Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills cover art

Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills

Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills

Written by: Miriam Atkin
Listen for free

About this listen

Specific Objects is a monthly freeform radio show and podcast, hosted by Miriam Atkin, that invites artists from a variety of disciplines to describe, ponder, interrogate, interpret, and celebrate their current projects. The focus is on guests who live and work in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region, though people will occasionally visit from farther afield. Tune in to learn what artists in your neighborhood are thinking and making right now. Sponsored by Wave Farm WGXC Intro music: "Sing Out," Joanna Mattrey Logo design: Ric RoyerMiriam Atkin Art
Episodes
  • Specific Objects: Ep.16 Viktorsha Uliyanova
    Dec 23 2025

    On this month's edition of "Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills," host Miriam Atkin speaks with Woodstock-based multidisciplinary artist Viktorsha Uliyanova. We discuss her recent solo show at Roundabouts Now gallery in Kingston titled "Quieter than Water Lower than Grass."

    Viktorsha Uliyanova is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working with alternative photography, installation, video, and fiber art. Her work explores impermanence, the notion of home, and cultural identity narrated through the prism of memory. Uliyanova’s practice is informed by her upbringing in the Soviet Union, political repression, and the immigrant experience. In her research, Uliyanova explores neglected and overlooked histories, often using archives as a catalyst for her work. Her work has been exhibited at Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Baxter St., MOMA PS1, Participant Inc, and Collarworks, among others. She teaches photography at SUNY New Paltz.

    "Specific Objects" is a monthly freeform discussion hosted by Miriam Atkin that invites artists from a variety of disciplines to describe, ponder, interrogate, interpret, and celebrate their current projects. The focus is on guests who live and work in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region, though people will occasionally visit from farther afield. Tune in to learn what artists in your neighborhood are thinking and making right now.

    Miriam Atkin is a Catskills-based writer whose work concerns the possibilities of poetry as a medium in conversation with avant-garde film, music, and dance. She is cofounder of Pinsapo, an international publishing collective, and teaches writing around the Hudson Valley region at Bard College and the Otisville Correctional Facility.

    Intro music: "Sing Out" by Joanna Mattrey

    Show More Show Less
    50 mins
  • Specific Objects: Ep.15 Erica Dawn Lyle
    Sep 30 2025

    On this month's edition of "Specific Objects: Talks on Art in the Catskills," host Miriam Atkin speaks with musician/writer Erica Dawn Lyle. We discuss her new album, On Fire, in which she transforms and deforms Van Halen's classic live opener and "tunes her antenna deeply to The Moment, channeling abandon and grief in equal measure." Lyle also gives a reading of recent poems that explore the body as a site of personal and collective experimentation-as-resistance.

    Erica Dawn Lyle is a writer, curator, experimental musician, and cultural instigator who lives in New York City and Florida. The former touring guitar player for Bikini Kill, as a solo performer, Lyle has released musical collaborations with Kim Gordon, The Raincoats, Bernadette Mayer, Kathleen Hanna, Brontez Purcell, and many more, and she performs in the improv free jazz activist duo, MYKAWARA, with drummer, Marshall Trammell. Lyle is the author of Streetopia(Booklyn, 2015) and On The Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of The City (Soft Skull, 2008) and has written for Artforum, Art in America, Frieze, and NPR's This American Life. Her most recent book is The Knight of Cups (Belladonna, 2023).

    "Specific Objects" is a monthly freeform discussion hosted by Miriam Atkin that invites artists from a variety of disciplines to describe, ponder, interrogate, interpret, and celebrate their current projects. The focus is on guests who live and work in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region, though people will occasionally visit from farther afield. Tune in to learn what artists in your neighborhood are thinking and making right now.

    Miriam Atkin is a Catskills-based writer whose work concerns the possibilities of poetry as a medium in conversation with avant-garde film, music, and dance. She is cofounder of Pinsapo, an international publishing collective, and teaches writing around the Hudson Valley region at Bard College and the Otisville Correctional Facility.

