Saturday, November 27, 2010. Landing in Miami a few days before the wall-to-wall insanity commenced, I had a chance to take the temperature of the town, to selectively buzz through various Wynwood galleries and project spaces, to survey the tents of Art Miami, -Scope et. al. on Midtown Boulevard, to watch the graffiti boys throw up a mural on the side of a garage, to hook up both with the local scene and with other recent arrivals lured by the heady promise of Art Basel week.

In other words, I felt commendably and reassuringly early. That is, until Jill Clark, an art adviser from New York now relocated to South Beach, informed me that Basel-themed parties generally start in the middle of November, two full weeks before my arrival. Faced with the looming, inevitable immanence of the Great Influx and its concomitant doses of frenzy and glamor, many art dealers, club owners, party promoters, real estate speculators, fashion doyennes and benefit committees cannot resist the obvious marketing ploy. They resolutely hang their efforts on that familiar ABMB shingle, hoping to define their event as some sort of preamble

dancelovesart
presents
PDA
dancelovesart is a series of nomadic dance acts, installations, and video and performance interactions taking place in and around Art Basel Miami Beach.

dancelovesart will be hosted by Morgans Miami properties with daily performances and dance installations in the pools and onsite at Mondrian, Shore Club and Delano

Sunsets December 4 l 5 l 6 2009, 4 - 6pm.
curated by Natalie Kovacs

For more information go to PAM:
http://www.perpetualartmachine.com/content/view/677/48/lang,en/

Miami Art Fairs Week 2009

Art Basel Miami Beach
December 2 - 6

Miami Compendium: Dialog, Diaspora, Directions

by Onajide Shabaka

Event: September 12, 2009

Miami Compendium: Dialogue, Diaspora, Directions
The African Influence in Contemporary
Part 1 of a 3 part series

An investigation into the influence of the African diaspora on art and artists in Miami (South Florida) would seem a natural fit for a large population from the Caribbean and the southern United States. The organizer, Marvin Weeks, asked a number of people he felt qualified to speak on the topic, including several scholars, an anthropologist, several artists and a museum curator. We each brought our particular perspectives to the table, mostly speaking in broad sweeps and generalities.

The Buena Vista rail yards used to occupy a huge swath of 56 acres, bounded by 36th and 29th Streets north and south, and by N Miami Avenue and NE Second Avenue west and east, smack in the middle of a decaying area of light manufacturing, garage industry and broken down bungalows just a bit north of downtown Miami, a neighborhood that is now called Wynwood.

The yards were a fenced-in, weed choked eyesore, not a "buena vista" at all, although certain urban archaeologists undoubtedly found it charming. And the land was available, an unused graveyard for rusting rolling stock. But since most real estate development in Miami was done in typical subdivision method, reclaiming swampland to the west and south for new tracts of homes and shopping centers, and since the inner city ghetto of Overtown abutted Wynwood, the area was left stagnant for decades. It was considered unredeemable, too funky by far.

But the healing power of art (as a battering ram for real estate speculation) started to work its magic in Wynwood about a decade ago, as galleries opened up, then private museums (Rubell, Margulies), followed by speculators buying property (both warehouses and parcels of land) all through the neighborhood. Eventually even the train yards were seen as a potential source of development, and in one fell swoop the area was rethought as "Midtown Miami". It would feature big chain stores like Target, Circuit City, Linens 'N Things, Ross Dress for Less, Marshalls, West Elm and Loehmann's, as well as high rise condos and garden apartments. A little oasis of mixed use where rusting metal, garter snakes and (who knows?) the decapitated bodies of mob hits once held sway. Also included would be lots of parking space.

Saturday, December 1: Big Paintings

Made it to LaGuardia with time to spare, courtesy of a moving performance by Eric “to the airport” Payson. Adam Cvijanovic was already standing at Departures, draped in a long black leather coat, awaiting his dealer Becky Smith. We were on the same Jet Blue flight, beating the crush down to Art Basel, while also sidestepping New York’s first seasonal ice storm, due to arrive in less than twenty four hours. Several days (and several score of Art Basel events) later, I would eventually view his panoramic landscape painting, huge, green and vegetal, which wrapped around the walls of the Bellwether booth at NADA and was one of the hits of
that particular fair.

A stiff tailwind brought us into Ft. Lauderdale 45 minutes ahead of schedule. I judged this a good omen. It allowed me to spend some quality time in Wynwood before dropping off my luggage at my Miami apartment. I cruised by various tents still under construction (Scope, Photo Miami, AIPAD) and visited a number of local spaces which held “soft” openings that night for the local audience, in advance of the great influx.