young queer writer in a turn-of-the-century college town. He shares a poem and an excerpt from his novel Outline of My Lover, and we discuss his novels, Branwell and Wolf. The former is about the doomed brother of the legendary Brontë sisters, and the latter is about two abused brothers who murdered their father in Florida a few weeks after 9/11.
He also introduces the astonishing 1973 collection of Tammy Wynette songs called Kids Say the Darndest Things, which features such crowd pleasers as "I Wish I Had a Mommy Like You", "Don’t Make Me Go to School", and one we can all relate too, "Buy Me a Daddy."
Douglas A. Martin is the author of books of poetry and prose, including: Once You Go Back, Your Body Figured, In The Time of Assignments, Branwell, and They Change the Subject. Martin’s first novel, Outline of My Lover, was selected by Colm Tóibín as an International Book of the Year in The Times Literary Supplement and adapted in part by the Forsythe Company for their multimedia ballet/live film, Kammer/Kammer. Martin lives in Brooklyn and Callicoon, New York.




Emily Mae Smith
February 5, 2023
Pictured above: Poetry (Toy in Blood), 2022, oil on linen, 67 x 51 inches & Painters Quarry, 2022, oil on linen, 90 x 67 inches both courtesy the artist and Petzel gallery; photo credit: Charles Benton. Portrait photo credit: Steve Benisty; nature portrait credit: Nate Heiges.
Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.
- Summer Breeze - Type O Negative
- Lay Lady Lay - Ministry
- Worlock - Skinny Puppy
- Israel - Siouxsie & The Banshees
- Lucretia My Reflection - The Sisters of Mercy
- Cuts You Up - Peter Murphy
- A Forest - The Cure
- Until Death (Us Do Part) - Front 242
- Hot on the Heels of Love - Throbbing Gristle
- Head Like a Hole - Nine Inch Nails
- Warm Leatherette - The Normal
- Collapsing New People - Fad Gadget
- Sensoria - Cabaret Voltaire
- He's a Liquid - John Foxx
- Paranoid - Black Sabbath
- Sistinas - Danzig
- We Believe - Ministry
One of my oldest friends, painter Emily Mae Smith GOES HARD on this episode of the Selection Committee Radio Show. Bringing in a mixtape of goth and industrial songs that she listens to in the studio when on a deadline, Smith gets us in the mood for productive violence, talking about her predilection for groups with dangerous performances and connections to avant-garde art movements.
Like a good goth song, Emily’s meticulously rendered paintings reference both high art and cheap culture to create shimmering tableaux of ludic nihilism. Reflecting on her work’s references to art history, Smith talks about the way the female figure is used as a formal cipher for male artists, the rage and alienation this engenders, and how she’s using her work to paint her own place in history.
We discuss the ethical implications of taking on violent and/or charged subject matter in art and the return of the Satanic panic. We also talk about the importance of community in the development of ourselves and our work—and reminisce about our shared youth at the turn of the century in central Texas!
You can see her exhibition "Heretic Lace" and our panel discussion about her new monograph here.
The monograph is focused on the last decade of her work is now available wherever you like to buy books or from the Petzel bookstore.
Follow Emily Mae Smith on instagram!
Emily's limited edition cover for Nine Inch Nails for Interscope is here.
Peter Duchan
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or Subscribe to the show on Spotify here!
Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.
- Putting It Together, Barbra Streisand, 1985
- Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Eurythmics, 1983
- Love Revolution, I Love My Wife Cast Album, 1977
- Make Someone Happy, Jimmy Durante, 1964
- I Don’t Want to Be Alone, Billy Joel, 1980
- If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, Sting, 1993
- And You Would Lie/I Will Give—from Marie Christine Original Cast Album, Andrea Frierson-Toney, Jennifer Leigh Warren, Mary Bond Davis, Audra McDonald, 1999
- Wherever He Ain’t—from Mack & Mabel Original Cast Album, Jerry Herman & Bernadette Peters, 1974
- Nobodys Side—from Chess Original Cast Album, 1984
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When I Was A Freeport And You Were the Main Drag, Laura Nyro, 1970
- Dedicated To The One I Love, The Mamas & The Papas, 1967
-
Care Of Cell 44, The Zombies, 1967
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My Way, Nina Simone, 1971
-
Katie Cruel, Karen Dalton, 1971
-
Oh, Pierre! Breedlove, 2017
- Loving You Sometimes, The Outcasts, 1968
- (Theme From) Valley of the Dolls, Dionne Warwick, 1967
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Love Me - Two Gentlemen Of Verona, Galt MacDermot, John Guare, Mel Shapiro, 1971
-
Lo Dudo, Los Panchos, 1954
- Don't Bring Me Down, PREP, 2018
- Two for the Road, Henry Mancini, 1967
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January 8, 2023
Robert Buck
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Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.
