Fresh Art International – Details, episodes & analysis

How does your art engage the world? How do you speak to the issues and ideas of our time? What do you hope others will remember about your life, your beliefs, your work?

The exhibition Teresita Fernandez / Robert Smithson, SITE Santa Fe opens a portal for us to consider our place in the landscape and explore the legacy of two significant artists. Their vibrant visual exchange feels both time sensitive and timeless.

This dialogue with artist Teresita Fernández and Lisa Le Feuvre, Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, deepens our appreciation of resonant and divergent perspectives. Embracing change, they show us the way to and through a few of the entanglements that come with being an artist and being human. 

Host: Cathy Byrd Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Special Audio featured with permission, as follows:

Recordings on site at Spiral Jetty, Salt Lake, Utah, 2013, courtesy Anamnesis Audio. 

Extracts from Teresita Fernández, Cuajaní (2024), directed by Teresita Fernández and Juan Carlos Alom; 16mm film converted to digital video, black and white, sound; duration 20 minutes, 9 seconds.

Extracts from Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970); 16mm film; duration 35 minutes; © Holt/Smithson Foundation 2024. Blister Creek by Blue Dot Sessions

Related Episodes: Unsettled Landscapes at SITE Santa Fe, Louis Grachos, Land Arts of the American West

Related Links: Teresita Fernández, Holt/Smithson Foundation, SITE Santa Fe

Today, we take you to Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, for our first experience of the yearly gathering known as March Meeting. The Sharjah Art Foundation designs these programs to resonate with issues and events of the moment. March Meeting 2024 is no exception. Across three days, artists, curators, educators and writers from near and far converge to consider the power and purpose of collective creativity.

Here, we bear witness to diverse artistic energies behind grass roots initiatives in the Global South. Finding strength in numbers, creative activists collaborate on initiatives that bring positive change to the vulnerable communities where they live and work. All embrace multiple voices. None are unafraid of messy entanglement. They give us hope, they show us the way— to a more inclusive, sustainable, and livable future. 

Sound Design: Anamnesis Audio

Special Audio: Alex Pierce and Zoe Annesley, “Beneath a Tent, a Performance for Strings and Voice”; Bint Mbareh, “Lentil Soup as an Antidote to Rampant Wildfires”; dhaqan collective “Camel Song” and “House of Weaving Song”; La Revuelta YouTube channel; Episodio 7 - El podcast de Anamá Rojas, June 2021; Vela Vela; Stanza for Lumi

Related Episodes: Sharjah Biennial 15—with Hoor Al Qasimi, Searching for Libertalia—with Shiraz Bayjoo, Creating Community in Kazakhstan—with CEC ArtsLink, The BLCK Family of Miami on Collective Creativity

Related Links: Sharjah Art Foundation, Topsoil, Sakiya, dhaqan collective, La Revuelta

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

Related Episodes: International Curators Champion Creative Resilience, Curators Consider Climate Change, Curating in a Time of Global Change

Related Links: International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, Great Meadows Foundation, Monique Long, Juste Kostikovaite, Lindsey Cummins, Amethyst Rey Beaver, Sarah Burney, Claire Schneider, KMAC Museum, Benham School House Inn

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

Stephen Vitiello

Live from Dak'Art 2018

Related Links:

Magdi Mostafa

Dak'Art 2018

Hong Kong Mixtape introduces our first guest producer: composer and artist Samson Young, and the sound art community of Southeastern China. Young orients us to a set of nine compositions with sonic program notes.

Hong Kong—a vibrant, densely populated urban center, a major port and a global financial hub—offers rich source material. Artist composers take us to the heart of student-led street protests during Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement*, invite us to feel the vibrations of traffic lights and trams, immerse us in a traditional funeral ceremony and share the sensation of abstract computer-generated hip-hop. 

Samson Young’s personal field recordings capture site-specific sounds far from Hong Kong—the singsong of a North Carolina tobacco auctioneer and a peacock clock inside the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

The set of short compositions will be broadcast on radio stations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., and released as a podcast episode on multiple internet platforms, including Fresh Art International.

Sound artist composers and their works, in order of appearance:

Joyce Tang: Gloucester Road; Larry Shuen, Gynopedi No 1 Remix; Austin Yip, Philosophy One–Microsecond; Edwin Lo, Rabbit Travelogue: Central Region (Excerpt); Lee Cheng, Tram Ride on Sunday Afternoon; Alex Yiu, Alter ego (stereo mix); Samson Young, Tobacco Song and Peacock Clock; Fiona Lee, Tide

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio Sources noted above | Images courtesy Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong 

Related Episodes: Samson Young on Songs for Disaster Relief; Every Time A Ear Di Soun; Stephen Vitiello on Sound Art

Related Links: Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, Samson Young, Umbrella Movement

*More on Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement of 2014, rephrased from The Guardian : Hong Kong's so-called “umbrella revolution” turned the city’s gleaming central business district into a virtual conflict zone, replete with shouting mobs, police in riot gear, and clouds of tear gas. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents – young and old, rich and poor – peacefully occupied major thoroughfares across the city, shuttering businesses and bringing traffic to a halt. They claimed that Beijing reneged on an agreement to grant them open elections by 2017, and demand “true universal suffrage.” 

In October 2017, CNN reported the Umbrella Movement's return: Almost three years to the day after the 2014 Umbrella Movement shut down parts of Hong Kong, thousands of people once again took to the streets. As the city's government marked the 68th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, protesters wearing black braved stifling heat and pouring rain to call for the release of "political prisoners" jailed last month, including Umbrella leaders Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow. Those arrests marked a turnaround from 2014, when the trio helped bring out hundreds of thousands of people to the streets to call for a more direct form of democracy in the former British colony.

