Photo: Michael Miller

Skyping in from her studio at the University of Texas at Austin, artist Ariel Jackson is my guest this week. She produces sculpture, video, performance, and installation works that are research-driven critiques of United States history and culture. On this week’s episode, we talked about science fiction and Afrofuturism, games, intuition and color, complications in comedy and her “Dave Chappelle” moment, accessing and synthesizing information versus emotion, her recent studio projects that engage the politics of education and the history of African American farming, intersectionality, a 2017 artist residency she did in Senegal, cooking, and her new obsession with Topo Chico since relocating to Austin.