l’Encyclopédie De La Performa 2011. Courtesy if the author and Art in America Magazine.

On Nov 2, as part of the Performa 11 Biennal activities,’ L’Encyclopedie de la Parole’, a French performance group dedicated  to using speech as the central element in performance, produced a series of carefully chorused Speech Pieces based on familiar spoken texts taken from political rhetoric, YouTube’s  ‘most-watched’ videos and other pop American language sources.

Unlike spoken word performances, Slams and Rants, the work here is traditional-style rehearsed composition with a group of speaker/singers and a choral conductor. And the reference to older forms is an invitation to examine the appropriated content more closely: having been elevated here in a well-rehearsed aesthetic context that reinforces the sense of nuance and care that is central to this group’s exploration into linguistic constructs.

The French appreciation of language, the significance of words and their pronunciation, of complex verbal structures in that ‘diplomatic’ language alongside the more haphazard, innovative and free-style aspects of the American use of language is a striking mix that arguably brings out the qualities of both approaches; in this case American content presented into a French style structural form.

The group is composed of Francophone and Anglophone artists singing together; the words are carefully, maybe even over-pronounced so that we fully understand them, even though there are a number of different accents involved. The effect of American language constructs that went viral in one way or another, being turned into a kind of slo-mo, fastidious chant, is humorous and then revealing in the same way as other close-ups of pop phenomena.

On one hand, the greater significance of the content is in each case distilled down to it’s bottom line essence by virtue of being re-presented in this re-focused context; on the other the vapid superficiality of some of what goes viral is also laid bare. Not least here, the way language is used to express emotion becomes almost comic when elevated to song, then repeated in chorus structure.

In a sense, the emphasis on language, removed from its context and sung, can be considered analogous to the use of text in visual forms: Lawrence Weiner and Jean Michel Basquiat used words and phrases to add dimension and to express the back and forth of ambiguity and meaning that language is capable of; particularly when extracted from it’s original context.

In this case Presence, the primal, electro-magnetic even of Performance, and spoken word, replace text (and language) used in 2 and 3 dimensional traditional forms, but abstracted in a parallel way: Basquiat’s use of pop phrases clipped from common usage come more to mind here than, for example, Lawrence Weiner’s more heady single word byte constructions from a content angle are comparable in the way these demand that we focus on the actual non-contextural meaning. The polished  presentation is closer to Bruce Nauman. whose blinking neon phrases and video of a clown on a toilet agonizingly moaning out the letters of the alphabet come quickly to mind.

L’Encyclopedie has here blended 2 disparate cultural practices; the informal and formal, the structured and unstructured, in a way that reveals aspects of both; they’ve mined language in ways parallel to other contemporary forms; the focus on language is a striking reminder of the  complexity  power of word, and not least when the ever expanding theoretical language around art continues to become central to the actual content of art[.]

Link here to a video of L’Encyclopedie de la Parole.

This post was contributed by David Rohn.

Installation view. Image courtesy of John Burtle.

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Text mumbling courtesy of John Burtle. Originally posted on Facebook, 2011.

Running a Dérive (drifting) above 71st street is on any ordinary day a journey to an alternative place that is purposely out of sync with that emerging “Lombardi” circus running concurrent with the downtown “Art Walk”. Its a site, a locale, an urban area, a fixed flat topography. Its a place with vacant green lots in the concrete jungle all at once malleable and protean on the shifting margins of Miamiʼs limited historical zero sum gain. Its a place whose specific location is on both sides of rivers and moats. Its a place without gated communities whose drawbridges and barricades promote exclusivity.

Inchoate, yet realizable by it’s already emerged alternative to gentrification with far less pomp and circumstance–it transcends both the Design District and the Wynwood Arts District as an area to play, produce and think in less leveraged overhead–all the while waxing nostalgic yet working closer to pre-capitalized splendor. Its somewhere, over here, there about, close to that other place near or far from deserved Utopian dreams, resolutely counterpoised and unraveling master threads and narratives of reducibility.

Its the Little River, its Little Haiti, its Lemon City and its many other places inside and out of what ever is already here. Its a hood–its my neighborhood, but most of all its not mine.

Recycled cloths, bailed and ready to be shipped–headed for probably Haiti. Image courtesy of Richard Haden, from Running a Dérive series, 2011.

Not exclusively a culturally inspired address because its a mix…its spoken and unspoken dialogues woven between alterity; its a salad bowl instead of a melting pot, with all it’s ingredients still discernible. Its artist studios next to the recycled bails of clothing, run alongside the toxicality of artisan auto body shops, and a bit farther around the corner(s) are streets that flaunt walks on the side of risk.

