The following is a transcript from the first office hours event, held via twitter spaces on September 21st, 2022. This transcript has been slightly edited for ease of reading, but a link for the original recording is below.

This conversation is introduced by our community designer, Briana Griffin and includes our co-directors, Makayla Bailey and Michael Connor.

Briana: My name is Briana and I’m the community designer at Rhizome and I’m the host this week as we explore different parts of Rhizome. This first edition of office hours, which is a pilot program, will happen each Wednesday around 2pm. We’ll use this program to cycle through different areas of interest within the Rhizome ecosystem; varying from our history as an organization to upcoming programs, how and why we believe in the preservation of digital art, etc.

Our goal here is to experiment with facilitating discussion across different platforms - so although we’re on twitter spaces now, we might be somewhere else next week. Going to experiment with that as well.

We also want to open parts of the program later on to questions and ideas from our listeners. And this week we’ll be in conversation with our newly announced co-directors, Makayla Bailey and Michael Connor.

I can give a little bit of an introduction for them - basically this talk will be structured around a brief conversation and later an open period of Q&A.

Makayla Bailey is a writer and curator based in New York. Bailey has held positions at MoMA, LAXART and The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she co-organized Hearts in Isolation, the first digital exhibition at The Studio Museum, as well as the winter 2020 season of Harlem Postcards. Bailey was a primary researcher for This Longing Vessel, the 2019-20 Studio Museum Artist-in-Residence culminating exhibition at MoMA PS1. Bailey’s work has been featured in PIN-UP, Frieze, Artforum, Flaunt Magazine, Studio Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Hyperallergic. Kind of impressive backstory here so feeling excited to be able to learn more about Makayla. Her current work traverses environmental spaces and Black excess.

Michael Connor has been with Rhizome for nearly 10 years, Michael began at Rhizome as Editor and Curator in 2013 and was appointed Artistic Director in 2015, where Michael oversaw the Net Art Anthology, which was an expansive effort to retell the history of net art through 100 works. Net Art Anthology was presented as an online exhibition, gallery exhibition, and book. His first online curatorial project took place in 2003 at FACT, Liverpool, where he organized an edition of the traveling exhibition “Kingdom of Piracy” (with Shu Lea Cheang, Yukiko Shikata, and Armin Medosch.)

Pretty exciting, this next bit will be more conversational. We’ll go through a few questions.

Michael: Hey Briana, can you hear me?

Briana: Yes, haii!

Makayla: Hey, this is Makayla.

Briana: Hi ! how are you guys?

Makayla: Good, yea excited for this conversation. hopefully the beginning of many more conversations. We kind of wanted to open up - just ways to talk to our community. I think one thing about Rhizome is that we have really great supporters and really great people who are interested. Shoutout to some people listening like Lindsey Howard and Cory Archangel. Yea and just excited to start the conversation.

Briana: So yea, Makayla you’re newer to our community but you have a background as a curator and development director. So we want to learn a little bit more about that background and how it’s relevant to Rhizome and your new position.

Makayla: I was born and raised in California. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for most of my adult life. I’ve been in NY the past 3 years since 2019. And I’ve been working in arts spaces for over 7 years. My primary focus is like contemporary art and emerging artists. And while the broad definition of contemporary art can stretch back as far as the 1960s, in my practice I’m most interested in working with living artists who are engaged in conversations that are relevant to us today. And artists who continue to investigate culturally salient aspects of future cultural production and the questions that are involved with that.

Michael: One of the exciting things about this moment is that we’re both coming from a curatorial background. That makes Rhizome a sort of curator led institution, which is not that different from the way it’s always been. But kind of feels like an interesting moment. But I wondered - actually just maybe just as a way of talking a little bit more about your practice - I happened to the see show you were involved with at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. Maybe you could talk us through that project a bit as an example of something you’ve worked on recently. 

Makayla: That show was called “All Opposing Players” It was done in collaboration between David Kordansky and The Racial Imaginary Institute. (TRII for short) And TRII is basically like an interdisciplinary cultural laboratory that’s based on the premise that race is one of the primary ways that history lives in us. And so like the racial imaginary kind of alludes to the concept that race itself is an invented concept - that nevertheless operates with extraordinary force within our daily lives and can limit our movements and imaginations. According to TRII and many other people - no sphere of life is untouched and so the institute often gathers interdisciplinary range of artists, writers, knowledge producers, and activists.

So that particular exhibition just came about when David Kordansky was reading a piece that the founder, Claudia Rankine, had wrote on Art Forum. And wanted to offer up the gallery as a venue. Every two years the program centers around different topics. So the inaugural program was on whiteness and this next iteration - because it’s continuing as well - is on nationalism. 

