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 Episodes: Sounds of Contemporary Art in Norway, Curating in a Time of Global Change

Related Links: IKT, OCA Norway, osloBiennalen

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.

Related Episodes: Robert Chambers on Art, Ancient Plants and New Technologies, Gustavo Matamoros: Inside Miami's Sound Chamber, Deborah Mitchell: The Artist as Guide to the Everglades, Jenny Larsson on Searching for Arctic Winter, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right,Artist Residency in Everglades, Art and the Rising Sea,  Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism

Related Links: Artist in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), Everglades National Park, Jolt Radio

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

Related Episodes: Deborah Mitchell: The Artist as Guide to the Everglades, Jenny Larsson on Searching for Arctic Winter, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right, Artist Residency in the Everglades, Art and the Environment at Miami's Deering Estate, Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism

Related Links: Artist in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), Everglades National Park, Robert Chambers, Archbold Biological Station

Art with a Sense of Place considers creative projects that respond to a physical space and those that react to or embrace a historic moment, a cultural environment, a socio-political tension, or a psychological space.

Emerging in the 1960s, site-specific art sought to transcend what was perceived as the over-curated, almost clinical context of the art museum. Artists rebelled by creating their own exhibition sites (Agnes Denes brought a Wheatfield to a New York City landfill). Some flaunted the rules of museum installation with live interventions (Joseph Beuys lived in a Soho gallery with a live coyote).

Our series of episodes on site sensitivity brings a broader range of cultural production into the conversation, exposing new ways of seeing place, space, and site in contemporary art.

Art with a Sense of Place, Part II, highlights conversations featured in the second issue of the Fresh Art International Smart Guide. We produce the guide as a series of downloadable pdfs. Each issue delves into a different theme—through select episodes, transcriptions and links to research that informs our podcast.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio

Related episodes: Agustina Woodgate, Louis Grachos, Adam Schreiber, Tania Bruguera

Related link: Smart Guide, Issue 02 Art with a Sense of Place

Italian artist Paola Pivi takes us on a tour of Art with a View, her latest solo exhibition at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach. Pivi is a nomad. Cultural references in her projects are so diverse that they might seem to come from more than one creative mind. Our first stop is a massive, minimalist installation that dominates a large gallery on the museum’s second floor. The work titled World Record invites us to enter a surprising interstitial space, or space between. We take off our shoes, don booties and climb into the opening between two horizontal planes, each made of 40 white mattresses.

Sound Editor: Matt Hodapp | Photographs courtesy Bass Museum of Art and Fresh Art International

Related Episodes: Miami Art Week Preview 2017, Athi Patra Ruga, Ugo Rondinone

Related Links: Paola Pivi, The Bass Museum of Art

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

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

What does it mean to be Black in 21^st 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

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:

Giscard Bouchotte 

Tap-Tap Chéri  

Sculptors of Grand Rue, Haiti 

Ghetto Biennale 

Jeremy Deller 

Jeremy Deller, Skulptur Projekte Münster 2007/2017 

Cesar Cornejo 

rootoftwo

Whithervanes 

EN MAS’

Tide by Side 

Clair Tancons

documenta 14 Public Radio

Jillian Mayer

400 Nudes

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