Episodes
Monday Aug 19, 2019
Monday Aug 19, 2019
Jamaican-born artist Nadine Hall introduces Diaspora Vibe: Art with Caribbean Roots, a personally significant episode from her Fresh Art playlist. First published on July 26, 2017, this segment reveals the complex and diverse influence of the Caribbean on contemporary art.
Franklin Sirmans, director of the Perez Art Museum, Miami, talks about the pivotal role of art from the Global South in the triennial art exhibition known as Prospect New Orleans. Prospect returns to the Crescent City in November 2020.
Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator founder and curator Rosie Gordon Wallace and Miami-affiliated artists describe how the Caribbean is embedded in their work. In November 2019, DVCAI spotlights the region’s cultural impact in the collaborative exhibition Inter | Sectionality: Diaspora Art from the Creole City, at George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, in Washington, DC.
Nadine Hall writes: The Diaspora Vibe episode from the Fresh Art archive is my favorite—a dream-come-true story to share. Cathy Byrd recorded a conversation with me in summer 2017, just before I traveled outside my homeland Jamaica for the first time. Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator had invited me to Miami, to spend one month at Fountainhead Residency. Two years later, I’ve returned to South Florida. I’m here to pursue an MFA in sculpture at the University of Miami, with a three-year scholarship. In this episode, you’ll hear my voice, and the story behind the first step in my incredible journey.
Sound Editor: 2019 Anamnesis Audio, 2017 Guney Ozsan | Special Audio: Los Jaichackers, Jorge Martillo, Ashley Teamer
Related Episodes: Mapping Caribbean Cultural Ecologies, Live from Trinidad: Where Digital Culture Thrives, Live from Dominican Republic with Tilting Axis, Miami’s Caribbean Arts Remix, Art of the Everyday, Diaspora Vibe: Art with Caribbean Roots
Related Links: Franklin Sirmans, Perez Art Museum, Miami, Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Asser Saint-Val, Gerard Caliste, Ashley Teamer, Nadine Hall, Los Jaichackers, Jorge Martillo
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Art and Film Illuminate The Black Imagination
Monday Aug 05, 2019
Monday Aug 05, 2019
How do contemporary art and film illuminate the Black Imagination? This segment from our archive explores some of the issues and ideas behind creative practices that re-imagine the Black experience.
To begin, we share a conversation recorded with curator Valerie Cassel Oliver from 2013, while she was working at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Cassel Oliver is now Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where she's expanding the representation of African American and African-diasporic artists in the Museum's collection.
On November 2, 2016, artists, filmmakers and curators joined us to consider this topic during the Fresh Art International show on Jolt Radio, Miami. Since then, curator Natalia Zuluaga continues to edit [NAME] publications and co-edits the bilingual online journal Dispatches. In summer 2019, Zuluaga curates Materia Abierta, a program on theory, art and technology in Mexico City. Artist Domingo Castillo has been working under the radar since visualizing the complexities of Miami’s future in his 2017 video Tropical Malaise. In 2019, among other recent projects, artist Jamilah Sabur presented a five channel video installation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and showed a commissioned video at Hudson Yards, New York. Amir George, co-founder of the touring visual shorts program Black Radical Imagination, continues to engage in cinema culture. Mikhaile Solomon, founding director of the annual PRIZM art fair, is preparing for the Fair’s seventh year in Miami, scheduled for December 2019.
Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan 2016; Anamnesis Audio 2019 | Special Audio: courtesy Jamilah Sabur and Oolite Arts
Related Episodes: Valerie Cassel Oliver on Black Performance in Contemporary Art and Jean-Ulrick Désert and Trenton Doyle Hancock on Radical Presence, Black in America, Contemporary Black Portraiture
Related Links: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, [NAME] Publications, Hammer Museum, Black Radical Imagination, PRIZM Art Fair, Oolite Arts
Monday Jul 29, 2019
Charles Gaines on Philosophy and Politics in Conceptual Art
Monday Jul 29, 2019
Monday Jul 29, 2019
American artist Charles Gaines has been delving into philosophy, abstraction and mathematics to address politics and race since the 1970s. In August 2019, Gaines receives the 60th Annual Edward MacDowell Medal, an award celebrating his high achievements in visual art, musical composition and performance, and his influence as a teacher, writer and curator. An artist whose work is described as formulating the DNA of the conceptual movement, Gaines is a key figure in contemporary art history.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Gaines was the first African American accepted into the School of Art and Design MFA program at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He now lives and works in Los Angeles. He’s been a faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts, for more than three decades.
