Fresh Art International

Now, more than ever, culture transcends geographic boundaries. In this episode, we explore the impact of that global phenomenon on the visibility of contemporary diaspora art.
From Jamaica, Rosie Gordon-Wallace is a globally recognized curator, arts advocate, and community leader based in Miami, Florida, since the 1970s. In 1996, Gordon-Wallace launched a transformative enterprise, now known as Diaspora Vibe Culture Arts Incubator.
DVCAI is a creative laboratory—promoting, nurturing, and cultivating the vision and diverse talents of artists from the Caribbean Diaspora, artists of color, and immigrant artists through public programs, residencies, exhibitions and more. In 2021, the organization will be 25 years old. We sit down with Gordon-Wallace to contemplate the significance of this moment. 
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound from The Philosopher's Stone, with permission of artist Asser Saint-Val

Diaspora Art from the Creole City—with Rosie Gordon-Wallace

In 2019, we recorded the first part of this story about the history of Miami's contemporary art scene inside Locust Projects, the longest running alternative art space in the city. Locust Projects director Lorie Mertes and artists from a collaborative known as FeCuOp—Jason Ferguson, Christian Curiel, Brandon Opalka, and Victor Villafañe, remember the raw energy of the 1990s. When we meet, the collective is in the midst of building out an immersive environment for Antenna, their first major project in Miami since 2003. The performative and interactive installation aimed to create a social experiment around communication.
In early 2021, we reach out to FeCuOp to talk about how much has changed since they collaborated on the highly interactive, live, and in-person experience at Locust Projects. Only months after they realized Antenna, the global coronavirus pandemic shut down the world for most of a year, profoundly altering how we encounter art.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound featured with permission of FeCuOp 

Related Episodes:
Where Art Meets Sand and Social Behavior https://freshartinternational.com/2018/10/30/where-art-meets-sand-and-social-behavior/
The BLCK Family of Miami on Collective Creativity https://freshartinternational.com/2018/08/13/blck-family-of-miami/

Related Links:
Locust Projects https://www.locustprojects.org/exhibitions/main-gallery/antenna.html
FeCuOp https://www.christiancuriel.com/fecuop-artist-collaberative
Christian Curiel https://www.christiancuriel.com/
Jason Ferguson https://www.jasonjferguson.com/
Brandon Opalka http://www.brandonopalka.com/
Victor Villafañe https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Victor-Villafane/CCDF27B9397467C5
Miami Light Project https://miamilightproject.com/portfolio-item/antenna-by-fecuop/

Art in Miami, Then and Now—with FeCuOp

Jillian Hernandez gives voice to girls and women of color in her 2020 book Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment. In this episode, you’ll hear how she has been delving into the “aesthetic hierarchies” of femme culture for more than a decade. Research, critical writing, and personal experience come together to enrich this vividly illustrated book. Hernandez shares a few stories of her own fraught adolescence, along with those of Women on the Rise!, a community of teenage girls for whom she and local artists created opportunities to collide with art, through the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. 

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Chonga Girls, “Chongalicious,” Crystal Pearl Molinary, “Off the Chain”

Related Episodes:
Puerto Rico Rising—Resisting Paradise https://freshartinternational.com/2021/02/24/puerto-rico-rising-resisting-paradise/
The Awakening https://freshartinternational.com/2021/01/27/women-artists-curators-awakening/
Topical Playlist—Art and Feminism https://freshartinternational.com/2020/10/28/topical-playlist-feminist-art/

Related Links
Jillian Hernandez, University of Florida https://people.clas.ufl.edu/jillianhernandez/
Duke University Press https://www.dukeupress.edu/aesthetics-of-excess
Women on the Rise!: Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami https://mocanomi.org/2012/03/women-on-the-rise/

Aesthetics of Excess—with Jillian Hernandez

Today’s story takes place at the intersection of art and the First Amendment. This vital element of the United States Constitution protects our right to freedom of expression, by prohibiting lawmakers from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. 

Artist Sheryl Oring took up this cause célèbre in 2004. In conversations across time, we trace her synthesis of art and free speech in a public performance project that quite naturally, has no end in sight. As long as there is democracy in the United States, there will be opportunities to voice opinions about the U.S. presidency, about social justice, the economy, public health, globalization, climate change, education, and more. 

What would YOU wish to say to the U.S. President?
Let us know on Instagram: @freshartintl #iwishtosay

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Sheryl Oring on ABC World News Tonight, 2004; Sheryl Oring at Washington and Lee University, 2018; I Wish to Say with University of Michigan and Wayne State University students, 2020; Lisa Bielawa, Voters’ Broadcast, 2020

Related Episodes: 
Where Art Meets Activism https://freshartinternational.com/2018/06/25/art-activism/

Topical Playlist: Art and Politics https://freshartinternational.com/2020/10/14/topical-playlist-political-art/
Charles Gaines on Philosophy and Politics in Conceptual Art  https://freshartinternational.com/2019/07/29/charles-gaines-politics-conceptual-art/
Bahar Behbahani on Politics and Persian Gardens https://freshartinternational.com/2017/02/02/bahar-behbahani-on-politics-and-persian-gardens/

