12. Broken English with Žana Fejzić

Katarina Petrovic and I talk about her artistic practice, which is very much revolving around language. Tune in to hear more about her project Negative Poetry, how she made 15kg words, and to enjoy the sounds of Jupiter!About:Katarina Petrović (NL/RS) is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of art, science and humanities. Her work focuses on generative and creative processes, from meaning-making, poiesis and organizational systems to physics of sound, light and vacuum. She creates systems, procedural works that are presented as modular installations in an online and offline space, using media such as generative text, poetry, sound, software and performance.katarinapetrovic.netnegativepoetry.com

Poem by Rebecca A. Layton

This month my guest is Rebecca A. Layton ❤️During our breakfast, we talk about her artistic practice, poetry, what it's like to live between New York and Berlin (whaaat?!), proofreading, and how broken English influenced her own way of speaking!And you can hear her read one of her poem that is published in a separate episode!​​Rebecca A. Layton is an artist and writer living in Berlin, Germany and Brooklyn, NY. Their work looks at exhaustive maintenance, intimacy and digital versus in-person experience, exploring how the body functions (or doesn’t) within the constraints of society. Layton is a reiki practitioner and educator in the arts.

For this episode, I invited Žana Fejzić! Born in Bosnia, emigrated to Germany, and then to USA, this great comedian, producer, and dancer talks about the difficulties and advantages of being an immigrant child, speaking 5 languages fluently, breaking away from crappy jobs, and having the courage to work for yourself.Žana Fejzić: Comedian, Producer, Choreographer & Podcaster: with only less than a year in comedy, Žana is quickly becoming one of the hardest working comedians in the Berlin comedy scene. Within 5 months of starting comedy, she became a finalist in the 2022 Berlin New Stand-Up Awards and is now hosting & producing shows in Berlin & Lisbon. You can catch her perform nightly across Berlin and hear her fresh take on the absurdity of immigration laws, her Balkan background, and growing up in Florida.You can follow her work and shows via her Instagram @zanafejzic

We are back! It was a short break, but I come back with two guests! Jelena Prljević and Milos Bojović, live from Požega (Serbia).Was excited to talk to these two bright minds! TUNE IN and find out why we are in Požega; is there REALLY a difference between documentary short film and video art what happens when someone returns home and how to keep energies and motivation in a place fed with lethargy, and many other things...Miloš Bojović is a photographer and occasional writer. In his work, Miloš explores the relations of fear, anxiety, and possibilities of choice in space of imagination. Experiments in the fields of image, sound, and text, he joins in video installations and film. He is a co-founder of ŽTMRLJ.PROD, a production house that explores topics inside the underground film, music videos, and stop-motion animation. He is a member of the Youth in the 60s collective. Tightly collaborate with Jelena Prljević on various projects and ideas. He was a member of the Interaction.doc organization team. He writes different kinds of textual forms that are, so far, published in the online magazine Tag. He is based in Požega.IG: @ztmrlj.prodJelena Prljević is an artist from Serbia whose practice explores the field of drawing, moving image, and installation. Her work suggests an understanding of fear and the healing process necessary to overcome both internal and external unrest. She participated in many national and international group exhibitions, film festivals, and collaborative projects. In 2018, in NYC, along with artists Nataša Prljević and Joshua Nierodzinski she co-founded HEKLER platform and transnational collective that focuses on examination of hospitality and conflict. In 2020 Jelena joins the Youth in the 60s collective. She spends time in her countryside Ljubanje, Serbia, where, together with her family and artist Miloš Bojović, she works on transformation and restoration of the old family houses with the intention to celebrate hospitality and further collaborations.IG: @jprljevic @heklerkeFb: j.prljevicWebsite: www.jelenaprljevic.com, www.hekler.org

How do we pronounce our names? Why are we on the radio and why Jasmina's project 'Language of choice' is so good?Listen to the brand new episode recorded with Jasmina Al-Qaisi! Streaming now on https://radioart.zone/friday-5-august and all other streaming platforms for podcasts!Jasmina Al-Qaisi is a writer for voice and paper. She appears sometimes in other forms: as a walking scientist, the schnelle musikalische hilfe service, or as the only agent for the self-entitled-self-entitlement-office. She often makes waves on various radios, free, independent, temporary or mobile radios. https://jasminescu.com