We had the opportunity to use a commercial gallery space to impact a lot of these topics on a less commercial level. It was a nice bridge of having the support of a commercial gallery but also being able to get into some of the thematic concerns that you might typically explore at a university space or a non-profit project space.

Michael: We have this background that’s in common as being curators - but it’s interesting that you really have quite a lot more museum-focused experience than I do. I actually often feel like I’m kind of coming to curating as like an extra-terrestrial like googling “how do you make an exhibition” or something. and i think that has allowed me to be a little be free with how I think about online exhibitions and things. But I also am aware - always wishing that I had a bit more of that actual museum experience.

And so, as someone coming into Rhizome - this like non-museum space, do you - you’ve been here since December now, but still relatively early - what do you think Rhizome can draw on from that museum way of doing things.

What do you think is kind of nice to leave behind when you come here?

Makayla: One thing that drew me to Rhizome, even from a museum perspective, is that Rhizome has this really broad archive of digital artworks that are meant to be preserved and presented for both now and the future. I think Rhizome provides a really important curatorial context to a field that has now been emerging for some time and is now experiencing a ground swell of interest - in the last couple of years. Most notably around Web 3 I would say.

Overall in terms from what I’d like to leave behind from museum spaces - I would like to broaden the definition of what type of artwork is important. And so in my practice - whether it’s been trying to platform more marginalized artists at large institutions - such as MOMA - or arranging exhibitions at small, artist-run project spaces, something I also did in Los Angeles. I tend to shape things into my interests around a sense of what’s happening directly in the communities around me. And yea, as for Rhizome I really am interested in the idea of conserving and preserving digital culture. And continuing to broaden that definition as well.

From the idea of a lay-person’s perspective, a lot of people tend to talk about net art as a province of white creators and that simply is not true. Rhizome is doing work to re-frame that and when we do that, we arrive at a really compelling re-contextualization that can center a more equitable historical accounting of what the field is, has been, and can be.

Michael: I would like to type that up for our next funding application. I think it was like ready to go, full paragraphs, even amazing.

Makayla: Thanks, Michael

"..A lot of people tend to talk about net art as a province of white creators and that simply is not true. Rhizome is doing work to re-frame that and when we do that, we arrive at a really compelling re-contextualization that can center a more equitable historical accounting of what the field is, has been, and can be." - Makayla Bailey on what excites her about Rhizome

Makayla: One thing that I wanted to ask you as my partner in this new model at Rhizome - Rhizome has always been a unique organization and now we have a unique leadership model to match. And I just wanted you to talk to our audience about the co-director structure and what it means for us to have this type of leadership model.

Michael: We started this conversation as soon as we heard Zack was leaving. We had coffee and Zack obviously was at Rhizome quite a few years and had a great tenure. Really did a lot to build up the preservation program, secured this incredible Mellon foundation support. And really there have been so many moments where there’s this feeling of existential dread until the next grant comes through. He was just trying to get us out of that feeling of precarity. Something that Zack really put a lot of effort into. So when we heard he was moving on, in our conversation it immediately seemed like an opportunity for Rhizome to embrace a more non hierarchical way of doing things.

Both you and I have really collaborative practices in our curatorial lives and so thinking of the leadership of the institution itself as something that could be done collaboratively seemed like something that matched up with Rhizome’s ethos and our own way of working. Also at that point we'd worked together on the 2020 benefit and so we had this working relationship that felt like we might complement each other in an interesting way.

But yeah immediately I was like “this sounds like exciting. We should definitely try to put in this proposal, but I don't know if the board is going to go for this, you know?” I felt like it might be a little too wacky for people. I certainly am always coming in with like wacky ideas and I know you have a very creative way of approaching things too. So that was like my first instinct, but in fact - the board were extremely receptive. I think they also want to see Rhizome pushing forward with new models of doing things and also be a role model to other institutions, certainly there's examples that we looked to also of people that are already doing this, such as such as recess, to kind of think about how we would structure our approach. So that's the story of it a little and the process.

Should we get into a little bit of the nuts and bolts?

Makayla: Something that I would like to touch on is how this arcs into Rhizome’s history and you've been around for almost 10 years now. You are able to put this moment into context with like how Rhizome has changed.

