Fresh Art International

Fresh Talk: Agustina Woodgate

Argentinean artist Agustina Woodgate is based in Miami, Florida, and Buenos Aires. In a recent project, she and her team produced Radio Espacio Estacion (Radio EE), a 4-day online radio show for Auto Body, a performance-based exhibition featuring the work of more than 30 women artists. Our conversation—and Woodgate's temporal Auto Body broadcast—took place on Miami Beach, during Miami Art Week, December 2014.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Radio EE excerpts courtesy the artist

Fresh Talk: Cheryl Pope

Chicago-based artist Cheryl Pope tells the back story of UpAgainst, a performance she presented on Miami Beach in late2014. Pope used only her head to box down 700transparent water-filled balloons that were suspended from the ceiling ina former auto body shop. The context for UpAgainst was AUTO BODY, afour-day video and performance project that took place during Miami Art Week 2014.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Performance audio courtesy the artist and Spinello Projects

 

Fresh Talk: Fountainhead Residency

From El Salvador, Cuba, and Israel, Simón Vega, Candelario, and Gil Yefman talk about their experiences as artists-in-residence at the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, Florida. Launched in 2008 by Kathryn and Dan Mikesell, Fountainhead is one of the local efforts to build a sustainable art scene in Miami. Our conversation takes place in the house and garden where the artists live and work.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Sound effects, courtesy the artists

Fresh Talk: Tameka Norris

Tameka Norris just produced her first feature-length film. She plays herself in Meka Jean: How She Got Good. The narrative has a lot in common with The Moviegover, a novel by Walker Percy. Like Walker Percy, Norris grew up in the Deep South, and went away to seek her fortune. Like Binx Bolling, the book’s protagonist, Meka Jean reveals what it means when New Orleans is the city you call home.

We recorded this conversation with Norris when her film debuted during the international exhibition Prospect.3 New Orleans, in 2014. She presented the project as a multi-chambered installation at May Gallery, a nonprofit art space in the district known as the Upper 9^th Ward.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Soundtrack excerpts courtesy the artist

Fresh Talk: Lynda Benglis

New York-based artist Lynda Benglis has been pouring, dripping, and splattering her way through unexpected media, color, and texture for decades. Her work sometimes shocks, and always surprises. Forty years after posing nude with a dildo for the photo that appeared in a full-page ArtForum advertisement, Lynda is at last being recognized for her significant impact on contemporary art. In this episode, we talk about her passion for creating and resurrecting fountains.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Sound effects courtesy Dylan Farnum, Walla Walla Foundry

Fresh Talk: Prospect New Orleans 2014

Prospect New Orleans, a city-wide international art exhibition in its third iteration, is starting to feel at home. This episode features two project sites where we found a deep connection between art and community. In the order of their appearance, Timothy Levitch, Tavares Strachan, Margaret Thomas, and Gary Simmons reveal why Prospect makes perfect sense for the Crescent City.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie 

Episode sound: The Roots of Music Brass Band's performance of “Go to the Mardi Gras” by Professor Longhair during the live WWOZ broadcast from Jazz Fest on May 1, 2014; and Beans performing for Gary Simmons “Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark,” 2014, at Tremé Market Branch on the occasion of the opening of Prospect.3: Notes for Now, New Orleans, October 25, 2014.

Fresh Talk: Jillian Mayer

Miami-based artist Jillian Mayer introduces 400 Nudes, a revealing found photo project to debut at the Montreal Biennial. Mayer's work examines the nude selfie phenom on the Internet to comment on information sharing, privacy, the manipulation of identity, and the body politics of revenge porn.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie

Andrea Bowers on Art and Activism

We meet Andrea Bowers, an artist from Ohio who's based in Los Angeles, to talk about her passion for addressing social and political issues. Curators of two international biennials in North America selected her work for their 2014 exhibitions. Her Courtroom Drawings appear in l'Avenir, the inaugural Montreal Biennial. Two of Bowers's projects concerning environmental activism are on view in Unsettled Landscapes at SITE Santa Fe.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Episode Sound courtesy Andrea Bowers: I Plan to Stay a Believer, #sweetjane, & The Weapon of a Princess

Special feature performance by Malian singer and women's rights activist, Fantani Touré: L'arme d'une princesse / The Weapon of a Princess, 2014 Video, 24min53, With the support of the Espace culturel Louis Vuitton

Fresh Talk: Remy Jungerman

Surinamese-Dutch artist Remy Jungerman talks about how European modernism and Afro-religious aesthetics influence his art, and describes the recent public art project he created back in Morengo, his home town in Suriname. Selected for inclusion in Prospect.3, the 2014 contemporary art biennial in New Orleans, Remy's work will be on view in an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center from late October 2014, to January 2015.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Episode sound effects: Chris Quinlan, drum set and Evan Dyson, toad mating call

 

Related podcast: Fresh Talk: Franklin Sirmans

Fresh Talk: Unsettled Landscapes

This episode takes place at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico. We arrived just before the opening of SITE's 2014 international biennial Unsettled Landscapes to record the voices of these five artists from across the Americas: Glenda León, Jason Middlebrook, Melanie Smith, Jamison Chas Banks, and Gianfranco Foschino.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Episode sound effects, in order of appearance: Santa Fe Railyard, Melanie Smith, Gianfranco Foschino