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
Wednesday Nov 12, 2025
Wednesday Nov 12, 2025
Today, we introduce Cannupa Hanska Luger, an American artist born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, who now lives and works outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Our conversation reveals a few of the ways Cannupa acts on his deep respect for heritage and community, belief in ritual and remembrance, and fascination with science fiction and mythology. The artist shares the stories behind his mystical re-creation of Midéegaadi, a traditional buffalo dance he filmed against a green screen to show in exhibition spaces, on digital billboards, and even in a virtual reality app.
The dance is one strand of Future Ancestral Technologies, a new myth that Cannupa has been weaving since 2015. His interrelated projects reimagine Indigenous life and culture in a postcolonial world where space exploration has reduced and reconfigured the earth’s population. As Cannupa builds a framework for understanding, respecting and sharing indigeneity in the 21st century, he holds out hope for our collective future.
Production: Cathy Byrd | Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio
Special Audio: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Midéegaadi and Mirror Shield Project
Related Episodes: Video Performance Art Reimagines the Future, Live from the Everglades—Part One and Part Two
Related Link: Cannupa Hanska Luger
Wednesday Nov 05, 2025
Wednesday Nov 05, 2025
In this episode, we explore an emerging microgenre in contemporary performance art. Some of today’s artists create liminal spaces, construct original expressive forms, and make powerful statements in a range of inventive video performances.
The 2025 exhibition (Im)Posibilidades: Performance Art for Video at Ogden Contemporary Arts in Ogden, Utah, reveals the microgenre’s potential. Featured projects from the United States and Mexico envision ways to correct historical distortions and construct new possible futures. They show us a world where everyone’s stories can thrive through performance and reimagination.
Production: Cathy Byrd | Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio
Featured Voices: Stephanie Garcia and Peter Hay of PROArtes Mexico, Adam Forrester, Lilly McElroy, Cannupa Hanska Luger
Feature Soundtracks, Courtesy the Artists and Ogden Contemporary Arts: María Eugenia Chellet/La Dolorosa, Lilly McElroy/A Woman Runs Through a Pastoral Setting, Naomi Rincón Gallardo/Eclipse, Cannupa Hanska Luger/Midéegaadi, Ileana Moreno/Kowatl y el Mejor Amigo del Sol, Kameron Neal and Jarrett Key/CARGO!, Yoshie Sakai/ Grandma NightClub Music Video, José Villalobos/El Peso Del Rio/The Weight of the River
Additional music:
Caspertron by Blue Dot Sessions
Mergeron by Blue Dot Sessions
Related Episodes: Joan Jonas, William Pope.L, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Carolee Schneeman, Cheryl Pope, Regina Frank
About the Exhibition: Ogden Contemporary Arts
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
How does your art engage the world? How do you speak to the issues and ideas of our time? What do you hope others will remember about your life, your beliefs, your work?
The exhibition Teresita Fernandez / Robert Smithson, SITE Santa Fe opens a portal for us to consider our place in the landscape and explore the legacy of two significant artists. Their vibrant visual exchange feels both time sensitive and timeless.
This dialogue with artist Teresita Fernández and Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, deepens our appreciation of resonant and divergent perspectives. Embracing change, they show us the way to and through a few of the entanglements that come with being an artist and being human.
Host: Cathy Byrd
Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio
Special Audio featured with permission, as follows:
Recordings on site at Spiral Jetty, Salt Lake, Utah, 2013, courtesy Anamnesis Audio.
Extracts from Teresita Fernández, Cuajaní (2024), directed by Teresita Fernández and Juan Carlos Alom; 16mm film converted to digital video, black and white, sound; duration 20 minutes, 9 seconds.
Extracts from Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970); 16mm film; duration 35 minutes; © Holt/Smithson Foundation 2024.
Blister Creek by Blue Dot Sessions
Related Episodes: Unsettled Landscapes at SITE Santa Fe, Louis Grachos, Land Arts of the American West
Related Links: Teresita Fernández, Holt/Smithson Foundation, SITE Santa Fe
Tuesday Feb 18, 2020
Tuesday Feb 18, 2020
With filmmaker Alla Kovgan, we spark a conversation to find out why and how she realized CUNNINGHAM. The 2019 documentary traces American choreographer Merce Cunningham's artistic evolution over three decades.
Kovgan directed the immersive film that took seven years to make. She and her collaborators channel the spirit and image of Merce Cunningham—from his early years as a struggling dancer in postwar New York to his emergence as one of the world’s most visionary choreographers. With new technology, Kovgan creates the film in both 2D and 3D versions. She frees Cunningham’s oeuvre from the constrictions of the stage, projecting his work into an infinite realm of the senses.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio and Photography courtesy Magnolia Pictures
About CUNNINGHAM
2019 marked the centenary of legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham. The film CUNNINGHAM traces his artistic evolution over three decades of risk and discovery (1944–1972), from his early years as a struggling dancer in postwar New York to his emergence as one of the world’s most visionary choreographers. The 3D technology weaves together Merce's philosophies and stories, creating a visceral journey into his innovative work. Sharing archival footage of Cunningham, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg, CUNNINGHAM is a tribute to one of the world’s greatest modern dance artists.
