Fresh Art International

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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 Nov 19, 2019

Experts Guide to Miami Art Week 2019

Tuesday Nov 19, 2019

Today, we take you to meet three globally engaged, Miami-based contemporary art experts. Ombretta Agro Andruff, Tami Katz-Freiman and Kathryn Mikesell are here to help you navigate the city and enjoy the intense burst of international art that transfigures the cultural landscape every December.

Miami Art Week brings together local and international art worlds. This is not only an opportunity for globally active galleries to present the best work of artists they represent. Miami art spaces, museums, community initiatives, individual artists and designers and collectives all rise to the occasion, too, to show their creative force to the world.

Diverse participants have diverse agendas. Whether you’re a collector, a curator, a creator, or an aficionado, focus on your passion—what would you like to discover?

Takeaways

Plan your itinerary to focus on one art corridor— either the mainland or the beach
Use the map guides offered at the venues you visit, mark your map - where you want to go and where you’ve been
Take water and snacks, wear comfortable shoes
Do your homework, but be willing to improvise — follow your intuition!

Of Special Interest in 2019

BEFORE THE FAIRS: Dec 1, Miami—Progressive Brunch with local galleries | Dec 2, Miami Beach—Faena Festival

Dec 3-8 ART FAIRS Recommended: Art Basel Miami Beach, Design Miami, UNTITLED, NADA, PINTA and PRIZM

EXHIBITIONS—Openings: The new Rubell Museum and El Espacio 23 in the Allapattah district | Teresita Fernandez at Pérez Art Museum Miami | Yayoi Kusama and Sterling Ruby at the Institute of Contemporary Art | Trenton Doyle Hancock at Locust Projects | Haegue Yang, Mickelene Thomas and Lara Favaretto, at the Bass Museum | Cecilia Vicuña at North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art

PUBLIC ART on Miami Beach—Collins Park, Lummus Park, on the beach and at the Convention Center

About Our Experts:

From Italy, Ombretta Agró-Andruff, is an independent curator and founder of ARTSail

residency and research initiative. The program connects artists and scientists to address

the climate change specific to South Florida through creative projects. From Israel, independent curator, art historian and critic Tami Katz-Freiman remembers Miami before Art Basel. Katz-Freiman curated the Israeli Pavilion in the 57th Venice Art Biennale. From the U.S., Kathryn Mikesell is co-founder and executive director of Fountainhead Residencies and Studios. The Residency offers artists from around the world a shared creative space and an introduction to Miami’s art scene.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio

Tuesday Nov 12, 2019

The Mind-Bending Mythology of Trenton Doyle Hancock

Tuesday Nov 12, 2019

In November 2019, Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock brings his mythological “Moundverse” to Miami. Locust Projects gives over the entire space to his site-specific installation. The artist will immerse us in a world inspired by comic books, toys, horror films and animations.

For decades, Hancock has been telling the story of the Mounds (gentle hybrid plant-like creatures) protected by Torpedo Boy (Hancock’s alter ego), and their enemies, the Vegans (mutants who consume tofu and spill Mound blood every chance they get). In paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, video and installation, the artist explores good and evil, authority, race and class, moral relativism, politics and religion.

This is not our first encounter with Trenton Doyle Hancock. He was among artists that curator Valerie Cassel Oliver selected for Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art. The exhibition premiered in 2013 at the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Houston, and traveled across the United States. In Radical Presence, Cassel Oliver surveyed seminal black performance art. She invited artists into the exhibition to re-stage their performances.

We make our way to Houston to watch Hancock embody one of the characters in the narrative he began creating when he was 10 years old. For an evening performance titled “Devotion,” he becomes a singing Mound. He's massive. He's blindfolded. Cassel Oliver feeds him Jell-O. The spectacle is intimate, absurd and deeply spiritual.

The next morning, we wander through the artist’s mind. Our conversation explores the histories, objects and ideas that inform his work. His warehouse is awash in accumulating materials—cast-off toys, books and bottle caps, scraps of felt and fabric, cans of paint. Works in progress and finished collage paintings line the walls. A drum kit sits waiting in one corner. It seems unlikely that this artist will ever lose the desire to experiment and play with the fantastical characters that animate his inner world.

Sound Editor: 2019 Anamnesis Audio; 2013 Eric Schwartz | Special Audio: Trenton Doyle Hancock

Tuesday Nov 05, 2019

CYJO on the Complexities of Photographing Identity

Tuesday Nov 05, 2019

We shadow CYJO, a Miami-based Korean American visual artist, as she navigates the complex maze of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018. Her goal is to discover and document exceptional work in the photographic medium for the “Art Basel Miami Week Diary” that she contributes to the bilingual online publication L’Œil de la Photographie (The Eye of Photography).

Inside the fair, Gian Paolo Paci, of Paci Contemporary, in Bresi, Italy, introduces us to his gallery’s featured artist: American photographer Nancy Burson. Burson created some of the earliest photographic portraits using computer-morphing technology.

Jared Quintan, Associate Director of Rhona Hoffman, in Chicago, deconstructs the symbolism in a photographic wall installation by Lorna Simpson, an African-American photographer and multimedia artist known for her singular approach to portraiture. Quintan also talks about intimate portraits by African American artist Deana Lawson, whose photographs reveal the body’s ability to channel personal and social histories.

