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 May 21, 2018
Monday May 21, 2018
Today, we bring you Fresh Art International LIVE from Dakar, Senegal. We made the journey to West Africa in May 2018, to capture sounds of local art and culture and to document our first encounter with the biennial of contemporary African art known as Dak'Art.
In the first of our two live streaming broadcasts, you'll hear Marisol Rodríguez (Mexico City/Paris), one of the biennial's guest curators, talk about her work with a team of creatives based in the Hurricane Zone (Mexico's Yucatàn Peninsula, Central America and the Caribbean).
Also LIVE: our show from la Boite à Idée, or Idea Box, a cultural hub in Dakar's Mermoz district. In the garden of this space is where cultural activist Ken Aicha Sy, founder of Wakh'Art Music introduces us to a few of the creatives engaging in the local art and music scene. You'll hear from Ms. Sy, along with Franco-Senegalese artist Gabriel Dia, jazz guitarist Paride Pagnotti, I Science vocalist Corinna Fiore, and composer Nathan Fallou Fuhr. A modest local songwriter introducing himself simply as "Jean-Pierre," steps up to the microphone with his guitar to voice our melodic good-bye-for-now.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special audio courtesy ZAM ZAM, Paride Pagnotti, I Science, Nathan Fallou Fuhr and Jean-Pierre
Monday May 14, 2018
Monday May 14, 2018
Trinidad-born photographer Johanne Rahaman shares hope for a better world in her Black Florida project—a modern archive of images that tell the story of Blackness in America today. Follow our Sunday morning drive to Perrine where we visit Flavas, the town's favorite breakfast spot, and stop by the House of God, home of the sacred steel ensemble known as The Lee Boys. Find out why Rahaman is taking the time to dignify the character of rural and urban black communities across the state. Keep listening to discover how she will celebrate Black water rights on Miami's South Beach during Urban Weekend 2018.
Special Audio courtesy Johanne Rahaman
Related links: Johanne Rahaman, Flavas Miami, House of God, The Lee Boys, Zora Neale Hurston, Urban Beach Weekend Miami
Monday May 07, 2018
Monday May 07, 2018
Monday Apr 30, 2018
Monday Apr 30, 2018
We follow artist Joana Choumali from the Ivory Coast Pavilion at the 57th Venice Art Bienniale to Dak'Art 2018, as she explores the shared experience of migration and violence in her birth country. Her embroidered photographs trace stories of loss and longing—depicting lone figures disappearing from home and reappearing in foreign environments, and giving shape to the emptiness left by the casualties of terrorism. Needle and thread express Choumali's empathy with the fraught human condition.
Sound Editing: Anamnesis Audio | Photography: Joanna Choumali and Fresh Art International
Monday Apr 23, 2018
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
Monday Apr 09, 2018
Monday Apr 09, 2018
We begin with a flashback to our 2016 episode with dancer choreographer Hattie Mae Williams. Her creative intervention at the stadium is just one example of how the site has beckoned artists for decades. Fast forward to 2018. Miami’s International Boat Show has come the marine stadium’s home on Virginia Key for the third year in a row. The stadium is now in the first phase of a complete restoration. Don Worth, one of the founders of Friends of Miami Marine Stadium, talks about the ten years of activism that led to this moment. The stadium's original architect Hilario Candela, restoration architect Richard Heisenbottle, conservation specialists Rosa Lowinger and Kelly Ciociola explain the restoration process. Among local artists behind the 200 layers of paint that now cover the concrete venue, Hox and Abstrk voice their support for the stadium's face-lift. Over the next three years, the legendary venue will come back to life, reclaiming its identity as a top destination for cultural experiences in Miami.
Sound Editing: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio from Concrete Paradise exhibition at Coral Gables Museum, courtesy of Little Gables Group | Feature photograph by Diana Larrea
Monday Apr 02, 2018
Monday Apr 02, 2018
Today's conversation reveals the role of private investment in temporary and permanent public art across the U.S. Contemporary art collector Cricket Taplin, who with her husband Martin Taplin once owned the legendary Sagamore Art Hotel on Miami Beach, explains her philosophy on collecting as a mode of civic engagement. Curators Claire Breukel and Dina Mitrani tell how they introduce the work of local and international artists through public art. Miami-based artists Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar of R&R Studios share stories behind their privately sponsored and public-funded projects from Florida to California. In a special Fresh Art International flashback, Dejha Carrington talks about the waterfront intervention she realized in 2016, through the Miami Foundation's Public Space Challenge.
Sound Editing: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery: Hiraki Sawa’s Hidden Tree, 2007
Related links: Cricket Taplin and the Sagamore Art Hotel, Unscripted Bal Harbour, R&R Studios
Monday Mar 26, 2018
Monday Mar 26, 2018
American virtuoso Jason Moran is a genius jazz pianist known for performing experimental compositions in collaborative projects with visual artists—among them, Joan Jonas, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon and Adrian Piper. For the 56th Venice Art Biennale, artistic director Okui Enwezor invited Jason to stage and animate two sound environments. The multi-faceted artist brings the full range of his creative practice into play for his first museum show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis this year. In our conversation, Jason Moran shares the discoveries he made while realizing recent collaborations with artists Julie Mehretu and Kara Walker.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio courtesy Jason Moran: Summon, Katastrof Karavan, Three Deuces, He Puts on His Coat and Leaves
Monday Mar 19, 2018
Monday Mar 19, 2018
Today, we invite three women writers to talk about Cuba as a character in newly released films. Our portal to the Cuban psyche is the 35th Miami Film Festival that brings diverse cultural perspectives to the big screen in theaters across Miami, Florida. Sharing their expertise and personal knowledge of Cuba's socio-political landscape are two sisters born in Miami, to Cuban parents: writer and filmmaker Carmen Peláez and food writer Ana Sofia Peláez. New York based journalist and filmmaker Michelle Memran joins us to remember her own encounters with the culture while making a documentary film with Cuban American playwright María Irene Fornés.
In this conversation, we consider the value of creativity, resilience, family and friendship in Cuba. The country’s historic relationship and chaotic rupture with the Soviet Union is the backdrop for the three stories we introduce. (The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union catapulted Cuba into a life-changing economic crisis from which Cubans around the world are still recovering.) The films: Cuban Food Stories, director Asori Soto; The Rest I Make Up, director Michelle Memran; and Sergio and Sergai, director Ernesto Daranas.