Podcast
Bad at Sports
Hosted by Bad at Sports · EN
Bad At Sports is a weekly podcast about contemporary art. Founded in 2005, the series focuses on presenting the practices of artists, curators, critics, dealers, various other arts professionals through an online audio format.
51episodes
Episodes
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Bad at Sports Episode 958: Rafael Salas
2w ago01:12:36Tap to summarizeThis week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artist and educator Rafael Salas for a wide-ranging conversation about rural Wisconsin, magical realism, county fairs, country music, identity, and the contested landscapes of contemporary America. Salas discusses growing up in rural Wisconsin, returning to the Midwest after years in New York, and how his paintings inhabit a space between celebration and unease. The conversation moves from the influence of Wisconsin Death Trip to the political symbolism of county fairs, mixed-race identity, landscape painting traditions, and the challenge of making meaningful contemporary art from outside major art centers. Name Drops and links: Rafael Salas – https://www.rafaelsalas.com/ Door County Contemporary - https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/ Ripon College – https://www.ripon.edu/ Museum of Wisconsin Art – https://wisconsinart.org/ Newcity – https://www.newcity.com/ Michael Lesy (Wisconsin Death Trip) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lesy Wisconsin Death Trip – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Death_Trip Charles Van Schaick – https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/record/image/W0128W2 Mark Tansey – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Tansey Grant Wood – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Wood Cormac McCarthy – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy Caspar David Friedrich – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich Johnny Cash – https://www.johnnycash.com/ Dolly Parton – https://dollyparton.com/ Willie Nelson – https://willienelson.com/ Hank Williams – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams Woody Guthrie – https://www.woodyguthrie.org/ Neil Young – https://neilyoungarchives.com/ Marquette University – https://www.marquette.edu/ John McCain – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain Sarah Palin – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin Barack Obama – https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/
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Bad at Sports Episode 957: Andrew Rafacz
3w ago00:55:33Tap to summarizeRecorded live at Door County Contemporary, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally correct a seventeen-year oversight and sit down with Chicago gallerist Andrew Rafacz. From the Bucket Rider days in Pilsen to twenty-five years of building a gallery practice rooted in friendship, advocacy, and weird Midwestern generosity, Rafacz reflects on Chicago's changing art scene, the pressures of art fairs, the realities of representation, and why artists shouldn't mistake social media attention for support. Along the way: the Spray Show, shower beers, Cody Hudson, Pace Gallery's roster cuts, and the strange beauty of making things nobody asked for. Name Drops & Links Andrew Rafacz Gallery — https://andrewrafacz.com Cody Hudson — https://www.struggleinc.com/ Michelle Grabner — michellegrabner.com Mark Bloch — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bloch_(artist) Shane McAdams — https://www.shanemcadams.com Cindy Sherman — https://www.moma.org/artists/5392 Robert Rauschenberg — https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org Roger Brown — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/estate-of-roger-brown Nancy Spero — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Spero Leon Golub — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Golub Christina Ramberg — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Ramberg Griffin Goodman — https://www.griffingoodman.com Door County Contemporary — https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com EXPO Chicago — https://www.expochicago.com One After 909 Gallery —https://oneafter909.org/ Foxy Production — https://www.foxyproduction.com The Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.artic.edu Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago — https://mcachicago.org Pace Gallery — https://www.pacegallery.com Gilles Deleuze — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze
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Bad at Sports Episode 956: Phoenix Brown
3w ago00:40:27Tap to summarizeThis week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Milwaukee-based artist, curator, musician, and all-around multi-hyphenate Phoenix Brown. The conversation begins with Phoenix's drawings in the Portrait Society exhibition and quickly expands into vulnerability, symbolism, self-healing, lizards from Italy, Midwestern art communities, music, curatorial practice, and the challenges of balancing multiple creative lives. Phoenix discusses how personal experiences become encoded into a visual language of recurring symbols—flowers, fire, rivers, and tailless lizards—while reflecting on trust, disclosure, and the ways artists reveal themselves through their work without always saying everything outright. Phoenix also shares details about their work as curator at the Bronzeville Center for the Arts, efforts to build Milwaukee's first museum dedicated to artists of the African diaspora, and their band Home Going. Links Phoenix Brown: https://phoenixbrown.format.com/ Bronzeville Center for the Arts: https://bcamke.org/ Portrait Society Gallery: https://www.portraitsocietygallery.com/ Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD): https://www.miad.edu/ Milwaukee Art Museum: https://mam.org/ Cincinnati Art Museum: https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/ Sculpture Milwaukee: https://www.sculpturemilwaukee.com/ Martine Syms: https://www.martinesyms.com/ CK Ledesma: https://bcamke.org/event/ck-ledesma-if-you-put-your-ear-to-it-you-can-hear-the-waves/ Door County Contemporary https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/