    Intro music: "Sing Out" by Joanna Mattrey

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Specific Objects Ep.14: A Tribute to Cole Heinowitz| Cole's Music, Poetry, and the Interplay Between Them, w/ Guest Chris Funkhouser
    Jul 27 2025

    This month, Chris Funkhouser visits the studio to discuss the life and work of poet, translator, musician, and professor Cole Heinowitz. Chris and Cole played music together in multiple Hudson Valley ensembles; we listen to audio from those projects as well as archival recordings of Cole reading her poetry.


    Poet Ray'd Yo: Cole Heinowitz Tribute

    Cole Heinowitz's PennSound Page

    Satan's Black Acid Bandcamp Page


    ~


    Cole Heinowitz was born and raised in San Diego, California. She earned a BA in creative writing and comparative literature from the University of California San Diego and an MA and PhD in comparative literature from Brown University. Prior to coming to Bard College, she taught literature and Spanish at Brown University, Brandeis University, and Dartmouth College.


    Dr. Heinowitz joined the faculty at Bard College in 2004 and became full professor in 2021. Her mind and personality were magnetic and singular. She combined a mesmerizing presence, uncommon perceptions, and a deep and intense enthusiasm for scholarship and art and the community of learning.

    An accomplished writer, musician, translator, and scholar, Cole Heinowitz’s unique gifts spanned many literary-historical fields, genres, and languages. She was the author of three books of poetry: Daily Chimera (Incommunicado, 1995), Stunning in Muscle Hospital (Detour, 2002), and The Rubicon (The Rest, 2007). She translated widely from Spanish into English, concentrating on 20th-Century Latin American poetry. Translated works include Advice from 1 Disciple of Marx to 1 Heidegger Fanatic (Ediciones Sin Fin, 2023; Wave Books, 2013) and Bleeding from All 5 Senses (White Pine, 2020), both by Mexican infrarrealist poet Mario Santiago Papasquiaro; A Tradition of Rupture, the collected essays of Argentine poet and fiction writer Alejandra Pizarnik (Ugly Duckling, 2019); and Primeval Wing by Mexican poet Mara Larrosa (forthcoming from Ediciones Norteadas). Dr. Heinowitz’s translations from French include Succubations & Incubations: Selected Letters of Antonin Artaud (Infinity Land, 2020).


    ~


    Christopher Funkhouser is a writer, musician, and multimedia artist who has authored of two scholarly monographs, Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archeology of Forms, 1959-1995 and New Directions in Digital Poetry. I have taught Communication and Media courses at NJIT since 1997, and was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Multimedia University, Malaysia, in 2006. As a publisher he worked closely with Amiri Baraka and Kamau Brathwaite, and many other writers and artists. He was commissioned by the Associated Press to prepare digital poems for the occasion of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, and in 2016 he performed at the Whitney Museum’s Open Plan: Cecil Taylor exhibition. Christopher is a Contributing Editor at PennSound, host of the POET RAY’D YO radio program at WGXC (Hudson, NY), and is a member of the improvisational musical ensemble Most Serene Congress.


    ~


    "Specific Objects" is a monthly freeform discussion hosted by Miriam Atkin that invites artists from a variety of disciplines to describe, ponder, interrogate, interpret, and celebrate their current projects. The focus is on guests who live and work in the Hudson Valley/Catskills region, though people will occasionally visit from farther afield. Tune in to learn what artists in your neighborhood are thinking and making right now.


    Miriam Atkin is a Catskills-based writer whose work concerns the possibilities of poetry as a medium in conversation with avant-garde film, music, and dance. She is cofounder of Pinsapo, an international publishing collective, and teaches writing around the Hudson Valley region at Bard College and the Otisville Correctional Facility.


    Intro music: "Sing Out" by Joanna Mattrey


    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 10 mins
No reviews yet