- Little Room, The White Stripes, 2001
- Strange, Galaxie 500, 1989
- One More Cup of Coffee, Bob Dylan, 1976
- Hurt, Johnny Cash, 2002
- Afraid of Everyone, The National, 2010
- The Rip Tide, Beirut, 2011
- Sun, Caribou, 2010
- Ghost Dance, Patti Smith, 1978
- Video Games, Lana Del Rey, 2012
- Holy Roller Novacaine, 2003
- Counting Stars, OneRepublic, 2014
- Neon Pattern Drum, Jon Hopkins, 2018
- 2000 Miles, Pretenders, 1984
- Song for Zula, Phosphorescent, 2013
- St Jude, Florence + The Machine, 2015
- The Beautiful Dream, George Ezra
- Shallow, Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper, 2018
- Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell, 2000
Cross-disciplinary artist Robert Buck’s Thirteen Shooters series from 2001 was a meditation on media coverage of young school shooters when they first began to appear in the 1990s. His video work, too, explores the relationships between image-making, violence, desire, and indentity formation. Much of Buck’s conceptual framework is based in psychoanalysis (Buck is the Art Editor of The Lacanian Review), particularly the ideas surrounding the concept of the Name of the Father which is a metonym for the patriarchy, the law, and hierarchically organized society. But as traditional institutions are eroded by changing technology, social mores, and ideals, how do we go about forming an understanding of the world and our place in it? One way is to make a pilgrimage to the desert!
For Buck songs have always had very strong associations with place, and he wanted to take us on a road trip through the American West, traversing the land from Zion National Park in Utah, to his own small plot near the US-Mexico border in Texas. We discuss Bob Dylan and Pattie Smith, the complicated legacy of settler-colonialism in our conception of the American West, and white wine margaritas. It’s a journey that starts in a stifling suburb of Baltimore in the late 70s and ends with a remarkable epiphany in a white-out blizzard just beyond Truth or Consequences New Mexico.
www.robertbuck.net
www.instagram.com/robertbuckstudio
Morning
To find the Western path
Right thro' the Gates of Wrath
I urge my way;
Sweet Mercy leads me on:
With soft repentant moan 5
I see the break of day.
The war of swords & spears
Melted by dewy tears
Exhales on high;
The Sun is freed from fears 10
And with soft grateful tears
Ascends the sky.
-William Blake
Robert Beck was born in Baltimore and moved to New York City in 1978 to learn filmmaking and cinema studies at New York University. In 1993, he attended the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is a cross-disciplinary artist recognized for his precise use of materials, ranging from traditional art supplies to such non-art materials as mortician’s wax, industrial reflective paint, latent fingerprint powder and gunpowder. Trained as a filmmaker, he works in a montage-like metonymical manner, a ‘horizontal’ approach that allows him to utilize the associative power of adjacent images and artworks. The crux of his art is subjectivity, with violence, sexuation, loss, and America as recurring themes. In 1995, Beck was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, in Printmaking/Drawing/Artists’ Books, as well as an Art Matters, Inc. grant. He received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1999. In 2007, Beck had a solo exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH. In 2008, Beck changed his given, or father’s, name as a work of art by a single vowel to Buck. His practice is oriented by a constellation of influences, including artists Marcel Duchamp, Cy Twombly, Agnes Martin, and Cady Noland, filmmakers Robert Bresson and David Lynch, novelist Cormac McCarthy, forensic science, Buddhism, the teachings of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the American southwest. In 2009, Buck bought a small off-grid property along the U.S.-Mexico border south of Marfa, Texas, which he refers to as his extimate studio. Since 2018, he has been an art editor of The Lacanian Review. His work is included in museum and private collections internationally. His moving image works are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. He is represented in New York by Ulterior Gallery and Von Ammon Co. in Washington, DC., where he had an exhibition in November, Robert Buck: Wound Filler. In 2019, Buck received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. Buck lives and works in New York City and far West Texas.