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Bad at Sports Episode 955: Mindy Rose Schwartz
4w ago00:53:54Tap to summarizeThis week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Duncan MacKenzie sit down with Chicago artist Mindy Rose Schwartz to discuss Countersealed, her recent exhibition at M. LeBlanc Gallery. The conversation explores a deeply immersive exhibition built around ceramic scorpions emerging from cracks in the gallery floor, glowing bronze aliens, reconstructed fur animals, monumental incense sculptures, woven memorial forms, and a contemporary incantation bowl based on ancient Mesopotamian protective magic. Schwartz discusses material experimentation, memory, ecology, astrology, political anxiety, and the possibility of making art that is simultaneously playful, hopeful, sentimental, and critical. Name drops and links: Mindy Rose Schwartz – https://www.mindyroseschwartz.com M. Leblanc Gallery - https://mleblancchicago.com/ Louise Bourgeois – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois Helen Mirra – https://hmirra.net/ Luba Krejci – https://browngrotta.com/artists/luba-krejci Dr. Justin Sledge – https://www.esoterica.tv King's Leap Gallery – https://www.kingsleapfinearts.com/
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Bad at Sports Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson
4w ago00:55:47Tap to summarizeThis week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago artist Heather Mekkelson to discuss her recent paired exhibitions, Bass Note at 65GRAND and Snare at Boundary. Across two installations separated by nearly sixteen miles of Chicago, Mekkelson transforms obsolete communication technologies into sprawling sculptural environments wrapped in jute. The conversation explores technological obsolescence, archaeology, sound, labor, environmental extraction, analog nostalgia, artistic trust, and the strange afterlives of the materials we leave behind. From bog-preserved artifacts and ancient spears to dead HDMI cables and power distribution boxes, Mekkelson traces the resonances between human invention and human consequence. Name Drops and links Heather Mekkelson — https://www.heathermekkelson.com/ 65GRAND — https://www.65grand.com/ Boundary — https://www.boundarychicago.space/ Clacton Spear — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacton_Spear Ancient Danish Corded Skirt (Egtved Girl context) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egtved_Girl
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Bad at Sports Episode 953: George Scheer
Jun 1800:59:56Tap to summarizeExecutive Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, former co-founder of Elsewhere Museum, printmaking evangelist, institutional theorist, and recovering residency founder George Scheer joins Duncan and Ryan for a sprawling conversation about artist-centered institutions, the legacy of Robert Blackburn, socially engaged practice, the economics of DIY arts infrastructures, and what happens when artists try to build sustainable worlds inside systems that rarely reward care work. The conversation moves from the legendary Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop to the anarchic magic of Elsewhere's living archive, through New Orleans arts policy, cross-sector cultural work, printmaking discourse, academia, administration, and the impossible balancing act between artists, institutions, donors, and communities. George discusses the evolution of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts from grantmaking organization to one of the most significant artist studio and printmaking ecosystems in the country, including the continuation of Blackburn's radical community printshop model and the preservation of a major archive featuring artists like Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden. Name Drops & Links Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts — https://www.efanyc.org/ Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop — https://www.rbpmw-efanyc.org/ Elsewhere Museum — https://goelsewhere.org/ NADA New York — https://www.newartdealers.org/ Library of Congress — https://www.loc.gov/ Mellon Foundation — https://www.mellon.org/ Faith Ringgold — https://www.faithringgold.com/ Elizabeth Catlett — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Catlett Romare Bearden — https://beardenfoundation.org/ Jasper Johns — https://www.jasper-johns.com/ Robert Rauschenberg Foundation — https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/ Common Field — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Field Creative Time — https://creativetime.org/ Walker Art Center — https://walkerart.org/ Central Saint Martins — https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — https://www.unc.edu/ Duke University — https://duke.edu/
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Bad at Sports Episode 952: Tali Halpern
Jun 1500:54:15Tap to summarizeBad at Sports Episode 951 has Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller still in Miami for a conversation with Chicago artist Tali Halpern at NADA, representing 1210 Gallery. The conversation spans weaving, sobriety, punk music, queer identity, labor, spectacle, and the ecstatic possibilities of fiber art. Halpern discusses their transition from painting and addiction into weaving, their work with digital looms at Loom Room, and the way embellishment, rhinestones, embroidery, and collage become acts of healing and reconstruction. The episode touches on Chicago's art community, punk aesthetics, club culture, spiritual labor, and the tension between craft traditions and contemporary experimentation. Name Drops & Links Tali Halpern — https://tali.rocks/ Twelve Ten Gallery — https://twelvetengallery.com/ NADA Miami — https://www.newartdealers.org/ School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) — https://www.saic.edu/ Loom Room Chicago — https://www.lmrmchicago.com/ Hope Lange — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Lange Gregg Araki — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Araki Nowhere — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119809/ Mike Kelley — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kelley_(artist) Paul McCarthy — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCarthy Tracey Emin — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracey_Emin Sylvia Plath — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath Elliott Smith — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Smith Ken Burns — https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/ Nirvana — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_(band) The B-52's — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_B-52s Guns N' Roses — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_N%27_Roses Howardena Pindell — https://www.garthgreenan.com/artists/howardena-pindell Melissa Cody — https://www.garthgreenan.com/artists/melissa-cody Cranbrook Academy of Art — https://cranbrookart.edu/ Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art — https://bmoca.org/ The Weaving Mill — https://theweavingmill.com/ Mikey Mosher — https://www.mikeymosher.com/ Cindy Sherman — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sherman Noelia Towers — https://www.noeliatowers.com/ The Killers — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killers
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Bad at Sports Episode 951: William Powhida
Jun 1101:11:27Tap to summarizeAt NADA Miami, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sandford and returning guest William Powhida dig into the art world's annual power rituals, the shifting geography of cultural influence, Gulf-state biennials, wealth concentration, and the contradictions of contemporary art's relationship to capitalism. Starting from Powhida's commissioned work for the annual ArtReview Power 100 issue, the conversation encompasses discussions of oligarchy, philanthropy, redistribution, art fairs, nationalism, soft power, artist-run infrastructure, and Powhida's ambitious experimental project, the Zero Art Fair. William Powhida — https://williampowhida.com/NADA Miami — https://www.newartdealers.org/ ArtReview Power 100 — https://artreview.com/power-100/ Ben Davis — https://www.benadavis.com/ Art Angle Podcast —Art Angle Podcast Nicole Eisenman —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Eisenman 52 Walker — https://52walker.com/Zero Art Fair — https://zeroartfair.com/Flag Art Foundation — https://www.flagartfoundation.org/
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Bad at Sports Episode 950: Justin H Long
Jun 800:54:26Tap to summarizeBad at Sports Episode 947: Justin H. Long Live from the fair circuit heat (not Miami… but spiritually always Miami), Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford catch up with artist Justin H. Long, self-described "original Florida man," to talk boats, comedy, identity, and the strange poetics of nautical culture. Long's sculptural practice moves between deadpan humor and conceptual rigor: a capsized Laser sailboat turned vertical monument, a palm tree replacing its mast, and a title—S.O.S.—that refuses to resolve cleanly into sentiment. From Morse code to yacht club politics, from Spanglish boat names to disaster-relief coolers, Long builds a practice that blends maritime history, Miami mythologies, and a punk-inflected irreverence toward art's seriousness. Also featured in this episode – a CalArts performance art involving chocolate milk vomit, signal flags translating hip-hop lyrics, and why humor still makes the art world uncomfortable. Justin H. Long — https://justinhlong.comDuncan MacKenzie — https://kurasmackenzie.com/Ryan Peter Miller — http://ryanpetermiller.com/Tom Sanford — https://www.tomsanford.art/Lumpen Radio — https://lumpenradio.comFlorida International University — https://www.fiu.eduCalArts (California Institute of the Arts) — https://calarts.eduBaker Hall Gallery — https://bakerhall.art/Spring/Break Art Show — https://www.springbreakartshow.com Design Miami — https://www.designmiami.comKey Biscayne Yacht Club — https://kbyc.orgContemporary Arts Center New Orleans — https://cacno.orgDamien Hirst — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst Nicole Eisenman — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Eisenman The Simpsons — https://www.thesimpsons.comKids in the Hall — https://www.kidsinthehall.ca
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Bad at Sports Episode 949: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein
Jun 802:22:07Tap to summarizeI don't quite know how to start this. It feels important to repost this interview because of Hilde. Hilde Lynn Helpenstein was a kickass human. "Jerry Gogosian" was a lance aimed directly at our pretensions and self-importance. Through Jerry, Hilde developed an incisive understanding of how the art world works. She created a space where many of us felt seen, derided, embarrassed, challenged, or simply able to laugh at our own reflection. She used Jerry to investigate us, for better and worse. In doing so, she exposed the paradoxes, half-truths, and hypocrisies embedded in what we do and how we choose to spend our lives. I think we should have listened more carefully when she tried to take what she had learned and suggest other ways forward. Hilde fucking loved art. More than almost anything. I know that feeling. She knew something wasn't working and she was trying to understand it, diagnose it, and imagine alternatives. What changed for me in this interview was realizing that we were on the same trip. My friend Chris Johanson used to say, "Trip on it, don't fry on it." It's hard not to fry on the thing you love most, especially when you feel responsible for all of it. Hilde was generous and generative. Sadly, the art world can't love you back. It's a little like summer camp: a temporary bubble of perfection that can be difficult to bring back into everyday life. What Hilde wanted, I think, was for us to find a way to reconnect art to the world outside that bubble, and maybe get over ourselves in the process. I, and all of us at Bad at Sports, will miss our fellow traveler. d.
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