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

Fresh Art International

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

In a city renowned for its beauty and often regarded as a paradise,
Miami can sure be a nightmare to get around. In her new book Making Good Time, Editor Lynne Barrett shares true stories, written by authors across Miami, about the dos and don’ts of getting around
South Florida. I had the opportunity to Interview her on the Making of
the book, as well as author Les Standiford, and poet-engineer Richard Blanco.

How to Make Good Time in South Florida

A Hialeah native using the mic to inspire heroism in others one story at a time.

Approximately half of The Nightwatch @WVUM90.5

Stay on the lookout for my segments of the Miami Moves Me Podcast as well as other amazing stories from my fellow UM colleagues!

How to Make Good Time in South Florida

Krisontheair

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