Jessica Helfand

Michael Bierut|Audio

Episode 126: Screens and Dreams

Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Discerning

Sometimes you have to unlearn the constellations to see the stars.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Making

Real makers produce against all odds: ever evolving, all of it work in progress

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Observing

Observing is truth-telling. It’s not a picture postcard, or a gilded lily.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Pretending

The faking of feelings is a sin against the imagination.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Missing

Ambiguous loss is the loss we can not see, just as it lingers in the closure we can not find.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Tracing

Tracing is a way to think in stages, and seeing those stages pulls you along in your thinking.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Animating

As an artistic practice, animation is a process of aggregation. But as a life practice, to animate is to awaken.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Helping

It’s time to pierce the routine of the everyday. What else is there to know?

Michael Bierut|Audio

Episode 125: Zoom Aesthetics

Zoom aesthetics and COVID-19; Kyle Chayka on minimalism; Deborah Berke on shared spaces; Jessica Salfia’s poem “The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining”; Megan O’Grady on artistic recluses

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Waiting

To wait inside is also a chance to go inside—and stay there for awhile.

Jessica Helfand|The Self-Reliance Project

Admitting

Productivity is a tonic for loss—not a replacement for it—and the work of reconstruction is always brutal.