Bad at Sports

Bad at Sports
  • 4.5 (92)
  • VISUAL ARTS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Bad At Sports is a weekly podcast about contemporary art. Founded in 2005, the series focuses on presenting the practices of artists, curators, critics, dealers, various other arts professionals through an online audio format.

  1. 1D AGO

    Bad at Sports Episode 934: John Stezaker

    Recorded at Gray Gallery This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller, sit down with legendary British artist John Stezaker inside the unexpectedly elegant library at Gray Gallery. The conversation centers on Stezaker's recent exhibition RAFT and expands into a wide-ranging meditation on collage, photography, landscape, and the strange psychological terrain "between images." Stezaker reflects on his long-standing practice of working with found imagery, particularly Victorian-era topographical prints and film stills, and how his recent shift into landscape collage emerged during lockdown while living on the coast. What begins as a search for calm quickly mutates into something more unstable, even apocalyptic, mirroring broader cultural and political upheavals. The conversation touches on risk, intuition, the rejection of intentionality, and the generative power of getting lost in one's own archive. Stezaker's framing of collage as a way to examine the "abyss" between images becomes a central thread, offering a compelling rethinking of how we see, construct meaning, and navigate visual culture. There's also a candid and surprisingly funny detour into photography skepticism, pedagogy, and the emotional cycles of artistic production, including what Stezaker calls the "terrible moment" between bodies of work. Names Dropped John Stezaker — https://www.stezaker.com/ Duncan MacKenzie — https://kurasmackenzie.com/ Brian Andrews — https://www.brianandrews.org/ Ryan Peter Miller — https://www.ryanpetermiller.com/ Gray Gallery — https://graygallery.com/ Maurice Blanchot — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/blanchot/ Slade School of Fine Art — https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/ Images Stezaker 2025, courtsey Gray Gallery.

    58 min

  2. 4D AGO

    Bad at Sports Episode 933: Kate Sierzputowski and EXPO Chicago 2026

    This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with Kate Sierzputowski to talk about the evolving identity of EXPO Chicago under Frieze and what 2026 signals for the fair, the city, and the Midwest at large. Now Director of EXPO, Sierzputowski reflects on scaling up leadership while doubling down on care for Chicago's ecosystem. The 2026 edition marks a shift toward a more curatorial, thematic, and relational fair model: smaller in scale, more intentional in layout, and driven by embedded curatorial frameworks rather than parallel programming. Major highlights include a deep institutional partnership with the Obama Presidential Center, a rethinking of the fair's floor plan and visitor flow, and a stronger emphasis on Midwest networks and inter-city cultural exchange. Across the conversation, Sierzputowski frames EXPO not just as a marketplace, but as a platform for storytelling, regional identity, and long-term relationship building. At stake is a bigger question: what does it mean for Chicago to be both global and defiantly local?     Kate Sierzputowski – EXPO Chicago Director – https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/kate-sierzputowski-director-expo-chicago-essence-harden-1234760346/ Duncan MacKenzie – https://kurasmackenzie.com/ Brian Andrews – https://www.brianandrews.org/ Frieze – https://www.frieze.com/ EXPO Chicago – https://www.expochicago.com/ Obama Presidential Center – https://www.obama.org/presidential-center/ Dr. Louise Bernard – Obama Presidential Center Founding Director – https://www.obama.org/press-releases/obama-foundation-announces-dr-louise-bernard-director-museum-obama-presidential-center/ Katie Pfohl - Detroit Institute of Art – https://www.diaart.org/ https://dia.org/about/media-room/news/detroit-institute-arts-names-katie-pfohl-associate-curator-contemporary-art Essence Harden –https://www.essenceharden.com/ Independent Curators International – https://curatorsintl.org/  Images by Leslie Hewett and courtesy of EXPO Chicago

