Dan Fox - The Good Fallow

In episode 4 of Alt Ctrl Create, Peter Urpeth speaks with Dan Fox, former editor of leading international art world journal, Frieze Magazine, and the author of two books published by Fitcarraldo Editions.

This podcast focuses on Dan's second book, Limbo, and its compelling relevance to creativity and creative business in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In this interview we discuss how the concept of limbo adds a positive reality to the difficulty of being endlessly creative in the time of that pandemic, and how embracing and working with fallow periods is a natural and productive part of a creative life.

Limbo is a book that very much confronts the orthodoxies of creative business and that is explored in this episode.

In a world that demands faith in progress and growth, the book's jacket blurb states, Limbo is a companion for the stuck, the isolated, delayed, stranded and those in the dark.

Fusing memoir with a meditation on creative block and a cultural history of limbo, Dan Fox considers the role that fallow periods and states of inbetween play in art and life. 

Limbo is an essay about getting by when you can’t get along. From the Headington Shark to radical behavioural experiments, from life aboard a container ship to Sun Ra’s cosmology, Limbo argues that there can be no growth without stagnancy, no movement without inactivity, and no progress without refusal. 

The interview brings out the relevance of Limbo not just as a fascinating cultural history of a deep concept, but how that concept can be a highly relevant, timely and productive tool for those coping in a changed world.

On route, we also touch on the importance of the self-confessed polymath and of the self-aware dilettante, we discover who the real Father Ted of writing development really is, and what Dan has been watching on Netflix since the lockdown commenced.

Dan Fox's author page on the Fitzcarraldo website, through which both my books are available

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/authors/dan-fox

And the "Limbo" audiobook is available here:

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/shop/audiobooks

Dan's band - The God in Hackney - are on Bandcamp:

https://thegodinhackney.bandcamp.com/album/small-country-eclipse

The website for his record label is here: http://junioraspirin.com/wp/

This podcast is produced in association with XpoNorth - the agency that supports the growth of creative business in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland - xponorth.co.uk

Peter Urpeth is publishing sector advisor to XpoNorth, a pianist, journalist and film-maker with a passion for the innovation of small creative businesses - peterurpeth.com

Podcast theme music - Dirt Rhodes by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3650-dirt-rhodes

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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