Writer/curator Cathy Byrd sparks conversations about today’s art, design, and film on the Fresh Art International podcast. Synthesizing interviews and field recordings with critical commentary since 2011, the podcast archives the voices, sounds, and stories of contemporary culture makers from around the world.
Episodes
Tuesday Oct 22, 2019
Tuesday Oct 22, 2019
Today, we bring you sound art from Hong Kong, in our second guest-curated segment with Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong. CMHK is an incubator for cross-disciplinary practices in music, sound, and technology. In July 2018, composer and sound artist Samson Young introduced the first Hong Kong Mixtape, a set of nine sound art compositions. One year later, musician Him Cheung introduces Hong Kong Mixtape II. He takes us back to the former British colony to share sonic responses to highly volatile current events.
Let’s set the stage with a few facts. In 1997, Britain handed Hong Kong back to China. Now run under a "one country, two systems" agreement that guarantees it a level of autonomy, Hong Kong has its own judiciary and a separate legal system from mainland China. Rights including freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are protected. Those freedoms – known as the Basic Law - expire in 2047.
Our first Hong Kong Mixtape took us to the heart of 2017 student-led pro-democracy demonstrations, when the famed mass protests of the 2014 Umbrella Movement returned to the streets.
The city's uncertain future has sparked years of political protests. In June 2019, thousands of Hong Kong’s citizens began to gather again, protesting against a proposed law to allow extradition to mainland China. Critics feared this could undermine the city's judicial independence and endanger dissidents. Clashes between police and activists became increasingly violent, with police using tear gas and protesters storming parliament. The bill was withdrawn in September 2019. Demonstrations continue.
For this mixtape, we share excerpts from five sound encounters by artists based in Hong Kong. The first sound work expresses feelings of anxiety and hopelessness that persist with regard to the 1997 handover to Mainland China. The following three field recording projects bear witness to months of escalating demonstrations this year—from mass marches in the streets, to the declarations of individual protesters, to Hong Kong residents' nightly ritual of shouting slogans from the windows of their homes. The final segment conveys a desire to leave all the unrest behind—taking us on a supernatural sound walk to a temple in the woods.
Fresh Art International joins U.S. based Montez Press Radio and Co-op Radio Vancouver to present Hong Kong Mixtape II.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Guest Producer: Him Cheung
Featured sound works, in order of appearance: So Ho Chi, Take 2 (ver. 2) | Jantzen Tse, So Ho Chi | RC Team, Voices of Hong Kong "Rioters" | Alex Yu, 10pm shouting _Free Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Time_ Beverly Garden, Tseung Kwan O 2-9-2019 | Alex Yu, Temple
Related Episodes: Hong Kong Mixtape I, Samson Young on Songs for Disaster Relief, When Sound is Art—Five Sonic Stories
Related Links: Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, Umbrella Movement
Tuesday Oct 08, 2019
Tuesday Oct 08, 2019
How do healthy creative economies open the door for artists and innovators?
To answer this question, we take you to Nashville, Tennessee. Music City, U.S.A., aims to become the nation’s start up capital, too. Every year since 2012, Launch Tennessee hosts the 36|86 Entrepreneurship Festival to encourage new business endeavors. In 2019, Festival organizers invited Fresh Art International to curate a presentation around building the creative economy.
For a live audience gathered inside the historic Acme Seed & Feed building, we bring to the stage Nashvillian Harry Allen, boutique banker, Emily Best, Los Angeles based filmmaker and film producer, and Andrea Zieher, director of Tennessee’s near future contemporary art triennial. Our conversation reveals how the same risk taking and innovation that drive all startups fuel the most impactful creative entrepreneurship.
Takeaways:
- Recognize the value of cultural entrepreneurship.
- Work toward meaningful and inclusive community impact.
- Optimize technology, forge real relationships and dedicate personal energy to increase opportunities for creators and facilitate greater access to cultural experiences.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Live event recording courtesy Studio 208, Nashville
Related Episodes: Model Behavior—New Orleans Art Triennial Inspires Other Cities, Creative Hive Transforms Contemporary Art in Tampa, The Future of Art
Related Links: Seed&Spark, Studio Bank, TN Triennial, Tennessee Triennial, 36|86 Festival,
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Monday Aug 12, 2019
Today, we take you back to the month of April, in the year 2012. That’s when we set out on a road trip from Austin, Texas. We’re aiming to find out how remote wide open spaces of the American Southwest inform and inspire art and design, curating and filmmaking.
