Fugue Chat

Matt talks about a weird feeling he had while watching the 2021 Beatles documentary, The Beatles: Get Back. (Matt probably calls it Let it Be in the podcast which is the name of the film from 1970 where lots of the footage comes from.)

Matt and Ross wander around London Liverpool Street station talking about features such as: the underground gym, the ‘Calm Corner’, and Exchange Square, the new development behind the station. n.b Neither Matt or Ross can remember the term ‘Terrazzo’ for the paving stones in Exchange Square.

Matt talks about Sean Cubitt’s article, ‘Anecdotal evidence’ from 2013, and what an anecdotal method to art, research and performance might entail.

Matt talks about how different techniques he uses across two podcasts construct the liveness of thought.

Matt walks through a field and tries to re-perform a previous podcast where he had talked about Maria Fusco and class.

Matt talks about the children’s book Snail Song and then sings his version of the poem from that book. (Correction: Matt gets the author’s name totally wrong. Snail Song is written by Judith Nicholls and illustrated by Lo Cole.)

Matt talks about how he’s probably going to spend less time talking about being a dad.

Matt talks about unreliable narrators, Greta Olsen’s article, ‘Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators’, and the idea of an implied author.

A double bill! Matt talks about getting his own height wrong and about how pleasant it is to lay still for a while while having an ECG.

Matt talks about rehearsing.

Matt talks about coffee.

Matt talks about Friedrich Nietzsche and his obsession with literal and metaphorical digestion

Matt and Joe walk around Nine Elms and talk about character.

Matt talks about Anselm Kiefer, Karl Ove Knausgård, and getting sentimental as you get older.

Matt speaks to Rebecca about going back to old ways of making and revisiting old ideas.

Matt talks about writing a proposal and how it helped him think about his work.

Matt and Ross talk about proximity in art while Ross walks around M&S to get out of the wind.

Matt talks about embarrassment as an important, but volatile, feeling in education.

Matt talks about how the more you study art, the less you’ll be paid.

Matt talks about an article by Greta Olson called ‘Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators’ and comes up with his own categories of untrustworthy authors and unreliable readers.

Matt writes about a drainage issue and talks about different kinds of sublime.

Matt tries to describe Fugue Chat as a performance project that exists as a podcast.

Matt walks through Deptford and talks about why Nev Clay’s song Staff Room makes him feel sentimental for a magical time when people drank tea, smoked Bensons and were in the Animal Liberation Front: the 90s.

Matt and Dan walk around Peckham and talk about skill in art, performance, and in teaching those subjects.

Matt talks about his theory of the dot after he has done a live podcast recording on the same topic to see if he thinks different things. This is part 2, part 1 was recorded before the podcast recording.

Matt talks about his theory of the dot before he goes to do a live podcast recording on the same topic. This is part 1. He’ll come back and do part 2 after he does the live recording and see if he thinks different things.

Matt talks about the benefits of looking at art in real life.

Matt and Sophie talk about moments where they have had to hide their disappointment.

Matt summarises some points from a lecture about collecting.

Matt talks about the duration of the podcast and about maybe doing a longer, live version for an exhibition.

Matt talks about the feeling of being, and not being, diagnosed.

Matt talks about how he doesn’t drink as much water as he used to.

Ho ho ho! For the first podcast of 2026 Matt and Ross have a (slightly late) chat about surprising things that make you feel festive such as: bin days, landlords, going up in the loft, prison escapes and more.

Matt talks about being embarrassed when people talk about Covid.

Matt talks about his daughters being ill. (Spoiler alert: everyone is fine.)

Matt drives home and talks about being given a neat idea to frame his PhD work, along with his worry that he’ll undermine it by going on about it for too long.

Matt drives home and talks about the US artist Lee Lozano’s notebooks

Matt makes meatballs and talks about clearing a blocked drain.

Matt talks about a workshop he ran with his students where they all went out and picked up things from the streets to make sculpture.

Matt talks about having a bad back.

Matt talks about misremembering where the term gaslighting originated.

Matt drives home from the station, talking about the Celebrity Traitors and how celebrities are really good at performing normalness. He’s also got a cold.

Matt walks around the reservoir and chats to Ross about clarity and complexity.

Matt walks around a reservoir in Suffolk and talks about being inarticulate.

Matt talks about the various platforms that he uses to take notes and make lists.

Matt cycles to work and talks about Men’s facewash, packet lattes, Andrea Long Chu and the erotics of performing the role of the consumer.n.b This is a re-performance of the episode after I realised the first version's audio quality was terrible.

Matt speaks about being proud of his students.

Matt describes a performance work he never made.

Matt drives back from the train station and talks about getting angry and shouting at another child in a soft play.

Matt talks about minor features of Lewisham shopping centre.