…and like that endless flow of being up here–that which doubles as singular or collective–thyself can always depend on they-selves cooperatively sharing an industrial base. Its a fountain-head stepped in mutidirectional vectoring. It’s multifarious trajectories having become subjective temporalities, shared or not, of temporal form laid over the concreteness of material form. Its in this place, where we are not exactly self-centered, that we can still carry on and work within degrees of authentic enthusiasm for being here, somewhere, dislocated and displaced, while all at once nomadic or in self exile.

Railroad tracks, Miami, somewhere out in the avenues close to NW 71st street, between 36th and 22nd Avenue, I think. Image courtesy of Richard Haden, from Running a Dérive series, 2010.

Itʼs a mixed industrial neighborhood with housed ethnicities anchoring the neighborhood soundly, keeping it from drifting towards that consuming la la land filled with gratuitous amounts of redundant boutique drudgery.

With no clearly or exactly defined borders and with railroad tracks running through it–there is no right or wrong side of the track–it is a place where graffiti is still real and local muralists like Serge Toussaint still hold their own along side commissioned murals and insurgent tags of hit and run aesthetic.

Now showing, a month or so ago, was John Burtle, an artist from Los Angeles who, like so many of us that drift through Miami with dissimilar curiosities, drifted through, Miami, to leave a trace. John Burtle by invitation, came to leave a trace on this place, in this place–a place where sea walls are illusions and yachts roll about on trailers….

John Burtle @ The Little River Yacht Club, [an artist run alternative space].

Here at an evolving locale in the “Little River community” is embedded–added to the magic pad of collective memory, there was, still is, and shall continue, like other past, present and futural events–a fast and fleeting exhibition. Its now showing status turned off, yet still mnemonically activated and tossed up here as fast as it was made, onto an exhibition archive on ARTLURKER.

Untitled, 2011. Paper and paint. Approximately 10 x 10 ft. Image courtesy of John Burtle.

John Burtleʼs work was made on the spot for the exhibition. And like things made in the proximity of a place, for a place–that I reckon are often left to be affected by said place, without thought–this exhibition, like the place, hyper-sensitizes the visitor, who is most likely embodied and personified by the place, if only briefly, informing the maker too.

That which makes us aware of place also makes us aware of being in it. Its just an existential experience whose affection is the estranged terrain that washes it’s signification and mood over us. It’s flowing Psycho-geography goes viral if you look outside yourself.

John Burtleʼs work does something like that. The five works in the show are about sensitizing sense [Hypostasis] and effecting the body. The installations title, Can You Feel It? concerns the sense of smell; whatʼs heard; its about the sensation of heat; its about being touched or touching another and its about seeing. Its also about reading sense as well as imagining how things feel or felt; its forward looking play and engaging while simultaneously grounded in memory. The works speak of intimacy or remind us of a lack of it. Its here too that we speak to(o). In this place, at this alternative pop up weird salon. Its an alternative institution, if you will…

Untitled, 2011. Rolling table [48 x 32 x 36 inches], synthetic orange fur blanket, and various hand implements for the body. Image courtesy of John Burtle.

Walking towards a bright orange table loaded with curious implements, we view an assortment of strange tools. The presence portending the possible use on someone standing next to us–while above our head a heat lamp warms our gaze–while back on the table, that assorted array of implements becomes a bit more focused. There are sexual toys, massaging tools and other equipment for the body–hardness and softness contributing to the ambiance of eerie suspicions and suspect moves which are scored in view of another.

A large painted collage fills a section of the room with ambient Lettrist forms, emitted by repeating patterns–itʼs ambiance loaded with retinal candy that positively charges the room; its also a bright orange pimped out table covering whose furious synthetic fur sells fast and cheep possibilities of pleasure. Its outwardly affectious and in this case, its pulled off in the style of Art Povera–the spirit of cheapness re-ified in its comment…in its less capitalized splendor.

Untitled, 2011 (detail). Paper and paint. Approximately10 x 10 ft. Image courtesy of John Burtle.

What typically goes on around here seems out of order, however, its quite the opposite: Its disquieted friendliness that is normal disorder of the day about the everydayness of everyday life up here, over here, there or wherever.

The show exhibited attitude. It snubbed its nose at the gentrification down below. The larger-than-life nose crafted out of paper and glue, fitted with a motion sensitive trigger, spun a grinder built inside (engineered by Meatball and Justin Long) and permeated the room with the smell of hot pepper.

Untitled, 2011. Fabricated nose: paper, glue, electrical motor, grinding mechanism, pepper, motion detector. Approximately 4 x 2.5 x 2.5 ft. Image courtesy of John Burtle.

Now that the trace is left, theyʼve grown fond of the nose and who knows where it will end up if not permanently mounted to the Yacht Club wall instead of a taxidermy trophy shot and hung by a rich imbecile back from an African safari.

