A podcast series by SPILL Festival
In this first episode of our new podcast series, I am delighted to be talking to zack mennell, an artist working across performance, photography, writing, film and installation. My first experience of zack’s work was last year, in the form of an installation piece entitled Dark Chamber. My initial read of the work was that this was a meditation on photography and its relationship with performance, but talking to zack in this podcast revealed multiple additional layers and motivations. This set the scene for a really rich and wide-ranging exploration of zack’s work, including their experiences working with other artists such as Martin O’Brien.
zack’s work with archives and analogue materials very much chime with my own artistic approaches and interests, so it was a real pleasure to explore this in our conversation, especially the part where we discuss what happens when technology malfunctions.
I was also fascinated by zack’s anecdote of how documentation of their work appeared on the TV comedy show Have I Got News for You. This is not the first time the topic of what happens when performance artists pop up in a mainstream context has been discussed on this podcast, and zack shared some thoughtful and funny observations of this strange experience.
What I particularly liked about this episode was how open and generous zack was in sharing what in some cases were quite personal autobiographical histories.
It's lovely to be doing these podcasts again, and I look forward to sharing the series with you going forward. We have some amazing artists still to come.
In the meantime, I do hope you enjoy my conversation with zack.
Robin Deacon, SPILL Artistic Director
Credits
Presented and edited by Robin Deacon
Music composed by Loula Yorke
