Episodes
Tuesday Nov 12, 2019
The Mind-Bending Mythology of Trenton Doyle Hancock
Tuesday Nov 12, 2019
Tuesday Nov 12, 2019
In November 2019, Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock brings his mythological “Moundverse” to Miami. Locust Projects gives over the entire space to his site-specific installation. The artist will immerse us in a world inspired by comic books, toys, horror films and animations.
For decades, Hancock has been telling the story of the Mounds (gentle hybrid plant-like creatures) protected by Torpedo Boy (Hancock’s alter ego), and their enemies, the Vegans (mutants who consume tofu and spill Mound blood every chance they get). In paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, video and installation, the artist explores good and evil, authority, race and class, moral relativism, politics and religion.
This is not our first encounter with Trenton Doyle Hancock. He was among artists that curator Valerie Cassel Oliver selected for Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art. The exhibition premiered in 2013 at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Houston, and traveled across the United States. In Radical Presence, Cassel Oliver surveyed seminal black performance art. She invited artists into the exhibition to re-stage their performances.
We make our way to Houston to watch Hancock embody one of the characters in the narrative he began creating when he was 10 years old. For an evening performance titled “Devotion,” he becomes a singing Mound. He's massive. He's blindfolded. Cassel Oliver feeds him Jell-O. The spectacle is intimate, absurd and deeply spiritual.
The next morning, we wander through the artist’s mind. Our conversation explores the histories, objects and ideas that inform his work. His warehouse is awash in accumulating materials—cast-off toys, books and bottle caps, scraps of felt and fabric, cans of paint. Works in progress and finished collage paintings line the walls. A drum kit sits waiting in one corner. It seems unlikely that this artist will ever lose the desire to experiment and play with the fantastical characters that animate his inner world.
Sound Editor: 2019 Anamnesis Audio; 2013 Eric Schwartz | Special Audio: Trenton Doyle Hancock
Related Episodes: Valerie Cassel Oliver on Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Tameka Norris on Channeling Personal History, William Pope.L Transforms the Black Factory into a Magic Lantern Show
Related Links: Locust Projects, Trenton Doyle Hancock at MASS MoCA, Radical Presence: Contemporary Black Performance Art
Monday Sep 03, 2018
Black in America
Monday Sep 03, 2018
Monday Sep 03, 2018
What does it mean to be Black in 21st century America? The expression of Blackness in art has a history of intricate connections to civil rights and social movements. In the United States and abroad, painting and drawing, filmmaking and photography, performance and protest have long represented diverse creative perspectives on the volatile subject of race and identity in this country.
Today, we hear from curators and artists whose work directly engages with race and American identity. Individually and collectively, they generate “freestyle” expressions of Blackness—revealing that no matter how history influences the Black cultural space, identity remains a fluid form in the hands of contemporary artists.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Photos courtesy of featured artists and the Renaissance Society
Featured Audio: Thelma Golden at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Hamza Walker, Black Is, Black Ain't Symposium, Renaissance Society, Johanne Rahaman field recordings in South Florida, Theaster Gates at Katzen Arts Center, American University, Theaster Gates performs at Huguenot House in Kassel, Germany, for documenta 13, Sanford Biggers, BAM (For Michael), Fahamu Pecou, All that Glitters Ain't Goals, Amy Sherald at Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago
Related Episodes: Modern Black Portrait of Florida, Jefferson Pinder on Symbols of Power and Struggle, Theaster Gates on Meaning, Making and Reconciliation, Sanford Biggers on Time and the Human Condition, Amy Sherald on New Racial Narratives, Fahamu Pecou on Art x Hip-Hop
Related links: Thelma Golden, Studio Museum of Harlem, Freestyle, Hamza Walker, Black Is, Black Ain't, Johanne Rahaman, Jefferson Pinder, Theaster Gates, Sanford Biggers, Amy Sherald, Fahamu Pecou, Deborah Roberts
Thursday Feb 13, 2014
Fresh Talk: Art x Hip-Hop
Thursday Feb 13, 2014
Thursday Feb 13, 2014
On Skype with Cathy Byrd, Atlanta-based artist and scholar Fahamu Pecou introduces his brand, explains why he's working toward a doctoral degree at Emory University and describes what it means to curate an art magazine at the intersection of art and hip-hop.
Wednesday Oct 23, 2013
Fresh Talk: Radical Presence
Wednesday Oct 23, 2013
Wednesday Oct 23, 2013
This Fresh Talkepisode features Jean-Ulrick Désert and Trenton Doyle Hancock, two of the artists participating in Radical Presence:Black Performance in Contemporary Art. Curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver for the Museum of Contemporary Arts inHouston (CAMH), the exhibition is now appearing in New York City. Some of theshow’s performance art events will be featured in New York’s Performa 13 this November.
To hear CathyByrd’s unedited recording sessions with Jean-Ulrick and Trenton, go to the newFresh Talk UNCUT podcast series.
Sound Editor: EricSchwartz
Episode Sound: TrentonDoyle Hancock, performing Devotion at CAMH
Monday Jan 21, 2013
Fresh Talk: Rashid Novaire
Monday Jan 21, 2013
Monday Jan 21, 2013
While in residence at Open Ateliers Zuidoost, in Southeast Amsterdam, Cathy Byrd meets Dutch novelist Rashid Novaire. Of Dutch and Moroccan descent, Rashid is an author whose heritage is intrinsic to his imagination. Rashid started penning stories when he was in elementary school. Hubris, his fourth novel, will be published in February 2013.Sound Editor: Eric Schwartz | Photos: courtesy Rashid Novaire| Episode Sound: radiobooks.com