Bad At Sports

Language lovers rejoice — the blab at sporkers transmit live to tape from the exhibition Glossolalia, hosted at ACRE (hosted by Drama Club) with our guests David Sprecher and Jeff Prokash. Their collaborative show, which performs a complicated material translation of an excerpt of a Franny Choi poem, is up through the weekend and includes a series of readings this Saturday (2/25/23) amidst and among their sculpture-phonemes. We talk about talking and think about thinking in what Zagat’s is calling “ə ˈrɪli ɡreɪt ˌɛksəˈbɪʃən ... wɜrθ ˈsikɪŋ ænd ˈsiɪŋ ɪf ju hir wɑt ɪts ˈseɪɪŋ θru ˈbiɪŋ sin …” and we’ll agree.      https://davidsprecher.org/home.html https://www.jeffprokash.com/ https://www.acreresidency.org/exhibition/glossolalia

This week Duncan sits down with Paul Gray in front of a live audience at Columbia College Chicago to talk about the history of Gray Gallery, the legacy of Richard Gray, how “the sausage gets made” in the art world, 60 years of supporting artists and what the next 60 years will look like, and Marcel Proust? Just another day of spectacular work for Gray Gallery, Coulumbia, and Bad at Sports.

This week we come at you live from Printed Matter in New York City with Christopher Sperandio of the Kartoon Kings. We talk about his recent flurry of publications, how the pandemic has impacted publishing and the art world, the potency of Instagram, and the failure of NFTs. Max Schumann Jumps in from the audience to talk about the mission of Printed Matter and query the separation between artist book and art publication, while challenging the techniques and labor used to generate Artist books. Brilliant painter Michael Cline grabs Duncan a couple of glasses of wine because if you are talking politics and art, there has to be at least one or two drinks.

Wowow! Around an arts and crampy table in an anonymous but lively third space in the Southern Loop of Chicago, some of our top minds and movers convene to chat about past, present and futures of Chicago DIY/DIT artist-organizing. Jesse, Duncan and eventually Ryan — slouches in their own rights — lead by following a disparate flow. A champagne bottle to share with 300 people! Leave a masterpiece, take a masterpiece! Should everything become a library? These notions and more are offered up in a freewheeling conversation that’s not to be missed.   

This week Brian and Duncan muse about color with design duo Luftwerk. The Chicago-based collaborative Petra Bachmaier & Sean Gallero entrance us into their series of sculptural light installations using botanical pigments and dynamic lights currently on view at the Chicago Cultural Center.

This week Bad at Sports catches up with Wisconsin’s pride, the Wormfarm Institute, with Jay Salinas. We learn more about a long running experiment in arts funding between the fine states of Wisconsin and Minneapolis. We learn about how sustainable agriculture and contemporary art have found an unusual marriage, and take a D-Tour. Then we open the door two adventure and the future of contemporary placemaking, and artist run endeavors with Nicholas Wylie and Brandon Alvendia, who speculate on the future of the MdW fair and the new infrastructure we have been building together to strengthen the future of Midwestern art making. Image of a work by Brenda Baker , photograph by Eric Bailles from the Wormfarm Institute, link below. https://www.wormfarminstitute.org/ https://www.mdwfair.com/ https://chicagolx.org/community/members/nicholas-wylie-public-media-institute https://www.alvendia.net/

Live from our tailgate at the MdW fair we bring you part two of a series we are doing with the organizing members of the MdW and a wrap up conversation that looks at the current state of arts organizing. But this week we have Confluence Studio, Duaba Unenra and Sam Gould, then are joined by Amy Kligman of the Charlotte Street Foundation. We learn about contemporary policing practice in MN and how residents mobilize through art and stories. Then we shift over to Kansas City MO and touch the other side of artist run culture through a 25 year old entrenched arts org. Good times had by all!   https://confluence-studio.org/ https://www.mdwfair.com/atlas https://charlottestreet.org/