As Charles Gaines prepares for high profile exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, through 2022, we reflect on what his art says to the world. Resolutely abstract in his practice, Charles Gaines refuses traditional representation—resisting both dominant racial stereotypes, and pressure from within the black community. His gridworks and manifestos deliberately counter deep-seated assumptions about the forms that nature and culture, art and music should take. Gaines shows us how art can embody conceptual, aesthetic, and personal freedom.
This episode features conversations recorded with Charles Gaines in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
About the MacDowell Medal: A Haven for Artists since 1907, the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, was the first artist residency program established in the United States. Each year, the MacDowell Medal recognizes one individual for outstanding contributions to American arts and culture. Merce Cunningham, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Sonny Rollins, and Toni Morrison are among past honorees.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Charles Gaines, Manifestos performance, 56th Venice Art Biennale
Related Episodes: Mark Bradford Connects Art with the Real World, Contemporary Art and the Black Imagination
Related Links: Charles Gaines | MacDowell Honors Visual Artist, Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection, Charles Gaines, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Charles Gaines, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Biennale Arte 2015, All the World's Futures
Monday Jul 01, 2019
Oliver Beer on the Architecture of Sound
Monday Jul 01, 2019
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
Related Episodes: Oliver Beer Explores the Sound Chamber of a Turkish Bath, Camille Norment on the Character of a Sonic Environment
Related Links: Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra, Oliver Beer: Call to Sound, Istanbul, Kiliç Ali Paşa Hamam, 14th Istanbul Biennial
Monday Jun 03, 2019
Sounds of the 57th Venice Art Biennale Revisited
Monday Jun 03, 2019
Monday Jun 03, 2019
Venice is proven as a top destination for international contemporary art. The 58th Venice Art Biennale opened on May 11, 2019, and will be on view for the next six months. Thank you to Philadelphia-based art historian Deborah Barkun for contributing views from Venice on Instagram. Follow her encounters @freshartintl.
Today, we revisit a selection of sonic encounters at the 57th Venice Art Bienniale, when Italy was the first stop on a six-week Fresh Art International field expedition. In May 2017, preview days for the global exhibition presented an ephemeral opportunity to record the voices of curators, artists, and sounds of installations, performances and events. This episode features our experiences in the pavilions of France, Germany and Nigeria, and our walk through Egyptian artist Hassan Khan’s outdoor sound environment. Artist Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) was honored with the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 57th Art Biennale. In her memory, we share the conversation we recorded with Schneemann just days before we watched her accept the prestigious award at the opening ceremony.
Sound Editor Guney Ozsan | Special Audio: French Pavilion—pianist Federico Tibone, vocalist Farrah el Dibany, experimental media artist duo My Cat is an Alien; German Pavilion—Vernissage TVfield recording, Billy Bultheel's musical composition for Faust; Nigerian Pavilion—performance by choreographer and dancer Qudus Onikeku; Hassan Khan, Composition for a Park, ambient recordings by Andrew Russeth and Fresh Art International
Related Episodes: Samson Young: Songs for Disaster Relief, Lisa Reihana on Reversing the Colonial Gaze, Monument to Decay: Israeli Pavilion in Venice, Mark Bradford Connects Art with the Real World
Related Links: Venice Art Biennale, Fresh VUE 57th Venice Art Biennale
About the 57the Venice Art Biennale: Christine Macel curated the main exhibition Viva Arte Viva, described as a “Biennale designed with artists, by artists and for artists.” Macel called it an Exhibition inspired by humanism. For her, direct encounters with the artists assumed a strategic role. Of the 120 invited artists, 103 were participating for the first time.
About Carolee Schneemann: Starting as a painter in the 1950s, in the 1960s, the artist began using her own body as material in experiments with film, music, poetry, dance, and performance. Her fearless artmaking explored body, narrative, sexuality and gender, in ways that challenged cultural and political taboos.
Monday May 06, 2019
Curator Playlist: Sasha Dees Listens to Remy Jungerman
Monday May 06, 2019
Monday May 06, 2019
Today’s conversation is the first in our new Playlist series. We’re inviting artists, curators, architects, writers, filmmakers and cultural producers to introduce their favorite episodes from our archive.
From the Netherlands, curator, writer and arts producer Sasha Dees works internationally. An advisor to numerous festivals and arts venues, she’s known for encouraging artists to experiment with classical art forms. Her practice centers on creating new dialogues and forging collaborations across cultures, traditions, genders and art disciplines. Here, she introduces my conversation with Remy Jungerman, first released on September 18, 2014.
