Dispatch comes to you this week from both sides of the United States with Rirkrit Tiravanija in New York and our host and partner Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran in California. The two enjoy a relaxed but contemplative conversation asking questions that Arlette finds she’s never had the opportunity to ask before as every other time the pair meets they tend to talk more about daily life and the food they share.

Instead, this talk focuses on the musings and reflections attitudes on life, on the pace of art practitioners in the world in recent times that has suddenly both slowed down and changed radically. Finally, the pair discuss Rirkrit’s path to teaching, something he’s been doing for decades but is rarely talked about or noted upon.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is known for a practice that overturns traditional exhibition formats in favor of social interactions through the sharing of everyday activities such as cooking, eating and reading. Creating environments that reject the primacy of the art object, and instead focus on use value and the bringing of people together through simple acts and environments of communal care, Tiravanija’s work challenges expectations around labour and virtuosity. Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of the Arts at Columbia University and is a founding member and curator of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. He also helped establish an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located near Chiang Mai, Thailand.