Fresh Art International

ORLAN on Art Tech

Today, we take you to Paris for a studio visit with French artist ORLAN. Surrounded by her books, sculptures, paintings and photographs, we talk about her evolving relationship with technology.

 Sound Editor: Alyssa Moxley | Voice Over Translation: Emilia Garth | Special Audio Track: ORLAN

Alexa Lim Haas on Animating Stories

Artist Alexa Lim Haas talks about Agua Viva, her newest animated short film. Agua Viva was among the twenty-four projects selected for a special one-night screening at the 2017 Borscht Film Festival in Miami, Florida.

Sounds of Contemporary Art in Norway

Our field recordings of conversations, performances and sound art in Oslo and Tromsø, Norway, during the 2017 International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT) Congress hosted by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and OSLO PILOT.

Bahar Behbahani on Politics and Persian Gardens

Iranian born, New York based artist Bahar Behbahani talks about the layers of poetry and politics she discovered while researching the legendary Persian garden. Her solo exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College reveals how the idyllic refuge became entangled with American espionage and a 1953 political coup in Iran. Highly relevant considering the mounting intensity of today's global tensions, the hidden agendas and coded behaviors exposed in Bahar Behbahani's work might well be the blueprint for a new political barrier erected this week: the executive order of a restrictive, anti-Muslim United States immigration policy.

 

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan | Sound Effects: Bahar Behbahani, Visiting you in summer, 2015

Zoë Buckman on Fight Mode

Artist Zoë Buckman is in fight mode. Her own boxing gloves figure in recent mixed media installations, spoken word, and sound art projects that defend women's reproductive rights. This episode is an excerpt from the 3 Dec 2016 Fresh Art International show on Untitled, Radio, Miami Beach.

 

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan | Swami Ji spoken word performance audio courtesy Zoë Buckman

Martha Wilson on Political Performance Art

Artist Martha Wilson talks about her political performance art and why she took on the guise of Republican candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 United States Presidential election season. Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist known for her politically charged photography, video and performance work. She’s also founder of Franklin Furnace, an artist-run performance and exhibition space in New York City. Listen to this episode to learn how America's Culture Wars* have sparked her political satire for decades and hear the artist's impersonations of Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Tipper Gore, and Donald Trump.

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan

Maria Alyokhina on Political Art

Maria Alyokhina, a member of the Russian punk performance group Pussy Riot, talks about the political actions she's been involved in since she and band member Nadia Tolakonikova were released from prison in late December 2013. Only days after they were freed, the two artists announced their founding of Justice Zone, an organization that provides legal support to political prisoners in Russia, and MediaZona, an online publication that spotlight incidents of political injustice in their home country. In 2014, they were awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. Now in London, Maria is preparing to make her theater debut in Burning Doors, with the independent Belarus Free Theatre company.

Listen to our podcast episode with filmmakers of the documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer to learn more about the arrests and televised trial that followed Pussy Riot's two-minute performance in a Moscow cathedral on February 21, 2012.

Read English versions of MediaZona coverage published in Vice and the Guardian.

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan | Episode Sounds: Pussy Riot performance of “Virgin Mary, Redeem Us of Putin, Christ the Savior Cathedral, Moscow

Fresh Talk: Amy Sherald

Fresh Art International presents a live podcast event with American artist Amy Sherald at moniquemeloche gallery in Chicago. Recorded on July 9, 2016, at a moment in American history marked with killings that accentuate deep racial issues in this country, our conversation verges on joy and sadness. The timeless sense of black identity described in Amy Sherald’s figurative paintings reminds us how art can be both transcendent and aspirational.

Sound Editor: Jesse McQuarters

Fresh Talk: Franky Cruz

Artist Franky Cruz talks about how Miami, and the art space known as Spinello Projects, became the laboratory for his creation of Sistema, an uncommon butterfly experience.

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan | Sound Effects: Franky Cruz and Cathy Byrd

Fresh Talk: Sanford Biggers

American artist Sanford Biggers has a lot to say about time and the human condition. We meet in New York where Chicago gallerist Monique Meloche is presenting an exhibition of his current projects during the Armory Show. I’m here to find out more about the ideas behind the work. What's motivating him to radically alter old quilts and African sculptures?