The Surinamese-Dutch artist talks about the influences of European modernism and Afro-religious aesthetics on his practice, and describes a public art he created in Morengo, his home town. A participating artist in Prospect.3, the 2014 international contemporary art exhibition in New Orleans, Jungerman showed his work a the Joan Mitchell Center from late October 2014, to January 2015. His art will be on view in the Dutch Pavilion at the 58th Venice Art Biennale.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Chris Quinlan, drum set and Evan Dyson, toad mating call
Sasha Dees writes: There are many podcasts I have enjoyed over the years since I was introduced to Cathy Byrd by [artist] Amy Sherald in 2012, but the episodes she made during her residency in Amsterdam are dear to my heart. My choice from the archive is the episode with artist Remy Jungerman. Five years after the podcast, he is selected for the Dutch Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. It has been a lot of work in Europe for non-white artists to conquer their rightful space within the art field. I am extremely proud of Remy, who worked consistently with great determination and passion, who kept investing in his own practice, and never veered off the path of being a professional artist or wavered from his artistic urgency. In 2019, presenting his work in the Venice Biennale is well deserved.
Related episodes: Franklin Sirmans on Prospect New Orleans, Remy Jungerman on European Modernism and Afro-Religious Aesthetics, Mapping Caribbean Cultural Ecologies, Sasha Dees on Miss T — My American Dream
Related links: 58th Venice Art Biennale, Dutch Pavilion 2019
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Public Art Meets Poetry in O, Miami
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Public art meets poetry in the month-long festival known as O, Miami. We sit down with visual artists Najja Moon and Michelle Lisa Polissaint and O, Miami's managing director Melody Santiago Cummings to talk about their work and introduce the spectrum of site-specific projects that bring poetry to communities.
Who’s The Fool? How To Patch A Leaky Roof: Moon and Polissaint create a Little Haiti Cultural District version of the blue umbrellas distributed for free in the Design District, a burgeoning retail development that is rapidly reducing the footprint of a community established by thousands of Haitian immigrants beginning in the 1950s. The artists imagine a dual role for the 1,000 bright red umbrellas they had fabricated. Mobile shelters from the rain and shields against the impact of urban development, the Little Haiti umbrellas feature a Creole proverb alluding to the false promise of urban development in the district. As if placing a flag on the moon, or drawing a line in the sand, Moon and Polissaint proclaim the identity of the community they call home and construct a monument to those fighting to preserve the district. The artists will go door to door with their gifts, inviting their neighbors to join in addressing the larger issue of gentrification in Miami.
O, Miami projects introduced in this episode: Who's the Fool?; Chiquita Poemas; The Last Ride of José Martí; The Beach is a Border; The Sunroom, poetry in schools
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Michelle Lisa Polissaint, Moonlight Moanin'; O, Miami: Ivan Lopez, The Last Ride of José Martí; Mia S. Willis, "hecatomb;" Sandra March, with Jose Olivarez, The Beach is a Border; The Sunroom
Related Episodes: Poetry, Art and Community Justice, Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti
Related Links: O, Miami, Najja Moon, Michelle Lisa Polissaint
Monday Apr 08, 2019
Sound Art and Contemporary Culture in Norway with IKT
Monday Apr 08, 2019
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 Episodes: Sounds of Contemporary Art in Norway, Curating in a Time of Global Change
Related Links: IKT, OCA Norway, osloBiennalen
Monday Mar 18, 2019
Live from the Everglades, Part One
Monday Mar 18, 2019
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.
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
Monday Mar 11, 2019
Filmmaking in Pahokee Holds Hope for the Future
Monday Mar 11, 2019
Monday Mar 11, 2019
The 2019 documentary Pahokee is a landmark project for filmmakers Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan and a sign of hope for the rural South Florida community whose story they tell. An official selection in 2019 Sundance and South by Southwest Film Festivals, Pahokee won the Miami Film Festival’s 2019 Knight Made in Miami Award.
Perched on the Southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades, forty miles west and a world apart from affluent West Palm Beach, Pahokee is named after the Seminole word meaning "grassy waters.” In the film, we follow four students as they navigate the hope and heartbreak of their senior year at Pahokee High School. All eyes are on the rituals of football, prom and graduation in the town these teenagers call home.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Film Audio and Photography courtesy Otis Lucas
Related Episodes: Women Writers on Cuba in Film, Introducing Miami Film Festival GEMS 2017, Alexa Lim Haas on Animating Daydreams, Borscht 10 Film Festival
Related Links: The Film Pahokee, Otis Lucas, Miami Film Festival 2019