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 Feb 25, 2019
Monday Feb 25, 2019
In 2018, when the annual Creative Time Summit unfolds in Miami, we’re thrilled to participate. On Archipelagoes and Other Imaginaries: Collective Strategies to Inhabit the World brings together artists, thinkers, activists, and cultural producers whose practices stimulate change through planetary thinking.
The nearby Caribbean Archipelago serves as the perfect context within which to question colonial and postcolonial ways of seeing and thinking. The Summit delves into Miami’s historical connection to the Caribbean and, by extension, to Latin America and the entire world.
Voices, in order of appearance: Justine Ludwig, Fredo Rivera, Edwige Danticat, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Daniela Ortiz, Colibrí Sanfiorenzo-Barnhard, Brigada Puerta de Tierra, Houston Cypress, Roc LaSeca, Edwige Danticat
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Live Performance Audio, in order of appearance: Drag en la Frontera, Samuel Tommie, Daniela Ortiz, Krudas Cubensi
Related Episodes: Where Art Meets Activism, LIVE from Dominican Republic with Tilting Axis, Mapping Caribbean Cultural Ecologies
Related Link: Creative Time
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 Feb 11, 2019
Monday Feb 11, 2019
Art with a Sense of Place considers creative projects that respond to a physical space and those that react to or embrace a historic moment, a cultural environment, a socio-political tension, or a psychological space.
Emerging in the 1960s, site-specific art sought to transcend what was perceived as the over-curated, almost clinical context of the art museum. Artists rebelled by creating their own exhibition sites (Agnes Denes brought a Wheatfield to a New York City landfill). Some flaunted the rules of museum installation with live interventions (Joseph Beuys lived in a Soho gallery with a live coyote).
Our series of episodes on site sensitivity brings a broader range of cultural production into the conversation, exposing new ways of seeing place, space, and site in contemporary art.
Art with a Sense of Place, Part II, highlights conversations featured in the second issue of the Fresh Art International Smart Guide. We produce the guide as a series of downloadable pdfs. Each issue delves into a different theme—through select episodes, transcriptions and links to research that informs our podcast.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Related episodes: Agustina Woodgate, Louis Grachos, Adam Schreiber, Tania Bruguera
Related link: Smart Guide, Issue 02 Art with a Sense of Place
Monday Feb 04, 2019
Monday Feb 04, 2019
Art with a Sense of Place considers creative projects that respond to a physical space and those that react to or embrace a historic moment, a cultural environment, a socio-political tension, or a psychological space.
Emerging in the 1960s, site-specific art sought to transcend what was perceived as the over-curated, almost clinical context of the art museum. Artists rebelled by creating their own exhibition sites (Agnes Denes brought a Wheatfield to a New York City landfill). Some flaunted the rules of museum installation with live interventions (Joseph Beuys lived in a Soho gallery with a live coyote).
Our series of episodes on site sensitivity brings a broader range of cultural production into the conversation, exposing new ways of seeing place, space, and site in contemporary art.
Art with a Sense of Place, Part I, highlights conversations featured in the second issue of the Fresh Art International Smart Guide. We produce the guide as a series of downloadable pdfs. Each issue delves into a different theme—through select episodes, transcriptions and links to research that informs our podcast.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Related episodes: Joan Jonas, Jason Moran, Janet Biggs, Sarah Hobbs, Tameka Norris, Stephen Vitiello
Related link: Smart Guide
Monday Jan 28, 2019
Monday Jan 28, 2019
Argentine architects Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar share their passion for creating emotional monuments. Their billboard-size greetings of Peace and Love and Besame Mucho at the Miami International Airport, Supernova at the 2018 Coachella Music Festival, and WOW, a new skate-able sculpture for the Lauridsen Skatepark in DesMoines, Iowa, are just a few of the iconic landmarks they've produced.
Founded in 1995 and based in Miami, R & R Studios is a multidisciplinary studio focusing on public artworks, architecture and urban design.
Related episodes: Miami Art Week 2018 Preview, Rodrique Mouchez on Choreographing Art Encounters, The Private Life of Public Art
Related links: R&R Studios, Untitled Podcast Miami Beach 2018, Wynwood Radio
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Monday Jan 14, 2019
Monday Jan 14, 2019
In 2018, a city-wide public art experience lures us to the capital of Argentina. Organizers of Art Basel Cities Week Buenos Aires, invited Cecilia Alemani, director of the public art program for New York City’s High Line park, to curate Rayuela (Spanish for Hopscotch). Crisscrossing Buenos Aires, we discover historic plazas, parks and museums, abandoned buildings, architecture and industrial sites. We meet artists whose projects connect contemporary art with urban space, civic history and community.