Michael: I'm actually gonna like throw it back further than my 10 years because Rhizome was founded by artist Mark Tribe and we were an e-mail and our first instantiation mark really just set up. and we use the word list-serv to describe it but Mark's always like it was actually on Majordomo which is a different email list software. So it was just a way for people to communicate together and develop a shared language around emerging media art forms. It had a community-oriented structure and even the word "Rhizome" is metaphor from Deleuze and Guattari for non-hierarchical modes of organization.

Obviously, we're seeing lots of conversations around those ideas and culture today but Rhizome initially had that kind of ethos right at its founding. Something else that it always had throughout its history was an understanding that an organization that focuses on digital culture would have to adopt different models and ways of working just to survive and so Mark when he moved back to New York from Berlin, where Rhizome started, he looked into starting a for-profit company that would commission artists to make public net art works for corporate websites and for corporate websites - That was called, I think, web objects…stock objects? web objects? something like that. and then he also of course recognized that there was this incredible need for more archival support for artists work at that time so that was where the artbase started - right at the start of Rhizome. It was like an online community it was a nonprofit it was an archive it was a for profit company and it was and it was a magazine and so it always has had this kind of very fluid model.

"..what's good about the museum world is that it supports a kind of cultural memory that, without institutions that support a longevity to cultural materials, becomes quite difficult to access, even the relatively recent past and material form…”In digital culture that process is so wildly accelerated because of planned obsolescence of hardware and software and it almost feels like we're being asked to exist in this state where an interface that we spent all of our time with in 2013 is now completely erased from the from the record. ..that makes it very difficult to build a coherent picture of one's work over time.” - Michael on the institutional fight against planned technological obsolescence

The moment that we're in now- When I started at Rhizome we had so much focus on publishing on the blog and it was really fun and great to put all of this effort into pushing out articles and posts and social media posts around it. But we have really wanted to put the archive more at the center of the organization while also supporting new artists work.

Those two aspects of Rhizome have grown over the past 10 years to kind of eclipse this more straightforward publishing side. We're really an organization that's much more focused on like a curated idea of supporting new work and also supporting the memory of the past and those ways of working require a somewhat institutional way of doing things.

We're at this moment where we're trying to be a public institution, we're trying to reach a bigger audience and that we are trying to speak clearly from the perspective that we have within digital culture while also retaining that ethos of the past of like non-hierarchical ways of doing things and embracing new models. So trying to retain that old spirit while also firming our status up as institution.

Makayla: I feel like for me like coming to Rhizome from like a museum background, I've always been aware of Rhizome but I always thought of it as almost like a swiss army knife of an organization where there's there's so many different tenants. And I think one thing that's a really fun sort of challenge for us is how to better our messaging in terms of like what we do and how we we want to be a resource to artists and to our community

Whenever we open up for conversation, I would love to just hear people's kind of, yeah, like how they came to know about us, like what they. I don't know. It's just, yeah, to know what Rhizome is to certain people and just so that we can move forward with a mission and vision that kind of includes that. and this will obviously be an ongoing conversation but i think that is part of why we wanted to start office hours.

Michael: Yeah, maybe we could open it up in just a few minutes to people for more broad conversation but I think one of the macro narratives to draw over from the last 10 years is the focus on the archive. Maybe we should take a moment just to dwell on that a moment longer you kind of did it already when we were talking about. And, you know, the museum world and what's good about it and I think what you were kind of saying -

Is that what's good about the museum world is that it supports like a a kind of cultural memory that we, you know, without institutions that support like a longevity to cultural materials it becomes quite it can become quite difficult to access, you know, even the relatively recent past and material form, and I think in digital culture that process is so like wildly accelerated. because of planned obsolescence of hardware and software and it almost feels like we're being asked to exist in this state where , an interface that we spent all of our time with in 2013 is now kind of completely erased from the from the record and. andthat makes it very difficult to like build a coherent picture of 1's work over time.

So there's a really strong political argument for supporting digital archives and making making sure that artists work has a role in that. It's been really exciting because we've been making the case for a while that artists are sort of like a Drosophila melanogaster of a digital culture - because their work is complicated and weird, if you think about how to support this over time then everything else kind of neatly falls into place and then the issues that arise in artists work in terms of preservation are the ones that digital culture has been kind of pushing to the side thinking it might not need to grapple with. But they always, there's issues getting out of our preservation program over the last decade.

Makayla: I just googled drosophi - is that - is that a fruit fly?

Michael: I think it's the fruit flies like a specimen that you like test all the things on and it gives you a good indication of whether or not its poisonous or something. so we’re like the test specimen the digital art that we have is like we can test all these crazy experimental methods on them and then you know, more normal websites and things.

Makayla: Well, thanks for that metaphor. I learned something new.

