Fresh Art International

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

Finding True North—with Irene Hofmann at SITE Santa Fe

The remote landscape and native culture of the American Southwest has long inspired artists and writers. Before the 1995, traditional landscape painting, pottery, weaving, and silver jewelry were perhaps the best-known regional aesthetics. And then came the nonprofit art space SITE Santa Fe, the first official outpost of contemporary art in New Mexico, and home to one of the first international biennials.

 

On Skype, Cathy Byrd speaks with Irene Hofmann, Director and Chief Curator of SITE, about radical changes in the way the space connects with artists and communities in the Americas.

 

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie

Sound credits in order of appearance: Pablo Helguera/SITE Santa Fe; Liz Cohen; and Giancarlo Foschino

 

Related Episodes: Unsettled Landscapes at SITE Santa Fe—Art Biennial 2014

Related Links: SITE Santa Fe

Fresh Talk: Sylvie Fortin

This Fresh Talk episode features Cathy Byrd in conversation with Sylvie Fortin, Executive and Artistic Director of the 2014 Montreal Biennial. Czech artist Klara Hobza's Diving Through Europe project is emblematic of the possible futures envisioned in L’avenir or What Is To Come. Presented in partnership with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the multi-venue exhibition reinvents the city's Triennial, juxtaposing the work of 25 Canadian artists with that of their global peers. The environment, geo-politics and artistic agency are explored by artists such as Hobza, Kevin Schmidt, Susan Norrie, Taysir Batniji, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, and the activist collectives Arctic Perspective Initiative and Adaptive Actions.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Episode Sound courtesy Klara Hobza 

Fresh Talk: Creative Time with Kara Walker

This Fresh Talk episode features A Subtlety, American artist Kara Walker’s first ever public art installation. Creative Time, an organization that produces public art projects internationally, invited the artist to respond to the history of the abandoned Domino sugar refinery in Brooklyn. A Subtlety, also known as The Marvelous Sugar Baby, references the intricate sugar sculptures once made for medieval feasts. The work pays homage to the unpaid and overworked laborers in the cane fields and refineries. We spoke to Creative Time Director Anne Pasternak and Kenyan poet Shailja Patel about this transformative project.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie

Fresh Talk: Naama Tsabar

We recorded this episode on Randall’s Island, in front of a small tented performance space on the great green lawn outside the North entrance of Frieze New York. We’ve come to meet Israeli artist Naama Tsabar and Tom Tom magazine publisher Mindy Abovitz to learn about their collaboration. Theirs is literally an outsider project: Without is a free 4-day outdoor music festival featuring 17 bands. You’re about to hear how the artist and the publisher brought music to meet an art fair.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Tigue, Felt Band, Honey Ear Trio, Doble Pletina, Laila, Balancer, Tigue

Fresh Talk: Koki Tanaka

To record this episode, we headed to Frieze New York 's tented art fair on Randall's Island. We were looking for Japanese artist Koki Tanaka to learn more about his interest in the island’s invisible communities. An array of picnic tables from a nearby park defined the space where Koki told a different Randall’s Island story each day, introducing communities and histories that lay outside the art fair’s reality. 

Our Fresh Talk includes voices—Koki Tanaki and local firefighter Michael Gallo, and music—a vintage recording of  Count Basie and his band playing at the Carnival of Swing that took place on Randall's Island in 1938, and a song recorded just last week with whistling sax0phonist Bill Todd!