Lubbock, Texas, birthplace of musician songwriter Buddy Holly, is our first stop. In a warehouse at the edge of town, we meet architecture professor Chris Taylor. He introduces us to students from Texas Tech University who took his course in Land Arts of the American West. The course involves a 6,000-mile road trip that culminates each time in an exhibition such as the one on view during our visit.
We drive on to Roswell, New Mexico, home to the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Museum, to spend the night in one of the ranch-style houses that accommodate the Roswell Artists in Residence Program, known as RAIR. Established in 1967 by artist and art collector Don Anderson, the program is off the beaten path for residencies, offering visual artists the unique opportunity to spend an entire year concentrating on their work. The voices you’ll hear are five of the current residents at the time of our visit: Sarah Bostwick, Jon-Paul Villegas, Brian Villegas, Brian Kluge, and Sioban McBride.
A three hour drive from El Paso, Texas, Marfa has become a destination for art tourism. Home of the ghostly Marfa Lights (unexplained lights sometimes seen along the horizon in the night sky), the tiny town sits in the high desert, between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park.
Renowned minimalist artist Donald Judd came here in the 1970s to escape New York City’s commercial art scene. With the help of the DIA Foundation, he acquired a former Army base. Before Judd died in 1994, he transformed the 400-acre expanse into a faceted art experience. The Chinati Foundation is a contemporary art museum designed to connect art to the surrounding landscape. Year round, visitors can explore Judd's signature boxes and installations by Dan Flavin, Rebecca Horn, Ilya Kabakov and more. We spend a few days to track down some of the artists, curators, designers and producers expanding on Judd’s singular vision.
Professional filmmakers Jennifer Lane and David Hollander moved to Marfa from Los Angeles. CineMarfa, the film festival they founded there, will celebrate its tenth year in 2020. We visit their home for a conversation about the genesis of CineMarfa and plans for the second annual event.
Ballroom Marfa is a key site of cultural production in this remote art mecca. Arts pioneers Fairfax Dorn and Virginia Leh-bermann founded the contemporary cultural arts space in 2003. Ballroom’s gallery is a converted dancehall that dates to 1927. We sit down with Ballroom’s creative team to learn more.
In 2019, we reach out to curator Laura Copelin to find out what happened next. Ballroom Marfa continues commissioning site specific artworks and installations—responding to the environmental, social and political ecology of the landscape that extends to the border of Mexico. One recent example is Haroon Mirza’s massive Stone Circle in the grasslands east of town. This is Ballroom’s most ambitious public commission since Elmgreen & Dragset’s Prada Marfa was completed in 2005. The stone circle will remain in the landscape for the next several years.
Leaving the high desert, we drive northeast through the Texas hill country, passing endless fields of bluebonnets. In East Austin, we meet designer architect Jack Sanders in his studio. Sanders talks about how the legendary architect Sam Mockbee influenced the evolution of his own life’s work.
Sound Editing and Special Audio Credits:
Destination American Southwest Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Land Arts of the American West Sound Editor: Leo Madriz | Special Audio: 45 rpm record found by Land Art 2011 participants
Program Director: Chris Taylor
Students: Alexander Bingham, Luis Bustamante III, Will Cotton, Winston Holloway, Richard Klaja, Celeste Martinez, Zachary Mitchell, Carl Spartz, Rachael Wilson, Bethany Wood. Program Assistant: Adrian Larriva
Roswell Artists in Residence Sound Editor: Leo Madriz | RAiR acoustics: Sarah Bostwick
CineMarfa Sound Editor: Jay Agoglia | Sound Track: Harmony Korine, TRASH HUMPERS, 2009
Ballroom Marfa Sound Editor: Leo Madriz | Special Audio: Brian LeBarton, The Wind, 2010. New Year’s Film/Score Series. January 2, 2010. The Crowley Theater, Marfa
Jack Sanders Sound Editor: Leo Madriz | Music: Ross Cashiola, “Trains in the Grass”
Related Episodes: Fresh Talk: Joan Jonas, Fresh VUE: Austin, Land Arts of the American West, Roswell Artists in Residence, CineMarfa 2012, Ballroom Marfa Imagines a Drive-In, Jack Sanders on Slow Architecture
Related Links: Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program, Sarah Bostwick, Jon-Paul Villegas, Brian Kluge, Corwin Levi, Sioban McBride, Chinati Foundation, CineMarfa, Jack Sanders, Sam Mockbee/Rural Studio
Tags: architecture, Austin,, Design Build Adventure, El Cosmico, Jack Sanders, Marfa, Rural Studio, Sam Mockbee, Texas, New Mexico, art podcast, Fairfax Dorn, Virginia Lebermann, Roswell, artists in residence, Chinati Foundation, Texas Tech University, Donald Judd
Monday Jun 24, 2019
Monday Jun 24, 2019
In this episode, we revisit one of our live studio sessions from 2018: The Art of Obsolete Media. Web streaming on Jolt Radio, we introduce four Miami-based artists passionate about bygone technology: Barron Sherer, Kevin Arrow, Martha Raoli and Terence Price.
