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 Feb 11, 2019
Monday Feb 11, 2019
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
Monday Oct 22, 2018
Monday Oct 22, 2018
Creative Time, the force behind ambitious public art projects in New York City and beyond, takes its annual summit to Miami in 2018. We invite Creative Time director Justine Ludwig to talk about the focus of this year's convening.
On Archipelagos and Other Imaginaries—Collective Strategies to Inhabit the World is the poetic title and subject of the 2018 Summit, with the idea of coalition as a central theme. Thinkers, dreamers and doers working at the intersection of art and politics gather to consider issues ranging from immigration and borders to climate realities, notions of intersectional justice, gentrification and tourism as an enabler for neocolonialism.
A portal to the Caribbean, Latin America and the entire world, Miami is the perfect context for such conversations. The City's creative community is ready—not only to share local challenges and their own site-sensitive initiatives, but also to welcome fresh perspectives on how art and activism might address these global concerns.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Krudas Cubensi, Mi cuerpo es mio, Haus of Shame via Amal Kiosk, Brigada Puerta de Tierra, Nástio Mosquito, Hilário
Related Episodes: Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti, Art and the Rising Sea, The BLCK Family of Miami, Modern Portrait of Black Florida, Diaspora Vibe: Art with Caribbean Roots, Caribbean Arts Remix Miami, Tania Bruguera on Art Activism, Cesar Cornejo on Architectural Intervention, Mary Mattingly on Human Relationships, Glexis Novoa on Cuba's Past, Live from Dominican Republic with Tilting Axis, Live from Trinidad: Where Digital Culture Thrives, Public Art and the Underline, Artist Residency in the Everglades, Art and the Environment at Deering Estates
Related Links: Creative Time, Creative Time Summit 2018, Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Creative Time Summit Miami is co-presented with Art in Public Places of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, with leading support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Monday Sep 03, 2018
Monday Sep 03, 2018
What does it mean to be Black in 21st 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
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 May 28, 2018
Monday May 28, 2018
Curators and artists whose passion is social engagement share their experiments in relational aesthetics—participatory performances, interactive installations, community events, and inside/outside exhibitions—invite viewers to become co-creators, to take ownership in the creative process.
Curators Jochen Volz (São Paulo Biennial, Live Uncertainty, 2016), Susan Cross (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Material World, 2010-2011, The Workers, 2011-2012), James Voorhies (Bureau of Open Culture, MASS MoCA, The Workers) and Stephanie Smith (SMART Museum of Art, FEAST, 2012, and Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond, Declaration, 2018) share their perspectives, as do artists William Pope.L (Baile, 2016), Theaster Gates (Soul Food Pavilion, 2012) and Marinella Senatore (Estman Radio, ongoing).
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Special Audio:
William Pope.L, Baile, São Paulo Biennial
There Is Only Light (We Do Not Know What To Do With Other Worlds) performance-reading, July 2011, MASS MoCA. Produced by Bureau for Open Culture
Theaster Gates, FEAST, SMART Museum of Art, University of Chicago
Marinella Senatore and Estman Radio recording, courtesy Marinella Senatore and Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Contemporary Art
Related Links:
Live Uncertainty, Material World, The Workers: Precarity/Invisibility/Mobility, FEAST: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, Declaration, Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation Exhibition Award, Exhibitions on the Cusp
Monday May 07, 2018
Monday May 07, 2018
Thursday Jan 04, 2018
Thursday Jan 04, 2018
Today we take you to the intersection of nature, art and technology to meet Amsterdam-based artists Ralph Nauta and Lonneka Gordjein of Studio Drift. They design their creative applications of new technology to make us question the lines we draw between humanity and nature, chaos and order. Presented during Miami Art Week 2017, Studio Drift's flying sculpture made of 300 lighted drones was especially provocative and poetic. The artists leave us believing in the unexpected potential for technology to feel natural.
Piano solo: Joep Beving
Thursday Jun 22, 2017
Thursday Jun 22, 2017
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.
Wednesday Nov 16, 2016
Wednesday Nov 16, 2016
Today, our show on Jolt Radio, Miami, is a feast of new performance art projects. Hear the conversation Cathy Byrd recorded with artist William Pope.L one night during the roving street performance he created for the 32nd Bienal São Paulo. Learn about the Tide by Side processional event planned for the Faena Art District on Miami Beach from curator Claire Tancons and artist Marinella Senatore. Also in the studio, Alexis Gideon introduces the multi-media opera The Comet and the Glacier he brings to Locust Projects, Miami.