B@S can be tricky to describe: it acts as a curious investigator, an archivist, oral historian, and occasionally as a provocateur. We produce content that lies somewhere on the Venn diagram of art, journalism, media, intellectualism, and all the naughty bits. We represent artists and their art world through an archive that is text, audio, physical, ephemeral, historical, and constantly evolving through ongoing and unique projects.
Founded in 2005 by Duncan MacKenzie, Richard Holland, and Amanda Browder. B@S expanded to a daily article website in 2006 with Christopher Hudgens, expanded it’s broadcast to San Francisco in 2005 with Brian Andrews and Patricia Maloney, Continental Europe with Mark Staff-Brandl in 2006 and New York City in 2007 with Tom Sandford. The show took to the airwaves in 2017 as Bad at Sportscenter on WLPN 105.5FM with hosts Dana Bassett, Ryan Peter Miller, Brian Andrews and Duncan Mackenzie.
Bad at Sports (B@S) now features over 20 principal collaborators and is a weekly podcast, a series of objects, events, and a daily blog produced in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York City that features artists and art worlders talking about art and the community that makes, reviews and participates in it.
Bad at Sports has done stuff with the Queens Museum, apexart in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Baer Ridgeway, NADA Art Fair, Open Engagement and many others. We share collaborators with Art Forum, Art Practical, The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Art21, BUST magazine, Proximity Magazine, Modern Painters, Beautiful Decay Magazine, Art in America and numerous other publications.
Our podcast has included over 600 interviewees/co-conspirators including Kerry James Marshall, Jessica Stockholder, Jeff Wall, Lucy Lipard, Peter Saul, Liam Gillick, Mary Jane Jacob, Chris Ware, Tania Bruguera, Jeffrey Deitch, Alex Katz, James Elkins, Meg Cranston, Carol Becker, and Polly Apfelbaum.
Bad At Sports has been a lot of different people but is currently Brian Andrews, Dana Bassett, Mark Staff-Brandl, Amanda Browder, Stephanie Burke,Terri Griffith, Keeley Haftner, Richard Holland, Christopher Hudgens, Claudine Ise, Duncan MacKenzie, Jessie Malmed, Patricia Maloney, Sarah Margolis-Pineo, Nicholas O’Brien, Ryan Peter Miller, Caroline Picard, Abraham Ritchie, Tom Sanford, Randal Szott and Abigail Satinsky.
If you are interested in contributing content to the program, please
contact us at mail@badatsports.com
As reported by the Chicago artists resource
Bad at Sports is a weekly podcast produced in Chicago that features artists talking about art and the community that makes, reviews and critiques it. Shows are usually posted each weekend and can be listened to on any computer with an internet connection and speakers or headphones. Past shows can be accessed via the Bad at Sports website. CAR associate Tom Burtonwood caught up with Duncan MacKenzie, artist and founding member of Bad at Sports to find out more…
Tom:
How did Bad at Sports get started?
Duncan:
The simple answer is in a bar. Richard Holland and I were planning an exhibition at Michelle Grabner’s “Suburban” and started talking about the podcasts and audio books that we were listening to and Bang. We got a case of beer, a bottle of Whiskey, a mixer, three mics, a laptop computer, and a curator from the Sioux City Art Center and made the first episode. A month later Amanda Browder came on to talk about the Career Day project and over the next six or eight episodes became a full member of the team.
Tom:
What questions do you get asked most frequently?
Duncan:
Top four
i. Q- How did Bad at Sports get started?
ii. Q-Are you guys Art Critics Now? A-Nope. We are artists with beer, a microphone, and a desperate enthusiasm for art.
iii. Q-Do I need an ipod to listen? A-Nope. (see details below)
iv. Q-Who the f*&@ are you? A-We’re Bad at Sports.
Tom:
Bad at Sports clearly fills a void in arts media, but as an artist-run project Bad at Sports must operate within limits. What can artists/listeners do to support the project?
Duncan:
I don’t think that it’s clear that BAS fills a void in the Chicago Art media. I think that it is clear that there is a void left by the end of the New Art Examiner and uncertainty about Chicago as an Art Fair City, and that it is huge. There is also just a want for conversation and the need for a document of some kind about what is going on in Chicago. But BAS is just a small part of the solution. Other media projects like Lumpen, Art Letter, Shark Forum, and Art or Idiocy are also part of that solution.
