Why Do We Converse?

🎙️ Edited Interviews

Yuchen and I started our podcast, Edited Recordings, simply because we enjoyed our casual conversations. But over time, what began as idle talk gradually became part of Yuchen’s work—since I lack both the passion and patience for audio editing, every past episode has been the result of her careful labor. I sit back with gratitude and reap the rewards.

Carrying a recorder and talking with people, however, is actually part of my daily work. As an art writer, I often visit artists’ studios for interviews—a privilege that feels like sitting in the front row of a performance, catching glimpses of what happens behind the curtain. Many works appear and disappear onstage; they are born in studios, pushed into the spotlight, and often return there again. In interviews, artists’ thoughts always feel especially lucid and lively—like annotations to the main text—loosely anchoring the meanings generated by their works to the ineffable impressions those works leave behind.

To be honest, my interest in art criticism has waned in recent years. I realized that as long as I stare long enough and hard enough at an artwork—even one that leaves me unmoved—I can always manage to say something good about it. Looking is a kind of projection, but too often professional conventions have channeled such projections into predictable paths, turning criticism into a market accelerant. Writing then risks becoming a kind of soliloquy amid the illusion of a thriving scene. I want to stay wary of those conscious and unconscious projections.

On the other hand, I’ve never lost my enthusiasm for visiting studios or having conversations. Many of those in-depth exchanges have stayed with me in meaningful ways. I’m reminded of bell hooks, who in All About Love urges us to communicate with sincerity as a way to seek the meaning of love: “When we hear another person’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are.”

A few years ago, I organized a small exhibition around the very idea of studio visits. In the gallery, we showed only video recordings of my conversations with artists in their studios—no artworks were displayed. One of them, Yu Ji, was then in residence in New York, so we talked on a patch of grass in a park, since the city itself, more than her temporary apartment, felt like her studio. Yuchen was also among the artists I interviewed. At the time, she was between studios, so coral pieces, artworks, and books were neatly arranged around her bed at home—there was almost no spatial divide between everyday life and artistic practice. Outside of that project, I once met another artist at a café, during his transition from sculpture to photography; for him, the computer, not a physical space, was the real studio. We sat on a noisy street, looking through images together on his laptop screen.

Artists who speak about their own work—though each with a distinct temperament and vocabulary—share a certain kind of charm. In conversation, many of them naturally shift between being the maker, the narrator, and the viewer of their own work. They stand closest to what they’ve created—the very place where the front-row audience also sits—and ask their interlocutors for impressions and feedback. In those moments, they reveal hesitations and uncertainties quite unlike what’s shown onstage, and I find that intimacy moving. I’ve been nourished by such conversations, and I want to remember them.

“Edited Interviews” are, in fact, born from Edited Recordings—only now presented mainly in text form. I want to keep the process simple, minimizing the need to involve others and reducing video or audio editing to a level I can handle on my own. This way, conversations can continue to happen with the least effort possible on my part, allowing me to preserve and share those fleeting moments and words that linger in memory. I cherish every chance to converse, and I believe that the meaning of conversation often flashes forth only in the act of conversing itself.

——Qianfan, Fall 2025