    58 min

  3. MAR 23

    Bad at Sports Episode 932: Michi Meko

    Recorded at the Art Papers Fire Ecology Symposium, Atlanta Atlanta artist Michi Meko joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews during Art Papers' symposium weekend for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from southern port cities and landscape painting to pandemic solitude, mental health, and the strange spiritual work of making art. Meko discusses his exhibition So Black and So Blue, a body of work developed between New Orleans and Savannah that reflects on color, history, and the charged atmosphere of southern coastal landscapes. Working with shimmering surfaces, deep blues, blacks, and gilded frames, the paintings operate between abstraction and landscape. They draw viewers into spaces that feel both cosmic and terrestrial, somewhere between daybreak and nightfall. The works are designed to be experienced in person, where layers of marks, reflective materials, and shifting color create movement and depth impossible to capture in photographs. The conversation expands into the tension between hard-edge abstraction and expressive mark-making. Meko describes his earlier work using nautical signal flags as coded language about survival and buoyancy in America, while also poking at the seriousness of modernist abstraction. From there, the group debates the emotional power of painting, touching on artists like Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly, asking what makes a work spiritually or emotionally resonant and why some paintings leave viewers cold. A major turning point in Meko's practice came during the COVID-19 shutdown. When Atlanta closed down, he packed his car with camping gear and disappeared into the mountains, spending long stretches alone hiking, fishing, and writing. The period became a personal reckoning. He stopped painting entirely, turned inward, and began confronting anxieties and habits that had previously gone unexamined. Through solitude and outdoor wandering, he reframed landscape not as scenery but as a metaphor for the inner terrain of the mind. When Meko eventually returned to the studio, that experience reshaped his work. The paintings that emerged began to reflect internal states rather than external views. Horizons divide mind and body. Shimmering skies become metaphors for thought and anxiety. Dense fields of mark-making hold viewers inside the work, drawing them in and out of the image in a restless visual rhythm. Throughout the conversation, Meko reflects on the strange transformation that can occur through isolation, describing the experience of leaving society and returning "a little feral, a little monk-like," carrying new perspectives about art, masculinity, therapy, and the ways people search for healing. What emerges is a portrait of an artist navigating between wilderness and studio, darkness and wonder, abstraction and landscape. For Meko, painting becomes both exploration and survival, a way of mapping the landscapes inside ourselves. Name Drop List (Bad at Sports style) Michi Meko - https://www.michimeko.com Art Papers - https://www.artpapers.org/ Duncan MacKenzie - https://kurasmackenzie.com/ Brian Andrews - https://www.brianandrews.org/ Louis Armstrong - https://www.louisarmstronghouse.org Mark Rothko - https://www.markrothko.org Rothko Chapel - https://www.rothkochapel.org Ellsworth Kelly - https://ellsworthkelly.org Bob Ross - https://www.bobross.com J. M. W. Turner - https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jmw-turner-558 Thomas Cole - https://thomascole.org The Goat Farm Arts Center - https://goatfarmartscenter.com New Orleans Savannah Gulf of Mexico

    1h 1m

  4. MAR 18

    Bad at Sports Episode 931: Berenice Vargas Bravo and Krystal Lemonias

    Recorded during Miami art week at NADA, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artists Berenice Vargas Bravo and Krystal Lemonias to talk about painting, fiber, migration, labor, and the strange textures of building an art practice across borders. Vargas Bravo and Lemonias both arrived at NADA through Andrew Rafacz Gallery, but their paths into the fair and into the United States are very different. Vargas Bravo, a painter originally from Mexico City and currently completing graduate studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, discusses work that reimagines familiar structures of division. Her paintings pull from the visual language of Western painting while subverting its traditions, including a monumental image of a collapsed chain-link fence that imagines the fall of structures meant to separate and contain. The conversation moves through borders as both literal and symbolic constructs, and how living in Chicago has reshaped the stakes of the work. Lemonias, a Jamaican-born artist working in fiber and print processes, describes a practice rooted in care labor, migration, and material culture. Drawing from her experiences as a nanny in the United States, Lemonias incorporates children's clothing, food packaging, and other domestic remnants into textile works that trace the economies of caregiving and consumption. The materials themselves carry the stories of the households they passed through, mapping the intersection of labor, class, and migration that often remains invisible in the art world. Along the way the discussion opens into a larger conversation about mentorship, access, and the informal knowledge that structures the art ecosystem. Lemonias reflects on learning the unwritten rules of American cultural institutions while navigating race, class, and belonging, while Vargas Bravo speaks about the complicated promise of the "American dream" from the perspective of an international artist whose time in Chicago has included both opportunity and trauma. Both artists also unpack the evolving relationships between artists and galleries, describing representation less as a hierarchy than as a collaborative process built on trust and dialogue. Recorded amid the hum of the fair floor at New Art Dealers Alliance during Miami art week, the conversation moves easily from the practical realities of art fairs to the deeper social forces shaping contemporary practice. The result is a candid and thoughtful exchange about what it means to make work in a world structured by borders, labor, and the fragile networks that allow artists to keep going. Name Drop List Berenice Vargas Bravo — https://berenicevargasbravo.com Krystal Lemonias — https://www.krystallemonias.com Andrew Rafacz Gallery — https://www.andrewrafacz.com Andrew Rafacz — https://www.andrewrafacz.com Janelle Dawson — https://www.janelledawson.com School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) — https://www.saic.edu NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) — https://www.newartdealers.org EXPO Chicago — https://www.expochicago.com Western Exhibitions — https://westernexhibitions.com Bazaar Magazine (France) — https://www.bazaar.fr

