Fresh Art International

Recorded in New York during  Armory Arts Week  2014, this episode features  Franklin Sirmans , a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We’re talking about  Prospect New Orleans , an exhibition the size of a city. Franklin is artistic director of this year’s U.S. Biennial, AKA Prospect.3, or P.3. With the biennial now 6 months away, Franklin shares his vision—a curatorial concept that sp...

In 2014, we sit down with Janet Biggs, a Brooklyn-based artist whose video projects tell stories of toxic environments and endangered cultures. She explains what led her to follow miners inside a volcano in Indonesia and embed herself in a community at the edge of China’s Silk Road. Her next destination is South of the border. In Mexico, she’ll be donning an ice suit to explore a spectacular, whit...

On Skype with Cathy Byrd, Atlanta-based artist and scholar  Fahamu Pecou  introduces his brand, explains why he's working toward a doctoral degree at Emory University and describes what it means to curate an art magazine at the intersection of art and hip-hop. Sound Editor: Jeff T. Byrd | Episode Sound: Fahamu Pecou and Killer Mike

Recorded at  Vizcaya Museum and Gardens , Miami, this Fresh Talk episode features 3 of 8 projects presented at A Futurist Evening during  Art Basel Miami Beach 2013 . Curator Gina Wouters introduces this performance-based event that features Miami-based artists. Antonia Wright : Suddenly We Jumped Wright is catapulted upward to break panes of glass suspended 17 and 20 feet above the East Terrace a...

This is the launch of Fresh TalkUNCUT, a new series of unedited podcasts. In February 2013, Fresh Talk producer Cathy Byrd recorded a conversation with artist Trenton Doyle Hancock , in hisHouston, Texas, studio. Trenton talks about the mythology he created to filterhis artmaking and about the personal histories that lie beneath his work.   Sound Editor: EricSchwartz            Episode Sound: Tren...

Thisis our first broadcast of Fresh Talk UNCUT, a new series of unedited podcasts. In October 2012, Cathy Byrd, Fresh Talk producer, made a field recording with Jean-Ulrick Désert  during her residencyin Berlin. Born in Haiti, Jean-Ulrick lived in the U.S. and France beforemigrating to Germany. He talks about how moving through these cultures hasmarked his artmaking.   Sound Editor: EricSchwartz

This Fresh Talkepisode features  Jean-Ulrick Désert  and  Trenton Doyle Hancock , two of the artists participating in Radical Presence:Black Performance in Contemporary Art. Curated by  Valerie Cassel Oliver  for the Museum of Contemporary Arts inHouston (CAMH), the exhibition is now appearing in New York City. Some of theshow’s performance art events will be featured in New York’s  Performa 13  t...

In this episode, Cathy Byrd connects on Skype with sound artist  Stephen Vitiello . Stephen shares recordings he made during residencies in New York, Australia, and on the island of Captiva, and talks about the challenges of archiving new media. Stephen’s 2010 project  A Bell for Every Minute  is currently installed in the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden as part of  Soundings: A Contemporary...

What does it mean for a story to be new age noir? At KUT 90.5 studios in Austin, Texas, Cathy Byrd meets local authors Morgan Coy and Karen Davidson to find out. They talk about about Shadow Healer , the four-part graphic novel the two Austinites created with London-based artist Chris Chalik. Here's their free five page preview . Sound Editor: Eric Schwartz | Episode sound: Morgan Coy

At South By South West , in Austin, Texas, Cathy Byrd meets Steve Brown and Jessie Deeter, the team that directed and produced the documentary Spark: A Burning Man Story . Steve and Jessie explain what they learned about the individuals and ideas behind the legendary desert rituals of Burning Man. Sound Editor: Eric Schwartz | Episode Sound, from Spark: A Burning Man Story

Via Skype, Cathy Byrd speaks with international curator and producer Rijin Sahakian in Beirut, Lebanon. Rijin describes how the American invasion in 2003 impacted Iraq's cultural scene and introduces SADA , the experimental new media project she created to support the creative practices of emerging Iraqi artists. Sound Editor: Eric Schwartz

Recorded at the KUT/NPR studio in Austin, Texas, this Fresh Talk episode features Louis Grachos, new director of Austin Museum of Art-Arthouse (currently known as  AMOA-Arthouse ). Louis has been an arts leader on the move. His career has taken him across the country—to New York, San Diego, Toronto, Miami, Santa Fe and Buffalo. Before moving to Austin, he directed the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in...