About Director Alla Kovgan
Alla Kovgan is a New York-based filmmaker, born in Moscow (Russia). Her films have been presented worldwide. Since 1999, Kovgan has been involved with interdisciplinary collaborations, creating intermedia performances (with KINODANCE Company), dance films and documentaries about dance. With CUNNINGHAM, she created a film that is neither a straightforward biopic nor a traditional concert film. Cunningham was conceived as a 93-minute art piece that would tell the master’s story through his work.
About Merce Cunningham: Merce Cunningham, considered the most influential choreographer of the 20th century, was a many-sided artist. He was a dance-maker, a fierce collaborator, a chance taker, a boundless innovator, a film producer, and a teacher. During his 70 years of creative practice, Cunningham's exploration forever changed the landscape of dance, music, and contemporary art. Visit Merce Cunningham Trust to explore his history.
Related Episodes: Filming Rhythm, Stories and Soul in the Toronto Subway, Akosua Adoma Owusu on Her Film Kwaku Ananse, Inside Miami’s Sound Chamber, Erika Hoffmann on the Hoffmann Collection, Stephen Vitiello on Cultural Soundscapes
Related Links: Alla Kovgan, CUNNINGHAM, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg
Tuesday Oct 29, 2019
Tuesday Oct 29, 2019
In 2018, Puerto Rico based actor, composer and filmmaker Juan Botta left job security behind to center on his creative life. That’s when he launched Freelance, an inventive Instagram film series that empathizes with the challenges of living and working in Puerto Rico today. Botta’s determination to make films where he lives—despite economic, political and environmental conditions—suggests creativity as a way forward. Freelance expresses a sense of hope, demonstrating that it's possible to find poetry, humor and beauty in the most unlikely situations.
The backstory: In 2019, we head to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to immerse ourselves in the island’s creative life. Now more than ever, residents are faced with a mountain of adversity. Two years after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, this place still awaits reconstruction. Puerto Rico’s 2019 summer uprising protested against politics as usual. Residents gathered en masse, to transform the political landscape. Nonstop street demonstrations led to the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló. New actors and forces are emerging that resist the island’s colonial subordination.
Despite ongoing unstable conditions, cultural work continues, with renewed energy. One night in San Juan, we meet Argentina born Juan Botta, an award winning actor, composer and filmmaker who grew up in Puerto Rico. He left his job in the tourism industry one year ago, to center on creative pursuits.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Juan Botta
Related Episodes: Mapping Caribbean Cultural Ecologies, Filmmaking in Pahokee Holds Hope for the Future, Akosua Adoma Owusu on Her Film Kwaku Ananse
Monday Apr 15, 2019
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 Episodes: Live from the Everglades, Part One, 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: 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 Feb 18, 2019
Monday Feb 18, 2019
Artist Bill Fontana has a long-time relationship with sound and space. He's known for relocating sounds to create site-specific installations around the world.
Fontana describes his practice as "composition by listening." In this episode, we talk about what has inspired and informed his public art projects through the decades—from his 1981 Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns in San Francisco, to his 2018 Sonic Dreamscapes in Miami Beach.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Bill Fontana
Related episodes: Inside Miami's Sound Chamber; Stephen Vitiello on Sound Art
Related links: Bill Fontana, City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places
Monday Apr 16, 2018
Monday Apr 16, 2018
Art and Sports? Curator Franklin Sirmans brings them together in The World’s Game exhibition at the Perez Art Museum, Miami. Immersive installations, paintings, sculptural objects, photographs and videos by forty artists reveal how the universal language of this transnational game can define beauty, make social statements, create a sense of community and express a shared passion. Timed to coincide with the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, the exhibition celebrates soccer as the portal to a world of contemporary art.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special audio: Stephen Dean, Volta and Perez Art Museum, Miami
Wednesday Oct 18, 2017
Wednesday Oct 18, 2017
Today, we take you to the Arsenale, a historic shipyard and main venue for the 57th Venice Art Biennale. In the New Zealand pavilion, we hear artist Lisa Reihana speak on reversing the colonial gaze in her work Emissaries. http://www.freshartinternational.com
Tuesday Mar 25, 2014
Tuesday Mar 25, 2014
In 2014, we sit down with Janet Biggs, a Brooklyn-based artist whose video projects tell stories of toxic environments and endangered cultures. She explains what led her to follow miners inside a volcano in Indonesia and embed herself in a community at the edge of China’s Silk Road. Her next destination is South of the border. In Mexico, she’ll be donning an ice suit to explore a spectacular, white-hot crystal cave that lies 300 meters below the Earth’s surface.
Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Production Assistant: Amy Sherald | Special Audio, courtesy Janet Biggs
Related Episode: Janet Biggs and the Power of Desire
Related Links: Janet Biggs, Ijen Volcano, Taklamakan Desert, Cave of Crystals