Bad At Sports

This week Duncan talks to Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Kerstin Niemann, Research Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, and Stephanie Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum of Art about the current Smart Museum exhibition, Heartland.Project backgroundIn 2007 and 2008, the Heartland curators, eschewing traditional research methods, set out on a series of old-fashioned road trips through the vast center of the United States. These research trips informed two distinct exhibitions. The first presentation, which opened in October 2008 at the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, sought to uncover new ways of thinking about the American interior during the U.S. presidential election and gave European audiences access to a broad survey of the Heartland’s culture, art, and music. The second, reconceived presentation at the Smart Museum, offers U.S. audiences a more focused look at the ideals of resourcefulness and invention that permeate the Heartland

Liam Gillick. That is right, the man whose imagination can take him anywhere. A transparent master of the question of Modernity? Cat lover? Designer/author/theorist/artist/architect? The son Donald Judd never wanted? Enigma cloaked in riddle? Relational Aesthetic celebrity? All these things and more... We at Bad at Sports try and get to the bottom of Liam's magic in this hour-long interview. The last element in Liam Gillick's 4 part global retrospective, "Three perspectives and a short scenario" will run through January 10th at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.  Accompanying that exhibition, Gillick has produced "The one hundred and sixty-third floor: Liam Gillick Curates the Collection," which is also be on view.Liam Gillick emerged in the early 1990s as part of a re-energized British art scene, producing a sophisticated body of work ranging from his signature "platform" sculptures -- architectural structures made of aluminum and colored Plexiglas that facilitate or complicate social interaction -

Jeremy Deller. That's right, this week we have one of the world's most interesting contemporary artists talking about "What It Is," a show and tour he has worked on, that appeared at The Hammer, the New Museum and now, Chicago's MCA, featuring a car that was bombed-out during the Iraq war. He is joined by artist Esam Pasha to talk about "What It Is"Deller's work often challenges our assumptions about what "is" and "is not" art and uses the banner term "art" to gain access to, extend, push, and develop local cultures.  Deller is also the first Turner Prize-winner to appear in the 230 hours of the Bad at Sports show. Schedule of Participants at the MCA http://www.mcachicago.org/deller/Jeremy Deller http://www.jeremydeller.org/Esam Pasha http://www.artvitae.com/artist_portfolio.asp?aist_id=217MCA Release about the show http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=219

This week for your listening pleasure Bad at Sports has dispatched Shannon Stratton and Duncan MacKenzie to Illinois' glorious Kankakee to meet up with the artists of Temporary Services. They query Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Marc Fischer about social practice and the group's decade long history. The new www.badatsports.com is here! Come check out our redesign! Sunday the 8th we all need to once again make a trek down to Hyde Park to pick up the Artists Run Chicago Digest. In it you will find contributions by Lori Waxman, Dan Gunn, and little ole Bad at Sports! What follows is from http://www.studiochicago.org/arc-release/Artists Run Chicago Digest Release Sunday, November 8, 2:00 - 5:00pm Hyde Park Art Center 5020 S. Cornell Chicago, IL 60615 Join the Hyde Park Art Center, threewalls and The Green Lantern Press, as they celebrate the release of the Artists Run Chicago Digest. The A.R.C. Digest: Published by threewalls and The Green Lantern Press, The Artists Run Chicago Digest docum

This week Duncan and Christian check in from the Banff Centre for the Arts. They sit down with the Director of Visual Arts, Kitty Scott to discuss what the Banff Centre is and does. Then they hijack a moment of performance art to "guerrilla" style interview Jan Verwoert, a contributing editor to Frieze magazine, a regular writer for Afterall and Metropolis M, and the leader of their summer residency.

This week Duncan and Richard talk to Anthony Elms about WhiteWalls! Also the book review has made its glorious return. Terri and Joanna review “The American Painter Emma Dial” by Samantha Peale. Rejoice and be glad!

This week Bad at Sports has it all: tattoos, surfing accidents, sexual deviants, motorcycle races, newborn babies, starring death in the eye, and a walk down the red carpet at the Emmy's. Brian and Patricia probe artist Paul Urich about the connections between his studio practice and the craft of tattooing. Paul Urich has had exhibtions at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Fecal Face Dot Gallery, and created a limited edition sneaker for Nike.

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This week we return to Chicago's magic love and check in with a few local heroes, Rob Davis and Michael Langlois. Fresh from shows in New York and Berlin, they have returned home to a run of great exhibitions starting with the Cultural Center in January and rolling up to the current 12 x 12 at the MCA. They join us to chat about painting, perspectives on art history, collaboration and show making in the contemporary context, while always draping one hand back to tradition. The outro has a guest commentator with a message for Joseph Mohan. After that there is a special surprise for those who hang about for end of the credits. Or maybe not. I thought it was funny.

