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
Monday Oct 22, 2018
Monday Oct 22, 2018
Creative Time, the force behind ambitious public art projects in New York City and beyond, takes its annual summit to Miami in 2018. We invite Creative Time director Justine Ludwig to talk about the focus of this year's convening.
On Archipelagos and Other Imaginaries—Collective Strategies to Inhabit the World is the poetic title and subject of the 2018 Summit, with the idea of coalition as a central theme. Thinkers, dreamers and doers working at the intersection of art and politics gather to consider issues ranging from immigration and borders to climate realities, notions of intersectional justice, gentrification and tourism as an enabler for neocolonialism.
A portal to the Caribbean, Latin America and the entire world, Miami is the perfect context for such conversations. The City's creative community is ready—not only to share local challenges and their own site-sensitive initiatives, but also to welcome fresh perspectives on how art and activism might address these global concerns.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Krudas Cubensi, Mi cuerpo es mio, Haus of Shame via Amal Kiosk, Brigada Puerta de Tierra, Nástio Mosquito, Hilário
Related Episodes: Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti, Art and the Rising Sea, The BLCK Family of Miami, Modern Portrait of Black Florida, Diaspora Vibe: Art with Caribbean Roots, Caribbean Arts Remix Miami, Tania Bruguera on Art Activism, Cesar Cornejo on Architectural Intervention, Mary Mattingly on Human Relationships, Glexis Novoa on Cuba's Past, Live from Dominican Republic with Tilting Axis, Live from Trinidad: Where Digital Culture Thrives, Public Art and the Underline, Artist Residency in the Everglades, Art and the Environment at Deering Estates
Related Links: Creative Time, Creative Time Summit 2018, Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Creative Time Summit Miami is co-presented with Art in Public Places of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, with leading support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Monday Oct 15, 2018
Monday Oct 15, 2018
From Port of Spain, Trinidad, we live stream a special radio program about the significance of digital media as a contemporary cultural space in the Caribbean. Joining us in our pop up studio are artist and writer Christopher Cozier, architect Sean Leonard, writer and media producer Janine Mendes-Franco, journalist and podcaster Franka Philip, and artist designer Kriston Chen—all based in Trinidad.
Listen to find out when the internet begin playing a vital connective role in the region and which social media platforms currently inform and inspire the local creative community. Hear diverse perspectives on how locally produced radio, citizen journalism and podcasting might diversify, amplify and document critical conversations about contemporary art and culture.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Talk 'Bout Us/Trini Good Media; Jamie Lee Lloyd, Unease, Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, University of West Indies, 2008; 1000 Mokos, Douen Islands: In Forest and Wild Skies, featuring Sharda Patasar; Moko Jumbie special on Kelly Village TV, 2017; Sugar Cane Arrows; Attorney General TV news bulletin during 1990 attempted coup, via Wondershare; The Street, 91.9FM; IRadio.TT, Music Matters, The Caribbean Edition; 1990 Coup Special on Gayelle TV; David Michael Rudder, Accapella on Instagram, 2018; Don't Be Rude, mix created by Ozzy Merriq, 2011
Related Episodes: LIVE from the Dominican Republic with Tilting Axis, Miami's Caribbean Arts Remix, Diaspora Vibe: Art with Caribbean Roots
Related Links: Alice Yard, Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, #1000Mokos
Monday Oct 08, 2018
Monday Oct 08, 2018
In the world today, many consider capitalism a fraught economic system. Some believe that capitalism is the cause current international trade wars, accelerating student debt, the bankruptcy of entire countries, the growth of virtual currencies and the reason for coded security systems.
Artist Hilary Powell and filmmaker Dan Edelstyn, an inventive couple based in London, have decided to wreak a bit of havoc with the capitalist system in their home country by opening their own bank. Hoe Street Central Bank, AKA HSCB, is open in the former Co-Op Bank on Hoe Street in the London suburb of Walthamstow.
Powell and Edelstyn have been printing their own bank notes and selling them to buy up debt in their community. This fall, they begin producing and selling bonds—a new initiative in the orchestration of their collectively owned and distributed debt explosion. The Optimistic Foundation demonstrates what Powell refers to as pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. In the collective act of abolishing local debt, they're staging a timely intervention in the name of economic justice.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound: Bank Job/Optimistic Foundation
Related Episodes: The Art of Capitalism, Occupy Museums on Artists and Debt
Related Links: Bank Job, Optimistic Foundation
Monday Sep 17, 2018
Monday Sep 17, 2018
In 2018, Locust Projects invited the Detroit-based design duo known as root of two to bring three headless chickens to roost in Miami. For six months, Cezanne Charles and John Marshall embellish the Magic City skyline with their public art and digital engagement project.
Previously presented in France and the United Kingdom, Whithervanes translate the traditional weathervane into a 21st century radio transmitter. Mounted on rooftops in downtown, the Design District and Biscayne Boulevard, the four-foot tall birds change colors and direction in response to the climate of fear propagated by the media. These are tech-savvy chickens. They scan the Internet for alarmist keywords, collecting information on topics from violence to economic crises to natural disasters. You can follow their “neurotic, early worrying system”, or N.E.W.S. on the Whithervanes Twitter account.