    1h 5m

  5. MAR 10

    Bad at Sports Episode 930: Antonio Darden

    Recorded in Atlanta during the Art Papers symposium: Fire Ecology Artist Antonio Darden joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews in Atlanta, where the conversation opens with one of the most arresting images in Darden's recent work: an alien laid out on an autopsy table. What begins as a discussion of a strange installation quickly unfolds into a deeply personal exploration of grief, memory, and the ways artists translate trauma into form. Darden describes the work Last One Left, a project that emerged from a cascade of personal losses: the deaths of his mother, brother, and father, leaving him the final surviving member of his immediate family. The alien body becomes a surrogate figure, a way to approach unbearable realities obliquely. Humor, conspiracy culture, and pop imagery become tools for making painful subjects accessible without dulling their impact. As Darden explains, confronting audiences with a literal body can shut down reflection, but a grey alien opens a space where grief can be processed at a distance before it lands. The conversation moves through the complicated emotional landscape that shaped these works: family histories stretching from Trinidad to New York, the lingering trauma of police violence after his brother's death in Atlanta, and the strange burden of becoming the keeper of a family archive of memories, objects, and stories. Darden reflects on what it means to inherit not only possessions but also responsibility for the narrative of a family's past. From there, the discussion shifts to Darden's increasingly theatrical performance practice. He recounts a recent performance staged in an entirely blacked-out theater that blended wrestling mythology, Atlanta rap history, gospel music, cinematic references, and sculptural staging into a chaotic and emotional ritual. Undertaker imagery, Pastor Troy, Lil' Kim, and The Naked Gun collide in a deliberately excessive spectacle meant to mirror the overwhelming density of memory and grief. Throughout the conversation, Darden describes his work as a kind of mental montage. Cars, hip-hop, conspiracy theories, television shows, and family trauma coexist in the same symbolic landscape. Rather than separating high and low culture, he embraces the full range of references that shape lived experience. The episode also turns toward the future, as Darden reflects on fatherhood and the challenge of raising a young son while carrying the weight of family history. In contrast to the losses that haunt his work, his son's creativity and confidence offer a different kind of legacy. What emerges is a portrait of an artist using humor, spectacle, and cultural collage to navigate the most difficult questions of survival, responsibility, and memory. Name Drop List: Antonio Darden – https://www.antoniogdarden.com Craig Drennen – https://craigdrennen.com Jared Christian – https://www.instagram.com/jaredchristian Devonté Hynes – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dev_Hynes Blood Orange – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Orange_(musician) Young Thug – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Thug Shawty Lo – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawty_Lo Pastor Troy – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastor_Troy Lil' Kim – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil%27_Kim John P. Kee – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Kee Gillian Anderson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Anderson Dana Scully – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Scully The X-Files – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files Tupac Shakur – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur Michael Jackson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_%26_Order:_Special_Victims_Unit Olivia Benson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Benson Gordon Ramsay – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Ramsay Kitchen Nightmares – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Nightmares Kanye West – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West Bound 2 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bound_2 The Ponderosa Twins Plus One – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ponderosa_Twins_Plus_One The Undertaker – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undertaker Priscilla Presley – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Presley Leslie Nielsen – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Nielsen The Naked Gun – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Gun Cyclops – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclops_(Marvel_Comics) X-Men '97 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_%2797 Radcliffe Bailey – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radcliffe_Bailey Art Papers – https://www.artpapers.org/ Fire Ecology – https://www.artpapers.org/fire-ecology/