A few weeks later, we meet CYJO in her studio, a light-filled loft that looks out over Biscayne Bay in Miami. We’re here to learn more about how the artist explores the complexities of identity, beauty and belonging through her own photography, video and text.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio

Tuesday Oct 15, 2019

Contemporary Psyche on View in Venice Art Biennale

Tuesday Oct 15, 2019

Philadelphia-based art historian Deborah Barkun talks about the pleasure and critical thinking that she discovers each time she explores the Venice Art Biennale and collateral events. Through her eyes, we understand that the venerated exhibition never fails to create a constellation of art encounters—always stimulating the senses and challenging the mind, always offering a glimpse into our contemporary psyche.

58th Venice Art Biennale:

For the 2019 international art exhibition, London-based American curator Ralph Rugoff chose the title May You Live in Interesting Times. This is a phrase of English invention that has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse. The words ‘interesting times’ invoke periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil. Rugoff invited 79 artists from around the world who, in his words, “challenge existing habits of thought and open up our readings of objects and images, gestures and situations…entertaining multiple perspectives…holding in mind seemingly contradictory and incompatible notions, and juggling diverse ways of making sense of the world.”

The 2019 exhibition includes 89 National Participations in the historic Pavilions at the Giardini, at the Arsenale and in the historic city center of Venice. Four countries are participating for the first time: Dominican Republic, Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia, and Pakistan. Twenty-one Collateral Events taking place across the city widen the diversity of voices that characterizes the Biennale.

Read Deborah Barkun’s posts from the 58th Venice Art Biennale on instagram @freshartintl.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio recorded in Venice May-June 2019

Romani Embassy performance by Delaine Le Bass, Music by Santino Spinelli

Oliver Beer on the Architecture of Sound

Monday Jul 01, 2019

Where do you go to hear the voice of architecture?

At midnight, on the eve of the 14th Istanbul Biennial exhibition opening in 2015, we meet British sound artist Oliver Beer inside a 400-year old Turkish bath for an immersive acoustic experience. With microphone and recorder in hand, we follow him into the bath’s hot, steamy inner chamber, where young local opera singers are rehearsing for a one-night-only performance of his composition Call to Sound.

Revisiting our sonic encounter with the architecture of Istanbul is an opportunity to introduce the sound work that Oliver Beer brings to New York in 2019. Keep listening, to hear the site-specific project he created for The Met Breuer, home to the modern and contemporary art program of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met's first commission of a sound-based installation, Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra is a musical instrument, a series of live performances, and an installation composed of thirty-two sculptures, utilitarian vessels, and decorative objects from the Museum collection.

Call to Sound Composer: Oliver Beer | Musical Director: Eray Altınbuken (ITU/MIAM)
Singers: Seren Akyoldaş, Ufuk Atar, Başak Ceber, Nur Diker, Murat Güney, Recep Gül, Baruyr Kuyumcıyan, Deniz Özçelik, Alin Aylin Yağcıoğlu, Canan Tuğberk

Sound Editors: 2015 Kris McConnachie; 2019 Anamnesis Audio | Call to Sound performance audio courtesy Oliver Beer; Oliver Beer: Orchestral Vessel installation sound courtesy Oliver Beer and The Met Breuer

Monday May 13, 2019

Art Historian Playlist: Deborah Barkun Listens to Joana Choumali

Monday May 13, 2019

Today’s conversation continues our Playlist series. We’re inviting artists, curators, architects, writers, filmmakers, cultural producers and other listeners to introduce episodes from our archive.

Based in the United States, art historian and curator Deborah Barkun is Chair of the Department of Art and Art History and Director of Museum Studies at Ursinus College, outside Philadelphia. Her research centers on the social dynamics of artistic collaboration. Barkun is contributing to our stories from the 58th Venice Art Biennale. Here, she introduces our conversation with Ivorian artist Joana Choumali, first released on April 30, 2018.

Deborah Barkun writes: I am excited to introduce this reprise of “Joana Choumali Embroiders Empathy.” I feel especially connected to this episode, as I was present for Cathy’s first interview with Choumali in the Ivory Coast Pavilion at the 57^th Venice Biennale. Choumali spoke poignantly about African emigration and the emptiness it leaves in the hearts of loved ones left behind. Her hand-embroidered and collaged photographic diptychs depict this global migration. Loose threads left dangling from the works speak to a sense of ongoing longing.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Photography: Deborah Barkun

Monday Apr 15, 2019

Art and the Climate Crisis with IKT Miami

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 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

Sound Art and Contemporary Culture in Norway with IKT

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 Links: IKT, OCA Norway, osloBiennalen

Monday Mar 18, 2019

Live from the Everglades, Part One

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.

Monday Mar 04, 2019

Robert Chambers on Art, Ancient Plants, and New Technologies

Monday Mar 04, 2019

Miami-based sculptor Robert Chambers lived in Everglades National Park for one month in 2018, as a Fellow in the Artist in Residence in Everglades program.

In the darkness outside his studio one night, the artist tripped on the roots of an ancient plant: The Saw Palmetto (in Latin, Serenoa repens), That’s when a hidden world began opening up to him.

In fact, the small palms are everywhere you look, native to the subtropical wilderness. The leaves are woven into the thatched roofs of indigenous pavilions you’ll find in Big Cypress, a wetlands preserve north of the national park. In some parts of the world, saw palmetto berries are cherished for their healing properties.

We meet Robert Chambers to explore his exhibition titled Serepens at the AIRIE Nest, an art gallery inside the Visitor Center. AIRIE curator Deborah Mitchell and two environmental scientists who’ve inspired his new body of work are here, too. Botanist Walter Abrahamson has been researching the saw palmetto for forty years. Hilary Swain directs the Archbold Biological Station, a center dedicated to research and conservation in the South Florida watershed.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio