Bad at Sports

Is a magical and triumphant return. We were on a post-EXPO vacation and we don't mind admitting that we feel little sheepish about it. This is an epic return to form. First we repatriate Brian Andrews as he returns to work in the mother ship and for DePaul University.  Then we are joyously joined by our sponsor for the month, SAIC's low residency MFA program! For those of you already establishing...

An AirBNB Gallery? (what is up with that logo AirBNB?) The sculptor and super friend Erik L Peterson at Open House Contemporary with Matthew Kellen and Britt Skaathun    Holy smokes Expo 2016 is opening? And Joel Peter Witkin is lecturing in Chicago? It is going to be the best!  

Sound and Performance Artist Sam Hertz checks in on the Anthropocene and the Aerocene with Caroline Picard!   They carve away at our conceptions around Knowledge Production, Shamanism and Science, the Technosphere, Perception Structures, and various Epistemologies.   They also swing through the work of Thomas Sarocenno, the Rain Room, and Sianne Ngai all while utilizing the ambiguous device to cre...

Finnish Curator Jenni Nurmenniemi and Caroline Picard rock it out with a wide ranging conversation about specialized residencies, Animism,  copper, mining, systems of belief, magical thinking, ecological residencies, and the green Earth trilogy.  Links, images, and a little more robust show notes will come tomorrow.  

Jeremy Bolen, Emily Eliza Scott, and Andy Yang take on Sensing and the Anthropocene at the HKW in Berlin! Real show note soon.

Michael Rakowitz is a Chicago based artist whos works have appeared in venues worldwide including dOCUMENTA (13), P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, the 16th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, and Transmediale 05. He has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, Lombard Freid Gallery in N...

This week: The amazing stupendous Michael Rakowitz!!

This week Dana Bassett and Duncan Mackenzie catch up with the artist Ben Stone. We are joined thanks to Artadia by special guest host (whose name Duncan has been mispronouncing for years and to his shame this continues here) Elysia Borowy-Reeder Executive Director of MOCAD ( Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit).   We catch up with Ben during the intense run up to his solo show at Western exhibition...

This week's episode produced in conjunction with Chicago's Lake FX Summit . We join Dana Bassett and Allison Glenn as they unpack the unusual public art exhibition " Messages in the Street ." The conversation ranges broadly from the context of public art, institutional and non-institutional modes of being, money and our collective frustration with it, a surprising suggestion that Wittgenstein is a...

This week sees the return of the once thought lost Mark Staff Brandl! Chris Dennis! From his site: Chris Dennis grew up in, England. He studied natural history illustration at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and this classical training is evident in his current therianthropic work.  After completing his BA (Hons) at the University of Wolverhampton he relocated to the United States, and in 200...

Tim Kinsella! Yes that Tim Kinsella. The visionary musician behind Joan of Arc, Owls, and Mid-Western indie rock world changers, Cap n' Jazz . He joined Duncan in his class " The Late Late Afternoon Show" to discuss all things indie rock, writing books , and now being a publisher at Featherproof Press . Minds will be shredded. While your listening to the show, why not head over to the Elastic Arts...

This week we check in with Zachary Dodson about all things Scandinavian, Featherproof Press, and BATS OF THE REPUBLIC. From his website... Zach Dodson is a book designer particularly interested in visual narrative. He has designed books for many independent presses, most notably f eatherproo f books , which he founded in Chicago in 2005. Contact him about freelance book design projects by putting...

Low and behold, in conjunction with Rhona Hoffman and on the eve of the 2015 Chicago Architectural Biennial we had a once in a life time opportunity to sit down and speak with James Wines of SITE. An architect so radical his buildings have a power quite unlike most contemporary architects, they don't bend us with spectacle, physicality, or industry, they delight us with wit and whimsy. They open o...

This week Duncan, thanks to Columbia College Chicago and a class called the Late Late Afternoon Show, rocks the mic with Amanda Williams whose work blew our collective minds with the " Color(ed) Theory " series of public works on the south side of Chicago. She pulled in the lion's share of the press at the 2015 Chicago Architectural Biennial and seems to have been going nonstop since!  

This week: Richard and Duncan talk to the curators and artists of Present Standard! Guest curated by Edra Soto and Josue Pellot, Present Standard features 25 contemporary artists with Latino Chicago connections. Their works that play with the manifold meanings and forms suggested by the “standard” – as either a flag or a pennant, a measuring tactic or a guiding principle, or a potent symbol of nat...

Ebony G Patterson is tearing apart our collective American contemporary art consciousness. She has recently closed a show at New York's Museum of Arts and Design and is rocking as exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem ! We caught up with her at EXPO Chicago . Richard and Duncan announce a new Bad at Sports initiative.   Names Dropped: Bling Funerals , Trinidad Carnival , Monique Meloche , Kris...

This week: NO NOT THE GUITAR COLLECTOR! Instead this week Duncan and Jesse talk to Deborah Stratman the artist and filmmaker.    

This week: Bad at Sports goes to SPRING BREAK Art Fair in the burned out section of the Post Office building on the Westside of Manhattan. Sadly we did not get loopy with jello shots and beach balls, but instead nerded out with some killer art conversations with some fantastic work! Joining Amanda this week is her co-host artist Caroline Burghardt, a Brooklyn based artists who looks at the relatio...

Brian and Patricia play Mulder and Scully this week as they sit down with the masterminds behind the SETI Institute artists-in-residence program. For those B@S faithful listeners unfamiliar with the Institute (An oxymoron, if there ever was one ) SETI stands for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Yes, friends, we're talking space aliens.   As part of the Institute's goal "to explore, un...

This week: Tom Sanford is back! Tom and Duncan talk to Avi Gitler about his gallery Gitler & _______ and his amazing stories of world travel and the terror of facing the NYT art critic!    

This week Dana Bassett and Duncan MacKenzie catch up with Peter Wachtler at Chicago's Renaissance Society just after their 100th anniversary. We "borrowed" this from Art Space which "borrowed" it from the Liverpool Biennial ... probably it is updated on the Renassance Society website. PETER WÄCHTLER Born: 1979 Hometown: Hanover, Germany Lives and Works: Brussels, Belgium and Berlin, Germany Educat...

Pretty sure I pronounced Vesna's last name wrong... Opps. But here it is the long awaited conversation and the return of a former host. From the International Museum of Surgical Science... Vesna Jovanovic is a Chicago-based visual artist who specializes in conceptualizations of the human body. Using spilled ink as groundwork, she creates drawings that often formally resemble medical illustration w...

This week, we join Brian and Patricia as they chat with Bay Area artist, doyenne, and badass Catherine Wagner following a decadent champagne brunch in her studio to ring in the New Year. For over thirty years Catherine Wagner has been observing the built environment as a metaphor for how we construct our cultural identities. She’s examined institutions as various as art museums and science labs, t...

This week: About a year and a half ago we mourned the passing of a true Chicago legend. Barbara DeGenevieve was an epic instructor, a committed boundary tester, and an enthusiastic gender warrior. Lisa Wainwright did a great job memorializing her on our site and this September Iceberg Projects mounted the first exhibition in honor of her legacy. Dr. Dan Berger, David Getsy, Doug Ischar, and our ow...

Epic Chicago cultural legend Anne Elizabeth Moore joins Duncan's Columbia College class "the Late, Late Afternoon Show" for an invasive journey through her history. Abigail Satinsky joins Bad at Sports for a farewell Chicago as she confesses her move to Philadelphia. Moore the warrior of comics, punk rock, anti-capitalism, journalism, and Cambodia's future, recounts her world. Super fun. http://an...