    57 min

  6. FEB 24

    Bad at Sports Episode 929: Dan Attoe

    Recorded on the fly during art fair week, live at NADA, this conversation with Dan Attoe moves from metal-kid origin stories to Zen meditation, daily practice, tattooing, landscape painting, and the unexpected turn toward writing a horror novel. Duncan opens with a personal note: a Dan Attoe painting has been hanging in his home for 22 years, a wedding gift that quietly embedded itself into the fabric of his life, which frames the conversation, and traces Attoe's arc from rural Idaho and northern Minnesota outsider to one of the most recognizable painters of his generation. Attoe talks about the seven-year run of making a painting every weekday, a discipline that functioned less as a productivity hack and more as a survival strategy. What began as wild, sex-and-drugs-and-rowdy-party imagery rooted in imagined social worlds gradually shifted toward the meditative landscapes he's now known for. These aren't observed sites but constructed psychic spaces, built from memory, attention, and what he calls a process of "composting" experience. Zen practice, daily drawing, and tattooing form a three-part studio structure that keeps the work in motion. Learning to tattoo on his own body sharpened his attention to contrast, permanence, and empathy, feeding directly back into the paintings. Along the way we get patches, skate culture, Methodist guilt, Barry McGee installations, Walker Art Center bookstore theory dives, and the long road from being told to abandon heavy-metal imagery to fully embracing it as the engine of a mature practice. The conversation closes on writing: how Stephen King, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and decades of accumulated art-world experience led Attoe to channel theory, narrative, and lived history into a horror novel. It's a talk about attention, energy, and letting the work tell you what it needs to become. Images courtesy of Western Exhibitions -  A party for children, 2019 India ink and graphite on paper 7h x 7w in   Fingertip Mountain, 2020 Oil on Canvas on Panel 24h x 24w in   Forest Path with Glowing Orb, 2021 Oil on Canvas on Panel 36h x 24w in   Dual Falls with Painted Arches, 2021 Oil on Canvas on Panel 36h x 24w in Names Dropped: Dan Attoe — https://www.danattoe.com Dan Attoe at Western Exhibitions — https://westernexhibitions.com/artists/dan-attoe Dan Attoe at PPOW — https://ppowgallery.com/artists/dan-attoe/ Clouds Tattoo (Attoe's shop) — https://www.cloudstattoo.com A Talking Tree — https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Tree-Dan-Attoe/dp/B0D4JGYR2F Barry McGee — https://www.ratio3.org/artists/barry-mcgee Chris Johanson — https://altman-siegel.com/artists/chris-johanson Jean-Michel Basquiat — https://gagosian.com/artists/jean-michel-basquiat/ Titian — https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/titian Giorgione — https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/giorgione Arthur Danto — https://www.columbia.edu/cu/philosophy/faculty/danto.html Dr. Woo — https://drwoo.com Natalie Goldberg — https://nataliegoldberg.com Stephen King — https://stephenking.com George Saunders — https://georgesaundersbooks.com Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — https://www.harpercollins.com/products/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-robert-m-pirsig Jean-François Lyotard — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lyotard/ Jean Baudrillard — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/ Walker Art Center — https://walkerart.org Iowa Writers' Workshop — https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu Iron Maiden — https://www.ironmaiden.com Danzig — https://www.danzig-verotik.com Twin Peaks — https://www.sho.com/twin-peaks Dragonlance / Larry Elmore — https://larryelmore.com New Art Dealers Alliance –– https://www.newartdealers.org/

    55 min

  7. FEB 17

    Bad at Sports Episode 928: Robert Burnier

    Recorded live at the Stony Island Arts Bank with the Chicago Architecture Biennial Robert Burnier joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews for a wide-ranging conversation that moves between sculpture, drawing, divination systems, urban planning, Mondrian, Agnes Martin, and the politics of place. Known for his bent and torsioned aluminum works—objects that hold gesture, decision, and duration in their skins—Burnier talks about a recent body of drawings made while traveling between Europe and South Africa. Working on translucent washi paper, the pieces attempt to register light, color, and spatial memory rather than image, emerging from time spent in Cape Town's Bo-Kaap and the erased landscape of District Six. The discussion connects these experiences to Burnier's upbringing in Oak Park and to larger questions about how communities are structured, protected, or destroyed through seemingly mundane formal decisions. From there the conversation spirals outward into the role of myth, tarot, and Yoruba divination as models for thinking through chaos, and into the slow time of art as a counterpoint to the speed of contemporary media. Lorezetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government becomes a touchstone for considering how abstraction can carry ethical or civic attitude without becoming propaganda, and how form itself can function as content. Throughout, Burnier frames sculpture and drawing as "sites of possibility" rather than statements—tuning forks for thought that ask viewers to complete the work through their own duration and attention. The episode closes with talk of new material directions following a recent Pollock-Krasner grant and an ongoing commitment to work that never fully resolves, but keeps adjusting—open, provisional, and in motion. Images courtesy of Andrew Rafacz Gallery. Zulua Ĉ iela Kapo, 2025 (top) Acrylic on aluminum Nebulaj Ćeloj (Soyinka IV), 2023 (bottom) Acrylic on aluminum   Robert Burnier – https://www.robertburnier.com Andrew Rafacz Gallery – https://andrewrafacz.com Corvi-Mora (London) – https://www.corvi-mora.com Bad at Sports – https://badatsports.com Lumpen Radio (WLPN 105.5 FM) – https://lumpenradio.com Agnes Martin – https://www.moma.org/artists/3787 Ambrogio Lorenzetti – The Allegory of Good and Bad Government https://www.wga.hu/html_m/l/lorenzet/ambrogio/governme/index.html Bo-Kaap (Cape Town) – https://www.capetown.travel/areas/bo-kaap/ Buddhism – https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buddhism Chicago Architecture Biennial – https://www.chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org Christopher Wool – https://gagosian.com/artists/christopher-wool/ District Six Museum – https://www.districtsix.co.za Oak Park, Illinois – https://www.oak-park.us Piet Mondrian – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/piet-mondrian-1654 School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) – https://www.saic.edu Schopenhauer – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/ Stony Island Arts Bank – https://rebuild-foundation.org/site/stony-island-arts-bank Takashi Murakami – https://www.perrotin.com/artists/Takashi_Murakami/1 Tarot – https://www.britannica.com/topic/tarot Yoruba Divination (Ifá) – https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ifa

