December 9, 2022 – January 28, 2023

December 10, 2022 – February 11, 2023

Foundwork is delighted to announce that the 2022 Foundwork Artist Prize has been awarded to Marseille and Essex-based artist Dominique White. As honoree, White will receive an unrestricted $10,000 grant and studio visits with each of the 2022 jurors who include esteemed curators, gallerists, and artists: Edgar Arcenaux, César García-Alvarez, Lauren Kelly, Eva Langret, and Javier Peres.

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Three artists were named to the 2022 short list: Anna Perach (London), Junghun Kim (Netherlands/South Korea), and Chris Zhongtian Yuan (London). Each of the honorees and shortlisted artists will be featured in interviews as part of the Foundwork Dialogues program to be published over the coming months. For more information, visit www.foundwork.art/artist-prize.

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One of the more remarkable things about being behind the wheel of a tour bus for Pavement is that you can easily kill Pavement if you want to. I bring this up with their driver, Jason, who responds only by smiling at me while driving at a professionally breakneck speed on the interstate somewhere between Saint Paul and Chicago at 4 A.M. as every one of the six members of the beloved nineties band lies asleep in their bunks in the cabin behind us. To my left, Jason’s freshly filled coffee mug—personalized to read LORDY LORDY, LOOK WHO’S FORTY above a beaming middle school graduation photo—jangles in its cup holder.

A fizz of dispatch comes through the receiver from the other driver, Jeff, who drives an identical bus bearing a platoon of tech and crew members that’s ripping down I-90 just ahead of us. Since we left Saint Paul, a relentless stream of consciousness has flowed from Jeff to Jason via CB radio, coursing through points of interest such as God and the best way to cook snake, to which Jason has responded only occasionally, if at all, with transmissions like “That’s a negative,” “Mmhmm,” or “Lord, that is crazy.” Jason has hardly taken a week off since his last nationwide tour (three months, Def Leppard) yet remains magnanimous, gallant, sweatless, surely underpaid. “I think it’s about time for a squirt in the dirt,” goes Jeff’s voice overhead. “All due respect, sir,” Jason says, seizing the mouthpiece, “but there is a woman in this vehicle. Please refrain from that sort of language. Over.” We pull over onto a shoulder and wait as Jeff’s crew bus deposits toilet runoff into scrubgrass with the push of a button. “I make it a point to listen to the bands that I’m moving around,” Jason offers as we watch the spot of sewage bloom, “and I think I get why people like these guys.” 

I’m accompanying the indie rock group Pavement for a thin slice of their hugely anticipated, nearly sold-out, four-month monster of a reunion tour. Founded in 1989 and nominally dead a decade later, Pavement belonged to the category of unsuccessful and confounding superstars—a band who was never really that famous, that scrutable, that glory-seeking or ambitious. None of their albums or songs ever got anywhere close to gold or platinum in the US. But they were treated as life-affirmingly, almost irritatingly influential by their big- and small-time rock contemporaries, knighted as “the finest rock band of the nineties” by Robert Christgau, and earned Pitchfork’s number one song of the nineties, back when people relatively cared about the opinions held by either Christgau or Pitchfork. They summed the epoch’s diffidence (its huge concern for “authenticity,” its allergy toward the idea of “selling-out,” et al.), were blessed and cursed with the idea that they were the vanguard of a loosely defined genre called “slacker rock,” and, for some among a population that remembers using the word hipster regularly, they are—as they were for the long-lionized English DJ John Peel—“one of the best bands in the world.” This is also a band that hasn’t written anything whatsoever together since their dissolution twenty-one years ago and whose last tour happened at the tail end of the aughts. 

As with most artists now granted the vague honorific of “cult band,” the enthusiasm for their reunion borders on unreasonable. Resale tour tickets in some cities were going for a ludicrous $500. Serious devotees have documented and color-coded each stop with spreadsheets that sort out setlists by album and frequency of track repetition. By the end of their North American leg, there had been a fan-made musical and a museum erected in their honor. Now, a feature-length film is purportedly in the works—one that (once again) imagines a universe in which Pavement is “the most important band in the world.” 

Dotun and Andy are joined by Italian football expert Nicky Bandini to get their heads around the chaos at Juventus. We discuss what could come next, how much money the club owe Cristiano Ronaldo, and the possibility of the deduction being reversed entirely. Plus, could title-chasing Napoli really get dragged into this?

We also discuss a truly ridiculous goal-fest in Germany and the one surprise contender that could leave Bayern looking nervously over their shoulder. And over in Spain, how have Sevilla gone from Champions League regulars to relegation strugglers?!

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How Colette's scandalous stories of sex and love captivated a nation

December 14, 2022 – February 5, 2023

December 16, 2022 – January 28, 2023

Our verdict on detective series Poker Face, from Knives Out creator Rian Johnson

Jules, Luke and Jim jump into the pocket of big Carabao for a bonus Ramble! Seriously though, why is the River Tyne so green and fizzy today?

Elsewhere, Everton are in talks with Big Sam – seriously – and we find out that referees might be about to get a new card. Plus, the narrative couldn’t be stronger north of the border: a sixth-tier team whose owner makes Scotch pies beating Aberdeen. Vintage fitba. 

Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sign up for our Patreon for exclusive live events, ad-free Rambles, full video episodes and loads more: patreon.com/footballramble.

***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***