Related Links: 
Sheryl Oring, I Wish to Say http://www.sheryloring.org/i-wish-to-say
Activating Democracy (the book)http://www.sheryloring.org/book-activating-democracy
The First Amendment Project, Oakland, CA https://www.thefirstamendment.org/
Creative Capital Foundation https://creative-capital.org/2016/04/13/want-write-letter-presidential-candidate-interview-sheryl-oring/
W&L Quick Hit: Sheryl Oring Performs I Wish to Say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14CesRvZutw
Sheryl Oring on ABC World News Tonight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbF1lVfLCII
I Wish to Say Archive http://uncglibraries.com/IWishToSay/
University of Michigan, Democracy & Debate Theme Semester https://umich-speak-act-vote.netlify.app/signature-initiatives/i-wish-to-say/
Stamps Gallery https://stamps.umich.edu/exhibitions/detail/sheryl_oring_i_wish_to_say
Lisa Bielawa http://www.lisabielawa.net/voters-broadcast
Voters’ Broadcast http://www.lisabielawa.net/voters-broadcast
Mauer Broadcast with Lisa Bielawa https://mauerfall30.berlin/en/programm/mauer-broadcast/
The Berlin Wall https://www.berliner-mauer-gedenkstaette.de/en/the-berlin-wall-10.html

I Wish to Say—with Sheryl Oring

With American-born artist Mary Mattingly, we delve into her collaborative environmental interventions over time. We remember the 2015 Havana Biennial when rainwater nourished Pull, a pair of geodesic dome eco-systems through which she engaged locals. We follow her rising interest in water to Swale, a co-created edible landscape on a barge that navigated New York City’s waterways, offering free fresh food to visitors when docked at public piers. And we contemplate the Year of Public Water that Mattingly launched with More Art in 2020. Emblematic of water issues that challenge public health the world over, the New York City story reminds us that clean water is a shared responsibility—a basic human right that we must invest in and protect. 

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio 

Related Episodes: 
The Awakening https://freshartinternational.com/2021/01/27/women-artists-curators-awakening/
Mary Mattingly on Human Relationships with Nature https://freshartinternational.com/2015/09/10/fresh-talk-mary-mattingly/

Topical Playlist: Sustainability and the Environment https://freshartinternational.com/2020/03/24/sustainability-environment/

Related Links: 
Mary Mattingly https://marymattingly.com/
Pull https://marymattingly.com/html/MATTINGLYPull1.html
Swale https://marymattingly.com/html/MATTINGLYSwale.html
Public Water https://moreart.org/projects/public-water/
More Art https://moreart.org/

Public Water—with Mary Mattingly

“In a way, I've always been working on the edge of both a larger dominant society engagement and a deep engagement with my communities. My focus is really digging deep into blackness.”
Andrea Fatona, 2021

Toronto-based curator and scholar Andrea Fatona has been addressing institutionalized racism on her own terms since the 1990s. Our conversations across time reveal the depth of her commitment to making visible the full spectrum of Black culture in Canada. Engaging with Black communities to build an online repository while addressing algorithmic injustice, she and her collaborators are illuminating the work of Black Canadian cultural producers on the global stage.

Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio 
Special Audio: Hogan’s Alley (1994), courtesy Vivo Media Arts, Andrea Fatona and Cornelia Wyngaarden and Whitewash (2016), Nadine Valcin, courtesy the artist

Related Episodes:
The Awakening https://freshartinternational.com/2021/01/27/women-artists-curators-awakening/
New Point of View at the Venice Art Biennale https://freshartinternational.com/2015/05/21/fresh-talk-new-pov-at-the-venice-art-biennale/

Related Links:
The State of Blackness https://thestateofblackness.format.com/
Andrea Fatona/OCADU https://www2.ocadu.ca/feature/dr-andrea-fatona-being-human-together-in-the-world
Vivo Media Arts https://www.vivomediaarts.com/
Okui Enwezor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okwui_Enwezor
All the World’s Futures/56th Venice Art Biennale https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2015/biennale-arte-2015-all-worlds-futures
Cornelia Wyngaarden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Wyngaarden

The State of Blackness—with Andrea Fatona

“This Persian Garden Project will be providing visitors with a private, yet public environment in which to engage important social and cultural issues by gathering and gardening through conversations, screenings, readings, and communal performances. I’m imagining it as a hub for activism and healing—a home for all marginalized, mediated, untold, and less celebrated stories.”
Bahar Behbahani, 2021


The art of Brooklyn-based artist Bahar Behbahani responds to the history and character of the complex landscapes that surround her—reflecting on her cultural origins and immigrant experience. Conversations with the artist across time reveal how she has immersed herself in the form, poetry, and politics of the Persian garden. Now, her vision extends to designing and programming a public environment for activism and healing where she aims to engender a communal sense of hospitality, resistance, and resilience. When Behbahani reaches her goal, a new Persian garden will flourish in Manhattan—cultivated by the hands and minds of artists and historians, thinkers and doers from cultures around the world that call New York City home.
Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Bahar Behbahani, Suspended (2007) and All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2019), courtesy the artist

Related Episodes:
The Awakening https://freshartinternational.com/2021/01/27/women-artists-curators-awakening/
Bahar Behbahani on Politics and Persian Gardens https://freshartinternational.com/2017/02/02/bahar-behbahani-on-politics-and-persian-gardens/

Related Links:
Bahar Behbahani http://www.baharbehbahani.com
Ispahan Flowers Only Once (2019-ongoing) https://www.baharbehbahani.com/public_art-ispahan.html
All Water Has a Perfect Memory/Wave Hill Public Garden https://www.wavehill.org/calendar/bahar-behbahani-all-water-has-a-perfect-memory
9/11 Memorial https://www.911memorial.org/

A Persian Garden in Manhattan—with Bahar Behbahani

In 2022, members and guests of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art (IKT) travel from around the world to Kentucky, in the Appalachian region of the United States. The uninitiated might consider this a remote context for conversations around international contemporary art. Instead, we find Appalachia a nuanced cultural and geographic space.

The third episode in our IKT Kentucky series explores the evolving and inclusive concept of “Global Appalachia” presented during IKT’s 2022 gathering. Generations of curators, poets, and artists from a world of cultures have found their way across time and space to build communities in this region. Here and now, Global Appalachia is where their 21st century contemporaries continue to shape a boundless future, with a diverse array of perspectives on the meaning of home and tradition.

Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Music: 

Delving the Deep by BlueDot Sessions, 

Gettie's Wash by Blue Dot Sessions,

Tan Mountain by Blue Dot Sessions

Voices, in order of appearance: Rebecca Adkins Fletcher, Frank X Walker, Elizabeth Mesa-Gaido, Vian Sora, Ceirra Evans, Anissa Lewis, Hannah Drake, Karlota Contreras Koterbay, Erin Lee Antonak

Global Appalachia—Where Culture and Geography Shape Community

With six independent curators, we explore a growing trend in the field of contemporary art. We discover that the covid epidemic and a global economic recession have not weakened their resolve to navigate the field on their own terms. Viewing challenges as opportunities, these women are channeling their creative freedom into projects that maximize resources and engage new communities.

What sparked this story: In September 2022, the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art welcomed more than 40 new members during IKT’s annual Congress in Kentucky. Most are independent curators. Listen to find out what motivated this shift.

Featuring: Monique Long, Juste Kostikovaite, Lindsey Cummins, Amethyst Rey Beaver, Sarah Burney, Claire Schneider

Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Music: Danver County by Blue Dot Sessions

Curators Declare Independence at IKT Kentucky

In 2022, members and guests of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art make their way to Kentucky, in the United States. Our first days are packed with urban experiences — museum, gallery, private collection, and studio visits, a symposium — and sunset tours of two outdoor sculpture collections. 

A small group continues the adventure on a road trip that takes us to the far eastern edge of Kentucky. As we cross the state, we learn firsthand the challenges of growing up and producing culture in the region. We bear witness to creative resilience and community in remote spaces and places in Appalachia. We bear witness to creative resilience and community in remote spaces and places where rich stories are told through art, film, music, and theater. 

Voices: Orlando Maiike Gouwenberg, Jessica Bennett Kincaid, Carolina Rubens, Jeff Chapman Crane, Sharman Crane, Kate Handslik

Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Music: Danver County by Blue Dot Sessions

Earl Gilmore - This Little Light of Mine, on “From the Depths of my Soul,” 1977, June Appal Recordings

Nimrod Workman & Phyllis Boyens - I am a Travelin' Creature, on “Passing Through the Garden," 1974, June Appal Recordings

Pigmeat Jarret – Look at the People (Little Girl), on “Look at the People,” 1979, June Appal Recordings

Ralph Stanley – I am a Man of Constant Sorrow

Sarah Kate Morgan - Goodbye My Honey I'm Gone, on “Old Tunes & Sad Songs," 2022, self-released

Sparky Rucker – Come on in my Kitchen, on “Cold & Lonesome on a Train,” 1977, June Appal Recordings

Special Sound: Stranger with a Camera, Elizabeth Barrett, 2000 Appalshop; Shift Change, Higher Ground Theater, 2021

Lure of Local Arts in Appalachia

In February 2023, we travel to the Arab Emirates for the first time. We’re here to witness and celebrate Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present. Four years in the making, the exhibition is ambitious and expansive. More than 100 artists from 70 countries are presenting projects in 19 venues across the emirate. Seventy of those projects are new commissions.

The memory and influence of Nigerian born art historian, author, educator, and curator Okwui Enwezor is deeply felt, despite his physical absence. The Sharjah Art Foundation had invited Enwezor to curate this iteration of the biennial. He envisioned the exhibition title before his death in 2019.

Sharjah Art Foundation Director Hoor Al Qasimi was 22 years old when she met Okwui Enwezor and experienced his non-western curatorial model at documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany. Enwezor’s impactful perspective on postnational hybridity and global modern identity inspired Al Qasimi to lead the Foundation and the Biennial in new directions. 

On the 30th anniversary of the Biennial, we sit down with Al Qasimi to talk about the inclusive ethos that we find in the art experience of Thinking Historically in the Present.

Story: Cathy Byrd | Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Special Audio: Hassan Hajjaj with Mestre Pastel, Open Capoeira Session, Arts Square, Sharjah

Sharjah Biennial 15—with Hoor Al Qasimi

In February 2023, we travel to the United Arab Emirates for the first time. We’re here to witness and celebrate Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present. Four years in the making, the exhibition is ambitious and expansive. More than 100 artists from 70 countries are presenting projects in 19 venues across the emirate. 

One afternoon, we wander through Sharjah’s heritage area to Bait Obaid Al Shamsi, the personal residence of a local pearl merchant and his family from the mid-19th century until the 1970s. In a small courtyard outside his multi chambered installation, we meet artist Shiraz Bayjoo to talk about how his project engages history—a pervasive theme in this Biennial.

The artist shares the storied past of the Indian Ocean and the island archipelagos of Mauritius and Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa. Keep listening to hear the orientalist tropes that he disrupts in Searching for Libertalia, a project that recovers the history of a purported pirate colony founded in the late 17th century.

Our conversation with Shiraz Bayjoo reveals one artist’s approach to Thinking Historically in the Present. Searching for Liberatalia materializes a cultural narrative that might come closer than real history to showing us the way through rupture, dislocation, and uncertainty to a place of growth and renewal.


Story: Cathay Byrd
Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio
Special Audio: Searching for Libertalia, Sharjah Biennial 15

Searching for Libertalia—with Shiraz Bayjoo

Listening to St. Louis—Counterpublic Art Triennial 2023

Key words: cultural history, Indigenous, Black lives, earthworks, St. Louis, public art, listening, healing, triennial, restoration, reparation, holistic engagement, commemoration, rematriation, contemporary art, creative intervention, podcast


Today, we take you to St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States of America. Home of the Gateway Arch, an Emblem of Manifest Destiny, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Emblem of Manifest Destiny. St. Louis is nicknamed “‘Mound City”’ because of the number of earthworks built by Indigenous peoples there, before the westward expansion of colonizers conspired to flatten them. Where caves beneath the city sheltered freedom seekers traversing the Underground Railroad in the mid-1800s. Where, from 1959 to 1972—in the span of less than 20 years—residents of the historically Black neighborhoods Mill Creek Valley and Pruitt-Igoe Homes were displaced in the name of urban development and public safety. 

