Artistic Identity when No One is Watching (part 1) with Alistair Debling and Rachel Summer Cheong

EPISODE 8 PART 1 Visual artists Rachel Summer Cheong and Alistair Debling dive deep into how their identities and philosophies have transformed with the pandemic and use of social media. They playfully touch on the ‘artist’ label, external validation, and authenticity. Rachel Summer Cheong is a misanthropic art gremlin and entrepreneur living in Austin, Texas. She highly recommends art as a covert way of making friends as an adult. She has an A.B. in the History of Art and Architecture and also (for some reason) a J.D. Plus, a small dachshund. With an experimental approach to form, Alistair Debling’s practice encompasses a broad range of time-based media, from video installation and live performance to alternative eco-film processes and AI-generated imagery. Though his work investigates diverse fields, from queer nightlife and ecology to the military-industrial-complex and its architectures, he is continually drawn to the question of what it means to survive. His work has been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Hauser and Wirth (Somerset) and the National Theatre of Great Britain (London). This podcast is presented in partnership with the Office for the Arts at Harvard and the Harvard Alumni Association. Learn more at 16artists.com Thank you to Jenny M Ng for helping to edit this episode.