Fresh Art International

How Jason Moran Amplifies Art and Jazz

American virtuoso Jason Moran is a genius jazz pianist known for performing experimental compositions in collaborative projects with visual artists—among them, Joan Jonas, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon and Adrian Piper. For the 56th Venice Art Biennale, artistic director Okui Enwezor invited Jason to stage and animate two sound environments. The multi-faceted artist brings the full range of his creative practice into play for his first museum show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis this year. In our conversation, Jason Moran shares the discoveries he made while realizing recent collaborations with artists Julie Mehretu and Kara Walker.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio courtesy Jason Moran: Summon, Katastrof Karavan, Three Deuces, He Puts on His Coat and Leaves

Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti

In this conversation, we talk about how the island country of Haiti has long inspired contemporary art, books and films and how the cultural complexity of immigrant communities is a creative force in South Florida. Come with us to the heart of Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood for a walk about with Carl Juste, a local cultural activist, photojournalist and artist whose family comes from Haiti and Cuba. Haitian-born writer Edwige Danticat introduces Foreigner's Home, a new film to premiere at the 35th Miami Film Festival. Miami-based curators Marie Vickles, Edouard Duval-Carrié and Tosha Grantham (with family ties to Greece and Africa, Haiti, Asia and America, respectively) talk about connecting cultural history to contemporary art in exhibitions at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex and share what sparked Visionary Aponte: Art & Black Freedom, the traveling exhibition that recently premiered in Miami. Cuban-born Lissette Mendez and Carl Juste share some of the stories behind the collective exhibition and book project Havana, Haiti and the annual Little Haiti Book Festival.

Art and Our Uncertain Future

Are we the last real humans? We consider this question in a conversation about art as a speculative science. Join us to ponder our uncertain future.

 

Laura Randall, scholar in residence at the Rubell Family Collection, shares the dark side of the exhibition Still Human, introducing artists who imagine a world where we never die and wonder if mayonnaise is alive. With curator Joey Orr (now at the Spencer Museum of Art), artist Andrew Yang contemplates our place in the cosmos and talks about how much sand it takes to build an homage to Carl Sagan inside the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Listen for the sound of your possible future in audio tracks from projects by artists Jon Rafman, Cécile B. Evans and Andrew Yang.

 

Related exhibitions: Post Human, 1992, Deitch Projects; In the Holocene, 2012, MIT List Center, What Absence Is Made Of, 2017-2018, Hirshhorn

 

Featured Sound: Jon Rafman, Poor Magic, courtesy the artist and the Rubell Family Collection; Cécile B. Evans, What the Heart Wants, courtesy the artist and Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark; Andrew Yang, White Noise, courtesy the artist and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

 

Prospect 4 New Orleans—The Lotus In Spite of the Swamp

Come with us to explore Prospect New Orleans, the Crescent City’s triennial of contemporary art. Titled The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, the fourth iteration evokes the musical character of New Orleans and the surrounding natural environment—the bayous, lakes and wetlands near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Voices in this episode: Prospect.4’s artistic director Trevor Schoonmaker, former executive director Brooke Davis Anderson, artists Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Paulo Nazareth, Sonia Boyce, Rusty Lazer, Darryl Montana, Davia Nelson of the Kitchen Sisters, and more!

 

Making a Mountain in Miami: Ugo Rondinone's Bright Boulders

Today, we take you to South Florida, for a conversation about public art with Swiss born artist Ugo Rondinone. Miami Mountain is the latest in his iconic Mountain series. The North American Badlands inspire the towering stack of five brightly colored neon stones that he designed to hold sway over the palm trees in Collins Park on Miami Beach. The Bass Museum of Art’s 2016 public art acquisition arrived in pieces. The boulders came from a quarry in Nevada, making their way to the beachfront park on flatbed trucks. A professional installation crew was ready and waiting. With industrial lifts and cranes, they erected the stone monument in a carefully calculated process that took just over 13 hours.

Art and the Rising Sea

On this live streaming radio program, we consider how artists, curators, architects and writers are responding to climate change in South Florida. King tides, flooding and eroding beaches are now part of everyday life. Our guests reveal how the rising sea has inspired two artist residency programs and an upcoming exhibition.

Natalia Zuluaga, Artistic Director at ArtCenter/South Florida, introduces the Center’s new Art in Public Life residency, a year-long opportunity for the selected artist to participate in shaping in the City of Miami Beach resiliency plan. She also talks about the exhibition Intertidal that imagines Miami's intertidal zone future, as a city above water at low tide, and flooded at high tide. 

 Also in studio, Ombretta Agro, Simon Faithfull, Will Rey, and Gustavo Oviedo share their roles in ARTSail, an ArtCenter residency exploring the Miami waterways, the South Florida coastline and the Keys. Our field recordings with recent ArtSail residents Blanca de la Torre and Mark Lee Koven to complete the picture of the floating residency's first year.

Special audio features: Archival Feedback, Stormtrack and Gustavo Oviedo, Boatski Tours

Studio Drift on Nature and Technology

Today we take you to the intersection of nature, art and technology to meet Amsterdam-based artists Ralph Nauta and Lonneka Gordjein of Studio Drift. They design their creative applications of new technology to make us question the lines we draw between humanity and nature, chaos and order. Presented during Miami Art Week 2017, Studio Drift's flying sculpture made of 300 lighted drones was especially provocative and poetic. The artists leave us believing in the unexpected potential for technology to feel natural.

Piano solo: Joep Beving

Alba Triana on Experimenting with Sound and Light

Alba Triana, a Colombian-born composer and sound artist based in Miami, Florida, introduces three of her exquisite sound and light installations: Music on a Bound String questions whether or not the act of listening is indispensable to the musical experience. Microcosmos animates a cymbal to create an immersive vibrational experience. The interactive Electronic Gamelan invites visitors to perform one of the artist's compositions. Listen to discover her trans-disciplinary approach to the ever-evolving field of sound art.

Lisa Reihana on Reversing the Colonial Gaze

Today, we take you to the Arsenale, a historic shipyard and main venue for the 57th Venice Art Biennale. In the New Zealand pavilion, we hear artist Lisa Reihana speak on reversing the colonial gaze in her work Emissaries. http://www.freshartinternational.com

Sounds of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017

Today, we take you to Germany, to experience the 2017 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster. The international public art exhibition that has taken place every ten years since 1977 activates historical, architectural, social and political sites across the city. The best way to experience this model of art in the public sphere is on foot and by bicycle.

Featuring temporary public art projects by Ei Arakawa, Aram Bartholl, Gerard Byrne, Jeremy Deller, Nicole Eisenman, Pierre Huyghe, Emeka Ogboh, Alexandra Pirici, Koki Tanaka, Benjamin de Burca/Barbara Bárbara Wagner, Cerith Wyn Evans and Hervé Youmbi.

Sound engineer: Guney Ozsan