How often do you share a bench with Vaginal Davis and chat about life? I reached out to ‘Tante Vag’, as she so charmingly signed off her email correspondence with me, asking if we could meet for an interview. Between starting a new professorship in Nuremberg and taking care of business in Berlin, she’s got a tight schedule – but still managed to squeeze in a quick conversation. After the book launch for the Jack Smith book ‘What’s So Underground About Marshmallows’ edited by CHEAP Kollektiv’s Minister of Sordid Information, Marcuse Siegelstein, we step out of the hidden project space. It’s still cold outside, an unusually long winter in Berlin (it’s February, but we’re not used to it), and we’re sitting on a green bench outside the space. The event is over, people are mingling and smoking outside, and we sit a few meters away. Bundled up in winter attire, my fingers freeze as I hold out my phone, recording our conversation. 

Vag is just coming out of a nearly two-year exhibition tour, with her first institutional show at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, followed by the Gropius Bau and the MoMA PS1, the latter ending next week, at the time of writing. I wanted to speak to Vag about the state of things from her view. How do we forge community? What was it like for her to leave the U.S. for Germany, and how did her relationships in Berlin influence that decision? Here’s what we got to talking about before we both froze.

Vaginal Davis: My time has suddenly been cut very, very short because I have to prepare for teaching now. The last time I taught was for the master's program at the University of Geneva, Workmaster Head.

Mia Butter: Oh, I studied in Switzerland!

VD: Oh, you did?

MB: Yeah, at the art school in Zurich. 

VD: That's so funny. I was in Geneva from 2018 to 2021, and so of course, the pandemic interrupted things. When they stopped teaching in person, we transitioned to online teaching. I didn't have internet access in my apartment because it’s an apartment from 1832, you know, so I had internet on my smartphone. I had to contact each student and speak to them individually, which was very time-consuming.

MB: Super valuable for the students, though. 

VD: They liked it. 

MB: But, time-consuming for you.

VD: And then finally, I was able to get some kind of internet access in my apartment. They couldn't do the fast… whatever it is, but they were able to get me broadband. That wasn't until August of 2020. So then I had one more year of teaching, but that was the last time I taught – 2021. 

MB: Are you looking forward to teaching again? 

VD: I am! Because after doing all these exhibitions back to back, from Stockholm to here in Berlin to New York, I think being with young people and students is gonna be really nice. I've already met the administration there; it's mainly all women. They're really great, the administrators and the other colleagues and whatnot. The students are incredible. I saw their winter exhibition, and it was great. It was really… I was wowed. This is the Art Academy in Nuremberg. 

MB: Awesome!

VD: So I can take the fast train to get there. It only takes three hours to get to Bavaria with this fast train.

MB: When I take the train to visit my sister in the south, the train stops in every single tiny town there is, so I’m impressed that you can get there so fast.

VD: Oh wow, not this one, this one’s fast. I may have to go there again soon, before I start in April.

MB: I think this connects nicely to what I want to speak to you about, actually. I’m interested in community and network, and I wonder where they overlap or if they’re antithetical. I find the word network to be a bit yucky, so I want to understand it better.

VD: Well, I don't particularly care for a word like ‘networking’. It's like that word ‘brand’. I don't like that word. People use it all the time, especially in discourses in America. Everyone calls themselves a brand now. And so with networking, it sounds so business-y and so corporate, and so it just doesn't have a great connotation to it. 

MB: I agree.

VD: You know? So that's something I would reject. Community is a different thing. 

MB: Yes, exactly. So, there are different rules within a community and a network?

VD: We forge communities with people and like-minded individuals, people you share ideals with and who cross-pollinate with each other. You know, to me, that's more important, and people just being together when there are so many things that are separating us.