Spectrevision Radio

Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.

For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weird Studies. This is Phil. You'd think by now we would have done an episode on J.F.'s

book, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice. In a way, it's felt like a subject too big to tackle.

Or maybe just redundant. After all, every episode of Weird Studies is shot through with its ideas.

It's the book that started at all. It's one of a

half dozen or so Weirdosphere books that I would happily shoot off into space in hopes that some

alien might find them and think kindly of us as a species. It's a work of 21st century

aesthetic theory that some might find old-fashioned, for how many thinkers stick up

for the autonomy of art these days. But to me, it discloses the capital N new, appearing in

advance of its audience and heralding a vision beyond our present limitations.

Eric Davis's late lamented podcast, Expanding Mind, used to be my constant Jim companion.

And one day, when I was hogging the bench press, listening to Eric's 2015 interview with J.F.,

here, at last, I found a kindred spirit. Someone who was telling it like it is about art.

A spiritual dude who wrote lyrically but with philosophical

heft. I devoured his book and recommended it to my friend, Weird Studies Spirit Animal, Graham Larkin.

Graham noticed that J.F. lived in Ottawa, more specifically, Vanier, and since I was going up to visit

Graham anyway, why not let's do a thing?

So we threw the book a launch party of sorts at Octopus Books in downtown Ottawa.

By the way, if you sign up for our Patreon, which, if you haven't, what are you even doing,

you can find the audio of that event buried somewhere in the mountain of exclusive content we have over there now,

just hours and hours of content waiting for you to consume it. I call weird studies content all the time, but as I'm sitting

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