    57 min

  8. FEB 16

    Bad at Sports Episode 927: Alfred Steiner

    Recorded in Miami during art fair week: Alfred Steiner joins Bad at Sports live from Miami, arriving by bicycle from the beach in full cowboy boots and jeans, already soaked through and fully inside the psychic weather of art fair week. A painter, conceptual artist, and practicing intellectual property lawyer, Steiner brings a rare combination of market fluency, legal clarity, and genuine artistic skepticism to a conversation that moves easily between booths, blockchain, copyright law, and the unwritten rules that quietly govern the art world. The discussion opens with a pulse check on the fairs, moving from NADA's familiar "house style" of faux-naïve figurative painting to the broader diversity of the main fair. Rather than ranking winners and losers, Steiner frames art fairs as emotionally destabilizing machines, places where impressive work and baffling work coexist in ways that are equally exhausting. What matters most is not judgment but endurance, the daily labor of continuing to make work in a system that constantly measures value against visibility and sales. From there, the episode dives deep into Steiner's dual practice. As an artist, his work spans painting, language-based conceptual pieces, NFTs, and legal interventions that deliberately stress-test institutional systems. He walks through two blockchain projects that were designed to fail commercially, including one where each NFT generates a unique text based on a buyer's Ethereum address, and another where ownership includes the right to alter the work itself, opening the door to misuse, mischief, and unexpected generosity. NFTs check in as, Steiner recounts a moment when an NFT holder copied a high-value work by Mitchell Chan, prompting Chan to respond by turning the forgery into an original drawing. The story becomes a parable about trust, legitimacy, and the strange ethics that emerge when technology destabilizes traditional ideas of originality. The conversation touches copyright law, photography, and artificial intelligence. Steiner explains why registering a copyright still matters, even in an age of ubiquitous images, and why most photographs are protected by default despite containing little expressive decision-making. He outlines how current legal frameworks are struggling to catch up with AI training practices, predicting that future court decisions will hinge not on whether content was scraped, but on how models are used and whose markets they undermine. Threaded throughout is a candid reflection on professional identity. Steiner speaks openly about the suspicion artists face when they have parallel careers, the romantic myth of total artistic devotion, and the quiet prejudice against artists who appear too competent, too organized, or too financially stable. Having spent years working part-time at Morrison & Foerster before founding his own firm, Steiner argues that the art world's fear of "dabblers" says more about its investment logic than about artistic seriousness. Recorded live, mid-fair, with sweat, exhaustion, legal theory, and humor all equally present, the episode offers a rare look at how art, law, labor, and belief intersect... Just don't look to hard at it.   NAMES DROPPED Art Basel Miami Beach — https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach NADA Miami (New Art Dealers Alliance) — https://thenada.org/nada-miami Untitled Art Fair — https://untitledartfairs.com Ethereum blockchain — https://ethereum.org Mitchell Chan — https://mitchellchan.com Rick Astley (via Rickrolling NFTs) — https://www.rickastley.co.uk Lawrence Weiner — https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lawrence-weiner-2124 U.S. Copyright Office — https://www.copyright.gov Supreme Court of the United States — https://www.supremecourt.gov Morrison & Foerster Alfred Steiner - https://alfredsteiner.com/

    51 min
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4.5
out of 5
92 Ratings

About

Bad At Sports is a weekly podcast about contemporary art. Founded in 2005, the series focuses on presenting the practices of artists, curators, critics, dealers, various other arts professionals through an online audio format.

Information

  • Creator
    Bad at Sports
  • Years Active
    2005 - 2026
  • Episodes
    938
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © badatsports.com
  • Show Website
    Bad at Sports

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