Connecting art with streaming social media and news technology, Whithervane designers Cezanne Charles and John Marshall invite us to think about the emotional impact of the digital information that controls our view of the world.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Photographs courtesy root of two and Locust Projects
Related episodes: Art of the Everyday, Art and the Rising Sea, Report from Miami Art Week 2017
Monday Sep 10, 2018
Monday Sep 10, 2018
In 2018, seventy-five artists from thirty-three countries came together for the contemporary African art biennial known as Dak’Art. The offsite program featured more than 200 autonomous artist-organized exhibitions and events across Dakar and on the island of Gorée.
The projects we share in this episode explore ideas of freedom and responsibility as they investigate colonial histories, politics, and the economy, migration and the environment. Often achieved collectively and always emphasizing process, experimentation and action, they animate the legacy of legendary Senegalese artist Joe Ouakam and Agit'Art, the revolutionary creative movement he co-founded in 1974.
Voices: Simon Njami, Glenda León, Guy Woueté, Marcos Lora Read, Magdi Mostafa, Tori Wraånes, Marisol Rodriguez, Moataz Nasreldin, Pascal Traoré, Michel Amadou Gué
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Related Episodes: Magdi Mostafa Turns Analog Tech into Sound Sculpture, LIVE from Dak'Art 2018, SITElines, Unsettled Landscapes 2014
Related Links: Dak'Art 2018, Simon Njami, Glenda León, Guy Woueté, Marcos Lora Read, Magdi Mostafa, Tori Wrånes, Marisol Rodriguez, ZAM ZAM, Moataz Nasreldin, DARB1718, Issa Samb, Agit'Art, Pascal Traoré, Island of Gorée
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
Monday Aug 13, 2018
Monday Aug 13, 2018
Monday Aug 06, 2018
Monday Aug 06, 2018
Today, capitalism, aka the free market, is linked to trade wars, suffocating student debt, entire countries gone bankrupt, burgeoning virtual currencies and coded security systems. What role can art and artists play in this wildly unbalanced economy? In abandoned bank buildings, failed urban development projects and public squares, we discover artists and their communities in the U.S., Western Europe, South America and Greece, taking on the challenge—as whistle blowers, catalysts, educators, money makers, evangelicals and documentarians.
Featured in this episode: Occupy Museums/Imani Jacqueline Brown, Kenneth Pietrobono, Noah Fisher; Fictilis/Andrea Steves and Timothy Furstnau; Museum des Kapitalismus/Julian and Janosz; Musée du Capitalisme/Samuel Hus and Chloé Villain; La Torre de David/José Luis Blondet, Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría; Bank Job/Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn; Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound: Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría; Bank Job; Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir; Contributing Producer: Anamnesis Audio for Reverend Billy Segment
Related Episodes: Art and the Rising Sea; Art Sparking Social Engagement; Where Art Meets Activism; Art of the Everyday; Occupy Museums on Artists and Debt Related Links: Occupy Museums; Museum of Capitalism: Fictilis; Museum des Kapitalismus; Musée du Capitalisme; Bank Job; Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir; SITE Santa Fe SITElines: Casa tomada
Monday Jul 09, 2018
Monday Jul 09, 2018
What happens outside the art scene inspires many of today’s curators, filmmakers and artists. They mine the conceptual depth of personal and communal rituals and routines. Community gardens, shared ride systems, public processionals, weathervanes, home improvement projects, live streaming radio and selfies on the internet are just a few of the subjects and sites of their research, commentary and engagement. Projects that elevate our view of the everyday reveal life as an art form—translating the mundane into the extraordinary.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Camionnette Chérie, original sound by Claudette et Ti Pièrre; TET CHAJE, mix by Michelange Quay; David Walters, Mesi Bondye; Yosvany Terry, Conga Reversible
Related Episodes:
Marcus Gammel (2107), Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Sounds of Miami Art Week (2016), New Performance Art (2016), Cesar Cornejo (2015), Jllian Mayer (2014)
Related Links:
Monday Jun 25, 2018
Monday Jun 25, 2018
Activism has long been a way for artists and curators, writers and filmmakers to engage with global flashpoints, inspiring new perspectives on visible and unseen causes. Over the last century, public interventions, performative protests, and works created for public marches and events have led communities to participate in art experiences and make art themselves.
The Me Too Movement, Black Lives Matter, Dreamers and Climate Change Activists expose sexual harassment and assault, race-based violence, immigrant rights violations, and the impact of sea level rise. The issues have energized today’s culture production. Contemporary artists and curators increasingly lead and invite calls to action in response to these vital concerns.
Voices in this conversation: Andrea Bowers, Ralph Rugoff, Catherine Morris, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Manolis D. Lemos, Tania Bruguera, Maria Elena Ortiz, Maria Alyokina
Sound Editor: Julien Borrelli | Special Audio: Andrea Bowers, Manolis D. Lemos, Pussy Riot | Photography: Credits in captions
Related episodes: Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism, Ralph Rugoff on the 13th Lyon Biennial, Catherine Morris and A Year Of Yes, Tania Bruguera on Art Activism, Maria Aloykhina on Political Art
Related links: Agora, The Highline, New York; Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminism Art, Brooklyn Museum; Songs for Sabotage, New Museum, Sala de Arte Público Siquieros