Where, in 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement coalesced. Nearly a decade later, in the year 2023, current events reveal that in this city and this state, the sanctity of civil and human rights remains tenuous on every level. 

What role can a public art triennial play in such a troubled context? 

A microcosm of the disruptive forces at play in cities across the United States today, St. Louis offers fertile ground for creative interventions that are healing—restorative in nature.

The civic exhibition Counterpublic takes on the challenge. To prepare for the 2023 event, the triennial’s home team committed to a year of listening sessions with a range of public constituents. A report integrated into the exhibition catalogue outlines local interest in holistic engagement with public memory, commemoration, and acknowledgement; the rematriation of Indigenous land; and reparative futures. In response, for three months, thirty projects animate the urban landscape along six miles of Jefferson Avenue. 

In this episode, we follow that throughway from south to north to share healing elixirs healing we discover at the heart of seven Counterpublic projects along the way. Listen to the ways they honor and amplify strength, beauty, and hope at the core of reemergent cultural histories in St Louis.

Story: Cathy Byrd
Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio
Special Audio courtesy Nokosee Fields, X, Raven Chacon, Stefani Jemison, Griot Museum of African American History, Torkwase Dyson, Mendi and Keith Obadike, SlowDrag audio "Joy and Everything," remixed by K Kudda, and Counterpublic, Mood Unit by  by Blue Dot Sessions

Listening to St. Louis—Counterpublic Art Triennial 2023

Today, we introduce a few of the artists and activists energizing the 2023 Art Prospect & TRASH-5 Festival in Kyrgyzstan. They give voice to the issues, ideas, and intentions that shape their truly creative approaches to mitigate pollution. Their projects illuminate the potential for artists everywhere to build community and drive sustainable solutions to our global environmental crisis. 

From the city of Bishkek to the settlement of Altyn Kazyk, we discover myriad ways that socially engaged artists encourage awareness and action. They bring us together from around the world to experience, understand, and create true moments of beauty and meaning—giving us hope for a future that holds clean air, land, and water.

Acknowledgement: In Fall 2023, Cathy Byrd recorded the voices in this episode during her residency with CEC ArtsLink in Central Asia.

Sound Design: @anamnesisaudio

Featured Voices: Sto Len, Ronja Roemmelt, Mishiko Solakauri, Begimai Zhunusova, Ellen Harvey, Bermet Borubaeva, Aimeerim Tursalieva

Special Thanks to the Bishkek Sanitary Landfill—Director Nurlan Djumaliev, Head of Municipal Enterprise Section Arzykulov Almaz Toktomukhanmedovich, Landfill Museum Co-Curator Samat Marso

Special Audio: Live musicians performance at the People’s Landfill Museum and the Bandistan Ensemble

Related Episodes: 

Public Water—with Mary Mattingly - 
https://freshartinternational.com/2021/05/19/public-water-mary-mattingly/

Topical Playlist—Sustainability and the Environment 
https://freshartinternational.com/2020/03/24/sustainability-environment/

Related Links:

CEC ArtsLink
https://www.cecartslink.org/

Art Prospect & TRASH-5 Festival 2023
https://www.cecartslink.org/art-prospect-trash-5-festival/

Tazar
http://www.tazar.org/en/about/

EU Compliant Landfill to Open in Bishkek
https://www.europeaninterest.eu/the-first-eu-regulation-compliant-landfill-will-open-in-bishkek/

Poetic Interventions Point to Pollution in Kyrgyzstan

Where in the world can you express yourself freely, share cultural knowledge, test inventive art practices, and build a transnational creative community in only 10 days time?
During an intensive CEC ArtsLink program in Kazakhstan, 23 artists and curators from across the region and the U.S. seize the moment to think deeply about their socially engaged projects. Our home base for talks, workshops, field expeditions, and performances is the bULt Collective rave space.

Paying attention to inclusion and access, issues and ideas, concept and creation, they begin to imagine new possible futures for collective art practices in Central Asia and beyond.

Acknowledgement: In Fall 2023, Cathy Byrd recorded voices and sounds for this episode during her CEC ArtsLink residency in Central Asia.

Sound Design: @anamnesisaudio

Featured Voices: bULt Collective, Lydia Matthews, Nara Bikinna, Zilïa Khansura, Laura Nova, Will Owen, Kristine Diekman

Special Audio: Bandistan Ensemble, DJ Nemezida; DJs inspired by traditional Kazakh music/Almaty, Kazakhstan; Nara Bikinna recording of a Tatar gathering/Tyumen, Siberia; recording of felting workshop with Zilïa Khansura/Oak Gallery, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; Collective Soundwalk Mixdown/Almaty

Co-Creating Community in Kazakhstan—with CEC ArtsLink

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.

Naama Tsabar and Mindy Abovitz On A Collaborative Music Festival

Today, we share our final live broadcast on Jolt Radio, Miami, from inside the exhibition pavilion of the 32nd São Paulo Biennial! We have quite the line-up! Brazilian artist Vivian Caccuri talks about her Afro-Brazilian sound project to kick off the show. Yvette Mutumba and Julia Grosse, Germany-based editors of Contemporary And (C&), follow, with their impressions of the exhibition and an introduction to their latest print publication. Our last guest, Brazilian artist scholar Jorge Menna Barreto, tells the story behind restauro, a biennial dining experience inspired by local agro-forestry efforts.

