Bad At Sports

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 exhibitions which is up now through September 16, 2016.  In a rich conversation we chat about things work, humor and contemporary art, violence, sports, and the magic of therapy. Names Dropped: Harry Caray Sammy Sosa Geoffrey Todd Smith Tom Skilling WGN The Score Sports Talk Western Exhibitions Untitled Art Fair Tony Tasset Tom Friedman David Robbins Maurizio Cattelan Stupidity Absurdism SAIC UIC Detroit Scott Reeder Tyson Reeder Berwyn Chicago police Belle and Sebastian Ben's sister MOCAD Parenthood

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 father, and they delve deep into hash tagging, and Beyoncé versus Bell Hooks.   Check out Dana Bassett’s wrap up post here.

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 2000 earned his MFA from the University of Art in San Francisco. In 2010 after a period in Berlin, Chris made Auckland his home. He has exhibited in New Zealand, Europe and across the United States. He currently resides in Zürich, Switzerland.   My paintings are perhaps best described as ‘Narrative expressionism’ or ‘internalized portraiture’. The stories behind these ‘Therianthropic’ pieces have been carefully obfuscated and invite the viewer to create their own narrative, bringing to mind facets or emotions that maybe more difficult to confront if not disguised behind a mask.  

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 Space and check out Joan of Arcs many Artist/Musicians work and if you hit it on a Tuesday on or after the 21st you'll catch one of their many tied in bands... From http://www.joyfulnoiserecordings.com/collections/tim-kinsella from http://soloset.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-pitchfork-are-wrong-about-joan-of.html

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 featherproof books, which he founded in Chicago in 2005. Contact him about freelance book design projects by putting “@gmail.com” after his name.  Texan Zachary Thomas is the author and illustrator of Bats of the Republic, an illuminated novel published by Doubleday in 2015. Zach Plague wrote and designed the hybrid image/text boring boring boring boring boring boring boring in 2008. Neither should be contacted, as they exist only speculatively. Professor Zachary Dodson teaches courses on hybrid narrative and storytelling at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. He is available for guest lectures or workshops on book design, visual narrative or publishing. Other names dropped... Tim Kinsella, Anna Kunz, Columbia College Chicago

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 our eyes to a magic in the everyday or in the second glance you have to give to a building telling you the story of its demise. Some days this is the best job.

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 national identity.

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, Krista Thompson, Claire Tancons, ICI (Independent Curators International), Michael Brown, Jacquard Loom, Prospect, Carpal Tunnel, Jamaica Biennial, Chincy, Skin Bleaching, Metrosexual, Man Bun, Kanye West, Jay Z, Kehendi Wiley, man liner, Cindy Sherman, the New York Times, Stan Douglas, Frank Stella, Jeffrey Gibson, Paul Anthony Smith, Dan Gunn, Sabina Ott  

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 relationship between humans and nature. Check out her site at www.carolineburghardt.com.    At the fair we first chatted with artist David B. Smith about his installation of fabric based sculptures. Then headed over to the curated exhibition "Doppelnamer" that is curated by and Elisabeth Smolarz,  Lauren Silberman and Jamie Diamond. We chatted with Elisabeth and Lauren about the artists in the show, and their doppelnamers. The artists featured in the room were: Daniel Bejar, Vince Contarino, Andrew Ross, Jonathan Allen, Brent Birnbaum, Jamie Diamond, Lauren Silberman and Elisabeth Smolarz... and all of their doppelnamers. 

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, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to apply the knowledge gained to inspire and guide present and future generations," they now host a residency program for artists based out of their Mountain View, CA headquarters. Artists work with scientists across a range of disciplines at any of the associated facilities to facilitate an exchange of ideas an create new modes of comprehension or expression. No, they didn't tell us how you can apply.    We hear from SETI AIR director Charles Lindsey, who was the inaugural AIR, and Advisory Committee chair Denise Markonish, who is curator at M

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 Education: Fine Art Studies, Bauhaus-University Weimar with Prof. Fritz Rahmann, 2004 Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury / England   While it might seem foreign or unfamiliar, underwater life, bourgeois domesticity, or the world of Peter Wächtler’s animated cartoons are simply habitats, each one coming with a set of behaviors, life-forms, movements, objects, images, and relationships. What is a disaster in one is a miracle in another and nothing more than routine in another. Dislocating them or mixing them together short-circuits their logic. To a butler—like the character that so frequently appears in Wächtl

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 while concentrating on what is usually left out: how it feels and what it means to have a body as well as how the body is culturally perceived. With drawing as a bodily act and medical illustration as a visual trope, Jovanovic brings embodiment, biopolitics, phenomenology, and various other ideas and theories of the human body into her work. http://imss.org/the-oval-portrait/ http://imss.org/rr2016/ http://atom-r.com/  

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, the home and Disneyland. Ms. Wagner’s process involves the investigation of what art critic David Bonetti calls "the systems people create, our love of order, our ambition to shape the world, the value we place on knowledge, and the tokens we display to express ourselves."  While Ms. Wagner has spent her life residing in California, she has also been an active international artist, working photographically, as well as site-specific public art, and lecturing extensively at museums and universities. She has received many major awards, including the Rome Prize (2013-2014), a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowships, and

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 own Duncan MacKenzie gathered to discuss her exhibition, her story, and what made her the force she was.  Yes. Four white men whose names all begin with D got together to discuss a great woman. Yes we know. Take your fingers away from your keyboards.  Iceberg - http://icebergchicago.com/barbara-degenevieve-medusa%E2%80%99s-cave---iceberg-projects.html   David Getsy Just dropped a new book and announced another. Check it out... http://www.amazon.com/Abstract-Bodies-Sixties-Sculpture-Expanded/dp/030019675X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1454291662&sr=8-2&keywords=David+Getsy http://www.amazon.com/Queer-Whitechapel-Do

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://anneelizabethmoore.com/ https://ladydrawers.wordpress.com/ http://ladydrawers.tumblr.com/ http://www.punkplanet.com/    

Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet is composed of forty speakers arranged in eight groups of five, configured as a large oval facing each other in the center of the room, and resting on stands so they are roughly just above eye level. The Motet, as Cardiff referred to it in our conversation, is a reworking of the English composer Thomas Tallis'sSpem in Alium (1570), which translates as “Hope in Any Other” and is sung in Latin by a choir of forty voices. The composition is arranged so that the choir, like the speakers, is divided into eight groups of five singers; each group consists of a soprano, tenor, alto, baritone, and bass. The groups alternate singing: first one, than another, sometimes alone, and at a few moments, all together, rising in a crescendo that breaks open the room to a place beyond the physical world. To hear the Motet in its entirety is profound. Spem in Alium is considered one of the greatest works of English music. The Forty Part Motet is equally a contemporary masterwork. It was a privileg