The initial spark for this conversation was Obsolete Media Miami (O.M.M.), a shared studio space and repository for all kinds of old media that Barron Sherer and Kevin Arrow launched and operated from 2015-2018.
On Fresh Art International, you’ll hear Sherer introduce the work of legendary filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and talk about his own complex film and video installation projects— presented in Miami, Florida, and Queens, Australia in 2018. Sherer opened a new studio space in February 2019. In 2020, he’ll launch the Moving Image Alliance, a nonprofit media arts resource and service organization to support contemporary moving image arts based on pre-digital cinema practices and technologies.
Kevin Arrow takes us on a tour of the Obsolete Media Miami space at the edge of Miami’s Design District. In early 2019, Arrow established Media and Archival Studies (M.A.S.), Miami with Stephanie Marie, the Manager of Special Collections and Archives at the Miami-Dade Public Library System. Among his upcoming local collaborations are a live “cinema + sound” experience at Bakehouse Art Complex, the activation of a planetarium dome at Booker T. Washington High School and the screening of a Maya Deren film at the North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art.
Artist and writer Martha Raoli talks about her 2018 performance with a manual typewriter at the Perez Art Museum, Miami. In 2019, Raoli launched her own radio show featuring live theremin performance. You can listen to "Etherwave Hour" on Jolt Radio every Saturday at 2pm.
Obsolete media inspired photographer Terence Price to create an entire body of work from family photo albums and home movies. After presenting his solo exhibition "Dancing in the Absence of Pain,” in early 2019, at Art Center South Florida (now Oolite Arts), he’s been preparing for upcoming shows and completing a residency with Oolite that will end in December 2019.
These Miami-based artists represent a penchant for the pre-digital among creatives the world over. Their bygone tech-infused pursuits emphasize the ongoing relevance of obsolete media in the field of contemporary art.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Courtesy Jonas Mekas, Barron Sherer, Kevin Arrow, Martha Raoli, Terence Price
Related Episodes: Turning Analog Technology into Sound Sculpture, Inside Miami's Sound Chamber, ORLAN on Art Tech
Related Links: Obsolete Media Miami, Terence Price, Martha Raoli, Barron Sherer
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Public art meets poetry in the month-long festival known as O, Miami. We sit down with visual artists Najja Moon and Michelle Lisa Polissaint and O, Miami's managing director Melody Santiago Cummings to talk about their work and introduce the spectrum of site-specific projects that bring poetry to communities.
Who’s The Fool? How To Patch A Leaky Roof: Moon and Polissaint create a Little Haiti Cultural District version of the blue umbrellas distributed for free in the Design District, a burgeoning retail development that is rapidly reducing the footprint of a community established by thousands of Haitian immigrants beginning in the 1950s. The artists imagine a dual role for the 1,000 bright red umbrellas they had fabricated. Mobile shelters from the rain and shields against the impact of urban development, the Little Haiti umbrellas feature a Creole proverb alluding to the false promise of urban development in the district. As if placing a flag on the moon, or drawing a line in the sand, Moon and Polissaint proclaim the identity of the community they call home and construct a monument to those fighting to preserve the district. The artists will go door to door with their gifts, inviting their neighbors to join in addressing the larger issue of gentrification in Miami.
O, Miami projects introduced in this episode: Who's the Fool?; Chiquita Poemas; The Last Ride of José Martí; The Beach is a Border; The Sunroom, poetry in schools
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Michelle Lisa Polissaint, Moonlight Moanin'; O, Miami: Ivan Lopez, The Last Ride of José Martí; Mia S. Willis, "hecatomb;" Sandra March, with Jose Olivarez, The Beach is a Border; The Sunroom
Related Episodes: Poetry, Art and Community Justice, Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti
Related Links: O, Miami, Najja Moon, Michelle Lisa Polissaint
Monday Apr 22, 2019
Monday Apr 22, 2019
Today, we take you to meet the creative hive that's transforming the cultural landscape of Tampa, Florida. While the coastal city may still be best known for its cigar-making history and vulnerability to rising sea levels, we discover an animated art scene. This is where new and established studios, public art projects, dynamic DIY galleries, avant-garde festivals, and networked community hubs are inventing fresh opportunities for public engagement with contemporary art.