This week: Duncan and guest interviewer (who really does most of the interviewing while Duncan slumbers) Anna Kunz talk to artist and educator Jay Wolke! This entertaining and at times wacky interview is not to be missed. As you listen to this you can think to yourself; "I wonder what general zaniness was in the 10 minutes Richard chopped out of this show for the purposes of brevity and flow", but you can rest comfortable that most of it consisted of Anna giving Duncan a hard time. Do not miss the longest, most unfocused and rant laden outro/credits in the history of the show, where Richard and Duncan are interrupted by Buses, the El, a panhandler, and Richard's spontaneous rant about a cop on a Segway smoking a cigarette. This spawns a discussion about the ascendancy of "douchebag" in the contemporary lexicon. Wow. That is a lot of quality show!Lifted shamelessly for somewhere else:Jay Wolke is professor and chair of the department of art and design at Columbia College Chicago, and the author of All Around t

This week Tom and Amanda talk to artist Helidon Gjergji!

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This week Duncan sneaks into The School of the Art Institute of Chicago to interview Mary Jane Jacob, Professor and Executive Director of Exhibitions.  Mary Jane Jacob's name is synonymous with the phrase "art as social practice" or the field of art that is now more widely known as "Relational Aesthetics."  Jacob was at the center of the nineties debate about what was and could be considered an art object/experience and was putting on festivals, exhibitions, and public art programming that expanded our art consciousness long before Bourriaud "sexy-ed" up the field with his now seminal book. Aside from being a former Chief Curator at the MCA Chicago and LA MoCA, Jacob was also the person behind "Culture in Action," Chicago's progressive, but widely debated 90's public arts program. She is the author/co-author of several books including, "Learning Mind: Experience into Art," "Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art," "Culture in Action: A Public Art Program of Sculpture Chicago," "Conversations at The Castle: Chang

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This week Patricia and Brian sit down again with Lawrence Rinder. In the last interview, they discussed his role as the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and it new building campaign. In this conversation they focus on his curatorial career, and his most recent exhibition Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye. Previously he was the Dean at California College of the Arts, curated for the Whitney Museum of American Art, and founded the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art at CCA.

This week, Patricia and Brian present the work from the Telling Stories class at CAA. The class was run by Taraneh Hemami, who invited the west coast Bad at Sports team to guest lecture and guide the students on an project interviewing community artists. The works edited for this podcast were of surprising content and quality, so we decided to share them with the Bad at Sports community. The students involved wih the project are Kim Ciabattari, Janet Lai, Jamie Lee, Fumi Nakamura, Johann Pascual, Jaron Stokes, Michelle Yee , Shen Yequin, Alexandra Styc, Alex Langeberg, Jamie Lee, Kristina Grindle, Amy Kelly, Taylor Ward, and Madeline Ward.

This week: Richard talks to Terry Scrogum, Executive Director of the Illinois Arts Council about the state of the budget, their programs and more! Next, Kathryn Born talks to Theaster Gates. Theaster Gates is a Chicago artist and University of Chicago faculty member who works with everything from executing ideas in urban planning, to Japanese sculpture, to performance art. He recently did "Temple Exercises" in the 12 X 12 space at the MCA, and among his upcoming projects is the possibility of buying an entire block on the south side. This project may someday include, among other things, a Soul Food-Japanese fusion restaurant which serves honey dipped, crunchy fried mac-and-cheese unagi rolls and Saki Kool-aid.

This week: Continental European Bureau Czar Mark Staff Brandl roams the Basel Art Fair 2009 with guest co-host Peter Noser, gallerist, curator and artist. They comment primarily on the "main fair," but also cursorily on Scope, Volta, the Solos Show, die Liste (and look forward to a Bridge addition next year). Additional walk-on voices include Maya LaLive d'Epinay, Martin Kraft, Alex Meszmer, many others, and a few seconds of Olga Stefan. Mark managed to wipe-out some excellent comments, or record them so poorly that they were unusable. Ce la technologie. A quick but comprehensive look at the "real" Basel, the most important international art fair, the Queen yet also Great Whore of Babylon. I made some multiples especially for the fair including pins and my T-shirt. They all bore the Latin phrase "Abite in Malam crucem, artis nundinae!", signed Marcus Scipio Incendiolus. Or, roughly in English, "Screw Art Fairs!" In German, as appropriate for Basel, that's "Zum Teufel mit Kunstmessen!"

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This week (the) Amanda Browder and Tom talk with curator Manon Slome about the "No Longer Empty" series of exhibitions. Manon is one of the curators of this year long series of shows, each of which inhabits an abandoned New York City store front for one month. Along the way the three talk about the dismal state of affairs in Ol' New York and how we can make lemonade out of these lemons.Manon Slome (PhD) is an independent curator working in New York City. From 2002 to June 2008 she was the Chief Curator of the Chelsea Art Museum in New York since its inception in 2002. During that time, she has curated and overseen a program of some forty exhibitions, symposia and museum publications as well as monographs and scholarly essays. Ms. Slome became highly involved with the Israeli art scene during her research for the exhibition, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made on”, (2005) and has followed and researched the Israeli scene for the last 3 years. Prior to the CAM, Ms. Slome worked as a curator at the Guggenheim Museum f