Michele Carlson

Outgoing Editor in Chief

Michele Carlson is a practicing artist, writer, and curator. She is an Associate Professor in Visual & Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts and the Executive Director at Daily Serving | Art Pracitcal. 

 

Wong Knows Best

Kristina Wong confronts power, stereotypes and racism

Michele Carlson - March 30, 2016

Sipping horchata with performance artist/writer/rapper/comedian Kristina Wong in the back courtyard of Best Fish Taco in Ensenada is fitting. The small restaurant in the Los Feliz neighborhood in Los Angeles is just rickety enough for its unabashedly bold name to somehow make sense. Wong, too, might appear unassuming at first glance. She is casually dressed in jeans, her long black hair and petite frame set off by a bright blue shirt.

Cyberhate Is Real Hate

The real online world

Michele Carlson - February 7, 2016

The Internet is a powerful and complicated place. It still embodies its early utopic vision of a borderless world where information is infinitely disseminated and there is unimaginable potential to connect with anything — as anyone. This is a world where we can only “Like,” “Share” and “Follow,” and we know “unfriending” can have great social impact. By now, for much of the First World, using the Internet is a required part of daily life.

Sound As Form

The Art of Christine Sun Kim

Michele Carlson - February 5, 2016

In January, on a sunny San Francisco day, sound and performance artist Christine Sun Kim darts around the spacious nonprofit art gallery Southern Exposure (SOEX), giving directions and approving final installation decisions. Like the day before any exhibition, art preparators balance on ladders affixing blue ropes that cut across the sun-drenched space, and gallery staff busy themselves with last minute details. Though active, the gallery is unexpectedly quiet — everyone is scrawling messages to Kim on notepads or holding up text on their smartphones for her to view.

Body Politic

Artist Taravat Talepasand confronts the Iranian female body within a political landscape

Michele Carlson - June 19, 2013

Huge, engorged, disproportionate breasts jut from the draped body and covered face of a woman — San Francisco-based Iranian artist Taravat Talepasand is obsessed with this pornographic image she found online several years ago, and this figure has appeared repeatedly in her detailed and intricate paintings and drawings.

Yeah, She Went There

Sex Nerd Sandra wants to school you in the bedroom

Michele Carlson - June 19, 2013

“Hello, naughty monkeys,” Sandra Daugherty says into her microphone at the start of her show, the wildly popular sex education podcast Sex Nerd Sandra.

Over the next hour, she details how to use a Hitachi Magic Wand and recounts lessons she learned from a recent “predator and prey” dungeon party. A product of Nerdist Industries — a media company begun by comedian Chris Hardwick that largely consists of comedy and pop culture podcasts — the Sex Nerd Sandra podcast reaches thousands of people every week.

Bodies and Borders

The Work of Wafaa Yasin

Michele Carlson - May 16, 2012

Wafaa Yasin literally turned her body into a boat and set sail across the San Francisco Bay. Yasin expected to fail in sailing anywhere, but she also hoped not to drown. Born in Palestine, the San Francisco-based performance and multimedia artist often puts herself at risk to ask questions about the histories and people who negotiate the boundaries of global politics.