Live from São Paulo Biennial - 08Sep2016

At the Rauschenberg Residency on the island of Captiva just off the west coast of Florida, we meet artists, writers, and scientists working on projects related to the environment. They’re here for a special session known as the Rising Water Confab, a month-long program exploring the topic of climate change.
Featured in this episode: Amy Balkin, an artist based in San Francisco, invites contributions to what she calls “A people’s archive of sinking and melting." Christopher Cozier, an artist from the island of Trinidad Tobago, reflects on the environmental extremes of the Caribbean as a way of life. Los-Angeles based Mick Lorusso contemplates a mangrove intervention based on discoveries he made during his residency. Though Rachel Armstrong teaches living architecture at Newcastle University and much of her practice is grounded in science, on Captiva, her thinking about climate change takes a spiritual turn. Buster Simpson, a public artist based in Seattle, Washington, has organized two sessions of the Rising Water confab. He hopes that Captiva might serve as a model of environmental solutions for South Florida.

Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water

Artist Alexis Gideon talks about myth and memory in his newest animated video opera: The Comet and The Glacier. He brings this musical narrative to life at Locust Projects, Miami, Florida. Gideon's intense multi-media environmental installation takes visitors on a journey into his imagination and serves as the stage for his performances during Miami Art Week 2016.

Recorded live at Jolt Radio, Miami, 16 Nov 2016

Sound Editor: Guney Ozsan 

Sound effects: Alexis Gideon

Alexis Gideon on Myth and Memory

Pope L on Endurance - Contemporary And

Brazilian artist Jorge Menna Barreto created Restauro, or Restoration, an eco-sensitive café within the pavilion that houses the 32nd São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. In partnership with local chefs and farmers, he encourages awareness about the way we use our land and the global consequences of how we eat.

Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture

Sharon Louden artist and educator and Hrag Vartanian, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online art publication Hyperallergic, talk about Louden's newest book project: The Artist as Culture Producer. Forty visual artists contributed essays to the four hundred page publication. These individuals model some of the ways that culture makers of the 21st century are enriching creative economies around the world. Their first-hand stories may inspire more of us to take on new roles in the public realm, to engage more deeply in our communities.

Sharon Louden on The Artist as Culture Producer

New York-based artist Patricia Cronin talks about women, power and sexuality inside her Tack Room installation at the 2017 Armory Show. Her reprise of the immersive environment she exhibited 20 years ago sparks this conversation about feminist issues, politics, and the artist's resolve to represent untold stories about women.

Patricia Cronin on Making Art History

Artist Alexa Lim Haas talks about Agua Viva, her newest animated short film. Agua Viva was among the twenty-four projects selected for a special one-night screening at the 2017 Borscht Film Festival in Miami, Florida.

Alexa Lim Haas on Animating Stories

We explore sounds of the international art exhibition documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany, extends its reach to Athens, Greece. This program is the latest in the series we’ve been curating from field recordings captured on our recent expedition to Europe and Scandinavia.

Featuring violinist Ali Moraly and artists Emeka Ogboh, Rasheed Araeen, Rick Lowe, Joar Nango, Otobong Nkanga, and William Pope.L.

Sounds of documenta 14

Today, we take you to Paris for a studio visit with French artist ORLAN (www.orlan.eu). Surrounded by her books, sculptures, paintings and photographs, we talk about her evolving relationship with technology.

Credits:
Host & Producer: Cathy Byrd
Voice Over: Emilia Garth
Sound Editor: @anamnesisaudio

Orlan On Art Tech

Today, we take you to Germany, to experience the 2017 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster. The international public art exhibition that has taken place every ten years since 1977 activates historical, architectural, social and political sites across the city. The best way to experience this model of art in the public sphere is on foot and by bicycle.

Featuring temporary public art projects by Ei Arakawa, Aram Bartholl, Gerard Byrne, Jeremy Deller, Nicole Eisenman, Pierre Huyghe, Emeka Ogboh, Alexandra Pirici, Koki Tanaka, Benjamin de Burca/Barbara Bárbara Wagner, Cerith Wyn Evans and Hervé Youmbi.

Sound engineer: @guneyozsan

Sounds of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017

Alba Triana, a Colombian-born composer and sound artist based in Miami, Florida, introduces three of her exquisite sound and light installations: Music on a Bound String questions whether or not the act of listening is indispensable to the musical experience. Microcosmos animates a cymbal to create an immersive vibrational experience. The interactive Electronic Gamelan invites visitors to perform one of the artist's compositions. Listen to discover her trans-disciplinary approach to the ever-evolving field of sound art.

Sound editor: @anamnesisaudio

Alba Triana on Experimenting with Sound and Light

Today, we take you to the Everglades, a region of South Florida once entirely covered in a shallow, slow-moving sheet of water. Established as a National Park in 1947, the subtropical wilderness of endless marshes, dense mangroves and towering palms is a habitat for rare and endangered species—including manatees, the American crocodile, and the Florida panther. 

Since 2001, the wild world of the Everglades has been a temporary habitat for artists and writers who spend a month here as fellows in the program known as AIRIE, Artists in Residence in Everglades. New York based photographer Adam Nadel was a past resident. In this podcast episode, he introduces Getting the Water Right an expansive exhibition project he produced with Jessica Cattelino, associate professor of anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles. Together, they tell the human story of South Florida’s iconic eco-system.