The real question is hard to answer. Is a grass roots style media viable here? How do we insure that there are future media resources, or a consistent public media organization recording and documenting this scene? For us it is a complex question. We would like to see it grow but we can barely get everything together as it is. Money would help but how do we acquire that kind of support without becoming beholden to the person(s) writing the checks?
Tell people about the show, listen, post on the blog, and share in this conversation. Oh yeah and buy stuff from our Café Press site, Bake Sales, and donate to BAS through Paypal. Also does anyone have a terabyte hard drive they would like to donate to the show?
Tom:
Has BAS considered applying for grants and if so what success have you had with funding?
Duncan:
Why? Do you know something we should apply for?
We have not. We wanted to take a year and see what we could do, establish a track record, see if anyone was even interested in this new media and how the personalities would all get along.
Trust me we will let the world know when ever or if ever we manage to get a grant and really if you know of any…
Tom:
How do you select guests for the show?
Duncan:
It is always a strange process. Sometime we contact them, sometimes they contact us, sometimes they are recommended by a listener or former interviewee, and other times we are all at the right place at the right time and it just comes together.
Tom:
How do you select which galleries / shows to review?
Duncan:
We see as many shows as we possibly can each week with some weeks being more extreme then others. Generally we review as many things as we can and as long as it’s worth talking about we will do it. Usually we will not talk about something that we just want to call “totally worthless garbage” but will talk about something negatively if it can sustain the conversation and is somehow getting at something of real value.
Tom:
How have you developed your pool of contributors from outside Chicago?
Duncan:
Most of them have contacted us and said, “This is an awesome thing you’re doing and I would love to be involved.” We then say, “Have you got a recording device? Don’t record for more then ten minutes. Don’t do the production yourself. Send it to us as an MP3. If it’s usable we will use it. (If not we usually have helped them figure out how to do it and make it usable for us.) We won’t edit for content but we will edit for time.” Now we have a bunch of good consistent people who we like and trust to do interesting things and welcome other contributors but email us before you run around recording and assuming we will post it.
Tom:
What is Libsyn?
Duncan:
Libsyn is the web host for our shows and RSS feed. They provide our system of distribution and the blog.
Tom:
Do you need an ipod to listen to the show?
Duncan:
Nope. You need an Internet connection and speakers. Just click the “Play” link on the blog or our home page.
Tom:
What software / hardware do you use to make Bad at Sports?
Duncan:
Hardware- (A combination of the following) A TASCAM DAT Tape Recorder, 2-4 Shure SM58/57 Microphones, A Nuros Digital audio recorder, a Spirit Portfolio mixer, and an M-Box.
Software- (A combination of the following) ACID, Sound Forge, Audacity, and Pro Tools.
Tom:
How long does it take to put a 1-hour show together from getting the tape to uploading and firing the email blasts?
Duncan:
There are four principle members of Bad at Sports and at least ten contributors.
It is hard to say how much time the contributors spend but Richard,
Amanda, Kathryn Born and I spend somewhere between 5 to 30 hours each week managing Bad-at-Sports-related things. Whether that is editing, scheduling, blogging, writing, seeing shows, making phone calls, traveling between shows/interviews/functions, and dealing with the email blast. It is a lot of work. A single show might come together over the course of four days or it may take months to schedule something. There is one artist/writer we have been working on scheduling for 7 months and won’t get on the “air” until September (if we are lucky).
Tom:
How are the artists who make BAS each week able to get their own work done and work their real jobs?
Duncan:
I think that we all work it out differently but everyone does whatever pays their rent first and the show second. Life and our personal practices have been taking a back seat lately.
Most of Richard’s work and my own personal practice has been subsumed by BAS.
Richard has cancelled a few shows; I’ve moved to working collaboratively with other contributors to the show (with Brian Andrews and Christian Kuras I have actually managed to realize projects) and radically changed the time frame in which I create works. Amanda is doing a much better job of finding balance and has some great and important shows lined up. But for all of us we put what feeds us and pays our student loans first.
Tom:
When was the last time you took a vacation?
Duncan:
Does Christmas with the in-laws count?
Richard will never vacation ever again.
Because there are a few of us we can backstop each other and make sure that no matter what we get a show out on Sunday or Monday at the latest.
Tom:
Why is Chicago a good city to be an artist?
Duncan:
Because there is an incredibly healthy, vibrant, smart, diverse, and non-competitive independent gallery scene here! It is like an undiscovered gem. It’s large enough that it has plenty of art schools producing world-class artists taught by truly brilliant professors, while being small enough that you can try almost anything and the community will support the endeavor.