Here we are here we are finishing out our roundup with the end of our “spot check” in Calgary Alberta, Canada, and we close out with the Western Canadian performance art legend Rita McKeough.   Rita McKeough is an installation and performance artist whose practice is based in Calgary. Her work incorporates audio, electronics and mechanical performing objects. Since the late 70s, McKeough has been committed to creating thoughtful and fully immersive spaces that push and unbalance our underlying assumptions which we use to navigate our everyday lives. She uses interactive technologies to represent natural interdependencies and to create weave together her musical and artistic practices. McKeough work’ are formerly rooted in a long established feminist perspective, and she brings that lense to content that deals with the environmental impacts of land development and industrial extraction. Her’s is the voice of agency and articulates the forces of resistance mobilized by the natural world.   Thanks again to the E

The Badlands Art Department - Jason de Haan and Miruna Dragan   In this episode Duncan visited "Drumheller" in the "Badlands" of "Alberta." We learn a little about life, love, and the magic that can happen way outside the centers. CONTEMPORARY ART FOR ALL! And natural beauty and leisure for artists! Jason de Haan is a multidisciplinary Canadian artist working in installation, sculpture, video, drawing, collage, photography, and bookworks. This includes the exploration of uncertain and unexpected spaces, temporal flux, natural phenomena and systems, transmissions, and open timelines, with a focus upon the points at which the invisible and residual reveal their contingencies.   Miruna Dragan is a post-conceptual artist whose work reflects themes of locality and dispersion through questions of imminence and transcendence. Operating within and between various modes of studio research including drawing, lens-based media, site-specific intervention and others, her work interprets surreal geographies through the rea

Kate gives us the low down on what ACRE has been up to and why we aught to be filling out our Chicago Arts Census. In a magic episode in which Brian is introduced to the cult of ACRE and we glimpse the utopia of artistic support, community, and friendship.   Book: Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States Edited by, Joni Maya Cherbo, Margaret Jane Wyszomirski, Ruth Ann Stewart   The River is a reference to a conversation between adrienne maree brown and sonya renee taylor   The brilliant Census team: Adia Sykes, Stephanie Koch, and Alden Burke    https://www.acreresidency.org/   https://www.acreresidency.org/chicago-arts-census  

This week we check in with two members of the MdW art fair and assembly brain trust, Nicholas Wylie and Brandon Alvendia and learn a little bit about drifts. This marks a true return to form as we tailgate an art fair and record while feeding hot dogs, Marz beer, and vegetarian chili to all those true lovers of art. Then we spend a few minutes chatting with the brilliant John Engelbercht and Kalmia Strong from Iowa City's Public Space One and try and get the lowdown on what is going on in Iowa, and figure out why the art world need to know about it.   http://www.publicspaceone.com/ https://www.mdwfair.com/ https://www.mdwfair.com/drifts

Teresa Tam’s practice utilizes spaces and experiences that are familiar and then alters them into something a bit foreign through re-interpretation and re-creation. She likes to conceive her projects as sketches: iterations of ideas and systems rendered but never reaching finality. Her work is also developed to include and emphasize visitor interactions as integral components. She focuses on themes that touch upon alienation within nebulous belonging, the position of an individual within a community, excessive labour, and an obsession with objects that contextualize relationships and realities of diaspora individuals. She specializes in digital platforms, functional installations, all things shaped in paper, and body-based exchanges and objects. She graduated from AUArts in 2014 and is the other half of Yolkless Press. We talk alternative and artist economy, the traditions of preforming industry, the inscription of labor, and publish artist books. Duncan learns that Teresa’s studio is in the same building as

Today on Bad at Sportscenter: Devin Balara and Bobby Gonzales! Another little transportive interview from summer sessions at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, be ears now and listen in to what a porch-hang with two generous geniuses and (whatever we’d call a) Jesse. Enjoy a careening, ebullient conversation in never mids west.  http://cargocollective.com/devinbalara https://bobby-gonzales.com/

Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal is a mixed-media artist, community activist, and perpetual learner. Born in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, she has been a visitor to Otôskwanihk/Mohkinstsis (Calgary) for the past nine years. Cardinal traces her ancestral roots back to both Nêhiyaw and Deutsch decent. Graduating from AUArts in 2015, Cardinal has since been a recipient of the National BMO 1st Art! Competition Award as well as the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Award in 2017. Cardinal has been an active member in the urban Indigenous community within Treaty 7 Territory, activating roles through Awo Taan Healing Lodge Society, Native Counselling Services of Alberta, the Midewiwin Teaching Lodge Society of Alberta, and currently through Miskanawah’s Diamond Willow Youth Lodge. Cardinal’s work continues to be a reflection of the teachings she receives along her journey; it is an invitation for others to become a part of the process, to partake in its making. Our conversation takes place in the wake of the revela

The Earth is changing. Quickly. Should we be afraid? Or can we embrace the changes and challenges and boldly look ahead? Can we build a new, better life on this planet? Ryan and Brian sit down with curator Nick Butcher and artists Allen Moore and Kat Jarvinen of The New Earth to find out. https://publicworksgallery.com/blogs/exhibitions/the-new-earth https://publicworksgallery.com/ https://katjarvinen.com/ https://chicagoartistscoalition.org/artists/allen-moore https://www.sonnenzimmer.com/  

Artists duo Sans façon (Charles Blanc and Tristan Surtees) began working together in 2001 in Glasgow, Scotland. Their diverse practice responds to the relationship between people and place. Collaborating with architects, composers, geographers, or perfumers, they work internationally on projects ranging from ephemeral performances, temporary installations in public space, large scale permanent artworks, to developing and implementing city wide strategies. Their approach renews awareness and tempts interaction, inviting one to look and think differently about our relationship to our surroundings and one another. In this conversation we trace the core of Sans façon’s work and use their almost decade long residency with the City of Calgary to open up the dimensions of what is truly a unique and singularly impactful practice. www.sansfacon.org

Selina Trepp—visual musician, collage animist, radical recycler—talks time, process, performance, material and more on the occasion of An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman at the Chicago Cultural Center. Our dynamic and inspired conversation zooms through the multiplicities of ways Selina's playful practice breaks open the forms and formats she's drawn to (and drawing on). Once again we're joined by curator Annie Morse and the ambient sounds of meaning being made and publics being formed.    https://selinatrepp.info/home.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/instrument.html  

asmaa al-issa (b. Baghdad, Iraq) immigrated to Mohkínstsis/Calgary, Alberta, Canada with her family in 2001. Her interdisciplinary practice engages her lived experiences with the land, materials, and people around her. She is continually building knowledge of recipes, traditions, philosophies, theories, and histories of the Middle East while developing her practice as an artist and educator. asmaa holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the University of Calgary (2013) and a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University (2017). Our wide ranging conversation seeks the roots of her practice and voice, post-colonialist futures, the nature of interdisciplinarity, and what we think when we speak of home.

Socially engaged watercolor sampler and plein air painter extraordinaire Leslie Baum and curator Annie Morse join us for part two of our series interviewing the three artists featured in An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman at the Chicago Cultural Center. Baum's sumptuous, joyous paintings are attended in this exhibition by a "pedagogical shelf", a vitrine that runs perpendicular (both physically and conceptually) to her work, revealing the nestled, intimate process by which they are made.    https://www.lesliebaum.net/ https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/instrument.html

Today, your Bad at Sportscenterers take refuge in Diane Christiansen's room at the Chicago Cultural Center's exhibition An Instrument in the Shape of a Woman. Her enrapturing paintings and animations play tricks in the cosmic sands as we feel and laugh our way through the existential biggies, buoyed by bodies, icons and acorns. Curator Annie Morse helps lead our sense of the exhibition and takes us through the long, pandemic-wrought fraughtness that permeates the space. Part one of a three part series!   https://rulegallery.com/artist/diane-christiansen/ https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/instrument.html   image: Diane Christiansen, Last Days of Capitalism, 2020, Gouache, acrylic, ink and plaster on paper, 55 x 50 in.