Everglades: https://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm
Adam Nadel: http://adamnadel.com/
Artist in Residence in Everglades: http://airie.org/
Jessica Catellino: http://www.anthro.ucla.edu/faculty/jessica-cattelino
Getting the Water Right: http://airie.org/adam-nadel-getting-the-water-right-2/

Adam Nadel on the Endangered Everglades

Today, we take you to South Florida, for a conversation about public art with Swiss born artist Ugo Rondinone. Miami Mountain is the latest in his iconic Mountain series. The North American Badlands inspire the towering stack of five brightly colored neon stones that he designed to hold sway over the palm trees in Collins Park on Miami Beach. The Bass Museum of Art’s 2016 public art acquisition arrived in pieces. The boulders came from a quarry in Nevada, making their way to the beachfront park on flatbed trucks. A professional installation crew was ready and waiting. With industrial lifts and cranes, they erected the stone monument in a carefully calculated process that took just over 13 hours.

Making a Mountain in Miami: Ugo Rondinone's Bright Boulders

Three examples of Fresh Art International's Sonic Encounters.
Captured in Miami and on Miami Beach in 2016 and 2018.

Sonic Encounter: Ugo Rondinone's Miami Mountain

Egyptian artist Magdi Mostafa's interactive environment for the 2018 Dakar Biennial of Contemporary African Art turns the sounds of analog technology into a vibrating aesthetic force. Acting like tiny radio receivers, his handmade electronics make audible the otherwise silent electro-magnetic fields emanating from today’s myriad digital devices. He exposes the reverberations of energy emission and loss in our battery powered, wi-fi connected contemporary communications. 



In “Transmission Loss,” electronic residue becomes the main signal—the core source of energy for an audio playscape. Mostafa invites us to turn a field of full frequency noise into a sonic composition. By tweaking the dials of tone generators and manipulating vibrating devices, we can alter sounds, discover patterns and explore the mysterious interactions of feedback and inter-device communication. 



Sound Editor: Jonathan Pfeffer | Special Audio and Photos courtesy Magdi Mostafa



Related Episodes:
Samson Young Presents Hong Kong Mixtape:
http://www.freshartinternational.com/2018/07/23/samson-young-presents-hong-kong-mixtape/
Stephen Vitiello:
http://www.freshartinternational.com/2013/09/12/fresh-talk-stephen-vitiello
Live from Dak'Art 2018:
http://www.freshartinternational.com/2018/05/21/live-from-dakar-2018/

Related Links: 
Magdi Mostafa - http://www.magdimostafa.com/Transmission-Loss.aspx
Dak'Art 2018 - http://biennaledakar.org/dakart-2018/

Magdi Mostafa: Turning Analog Technology into Vibrating Sound Sculptures

We meet Los Angeles based artist Mark Bradford—known for connecting art with the real world—when he represents the United States in the 57th Venice Art Biennale. While preparing for Tomorrow is Another Day, an exhibition of his signature layered abstractions, he launched a small business venture with members of the island city's hidden prison culture.

His six-year collaboration with Venice social cooperative nonprofit Rio Terà dei Pensieri offers employment opportunities to men and women incarcerated in Venice. Prisoners create artisanal goods and other products to support their re-integration into society. Titled Process Collettivo, Bradford’s relationship with this marginalized community raises awareness of the penal system and introduces a new business model. The project reveals the artist's strength as a culture maker; he acts on his belief that contemporary artists have the power to reinvent our world.

Tomorrow Is Another Day comes to the United States in September 2018, with an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art and a project engaging with the city's Greenmount West Community Center.

Sound Editing: Jonathan Pfeffer | Photos courtesy U.S. Pavilion in Venice 2017

Related Episodes:
Monument to Decay: Israeli Pavilion in Venice https://www.freshartinternational.com/2018/07/16/monument-decay-israeli-pavilion-venice/
Lisa Reihana on Reversing the Gaze https://www.freshartinternational.com/2017/10/19/lisa-reihana-reversing-colonial-gaze/
Samson Young on Songs for Disaster Relief https://www.freshartinternational.com/2017/11/02/samson-young-songs-disaster-relief/
Sounds of Venice Art Biennale https://www.freshartinternational.com/2017/05/17/live-radio-sounds-from-the-venice-biennale-2017/

Related Links:
Mark Bradford: Venice 2017  http://www.markbradfordvenice2017.org/
Baltimore Museum of Art https://artbma.org/exhibitions/tomorrowisanotherday

Mark Bradford Connects Art with the Real World

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 https://freshartinternational.com/2018/11/19/inside-miami-sound-chamber/
Stephen Vitiello on Sound Art https://freshartinternational.com/2013/09/12/fresh-talk-stephen-vitiello/

Related links:
Bill Fontana http://www.resoundings.org/
City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places http://gis.miamibeachfl.gov/artprojects/

Bill Fontana: Sound and Space

When art, activism and poetry come together in social sculpture, they inspire entire communities. Creating this dynamic is the O, Miami poetry festival's raison d'être. We sit down with visual artists Najja Moon and Michelle Lisa Polissaint and O, Miami's managing director Melody Santiago Cummings to talk about their work and the spectrum of site-specific projects created for the month-long festival that’s been transforming the city's cultural landscape, one poem at a time, since 2011.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Michelle Lisa Polissaint, Moonlight Moanin'; O, Miami: Ivan Lopez, The Last Ride of José Martí; Mia S. Willis, "hecatomb;" Sandra March, with Jose Olivarez, The Beach is a Border; The Sunroom

Related Episodes:
Poetry, Art and Community Justice https://freshartinternational.com/2018/12/24/poetry-art-community-justice/
Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti https://freshartinternational.com/2018/02/21/where-all-are-welcome-cultural-complexity-in-little-haiti/

Related Links:
O, Miami http://www.omiami.org/
Najja Moon http://gypsysocialite.com/
Michelle Lisa Polissaint http://www.michellelisap.com/

Who’s The Fool? How To Patch A Leaky Roof: Moon and Polissaint create a Little Haiti Cultural District version of the blue umbrellas distributed for free in the Design District, a burgeoning retail development that is rapidly reducing the footprint of a community established by thousands of Haitian immigrants beginning in the 1950s. The artists imagine a dual role for the 1,000 bright red umbrellas they had fabricated. Mobile shelters from the rain and shields against the impact of urban development, the Little Haiti umbrellas feature a Creole proverb alluding to the false promise of urban development in the district. As if placing a flag on the moon, or drawing a line in the sand, Moon and Polissaint proclaim the identity of the community they call home and construct a monument to those fighting to preserve the district. The artists will go door to door with their gifts, inviting their neighbors to join in addressing the larger issue of gentrification in Miami. 

