Artist Ben Kinmont on Experimenting With What Art Can Be, Antiquarian Bookselling, Economic Precarity, Artists' Contracts & More

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Cover image: Ben Kinmont and the Antinomian Press at Section Seven Books, Paris, printing Project Series: Lee Lozano.

For more information, please visit the websites for Antinomian Press, Ben Kinmont Bookseller, Ben Kinmont's projects and his gallery page.

SHOW NOTES:

0:00 artist / attorney collaboration

3:30 initial art practice in NYC 

3:50  work with antiquarian bookseller focused on medicine/science

4:20 antiquarian bookselling business - Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family

5:00 Occupational realism - term by Julia Bryant Wilson

5:35 Kinmont’s practice included painting, video, sculpture, photography 

5:50 NYC/Cologne street project I am for you, ich bin fur sie - 3  sculptures

6:15 “The Social Sculpture” - Joseph Beuys

6:40 "The Thinking Sculpture" and William James 

7:10 cognitive process as a sculptural process

7:25 “The Third Sculpture”

8:00 I Am For You 

9:00 Christo’s public projects about conversations with farmers/coastal commission 

10:35 The Materialization of Life Into Alternative Economies 

11:45 Antinomian Press 

14:40 economic precarity subtheme

15:10 theme of art in everyday life, what we can and can’t call art

16:00 Borders of what can and cannot be called art 

17:45 NYU Draper Institute lecture to grad class of anthropology 

19:00 cultural differences in interviewing NYC and Cologne individuals

21:15 archives of his projects led to his interest in contracts and Promised Relations: or, thoughts on a few artists’ contracts? 

24:20 Tilted Arc contract 

24:30 Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ certificates

25:30 Kinmont’s contract

25:40 Attorney Jerry Ordover

25:55 Seth Seigelab and Bob Projansky artist contract

29:45 MoMA Department of Prints and Drawing’s purchase of Antinomian Press archive

31:40 why artists shy from contracts

36:45 circa 1990 - Trust as Sculpture – strangers invited to waffle breakfast in Kinmont’s home 

38:15 understand history to create discourse around your experience

40:00 feedback from An Exhibition In Your Mouth

41:45 social/political meaning behind the study of gastronomy

42:50 Inter-sectionality of gastronomy with women’s studies, economic history, ethnography, class, medicine, health

44:40 Gastronomy and Economic Precarity

45:50 FBI’s attacks on the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast Programs

46:50 San Quintin death row inmate’s inquiry about publishing  Death Row Cookbook

48:50 his projects addressing injustice  

50:25 Ethical Considerations in Project Art Practice 

51:10 justice

51:502011 Carl Andre Killed His Wife Ana Mendieta

53:00 Olivier Mosset bought and later returned it

54:25 Andre’s involvement in Art Workers Coalition Group/work using proletariat mater

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Music by Toulme.

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© Stephanie Drawdy [2026]