Art Voices

Visibility, authorship, and freedom in digital culture

Guests: Patrick Amadon and Empress Trash

Hosted by Farrah Carbonell · Guest moderated by Justin Gilanyi

Duration: 60 minutes

Five years after the digital-art boom of 2021, artists have more ways than ever to create, distribute, and sell their work. But greater access has not necessarily produced greater freedom or security. Platforms control visibility, markets reward certain relationships, institutions determine what can be shown, and AI has introduced new questions about ownership and control.

Episode 8 of ART VOICES brings together Patrick Amadon and Empress Trash, two artists who have built careers without waiting for traditional permission. Amadon’s code-based and glitch practice uses digital systems as both material and adversary, confronting censorship, surveillance, anonymity, and political control. Empress Trash works across glitch, AI, crypto art, and virtual environments while building an independent career rooted in self-authorship, community, radical expression, and economic self-reliance.

Guest moderated by Justin Gilanyi, the conversation asks what artistic freedom actually costs. Did blockchain change the relationship between artists and collectors, or reproduce familiar hierarchies under new names? When does community become gatekeeping? Is visibility the same as support? And what allows an artist to continue when the market, platform, or institution does not respond?

A conversation with Osinachi, Alkan Avcioglu, Adam Heft Beringer and Justin Gilanyi.

Contemporary art is constantly being redefined—not only by artists creating new forms of expression, but also by the galleries, curators, and collectors who help shape how those practices are understood.

In this episode of ART VOICES, Osinachi, Alkan Avcıoğlu, Adam Heft Berninger and Justin Gilanyi explore what it means to build a contemporary artistic practice at a time when software, artificial intelligence, and computational processes are expanding the possibilities of image-making. Together, they discuss the relationship between artistic experimentation and curatorial vision, how galleries identify work with lasting significance, and how new artistic languages find their place within the broader cultural landscape.

Bringing together the perspectives of two pioneering artists and a leading gallerist, this conversation examines not simply what is changing in art, but how contemporary art continues to redefine itself.

A conversation on digital art, value, and taste with Sarp Kerem Yavuz, Rob De Los Santos, and Jared Poz.

Collecting has never been only about ownership. It is an act of judgment—shaped by taste, belief, identity, context, and the possibility that a work may matter long after the moment of acquisition. Digital art complicates that act further. Are we collecting an image, a process, a piece of code, an artist’s trajectory, a cultural position—or the provenance connecting them?

In Episode 6 of ART VOICES, artist and Artistic Director Sarp Kerem Yavuz joins Rob De Los Santos, Digital Art Releases & Partnerships Manager at Iconic, and Jared Poz, founder of 8NAP, to examine what it means to build a collection today.

When does purchasing become collecting? What does conviction look like before consensus forms? How do storytelling, technology, and market momentum influence taste? And what responsibility begins after a work is acquired? A conversation about value, discernment, belief, and what we ultimately choose to carry forward.

A conversation with Claire Silver, BatSoupYum, Lanett Bennett Grant, Justin Gilanyi

For centuries, patronage has shaped the history of art. Today, that role is evolving. Collectors are becoming curators. Artists are building institutions. Communities are discovering and supporting new voices. Digital platforms are creating new pathways for visibility, while museums and cultural organizations continue to redefine their role within an increasingly connected cultural landscape. This conversation brings together four perspectives—artist, collector, curator, and cultural strategist—to explore how collecting, curation, cultural stewardship, and community contribute to building lasting cultural ecosystems.

At its heart, this discussion asks one question: How is culture built—and what role does patronage play in shaping its future?

A conversation with Anika Meier and Liz Haas

Art has always existed within systems—institutions, markets, technologies, and structures of power.

Writer and curator Anika Meier joins artist Liz Haas of UBERMORGEN to examine whether artists can challenge the structures they depend upon for visibility, circulation, and value.

Together, they consider conceptual hacking, digital culture, emerging networks, and whether critique can remain critical once it becomes visible, collectible, and marketable. Can art escape the system or only transform it from within?

A conversation with Grant Yun and Chidi Nwaubani

Art is shaped by more than artists alone. It evolves through the technologies, institutions, communities, and conversations that define each generation. Using Grant and Chidi's (looty.art) perspectives as a starting point, this conversation explores what allows cultural movements to emerge, evolve, and endure—and what today's changing ecosystem reveals about the future of contemporary art.

A conversation with Gretchen Andrew and Dorian Batycka

Hosted by Elena Zavelev and Farrah Carbonell

Two voices from across the contemporary art landscape sit down to talk about cultural value: who shapes it, who benefits, and what keeps getting overlooked. Gretchen Andrew (artist) and Dorian Batycka (journalist and curator) explore how institutions are approaching digital art, what creates lasting value in the market, and the role visibility plays in deciding what matters. A bigger panel, a wider lens, and plenty of room for live questions.

A conversation with Anne Spalter

Hosted by Elena Zavelev

Anne Spalter is a pioneering digital artist, educator at RISD and Brown University, and collector with decades of experience at the intersection of art and technology.

In this inaugural episode, Anne and Elena talked about digital art's breakthrough moment at Art Basel, AI as a creative tool (and why it takes just as much time as painting), the art of online collaboration, and what's still missing from the conversation around digital art today.