O, Miami projects introduced in this episode: Who's the Fool?; Chiquita Poemas; The Last Ride of José Martí; The Beach is a Border; The Sunroom, poetry in schools

Public Poetry Inspires Communities from Miami to Key West

Today’s episode is part of our Playlist series. We’re inviting artists, curators, architects, filmmakers, cultural producers and other listeners to share episodes from their Fresh Art International playlists.

Born and based in Miami, Eddie Arroyo is a landscape painter who documents residential and commercial structures that urban development will soon erase. He chronicles the loss of a community's cultural, social, and economic fabric. In his photo-based practice, Arroyo hopes to spark conversations about prosperity and accountability within the American social system. He’s a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York. Here, he introduces The Art of Capitalism, a 60-minute segment released in 2018.

Arroyo writes: Over the years, Fresh Art International has contributed to Art World discourse through an informative, relevant and challenging podcast. One notable episode, The Art of Capitalism, was posted in August 2018. Right now, in what is being framed as a period of economic prosperity, this episode invites meditation regarding “the free market,” with projects such as the Occupy Museum collective which explores the financial consequences of debt - even going so far as hosting a “Debt Fair.” In London, an artist couple opened their own bank to print money, with plans to blow up a van filled with loan debt as a part of their “Bank Job” series. And there is Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping who preaches the word to his growing congregation and anyone who wishes to join.

About The Art of Capitalism: Today, capitalism, also known as “the free market,” is linked to trade wars, massive student debt, entire countries going bankrupt, burgeoning virtual currencies and coded security systems. What does art have to say about our careening global economy?

In abandoned bank buildings, failed urban development projects and public squares, we discover artists and their communities in the U.S., Western Europe, South America and Greece, taking on the challenge—as whistle blowers, catalysts, educators, money makers, evangelicals and documentarians.

Featured in this episode: Occupy Museums/Imani Jacqueline Brown, Kenneth Pietrobono, Noah Fisher; Fictilis/Andrea Steves and Timothy Furstnau; Museum des Kapitalismus/Julian and Janosz; Musée du Capitalisme/Samuel Hus and Chloé Villain; La Torre de David/José Luis Blondet, Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría; Bank Job/Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn; Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound: Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría; Bank Job; Reverend Billy | Contributing Producer: Anamnesis Audio for Reverend Billy Segment | Photo credits in descriptions

Related Episodes:
Poetry, Art and Community Justice https://freshartinternational.com/2018/12/24/poetry-art-community-justice/
The Art of Breaking the Bank https://freshartinternational.com/2018/10/08/art-breaking-bank/
The Art of Capitalism https://freshartinternational.com/2018/08/06/art-capitalism/
Where Art Meets Activism
https://freshartinternational.com/2018/06/25/art-activism/
Occupy Museums: Artists and Debt 
https://freshartinternational.com/2017/03/16/occupy-museums-artists-debt/
Related Links:
Decolonize This Place https://www.decolonizethisplace.org/
Occupy Museums http://www.occupymuseums.org/ 
Museum of Capitalism: Fictilis http://www.fictilis.com/projects
Museum des Kapitalismus http://museumdeskapitalismus.de/
Musée du Capitalisme http://museeducapitalisme.org/
Bank Job https://bankjob.pictures/
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir http://www.revbilly.com/athens_greece
SITE Santa Fe SITElines: Casa tomada https://sitesantafe.org/exhibition/la-casa-tomada/

Artist Playlist: Eddie Arroyo Listens to the Art of Capitalism

Where do you go to hear the voice of architecture?

At midnight, on the eve of the 14th Istanbul Biennial exhibition opening in 2015, we meet British sound artist Oliver Beer inside a 400-year old Turkish bath for an immersive acoustic experience. With microphone and recorder in hand, we follow him into the bath’s hot, steamy inner chamber, where young local opera singers are rehearsing for a one-night-only performance of his composition Call to Sound.

Revisiting our sonic encounter with the architecture of Istanbul is an opportunity to introduce the sound work that Oliver Beer brings to New York in 2019. Keep listening, to hear the site-specific project he created for The Met Breuer, home to the modern and contemporary art program of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met's first commission of a sound-based installation, Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra is a musical instrument, a series of live performances, and an installation composed of thirty-two sculptures, utilitarian vessels, and decorative objects from the Museum collection.

Call to Sound Composer: Oliver Beer | Musical Director: Eray Altınbuken (ITU/MIAM)
Singers: Seren Akyoldaş, Ufuk Atar, Başak Ceber, Nur Diker, Murat Güney, Recep Gül, Baruyr Kuyumcıyan, Deniz Özçelik, Alin Aylin Yağcıoğlu, Canan Tuğberk

Sound Editors: 2015 Kris McConnachie; 2019 Anamnesis Audio | Call to Sound performance audio courtesy Oliver Beer; Oliver Beer: Orchestral Vessel installation sound courtesy Oliver Beer and The Met Breuer

Related Episodes:
Oliver Beer Explores the Sound Chamber of a Turkish Bath https://freshartinternational.com/2015/11/26/fresh-talk-oliver-beer/
Camille Norment on the Character of a Sonic Environment https://freshartinternational.com/2015/07/09/fresh-talk-camille-norment/

Related Links:
Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/oliver-beer-landing
Oliver Beer: Call to Sound, Istanbul https://www.oliverbeer.co.uk/call-to-sound--istanbul
Kiliç Ali Paşa Hamam http://kilicalipasahamami.com/
4th Istanbul Biennial http://14b.iksv.org/

Oliver Beer on the Architecture of Sound

New York-based artist Allison Zuckerman explains what drives her desire to distort conventions of female beauty and push art appropriation to a new high. In bright, bold collages, she mixes paint with pixels to create absurd and exaggerated hybrids—women claiming their presence and power in the world.