If you enjoyed the excerpt of his sound piece you will definitely want to hear more about Juniper Foam's teaching experiences and methods; his business model called "Negative Money" and art practice (his and mine)! Just tune in!Juniper runs his label, Care Of, as a collective with his students, and his own practice is focussed on film and video installations, where music and sound play a big role.About:Juniper Foam is an artist and teacher who lives in Berlin. He graduated from some very fine art schools, like CalArts and the University of Michigan, but (slowly) he realized, art school had turned him into a house cat, which was unfortunate, because his dream was to venture out into the wilderness.He decided to take his chances anyway and move to Germany, which he thought was maybe an easy place to start.At that time, he didn't know anything about being a successful artist, except the most basic rule, which everybody knows: "Fake It Till You Make It".So he established himself as a fake businessman by joining the Graduate School for Arts and Sciences at the University of Art in Berlin. As a newly-appointed Communist Businessman, his first invention was a business model called "Negative Money", which he used to sell records from his record label, Care Of Editions.Soon, Mr. Foam was invited to give talks about business and eventually he became a business manager for galleries and studios that produced artworks for celebrity artists, such as Kanye West and Marina Abramovic, and holograms of dead musicians like Tupac, but not actually Tupac.All of this was very exciting, but it lacked a sense of purpose. So like a good house cat, Juniper Foam went back to teaching, but this time, he wanted to prepare his students for life on the outside. He wanted to teach them how to speak to street cats, and to birds, and to dogs and lizards. Secretly, he was teaching them about marketing, branding and strategy, but since artists don't like these words, he put the medicine inside the peanut butter, and described it as world-building, social practice and artist's DNA.Sound piece in the beginning:Excerpt from 'Wherever I Am, the Sky Is Mine' by Juniper Foam

Why memes for this episode? Well, memes have become one of the most interesting internet language forms, penetrating all layers of society and shaping perceptions of language in a particular way. I talk about how they can be used to influence our collective thinking with the one and only Hana Ćurak, sociologist and political scientist working at the intersection of decolonial and feminism, and founder of the platform @svesutovjestice platform and meme page for identification and subversion of patriarchal particularities in the everyday. Vještice created a particular meme form that combines visual and idiomatic elements with vernacular humor in order to communicate messages to larger audiences. Inspired by decolonial theory and radical feminist imagination of a decolonial future, Vještice aim to communicate feminist messages to unusual suspects and inspire others to do the same.

After a short break, I was glad to speak with NY-based stand-up comedian Sasha Srbulj! Sasha and I chat about the role of language in stand-up comedy, the differences and intersections with the contemporary art scene, and how to hustle in the New York comedy scene. Sasha Srbulj is a standup comedian and creator of the comedy special 'Artificial Ignorance' on Amazon Prime. He performs regularly at major clubs in New York, around the US & Internationally.His inspiration is drawn mostly from the feeling of "this can't be it?!" and that faint notion that buying more crap may not be the path to peace & fulfillment. Sasha has traveled the world and found peace of mind nowhere. Performances in Paris, Barcelona, Los Angeles, and all over New York have done nothing to quench the turmoil of his mind growing like tendrils of curly hair from an ever more confused head. Audiences find the entire process very amusing. Somebody once described his comedy as: “whatever disease Gwyneth Paltrow is trying to cure”.https://sashasrbulj.com/@sashasrbulj

After waking up from American Dream to record this episode, Nataša, Saša and I met at the NY Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street. These two great and courageous women continued a conversation about language, vulnerability, dignity, self-worth, and displacement from different perspectives that we started a few years ago in Berlin. Tune in to our conversation and tell us what you think! Natasa Prljević is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker. Through collaborative and collective feminist practice, she focuses on the emancipatory role of art in a development of radical imagination, pedagogy and justice. Starting with collage and assembly strategies, Prljević focuses on healing potential of polyvocality on the intersection of different media, personal poetics and histories. For the last ten years, she has been working and thinking with students, collectives and organizations in the field of art, culture and social justice. She is one of the initiators of the transnational platform HEKLER formed in New York, which focuses on the collective questioning of hospitality and conflict, merging artistic, pedagogical and organizational methods. She mostly finds herself on the route between New York and Uzice.https://www.hekler.org/missionSaša Tatić is a Bosnian-born artist, a storyteller of life. Her work reflects the continuous processing of the fact that her origin is left behind, but her identity is evolving and merging with a greater whole. She is in search of appropriate ways to address the challenges of living as a foreigner who carries the responsibility of family heritage values. Saša is the co-founder of Fully Funded Residencies - the association and online platform for disseminating open calls, helping artists find residency opportunities, and sharing experiences and critical reflections on AiR programs. She lives and works in Berlin. Visits Bosnia as often as she can. https://sasatatic.weebly.com/