Fresh Art International

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!

Fresh Talk: Franklin Sirmans 2014

Recorded in New York during Armory Arts Week 2014, this episode features Franklin Sirmans, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We’re talking about Prospect New Orleans, an exhibition the size of a city. Franklin is artistic director of this year’s U.S. Biennial, AKA Prospect.3, or P.3. With the biennial now 6 months away, Franklin shares his vision—a curatorial concept that spans decades and oceans.

To set the stage, Franklin talks about books, the City of New Orleans, and two historically important figures: French artist Paul Gauguin and Brazilian artist Tarsila Do Amaral. The P.3 curator explains the ideas behind several 2014 projects and introduces the participating artists whose work is represented in this week’s photo gallery: Los Jaichackers, Theaster Gates, Mary Ellen Carroll, Glenn Kaino, and Hayal Pozanti. Click on the artists’ names to learn more about their projects.

Sound Editor: Kris McConnachie | Episode Sound: Los Jaichackers, A Fuego Lento/Slow Burn II

Janet Biggs on Making Art at the Edge of the World

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

Fresh Talk: Art x Hip-Hop

On Skype with Cathy Byrd, Atlanta-based artist and scholar Fahamu Pecou introduces his brand, explains why he's working toward a doctoral degree at Emory University and describes what it means to curate an art magazine at the intersection of art and hip-hop.

Sound Editor: Jeff T. Byrd | Episode Sound: Fahamu Pecou and Killer Mike

Fresh Talk: A Futurist Evening at Vizcaya

Recorded at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, this Fresh Talk episode features 3 of 8 projects presented at A Futurist Evening during Art Basel Miami Beach 2013. Curator Gina Wouters introduces this performance-based event that features Miami-based artists.

Antonia Wright: Suddenly We Jumped Wright is catapulted upward to break panes of glass suspended 17 and 20 feet above the East Terrace at Vizcaya.The artist's body becomes a machine and the breaking of two physical and metaphoric 'glass ceiling' simultaneously embody and question the merciless, misogynist, weaponized industrialization of a Futurist world.

Juraj Kojs David Almeida, Kim Yantis, Hisa-Hua Liang and Angie Lu: Replacement In the Center Garden, techno plants invade the formal landscape with intoxicating artificial life. Inspired by Luigi Russolo’s noisemakers (called intonarumori) and Fedele Azari’s manifesto, The Futurist Flora and the Plastic Equivalents of Artificial Odors.

Susan Lee-Chun: Untitled (Ruins) Shouldering a hybrid sculpture that fuses traditional architecture with Futurist aesthetics, the artist's time-based performance embodies the endurance and eventual collision of conflicting ideologies.

Fresh Talk UNCUT: Trenton Doyle Hancock

This is the launch of Fresh TalkUNCUT, a new series of unedited podcasts. In February 2013, Fresh Talk producer Cathy Byrd recorded a conversation with artistTrenton Doyle Hancock, in hisHouston, Texas, studio. Trenton talks about the mythology he created to filterhis artmaking and about the personal histories that lie beneath his work.

 

Sound Editor: EricSchwartz            Episode Sound: TrentonDoyle Hancock, performing Devotion at CAMH