Produced in 2024, Crossing Currents: Aotearoa New Zealand Artists in Venice is an original eight-part podcast series by Contemporary HUM, created to cover a historic moment for Aotearoa New Zealand art at the 60th Venice Biennale and in parallel events. Despite the absence of a national pavilion, an unprecedented number of artists from Aotearoa were featured in Venice, both within the International Exhibition of the Biennale and other events across the city. This edition also marked a significant inclusion of Māori artists.
Crossing Currents addressed the lack of a national pavilion and national arts media by providing in-depth coverage of these projects to audiences in Aotearoa and expanding the artists’ international visibility. Episodes were released between June and August 2024, and feature artists Areez Katki, Brett Graham, Caitlin Devoy, Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta, Fred Graham, Mataaho Collective, Robert Jahnke and Sandy Adsett.
The series was produced with the support of Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, with editing and mixing by Hamish Petersen. Cultural advisory was provided by Matariki Williams, graphic design by Emma Kaniuk and music by João Veríssimo.
My contributions
As Production Manager and Communications Lead of Crossing Currents, I played a pivotal role in bringing this complex project to fruition and ensuring its success. My contributions included:
- Co-developing the initial project pitch to Creative New Zealand, successfully securing funding and helping to manage the production budget.
- Coordinating interviews with artists both on-site in Venice and remotely between our team in Europe and in Aotearoa.
- Taking on-site photography and managing audio recordings in Venice, and preparing all visual materials for publishing and communications.
- Producing transcriptions, obtaining artist sign-off and coordinating their publication on the Contemporary HUM website, adding extra information such as artist bios, image captions.
- Collaborating with our music producer to create an original track and liaising with our graphic designer to establish a memorable visual identity for the series.
- Leading communications to promote both podcast episodes and transcripts, liaising with artists, galleries and other stakeholders. This also included creating social media assets, uploading audio files to podcast platforms, and developing promotional partnerships with Urban Art Foundation (resulting in the series being featured on 100 billboards around Aotearoa) and Art+Object (resulting in a full-page ad in their auction catalogue, with a print run of 3,000 copies).
- Providing performance reports with engagement statistics for the series’ principal funder, Creative New Zealand.
Project impact
Crossing Currents achieved significant success and impact on a global scale. In its first month, the series reached number one on Apple Podcasts in Aotearoa, in the Visual Arts category, and remained in the top ten on Apple Podcasts in Aotearoa for five months.
Within four months, the series garnered over 1,500 plays, attracted more than 5,000 visitors to the Contemporary HUM website and achieved over 1,100,000 impressions on social media. Listeners tuned in from around the world, with around 60% from Aotearoa, and significant listenership from the UK (9%), Australia (5%) and the United States (5%).
Feedback
“This latest podcast is astonishing. I appreciate the transcripts and love the way Elisapeta [Hinemoa Heta] describes the layers and contexts of the work.” – Listener, France
“Not having my work taken seriously has always bummed me out, and this interview shows the deeper levels to my work. It really does mean a lot to me.” – Featured artist, Aotearoa
Click here to listen to all eight episodes of Crossing Currents: Aotearoa New Zealand Artists in Venice.