At the 57th Venice Art Biennale, Miami-based curator Tami Katz-Freiman guides us through the multi-media installation that artist Gal Weinstein created for the Israeli Pavilion. The artist used glue, mold, metal, and felt to transform the shining white cube into a monument to decay.

As you listen the conversation we recorded in 2017, keep in mind the mounting tensions in the Middle East today. Consider the larger question of how nations choose to represent themselves in the context of a high profile international art biennial. Weinstein's project reveals the enduring power of art to serve as portent and marker of change.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Images: Courtesy Israeli Pavilion and Fresh Art International

Related episodes: Sounds of the Venice Art Biennale 2017, Lisa Reihanna on Reversing the Colonial Gaze, Samson Young on Songs for Disaster Relief

Related links: Israeli Pavilion at the 57th Venice Art Biennale, Gal Weinstein, Tami Katz-Freiman

What happens outside the art scene inspires many of today’s curators, filmmakers and artists. They mine the conceptual depth of personal and communal rituals and routines. Community gardens, shared ride systems, public processionals, weathervanes, home improvement projects, live streaming radio and selfies on the internet are just a few of the subjects and sites of their research, commentary and engagement. Projects that elevate our view of the everyday reveal life as an art form—translating the mundane into the extraordinary.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Camionnette Chérie,  original sound by Claudette et Ti Pièrre; TET CHAJE, mix by Michelange Quay; David Walters, Mesi Bondye; Yosvany Terry, Conga Reversible

Related Episodes:

Marcus Gammel (2107), Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Sounds of Miami Art Week (2016), New Performance Art (2016), Cesar Cornejo (2015), Jllian Mayer (2014)

Related Links:

Giscard Bouchotte 

Tap-Tap Chéri  

Sculptors of Grand Rue, Haiti 

Ghetto Biennale 

Jeremy Deller 

Jeremy Deller, Skulptur Projekte Münster 2007/2017 

Cesar Cornejo 

rootoftwo

Whithervanes 

EN MAS’

Tide by Side 

Clair Tancons

documenta 14 Public Radio

Jillian Mayer

400 Nudes

Around the world, a growing number of listeners are falling in love with internet radio on-demand. Audio programs on a range of subjects are easy to access on laptops, computers and mobile devices. You can listen for free to podcasts in more than 100 languages. Among early adopters of the medium (we've been podcasting since 2011), Fresh Art International is one of 500,000 shows in this growing field.

We launched Fresh Art International to fill the gap in public awareness of contemporary art and culture. Our Miami-based podcast explores the center and fringe of art scenes across six continents and the Caribbean Archipelago. Fresh Art International is building a diverse oral history of contemporary art, film and architecture. We design listening experiences to stimulate, inform and inspire you for decades to come.

In the studio at Jolt Radio, Miami, we introduce four young podcasts that delve into local art and culture: Meet Them Mondays, with Christian Portilla; Kidnapped for Dinner, with Kristen Soller; Art&Company, with Alette Simmons-Jimenez; and Sunday Painter, with Alex Nuñez. Find out how and why they create their Miami-centric podcasts, what subjects interest them, and most important—when and where you can listen.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Images Courtesy Our Guests

Special Sound and Related Links: Meet Them Mondays, Kidnapped for Dinner, Art&Company, Sunday Painter

Activism has long been a way for artists and curators, writers and filmmakers to engage with global flashpoints, inspiring new perspectives on visible and unseen causes. Over the last century, public interventions, performative protests, and works created for public marches and events have led communities to participate in art experiences and make art themselves.

The Me Too Movement, Black Lives Matter, Dreamers and Climate Change Activists expose sexual harassment and assault, race-based violence, immigrant rights violations, and the impact of sea level rise. The issues have energized today’s culture production. Contemporary artists and curators increasingly lead and invite calls to action in response to these vital concerns.

Voices in this conversation: Andrea Bowers, Ralph Rugoff, Catherine Morris, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Manolis D. Lemos, Tania Bruguera, Maria Elena Ortiz, Maria Alyokina

Sound Editor: Julien Borrelli | Special Audio: Andrea Bowers, Manolis D. Lemos, Pussy Riot | Photography: Credits in captions

Related episodes: Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism, Ralph Rugoff on the 13th Lyon Biennial, Catherine Morris and A Year Of Yes, Tania Bruguera on Art Activism, Maria Aloykhina on Political Art

Related links: Agora, The Highline, New York; Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminism Art, Brooklyn Museum; Songs for Sabotage, New Museum, Sala de Arte Público Siquieros

Dancer choreographer Jenny Larsson enlivens our understanding of how the Far North's deep cold is essential to the balance of the Earth's biosphere. With the group known as Wild Beast Collective, she creates the interpretive dance performance Searching for Arctic Winter.

“In the winters up in the arctic when there’s no sunlight and no snow to reflect the moon, all that’s left is darkness. It’s a scary thought, these weather changes…”

Born in Sweden and based in Miami, Larsson is artistic director of the multidisciplinary international collective that hosts an annual residency in Florida. Wild Beast’s mission is to explore, stretch and deepen the experience of contemporary art by presenting site-specific projects and staging free public events to connect with local communities. Environmental issues inform and influence their work.

Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Wild Beast Collective

Related Episodes: Deborah Mitchell: The Artists as Guide to the Everglades, Art and the Rising Sea, Adam Nadel on Getting the Water Right, Jorge Menna Barreto on Environmental Sculpture, Rauschenberg Residency on Rising Water, Artist Residency in Everglades, Andrea Bowers on Environmental Activism

Related Links: Jenny Larsson, Wild Beast Collective