Michael: I feel like i've been saying that for like a long time, but I had forgotten why we started saying it. So it's good that you checked me on that.

It's been really exciting because we've been making the case for a while that artists are sort of like a Drosophila melanogaster of a digital culture - because their work is complicated and weird, if you think about how to support this over time then everything else kind of neatly falls into place and then the issues that arise in artists work in terms of preservation are the ones that digital culture has been kind of pushing to the side thinking it might not need to grapple with. - Michael on the fruit fly analogy

Makayla: Yea, of course.

Great, I feel like if anyone has questions we can move to that also you're feeling a little quiet or shy like feel free to DM us and we can also read the questions out that way and maybe while we gear up for that we also have some things to share about our program but we’ll give it a couple of seconds.

— cue technical difficulties and limitations from twitter spaces —

Michael: Well, the first thing is that we have a new website coming, which is really exciting. a lot of our programs are online and so the website is super important. the one we've had is quite a few years in at this point definitely sort of relates to like a previous way of doing things for us.

So what's really exciting about our new website is that it is being designed by Mindy Seu and Laura Coombs and it has a really great discoverability so we're hoping that the very rich archive on our website, not just the formal archive but just all of the posts we've done over the years are going to be a lot easier to surface in relation to people's interests now. So that’s happening soon, our developer, Mark Beasley, has been working really hard on it.

Yeah, we've been talking about kind of structuring our program around a few main strands and I think we can kind of tease those in and see how they land with people as they're still sort of in in development. And one of the program strands we've been thinking about is - well we had gotten support from Luce foundation to build up content for the archive. Do you want to say something Makayla, or should I just move on to the program itself?

Makayla: Yeah, I can say something about that. Really exciting, but we received a grant from Luce regarding our archival work, which is great. It's basically gonna support - in April 2021 we relaunched artbase which is kind of like a new chapter in the continued technical work that we have been doing at Rhizome to improve access to our art base as a collection and so make it easier to navigate and things like that so it can serve as a better resource. And the Luce foundation is basically going to support this effort with sort of like supporting like a half time curator. So, Celine Katzman is going to be researching the archive, accessioning new works and contributing to data improvement. Just an overall effort to expand the visibility of our archive through like publications and public programs.

Michael: Yeah and we had we had initiated that around open calls for the art base archive with executable poetry which was done last fall and and now we have a tumbler open call which is hopefully reaching its daily month soon

Following that instead of the open call format we're going to shift to something that's more like the net art anthology model. We're calling it art based anthologies and it's going to be rolling out one work at a time from the archive or new accessions to the archive and giving each work it's in sort of moment in the sun and we have some really exciting work that we're going to to be presenting as part of that strand. So that's sort of 1 sort of aspect of the program.

The next thing I think that’s kind of going to be coming back with a new look is our 7 on 7 program, which has been going on since 2010. It's our art and tech collaboration platform where we invite artists and technologists to work together to quote UN quote and make something new. In the future we want to really consolidate all of our research of which there's quite a lot under the 7 on 7 umbrella.

So that we will have 7 research themes, each theme could have conversations and publishing, but each one will be anchored by an artist and technologist collaborating and presenting their work at a major event, which is currently scheduled for next fall at the new museum. So 7 on 7 can be not just for artists and technologists to work together but also as sort of engine for, you know, for research and knowledge production - and then we have of course the commission's program.

The commissions program has been ongoing at rhizome since i think - the year 2000. We offer relatively small financial support to artists to produce new digital works. We present the results often online in our first look online exhibition series - and a lot of the funding for that comes from Jerome foundation which we got great support from, national endowment for the arts, and we also have a fantastic grant from algrant foundation which is supporting artists working on blockchain based projects for the Algerian blockchain.

So yeah we have like lots of different kinds of support for artists as part of that, which Celine is leading on then the final aspect of our program is really around preservation outreach and that's going to be the topic of next week's office hours with our preservation director dragan espenschied because we do all of this sort of developing tools and systems and ways of keeping digital culture alive and over the next year, we really want to make a big focus on talking and sharing around that more.

Makayla: Yeah, so tune in next week to find out more about our preservation program. But As for today, I think that's all we wanted to share. If anyone has questions or anyone to provide feedback like feel free to reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram and we're more than open to that. But thank everybody for your time and for tuning in to the very first office hours. We're looking forward to like iterating on this format and bringing in more speakers and artists and things just to provide more insight on what we do in our community.

Michael: Thanks everyone.

Yeah, and then feel free to reach out anytime and you're looking forward to seeing how this conversation evolves.