Bad at Sports

55:47

Bad at Sports Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/22

This 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

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59:56

Bad at Sports Episode 953: George Scheer

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/18

Executive 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

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54:15

Bad at Sports Episode 952: Tali Halpern

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/15

Bad 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

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01:11:27

Bad at Sports Episode 951: William Powhida

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/11

At 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,

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54:26

Bad at Sports Episode 950: Justin H Long

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/08

Bad 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

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02:22:07

Bad at Sports Episode 949: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/08

I 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

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32:35

Bad at Sports Episode 948: Esther Park

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/04

In this episode of Bad at Sports, recorded at the tail end of a sun-soaked, sweat-drenched, and somehow still magical Miami Art Week, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with curator and cultural programmer Esther Park—the force behind this year's public programming at New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). Park traces her origin story from working the front desk at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami to throwing illegal block parties in Wynwood, to shaping NADA's ambitious "Ecologies"

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40:20

Bad at Sports Episode 947: Heather Hubbs

Bad at Sports ·

2026/06/01

Recorded live in the blazing Miami heat (seriously, surface-of-the-sun conditions), Duncan, Ryan, and crew sit down with Heather Hubbs, Executive Director of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), for a conversation about art fairs, artist ecosystems, and what it actually means to build a sustainable contemporary art community. From CBD waters and early-morning whiskey to global art economies and the future of ceramics, this episode captures Bad at Sports at its most "tailgate meets art world summit."

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01:09:28

Bad at Sports Episode 946: Chris Succo

Bad at Sports ·

2026/05/28

Chris Succo joins Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford in Miami for a conversation that slides easily from pronunciation jokes into a deep dive on abstraction, immediacy, and the quiet, often unspoken labor of sustaining an art practice. Succo unpacks a studio logic built on contradiction: paintings that feel fast but are deeply considered, surfaces that appear minimal but hold layers of decision-making, and a practice that balances commercial necessity with experimental risk. The

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43:53

Bad at Sports Episode 945: Dreamsong Gallery

Bad at Sports ·

2026/05/25

Recorded in the sunburnt delirium of Miami, Duncan and crew stumble out of the Midwest and into the heat of the fairs, only to find a familiar sensibility in an unexpected place: Dreamsong. Rebecca Heidenberg joins the conversation to talk about building a gallery ecosystem in Minneapolis that resists isolation and instead fosters dialogue between regional artists and those working in larger art centers like New York and Los Angeles. From this conversation we get a portrait of a space that operates

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01:08:40

Bad at Sports Episode 944: Amy Kligman

Bad at Sports ·

2026/05/21

Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, this episode finds the crew in full fair-mode: cramped booths, warm beverages, and the particular energy of artists, curators, and dealers trying to make something real happen in public. Joining the conversation is Amy Kligman, founder of Special Effects Gallery, a Kansas City–based gallery barely out of the gate and already showing at fairs. Alongside Tom Sanford, the conversation moves quickly from logistics and booth banter into something deeper: how artists carry

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56:53

Bad at Sports Episode 943: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubko

Bad at Sports ·

2026/05/18

From the humid chaos of Miami Art Week, Bad at Sports drops into the garden at NADA for a conversation with two artists from Western Exhibitions: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubkov. A loose, funny, and surprisingly thoughtful discussion about painting that isn't painting, sculpture that remembers your body, and bathrooms as sites of intimacy, memory, and quiet surveillance. Nanako walks through her hyper-flat, acrylic-based "paintings" that live somewhere between screen, object, and comic logic. Olivia

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58:14

Bad at Sports Episode 942: Embajada Gallery

Bad at Sports ·

2026/05/14

Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, Episode 942 features a deeply generous conversation with gallerist and artist Christopher Rivera—founder of Embajada ("Embassy") Gallery in Puerto Rico. Joined by hosts Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sanford, and William "Bill" Pereda, Rivera discusses artist-led infrastructures, building a gallery as a political and conceptual project, and the evolving ecosystem of Puerto Rican contemporary art. At the center of the conversation is Rivera's presentation of artist Taina Cruz

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59:52

Bad at Sports Episode 941: Myra Greene

Bad at Sports ·

2026/05/11

Recorded live in Atlanta at the Art Papers Symposium at Ponce City Market, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, educator, and department chair Myra Greene for a conversation on materiality, identity, and the long arc from photography to textiles to weaving. The conversation centers on practice as evolution, about what happens when an artist refuses to stay in one lane, and about how material decisions carry conceptual weight. Greene reflects on her move from Columbia College

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01:02:19

Bad at Sports Episode 940: Emily Llamazales

Bad at Sports ·

2026/04/29

Recorded live during the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Emily Llamazales to talk speculative biology, adaptive futures, and sculptural ecosystems that feel equal parts laboratory experiment and sci-fi relic. Emily's work merges biochemistry, ecology, and material experimentation into immersive sculptural forms that hover between organism and artifact. From translucent photo-printed fabrics to ceramic "creatures" built from invasive species

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57:36

Bad at Sports Episode 939: Sarah Higgins

Bad at Sports ·

2026/04/19

Art Papers, Fire Ecology, and Ending Well This week on Bad at Sports, we sit down in Atlanta with Sarah Higgins, Executive and Artistic Director of Art Papers, during the Art Papers symposium. What unfolds is a candid, generous, and surprisingly hopeful conversation about what it means to end something well. As Art Papers approaches its final chapter after nearly 50 years, Higgins lays out a model for institutional closure that resists panic, rejects compromise, and instead asks: what if ending is a

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57:50

Bad at Sports Episode 938: Tori Tinsley

Bad at Sports ·

2026/04/15

Recorded live at the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, this episode features a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation with Tori Tinsley. Joined by Brian Andrews and Duncan MacKenzie, Tinsley reflects on caregiving, grief, motherhood, and the evolution of her "hug" figures across painting, sculpture, and animation. Her practice emerges from lived experience, particularly her mother's diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia, and expands into a broader inquiry into emotional labor, embodiment, and

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54:04

Bad at Sports Episode 937: Nato Thompson

Bad at Sports ·

2026/04/13

This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Abigail Satinsky sit down with Nato Thompson for a conversation that spans collapsing institutions, alternative economies, and what it actually means to sustain a life in art. Recorded in the context of an art fair ecosystem that increasingly blurs community, commerce, and survival, Thompson reflects on his path from Creative Time to Philadelphia Contemporary (RIP unrealized museum), and into his current multi-pronged practice:

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01:10:04

Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks

Bad at Sports ·

2026/04/08

Locks' exhibition operates as a split composition: the back gallery leans into layered, exploratory collage rooted in his teaching experience with Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center, while the front gallery delivers sharper, declarative works built around text and figuration. The conversation frames this as a kind of A-side / B-side logic, with one space functioning like improvisational jazz and the other like a stripped-down, urgent punk track. Locks

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01:29:19

Bad at Sports Episode 935: Chicago Critics Roundtable

Bad at Sports ·

2026/04/06

Guests: Annette LePique, Curtis Anthony Bozif, Pia Singh, Gareth Kaye Recorded with the support of Columbia College Chicago - Colum.edu What happens when you gather a room full of critics in a moment when criticism itself feels both endangered and newly alive? In this long-awaited return to the Chicago Critics Roundtable, Duncan sits down with a new multi-hyphenate crew of writers, curators, artists, and exhibition-makers to unpack the shifting role of criticism in a fractured "art ecology." What

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