INTERLOCUTOR Interviews

Lara Aburamadan is an independent visual artist, journalist, and co-founder of the Refugee Eye organization. Born in Gaza City, Palestine, she is now based in the United States. She holds a BA in the Faculty of Communication Sciences and Languages from Gaza University.​Lara tends to embrace the human perspective through visual storytelling; her work explores the social and political narratives for refugees and marginalized communities. She captures documentary and artistic images of everyday life and excels at catching light and moments with intimacy and humanity.​She has been photographing since 2010. Her photographs have been published in a variety of news organizations and online websites such as Time Magazine, VICE, San Fransisco Chronicle, WorldPressPhoto, NPR, Refinery29, The Progressive Magazine, Pacific Standers, Al-Jazeera, Syria Deeply, +972, and elsewhere. Time Magazine has chosen Lara among 34 women photojournalists around the world whose work you should follow. She's also a member of Women Photograph and Survival Media Agency.In this interview, Lara discusses her upbringing in Gaza, her move to the US with the assistance of writer Dave Eggers, and her aims to portray images of Gaza that show the everyday life and culture of its people rather than the usual bleak and war-torn imagery that is often presented in the media.

Lande Yoosuf is a writer, director, and producer with over 12 years of production development and casting experience, and has worked with several networks, including MTV, NBC, WEtv, truTV, Bravo, and others. Her short film, Privilege Unhinged, screened at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, Big Apple Film Festival, and the DC Black Film Festival, aired on Shorts TV, and is currently streaming on Chicago’s VonTV (Available on Amazon Fire TV, Roku, TV, Apple TV). Yoosuf’s second film, Second Generation Wedding screened at the Bronze Lens Film Festival, and inspired a prequel novel, “Ko-Foe.” She has an affinity for telling stories that explore media influence, sociology, gender/race relations, pop culture, and self-image themes and is currently developing a mixed slate of feature films, documentaries, and television pilots through her production company, One Scribe Media.

aja monet is a poet, lyricist, writer, and community organizer from Brooklyn, now based in Los Angeles. Her debut studio album, when the poems do what they do, was released in 2023 to acclaim, and it earned a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album.We published a version of this interview in the online edition of INTERLOCUTOR on February 1, 2024, and this episode is the full and unedited recording of the discussion between aja monet and our Contributing Editor, Logan Royce Beitmen.

Virginia L. Montgomery (VLM) is a multimedia artist working across video, performance, sound design, and sculpture. She is known for her unique, synthesia-esque, surrealist works that unite elements from mysticism, science, and her own lived experience as a neurodivergent individual. Her artwork is surreal, sensorial, and symbolic. It shifts in subject matter from stones to moths and machines, as VLM deploys an idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of repeating gestures and recursive symbols like circles, holes, and spheres.In this interview, VLM discusses her recent solo exhibition at Austin's Women & Their Work, Eye Moon Cocoon, which featured her ongoing examination of native Texas Luna moths and our multifaceted associations with the moon, along with her unique parallel career as a Graphic Facilitator.

Tyler Nesler talks with leading AI researcher, author, and TED speaker Blaise Agüera y Arcas about his new book, Who Are We Now? - an exploration of how biology, ecology, sexuality, history, and culture have intertwined to create a dynamic “us” that can neither be called natural nor artificial.Identity politics occupies the front line in today’s culture wars, pitting generations against each other, and progressive cities against the rural traditions of our past. Rich in data and detail, Who Are We Now? goes beyond today’s headlines to connect our current reality to a larger more-than-human story.The book is available December 19 via Hat & Beard Press.

French-American artist Miles Hyman has a solo show, Secret Lives, up at NYC's Philippe Labaune Gallery through December 23. Hyman's recent paintings lead us on a journey through his sources of inspiration. From his early childhood memories of the Ferris wheel in Bennington, Vermont, to his travels with his jazz musician father, to the bustling streets of New York, to the romantic embrace of Paris, where he has made his home for the past two decades, every stroke of his brush is a testament to that odyssey. The culmination of his artistic pilgrimage leads him to Italy, a country to which he already shares a deep artistic connection. Here, he weaves the pages of the Louis Vuitton travel book, an ode to the eternal city of Rome. These works are studies of light, imaginative juxtapositions, and records of personal geography. Alongside his paintings, there will be a selection of original strips from his latest graphic novel adaptation, La vie secrète des écrivains, penned by French author Guillaume Musso.