Promise No Promises is a podcasts series produced by the Center for Gender and Equality, a research project of the Institute Art Gender Nature FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, conceived as a think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of gender in the arts, culture, science, and technology, as well as in all knowledge areas that are interconnected with the field of culture today.
The podcast series originates from a series of symposia initiated in October 2018 in Basel and moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Part of the Gender’s Center for Excellency, the symposia and the podcasts are the public side of this research project aimed to develop different teaching tools, materials and ideas to challenge the curricula, while creating a sphere where to meet, discuss, and foster a new imagination of what is still possible in our fields.
THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. Rotten Oranges – Rubén Grilo
Rotten Oranges is episode 33, an online conversation with artist Rubén Grilo and Sonia Fernandez Pan, the host of this podcast, in which they talk about technology and art because they are part of his work without being categories that can fully capture it.
“The story that opens this podcast reveals how Silicon Valley is connected to any place with an internet connection. It also tells how what is supposed to be outstanding is actually utterly banal.
I don't know many people who pay such close attention to how things work: from machines to infrastructures to social and interpersonal relationships. Nor do I know many artists who decide to stop making art because they acknowledge the system is worn out. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that reverse engineering is part of Rubén’s work, understanding how systems are made and how they made us.
I also keep asking Rubén lots of questions about technology and capitalism because he explains them in a way that everyone can understand.
The title of this podcast has to do with that moment and with Rubén Grilo's way of speaking. To squeeze the rotten oranges, I highly recommend listening to the whole conversation. The rest is just a matter of making the connections.”
Sonia Fernandez Pan
18 May 2026
THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. Moving Through Layers of Internet – Martins Kohout
Moving Through Layers of Internet is Episode 32, of The Tale and The Tongue, which follows a conversation with artist Martins Kohout and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast.
“On my way to Martins' house with a recorder from another era, I felt my phone vibrate. Checking to see if there were any messages, there were none. As we were going to talk about technology, this moment became a reminder of common situations with our devices in daily life. I asked Martins to share a personal anecdote about technology that they found relevant. Rather than the appealing myth of eye-opening discoveries, Martins chose to talk about intensities and gradual shifts in our technological habits.
The promised world beyond the screen is often not as exciting as we imagined it would be. But the phone is always there for us, ready to comfort us and keep the dopamine flowing… The past is constantly being updated too. Just like with the apps on our phones, it’s very easy to forget about the older versions. This is something Martins reminded me of during a meeting that focused more on how we use things than on how they are made.
Our communication methods are not mutually exclusive; they all work together. Just as we don’t speak in the same way to everyone we know or in the different languages we know, we don’t express ourselves in the same way across all the media we use. Following Martins’s observations, this points to a contradiction: demanding that a single social media profile encapsulates who we really are, when actually we are many at once. But I don’t think this is just because of technology.”
Sonia Fernández Pan
16 Mar 2026
THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. We Could Not Resist That Call – Laurence Rassel
We Could Not Resist That Call is episode 31 of The Tale and The Tongue, which follows a conversation Laurence Rassel, a “cyberfeminist” and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of this podcast. “I saw Laurence at Feministaldia in San Sebastián at the end of 2025. She talked about something she calls an open-source institution. Just as we should understand the machines we use by opening them up and seeing what they are made of, we should open institutions to understand how they really work. The question of privilege came up in conversation with Laurence Rassel. Summarizing certain forms of dissent as a privilege is also a way of dismissing the fact that we still have some agency in what we do. Not everyone understands success in the same way, nor does everyone share the same motivations or aspirations. Persisting in these differences is important, precisely to avoid a monopoly of desire. This conversation with Laurence Rassel took place at the end of January 2026. I suggested a trip back in time, to how things were in the 1990s with regard to the internet and the promises of technology. At the end of our meeting, we returned once again to 2003. “I don’t want to be alone in the 21st century,” is something Laurence said back then. Now that we know how lonely we can be while being hyper-connected, perhaps it is time to keep returning to the past — not out of nostalgia for what has been lost, but for what we can still recover."Sonia Fernández Pan
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.5 / 5
2 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
11 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 48 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
64
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
81
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