The renowned Walker Art Center in Minneapolis staged a one-night Internet Cat Video Festival in August 2012 that drew an astounding 10,000 people to the Center’s Open Field . During South By South West 2013, Cathy Byrd meets curators Scott Stulen and Katie Hill in the KUT/NPR studios to talk about the legendary project. Sound Editor: Eric Schwartz | Episode Sound courtesy Walker Art Center

At  South By South West Interactive , in Austin, Texas, Roman Mars speaks with Cathy Byrd about what inspired him to create  99% Invisible , a radio show and podcast series featuring architecture and design. Based in San Francisco, Mars is a super hero in a world of passionate and mostly bootstrapped podcasters. Last year, the 99% Invisible Kickstarter campaign was the most successful journalism p...

The  2013 South By South West Film Festival , in Austin, Texas, is the setting for this Fresh Talk feature. Cathy Byrd meets filmmakers  Mike Lerner and  Maxim Pozdorovkin to learn more about  Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer , the documentary they recently completed. The film tells the story of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadia), Maria Alyokhina (Masha), and Yekaterina Samutsevich (Katia), members of the ra...

In Houston, Cathy Byrd meets Senior Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver at the Contemporary Arts Museum to tour Valerie’s latest exhibition project: Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art . Recipient of the 2011 David C. Driskell Prize for her contribution to the field of African American art history, Valerie talks about what it means to be a curator and how everything starts with a que...

Cathy Byrd meets Chicago-based photographer Adam Schreiber at an outdoor coffee house on East 5th Street in Austin,Texas. Adam talks about the sense of place that influenced his 2010 residency project at ArtPace San Antonio and how spatial dynamics affected the way he photographed the contemporary art collection of philanthropist and artist Linda Pace in her San Antonio residence.

In summer 2012, we travel to New England to visit MacDowell, a New Hampshire retreat for artists, writers, and composers. We're among hundreds of visitors gathered on Medal Day, August 12, 2012, to honor contemporary photographer Nan Goldin. After a picnic on the great lawn, we spend the afternoon following forest trails to the cabin studios of summer Fellows. Kyla Chevrier, West Moss, Bettina Joh...

While in residence at Open Ateliers Zuidoost , in Southeast Amsterdam, Cathy Byrd meets Dutch novelist Rashid Novaire . Of Dutch and Moroccan descent, Rashid is an author whose heritage is intrinsic to his imagination. Rashid started penning stories when he was in elementary school. Hubris, his fourth novel, will be published in February 2013.Sound Editor: Eric Schwartz | Photos: courtesy Rashid N...

In Berlin, Cathy Byrd meets German artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis in the control tower of Tempelhof , an abandoned airport at the edge of the city, to see the artist's installation "Up In the Air: Control Room Tempelhof." Agnes fuses pure science and creativity to explore the zone between fact and fiction, fantasy and technology. So far, her projects have taken Agnes to the U.S., Russia, Brazil, Switz...

Cathy Byrd speaks on Skype with photographer Sarah Hobbs on a night when Sarah is testing materials she collected for Overpacked, a set of site-specific installations to be on view in Midtown Atlanta for a few days next week. Sarah's interest in human obsessions has led her to depict a range of neuroses and human foibles. Known for immersing her viewers in large scale photographs staged in familia...

In Berlin, Cathy Byrd meets Luci Westphal , a German filmmaker based in New York and Berlin, to talk about Luci's love for street art, music, film and the D.I.Y. style. Luci shares the inside story on her moving postcard series In A Berlin Minute and her latest documentary All's Well and Fair . Sound Editor: Leonardo Madriz Photographs courtesy the artist Music: "Frogfly Buzzing," by Dioxin Dolly...

Conversations About Creativity in the 21st CenturyCathy Byrd meets Sarah Oppenheimer at the Baltimore Museum of Art to talk about Sarah's stunning architectural interventions in the museum's renewed Contemporary Wing. Kristen Hileman, the BMA's contemporary art curator, creates unique relationships between Sarah’s newly commissioned projects and other work from the collection, including The Shallo...

In Istanbul, Cathy Byrd meets Yane Calovski , a transmedia artist and curator based in Skopje, Macedonia. Since 1998, his research-based works have been exhibited at Tate Britain , Manifesta 7 , European Kunsthalle , Baltic Art Center , and Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje , among other venues. Yane is the artistic director of Press to Exit , an organization founded in 2004 as a special program-b...

In this Fresh Talk LIVE feature, Cathy Byrd meets Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates in Washington, DC, on Election Night 2012. Theaster is the featured speaker in the second annual Kinetic: Conversations in Contemporary Art lecture series at American University . Wilmer Wilson, an alumnus of Howard University , American University graduate students Emily Fransisco and Heather Ravenscroft, and Un...