Voices (alpha order): Janina Awai, Wendy Babcox, Neal Bender, Carrie Boucher, Devon Brady, Warren Cockerham, Liz Dimmit, Bridget and Henry Elmer, Rebecca Flanders, Mitzi Gordon, Sarah Howard, Noelle Mason, Tracy Midulla, Margaret Miller, Libbi Ponce, Jenn Ryan Miller, Gary Schmitt, Bosco Sodi, Jake Troyli, Christian Viveros-Fauné
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio Courtesy of Wendy Babcox, Meghan Lock and Noisy Womxn; Kalup Linzy and FMoPA; JaTovia Gary, Kristin Reeves and FLEX FEST; Devon Brady and The Echo Quilt
Tempus Projects supported, in part, this episode.
Related Episodes: Live from the Everglades, Part One and Part Two, Art and the Rising Sea, Modern Portrait of Black Florida
Related Links: Tempus Projects, The Echo Quilt, University of South Florida Institute for Research in Art, Bosco Sodi, Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Parallelogram Gallery, Quaid Gallery, Florida Experimental Film/Video Festival, St. Pete Women's Collective, SPACEcraft
About Tempus Projects: Tempus Projects is an alternative space situated in a storefront on Florida Avenue in the South Seminole Heights district of Tampa, Florida. A nonprofit organization operates the space as a way to nurture established and emerging local, national and international artists working in all media. Tempus originates, organizes and hosts exhibitions, events and special projects, to engage the Tampa Bay community through the visual arts. This home-grown cultural initiative has energized the district’s emergence as a unique and creative destination.
Monday Apr 15, 2019
Monday Apr 15, 2019
Globally engaged curators introduce IKT, the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, and talk about themes we'll explore during the 2019 IKT Congress in Miami. Ground zero for sea level rise, Miami is the ideal context for our conversation on how art and visual culture are changing public perception of today's climate crisis.
On April 10, 2019, we recorded this one-hour episode in the studio of Jolt Radio, Miami, during Fresh Art International’s weekly radio program.
Voices: (alpha order) Daniela Arriado, Susan Caraballo, T.J. Demos, Julia Draganović, Vanina Saracino
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Cara Despain, Sea Unseen; Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares, Forest Law; Oliver Ressler, Code Rood; Enrique Rámirez, Tidal Pulse; Band of Weeds, Underground Root Movement |
This episode is supported, in part, by IKT Miami.
Related Episodes: Live from the Everglades, Part One, Robert Chambers on Art, Ancient Plants and New Technologies, Gustavo Matamoros: Inside Miami’s Sound Chamber, Deborah Mitchell: The Artist as Guide to the Everglades, Jenny Larsson on Searching for Arctic Winter, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right, Artist Residency in Everglades, Art and the Rising Sea, Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism
Related Links: IKT, Screen City Biennial
Episode Participants:
Daniela Arriado is Director and founder of Screen City Biennial in Stavanger, Norway. Based in Berlin since 2012, she explores new curatorial approaches towards expanded borders of cinematic experiences and the audio-visual through projects concerning urban screens and online streaming platforms for video art.
Susan Caraballo is a Miami-based arts consultant, producer and curator working at the intersection of curating and directing to explore global issues including the ecological crisis and contemporary social conditions. A member of IKT's Miami constituency, Caraballo organized the symposium for the 2019 Congress around the subject of environmental sustainability and creative resilience.
T.J. Demos is Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Visual Culture, at University of California, Santa Cruz, and Founder and Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. He writes widely on the intersection of contemporary art, global politics and ecology.
Julia Draganović is a curator whose focus is time based and collaborative art and new artistic strategies. She has curated projects in Germany, Italy, Spain, the USA and Taiwan. Currently Director of Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Germany, Draganović has served as President of IKT since 2014.
Vanina Saracino is an independent curator and film programmer based in Berlin. She is the co-founder of OLHO, an international curatorial project about contemporary art and cinema initiated in 2015 in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, also shown at Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi (Venice, 2017) and Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2018). Saracino is co-curating the 2019 Screen City Biennial.
About IKT: German curators Eberhard Roters, Eddy de Wilde and Harald Szeemann and others founded IKT in 1973, to stimulate and extend debate concerning curating. Convening each year in a different city, IKT brings together curators from around the world, to meet, share knowledge, exchange ideas and broaden their professional networks.