We meet during her 2018 exhibition at Miami’s Rubell Family Collection. The paintings on view are the wild fruit of a 2017 summer residency. When collectors Mera and Don Rubell offered Zuckerman the time and space to expand her artmaking, she seized the opportunity to go larger than life. In Fall 2019, curator Tami Katz-Freiman introduces Zuckerman’s wild pop-surrealist paintings to Israel, with a solo show at the Herzliya Museum of Art. 

Sound Editor: Joseph DeMarco

Related Episodes:
Patricia Cronin on Making Art History https://freshartinternational.com/2017/04/13/patricia-cronin-on-making-art-history/
Zoë Buckman on Fight Mode https://freshartinternational.com/2017/01/05/zoe-buckman-fight-mode/
Kathleen Morris and the Year of Yes https://freshartinternational.com/2017/01/19/catherine-morris-and-a-year-of-yes/
ORLAN on Art Tech https://freshartinternational.com/2017/09/14/orlan-art-tech/

Related Links:
Allison Zuckerman https://allisonzuckerman.com/home.html
Rubell Family Collection https://rfc.museum/
Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art https://www.herzliyamuseum.co.il/en/

Paint and Pixels Power the Art of Allison Zuckerman

In this episode of Fresh Art’s Fall 2020 Student Edition, University of Miami students Gretchell Cano and Luz Estrella Cruz explore the work of Haitian-born artist Edouard Duval-Carrié. They, along with the rest of the Miami Moves Me team, visit Duval-Carrié’s studio in the Little Haiti district. Listen to find out why the artist chose to call Miami home, and hear his views on how the Caribbean influences the city’s art and culture.

Edouard Duval-Carrié was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1954. He was educated at the University of Loyola Montreal, Quebec, in Canada; and at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris in France. Duval-Carrié moved to Miami in 1992 and swiftly established himself as an integral factor in the city’s cultural fabric.
Throughout his career, Duval-Carrié has presented many solo exhibitions, including one at Pérez Art Museum Miami, in 2014. His art is in the collections of The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, Paris France; Davenport Museum of Art, Davenport, Iowa; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida; Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Monterrey, Mexico; among others. In 2014, Mr. Philippe Letrilliart, Consul General of France, awarded Duval-Carrié the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Duval-Carrié’s work explores the social and historical dimensions of Haitian culture. His imagery includes very often Voodoo gods combined with aspects of classical mythology and Haiti’s national heroes. His images are visual examples of Magic Realism, portraying a world in which reality and mythology are intertwined. (biographical source: panamericanprojects.com)

Producers: Gretchell Cano/Miami Moves Me, Giselle Heraux/FreshArtINTL

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio

Related Episodes: 
Miami Moves Me/Little Haiti https://soundcloud.com/gretchx/little-haiti-a-conversation-with-edouard-duval-carrie?in=freshartinternational/sets/miami-moves-me
Fresh Art Student Edition https://freshartinternational.com/category/student-edition/
Fresh Voices Miami https://freshartinternational.com/2020/07/29/fresh-voices-miami/
Cultural Complexity in Little Haiti https://freshartinternational.com/2018/02/21/where-all-are-welcome-cultural-complexity-in-little-haiti/

Related Links:
Miami Moves Me Podcast https://freshartinternational.com/2020/04/09/fresh-stories-miami-moves-me-podcast/
Fresh Art Distance Learning Guide https://freshartinternational.com/2020/03/24/distance-learning-guide/
Edouard Duval-Carrié http://duval-carrie.com
Little Haiti Cultural Complex https://littlehaiticulturalcenter.com
Little Haiti https://www.miamiandbeaches.com/neighborhoods/little-haiti

Gretchell Cano: Gretchell is a junior at the University of Miami, majoring in Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. She was born and raised in Miami and is pursuing higher education as a first generation student to be part of the voices/team that leads to the success of a Greater Miami. She has formed part of organizations that are creating positive change that range from veteran advocacy to disaster relief. At the University of Miami, she serves as the treasurer and communications chair for the Veteran Students Organization (VSO). In the Spring 2020, she has produced and co-produced two episodes for the Miami Moves Me Podcast.

Luz Estrella Cruz: Luz Estrella Cruz is a first generation student at the University of Miami, majoring in Africana Studies and film, with a minor in creative writing. Her passion for storytelling has pushed her to amplify and support voices outside the mainstream media. An Afro-Latinx queer woman, she explores the nuances of the African Diaspora through her studies and personal projects. Cruz centers on learning about different cultures and their lived experiences to deepen her understanding of the world she moves in and to share what she discovers on her platform.

Edouard Duval-Carrié at Home in Miami’s Little Haiti

Fresh Art International with curator Cathy Byrd features Conversations About Creativity with Joan Jonas, Jason Moran, Irene Hofmann, William Pope.L, Theaster Gates, Tania Bruguera, Stephen Vitiello, Camille Norment, Franklin Sirmans, Cheryl Pope, Lynda Benglis, Jillian Mayer, Sylvie Fortin, Andrea Bowers, Remy Jungerman, Louis Grachos, and more.

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