Featured projects: Maurizio Cattelan, Eduardo Navarro, Eduardo Basualdo, Alexandra Pirici, Gabriel Chaille, David Horvitz, Naama Tsabar
Sound Editor: Joseph DeMarco |
Related episodes: Sounds of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, The Private Life of Public Art, Fringe Projects Miami, Public Art and the Underline
Related links: Art Basel Cities Week Buenos Aires, Faena Art Center Buenos Aires, The High Line
Monday Jan 07, 2019
Monday Jan 07, 2019
Rodrigue Mouchez, founder of the artist-run curatorial platform known as AGUAS, talks about choreographing encounters with art. Mouchez introduces People Moving Through Space, an array of installations he created and staged with AGUAS collaborator Julie Escoffier and other artists for the seventh edition of Untitled, Miami Beach art fair.
Based in Mexico City and Brussels, AGUAS seeks to establish dialogues and collaborations between artists from Europe and Latin America through exhibitions, talks, and publications. AGUAS operates on the idea of interdisciplinarity. Each project invites the collective engagement of artists, designers, writers and friends.
Related episodes: Miami Art Week 2018 Preview, Report from Miami Art Week 2017
Related links: AGUAS, Rodrigue Mouchez, Julie Escoffier, Untitled Art
Monday Dec 24, 2018
Monday Dec 24, 2018
In Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, we meet poet Aja Monet, legal justice advocates Meena Jagannath and Alayah Glenn, and artist Eddie Arroyo to talk about how art and poetry are giving voice to urban communities fractured by gentrification.
Arroyo's paintings reference photographs he takes to capture the character of vanishing cultural landmarks. Monet is founder of Smoke Signals Studio, a music space that's become a transformative gathering place in Little Haiti. Jagannath and Glenn are two of the activists that run the local Community Justice Project, a young grassroots initiative focused on addressing issues ranging from women’s and immigrant rights, to race and economic justice.
These individuals represent the growing momentum of civic engagement across the United States. In the ways they animate their vision for Miami's possible future, we see infinite potential for creative interventionists to empower disenfranchised communities around the world.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Arsimmer McCoy Early
Related episodes: Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti, Where Art Meets Activism, The Art of Capitalism, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism, Marinella Senatore on Modern Life, Tania Bruguera on Art Activism, Maria Alyokhina on Political Art
Related Links: Smoke Signals Studio, Community Justice Project, Dream Defenders, Maroon Poetry Festival, Eddie Arroyo
Monday Dec 17, 2018
Monday Dec 17, 2018
Artist Joyce J. Scott is a legend—among the first to reposition craft as social commentary. In 2016, a MacArthur Genius award recognized her vital creative force. For Art Basel Miami Beach 2018, Peter Blum Gallery presented rarely seen early works that reveal how the artist has always delved into the extremes of human nature—from humor to horror, and beauty to brutality. In her fusion of craft aesthetics and contemporary sculpture, performance art and cultural critique, Scott weaves a deep sense of humanity into complex conversations of our time.
The first conversation we recorded with Joyce J. Scott in Baltimore, Maryland, became Fresh Art International's premiere episode, released on October 12, 2011. Re-releasing the segment is an opportunity to reflect—on the lasting value of Scott’s work and continued relevance of this podcast.
Original Sound Editor: Ira Kip, 2011 | Post Production Editor: Matt Hodapp, 2018 | Music: Joyce Scott
Related Episodes: Radio Show Miami Premiere 2016, Franklin Sirmans on Prospect New Orleans, Prospect.4 New Orleans
Related Links: Goya Contemporary, MacArthur Genius Award, Peter Blum Gallery
Friday Nov 30, 2018
Friday Nov 30, 2018
This year, tons of inventive projects unfold during Miami Art Week 2018 outside the established and emerging art fairs. Individuals and collectives passionate about public art and performance, film, video, music and social engagement will animate an upscale development on the beach, a luxury mall in Miami’s business district, the former Gold Dust Motel on Biscayne Boulevard, and an Asian bodega, an abandoned mall and a by-gone department store Downtown.
Art Week has come to this city every December since 2002, when the premiere art fair from Basel, Switzerland launched Art Basel Miami Beach. Since then, the year-round art scene has grown tremendously. Creatives from around the world are calling Miami home. When they come together at the intersection of art and life, it gets very exciting!
Voices in our conversation: Zoe Lukov/Faena Festival, Isabel Lewis/Classic Occasions, Tschabalala Self/Lee's Oriental Market and Free Range Miami, Tanya Bravo/Juggerknot Theater and Miami Motel Stories, and Octavia Yearwood/Spinello Projects and FREE! Art Fair
Related Episodes: Paola Pivi on Art with a View, Miami Art Week 2018 Preview, Report from Miami Art Week 2017, Lynda Benglis on Creating Fountains
Related Links: Faena Festival, Isabel Lewis, Fringe Projects Miami, Tschabalala Self, Free Range Miami, RAW Pop Up, Juggerknot Theater's Miami Motel Stories, FREE!, Octavia Yearwood