About IKT Miami: A group of twelve Miami-based curators organized a three-day program for IKT's 2019 Congress in Miami. More than 100 international curators and art professionals participated, along with local curators, cultural producers, artists and other members of Miami’s cultural community. IKT Miami brought international attention to area artists and cultural producers, including those addressing global issues of sustainability and resilience in South Florida. The symposium and five related community events introduced Miami’s rich cultural landscape.
Monday Apr 08, 2019
Monday Apr 08, 2019
This flashback to Norway 2017 features our sonic encounters and conversations with artists, curators and cultural producers in the capital city of Oslo and in Tromsø, a small town north of the Arctic Circle.
In 2017, Fresh Art International founder and artistic director Cathy Byrd traveled to Norway as a new member of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT), an organization designed to support and connect curators in our global community. The Office for Contemporary Art, Norway, and Oslo Pilot (now known as osloBiennalen) guided our first experience of contemporary Nordic art and culture.
In 2019, when IKT convenes for the first time in the United States, Fresh Art International will stage three podcast events with IKT delegates and Miami-based curators and cultural producers. Diverse venues, partners, grantors and sponsors make possible the realization of IKT Miami and the Post-Congress that follows in Havana, Cuba.
Voices: (alpha order) Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen/LOCUS, Freek Lomme/Onomatopee, Charlotte Nilsen, Marita Isobel Solberg, Ánde Somby, Amund S. Sveen, Jana Winderen, Tori Wrånes, Jana Winderen
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Margrethe Pettersen, Jana Winderen, Tori Wrånes | Photography: Fresh Art International, featured artists and curators, IKT and OCA Norway
Related Episodes: Sounds of Contemporary Art in Norway, Curating in a Time of Global Change
Related Links: IKT, OCA Norway, osloBiennalen
Monday Apr 01, 2019
Monday Apr 01, 2019
South Florida’s subtropical wilderness inspired us to stage a remote radio broadcast from the Everglades. On February 24, 2019, we brought live and pre-recorded conversations with artists, scientists, rangers, educators and Miccosukee activists to a live audience on the porch of the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center.
Voices in Part Two (alpha order): Warren Abrahamson, Miguel Alejandro Castillo, Robert Chambers, Houston Cypress, Jose Elias, Nathan Fox, Ellen Harvey, Jenny Hipscher, Lori Marois, Deborah Mitchell, Cristina Molina, Adam Nadel, Paula Nelson-Shokar, Sarah Michelle Rupert, Dara Silverman, Hilary Swain
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Jack Tamul & James T. Miller, Voices of Everglades National Park
This episode is supported, in part, by Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) and Everglades National Park. Fresh Art International’s Cathy Byrd, AIRIE Fellow, February 2019, lived in the Park for one month as curator in residence.
Related Episodes: Live from the Everglades, Part One, Robert Chambers on Art, Ancient Plants and New Technologies, Gustavo Matamoros: Inside Miami’s Sound Chamber, Deborah Mitchell: The Artist as Guide to the Everglades, Jenny Larsson on Searching for Arctic Winter, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right, Artist Residency in Everglades, Art and the Rising Sea, Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism
Related Links: Artist in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), Everglades National Park, Jolt Radio
Monday Mar 18, 2019
Monday Mar 18, 2019
South Florida's subtropical wilderness inspired us to stage a remote radio broadcast from the Everglades on February 24, 2019. We brought live and pre-recorded conversations with artists, scientists, rangers, educators and Miccosukee activists to a live audience on the porch of the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center. This episode is Part One of our two-hour program.
Voices in Part One: AIRIE Creative Director Deborah Mitchell, Miccosukee activist Betty Osceola, Celeste DePalma of Audubon Florida, Park Rangers Daniel Agudelo, Nathan Fox, Leon Howell, Lori Marois and Emily Wong, Park volunteer Barbara Hedges, Park hydrologists Steven Tennis and Adam Thime, and AIRIE Fellows Grant Livingston, Gustavo Matamoros and Christina Pettersson.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Jack Tamul & James T. Miller, Voices of Everglades National Park
This program is supported, in part, by Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) and Everglades National Park. Fresh Art International's Cathy Byrd, AIRIE Fellow, February 2019, lived in the Park for one month as curator in residence.
Related Episodes: Robert Chambers on Art, Ancient Plants and New Technologies, Gustavo Matamoros: Inside Miami's Sound Chamber, Deborah Mitchell: The Artist as Guide to the Everglades, Jenny Larsson on Searching for Arctic Winter, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right,Artist Residency in Everglades, Art and the Rising Sea, Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism
Related Links: Artist in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), Everglades National Park, Jolt Radio