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 29, 2018
Monday Oct 29, 2018
What does it mean to make art collectively? How does art speak to our shared destiny? Where does sand intersect with art and community?
In the studio at Jolt Radio, with Miami-based curators and artists, we speak of art at the intersection of sand, smells and social behavior. Curator Quinn Harrelson and artist Troy Simmons introduce Collectivity, a site-specific exhibition at the Bakehouse Art Complex that explores the power of the individual and the collective. Curator Marie Vickles and artist Geovanna Gonzalez talk about the role of destiny and poetry in the exhibition Visions of the Future at Little Haiti Cultural Complex. Artist Misael Soto, the first-ever Art in Public Life resident for the City of Miami Beach, explains how he's curating and activating Sand, just steps from the shore in Collins Park.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound: Domingo Castillo, Tropical Malaise, Martin Jackson, It's really very easy, Misael Soto, Flood Relief
Related Episodes: 2018 Creative Time Summit in Miami, Art and the Rising Sea, Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti, Where Art Meets Activism, Where Art Meets Cultural History
Related Links: Bakehouse Art Complex, Little Haiti Cultural Complex, Sand, ArtCenter/South Florida, The Bass Museum of Art, Creative Time
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 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
Monday Jun 18, 2018
Monday Jun 18, 2018
Dancer choreographer Jenny Larsson enlivens our understanding of how the Far North's deep cold is essential to the balance of the Earth's biosphere. With the group known as Wild Beast Collective, she creates the interpretive dance performance Searching for Arctic Winter.
“In the winters up in the arctic when there’s no sunlight and no snow to reflect the moon, all that’s left is darkness. It’s a scary thought, these weather changes…”
Born in Sweden and based in Miami, Larsson is artistic director of the multidisciplinary international collective that hosts an annual residency in Florida. Wild Beast’s mission is to explore, stretch and deepen the experience of contemporary art by presenting site-specific projects and staging free public events to connect with local communities. Environmental issues inform and influence their work.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Wild Beast Collective
Related Episodes: Deborah Mitchell: The Artists as Guide to the Everglades, Art and the Rising Sea, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right, Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water, Artist Residency in Everglades, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism
Related Links: Jenny Larsson, Wild Beast Collective
Monday Jun 04, 2018
Monday Jun 04, 2018
Today, we take you to meet to artist Deborah Mitchell in her studio on Miami Beach, to talk about the ways that Florida’s southwest coast inspires her. The contested landscape, endangered by encroaching urban development and sea level rise, is where she engages as an artist and an advocate for North America’s only subtropical wilderness: The Everglades. Mitchell’s mindful practice expresses her affinity for this fragile ecology, and her desire to learn, share and preserve its science and history.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Deborah Mitchell | Photographs courtesy the artist and Fresh Art International
Related links: The Everglades, Big Cypress, Deborah Mitchell, Artists in Residence In Everglades (AIRIE)
Thursday Mar 01, 2018
Thursday Mar 01, 2018
What does it mean to be a contemporary art curator in the 21st century? Perhaps subconsciously, it's about living up to the legacy of Harald Szeemann, a legendary art historian—acting on the impulse to experiment and introduce new ways of engaging with art. Follow us to Norway, where you'll meet a few of the curators gathering for the 2017 Congress of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, also known as IKT (Szeemann was a founding member in 1973). In conversations on how the environment, design technology, consumer culture and geopolitical histories inspire art, they reveal a shared interest in exposing artists’ site specific perspectives through collective exhibitions and publications.
Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen, the two Norwegian artist curators of Locus Publishing in Oslo tell us about a collective artist book project that investigates how we relate to nature. They introduce their newest venture: “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” Freek Lomme, director of Onomatopee Projects explains why he stages public interventions in the shopping district of Eindhoven, in The Netherlands. The sonic thread that connects these voices is the sound art of Norwegian artist Margrethe Pettersen.
Sound Editing: Anamnesis | Special Audio: Margrethe Pettersen, Living Land—Below as Above
Wednesday Feb 14, 2018
Wednesday Feb 14, 2018
Saturday Jan 20, 2018
Saturday Jan 20, 2018
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
Sunday Oct 16, 2016
Sunday Oct 16, 2016