“Sense, ideality, objectivity, truth, intuition, perception, expression–this common matrix is being as presence: the absolute proximity of self-identity, the being-in-front of the object available for repetition, the maintenance of the temporal present, whose ideal form is self presence of transcendental life, whose ideal identity allows idealiter of infinite repetition. The living present, a concept that cannot be broken down into a subject and an attribute, is thus the conceptual foundation of phenomenology as metaphysics.” (page 56 derrida and time).

Untitled, 2011 (installation view). Dripping eye lenses: resin, pigment, string, water and pump. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of John Burtle.

I speak of a place and I use this art event as that which is “good enough” and not at all that spectacular in itself for itself to focus on an area which is not necessarily all that peculiar or spectacularly different than many other so called underdeveloped urban areas. Yet this is where shit happens folks…its in this urban sprawl that we see color leaching back through sterile whitely painted walls. Its horizons not blocked with attitudes–nor with haughty commercial institutions holding back progressive alternatives to the status quo by the weight of overtly capitalized and gentrified institutionalized or wanna be commercially informed institutions who are inspired by fashionably packed recycled baggage.

So, to close this article, I would like to digress towards that hyperlinking frame of mind, that ever present spontaneous stream of consciousness, and bring up a curious notion that I heard at a lecture, recently at MOCA North Miami, a local Miami art institution, a notion whose idea has something to do with the subtext of this article…

The speaker: Dr. George Yudice, Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Miami, described, in a nut shell, that institutions are entities that reduce risk. He used one particular example that “startled” me…he used the police as an example of an institution that reduces risk–an institution that when run well, serves the public well-being as a utility to reduce risk.

Is this axiomatic definition and proscribed duty, all that we expect from our institutions? Is this all that we desire from our institutions…to be merely social entities that guard and preserve–that which when successful, reduce risk? It would follow then that when we apply this reasoning to other existing institutions we can see through analogy, hundreds of other kinds of institutions that are accordingly designed to reduce risk. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), for example, in its necessity is of course certainly the kind of institution or agency designed to reduce risk to the environment and our health; historical institutions as well preserve historical ideas; as do those cultural institutions that preserve existing cultural heritage…

BUT, is this model the proper paradigm for what we should expect from progressive art or politically oriented institutions? Is reducing risk, the best that we can do when it comes to dealing with so many inequities in today’s society? Is this all that we expect institutions of art to be? Fuck no…of course not and Doc didn’t mean it that way either.

“Two Girls One Bun,” 2011. Performance at the LRYC (The Little River Yacht Club) by Jesse Meadows and Camila Alvarez, 2011. Image courtesy of Richard Haden.

Contrary Dr. George Yudiceʼs conservative (and presumably ironic) model does he ask us to examine and critique the conservative model to suggest that we supersede that model by adding to or replacing that model with an aggressive insurgent model? Does he, shouldn’t he be calling for progressive institutions to replace or amend conservative models–all the while acknowledging the notion of reducing risk is but a small part of some institutions utility or essence? In addition can’t a case be made for pedagogical models to be based on looking for progressive solutions for what ails society? And finally why does the idea or notion of “to preserve” or to “reduce risk” have to prioritize efforts and funding–instead of it’s inversion? It is not the forward looking duty of today’s arts institutions to not only mindlessly preserve the idea of risk reduction as a paradigm and reduce risk, but to actually seek out risk itself in the name of affording growth? In other words, if there is to be some form of artistic insurgency that seeks to surpass the repressive powers that control, then it would seem natural that creating risk, in the shadows of those institutions that suppress it, illuminates the first order of every day–to make progressive changes that counter the edification of outdated institutional values or practices.

It is not difficult to fathom that we can agree that progressive institutions can maintain duel roles: First, reducing risk by curating/preserving and archiving (like collecting institutions do so well) and secondly, simultaneously promoting and encouraging risk while looking forward for alternative solutions. Progressive institutions can encourage authentic risk, out of the box as it were, which ultimately arises from choosing new paths on unfamiliar terrain (New Methods, a symposium recently organized by associate curator at MOCA North Miami, Ruba Katrib, investigates this issue).

The other which way, the way it has been by always looking back, away from taking risk today, is seen more today in less than creative circles–as the old guard with furrowed brow and an ever growing conservative suspicion of sustainable approaches to societyʼs ails seems ultimately hell bent on maintaining non-sustainable long term scorched earth policies–the fear of taking risk is endemic to the conservative mind. Take risks. Look for risky situations. Risk ‘it’. Not in societyʼs Club Med, nor paid for by cheap holidays in other people’s passive risk free misery. Be willing to get messy[.]

Performance at the LRYC (The Little River Yacht Club). Title: “Two Girls One Bun”, Performed by Jesse Meadows and Camila Alvarez with Justin Long willing to “risk” going along. Image courtesy of Richard Haden.

This post was contributed by Richard Haden.

Kathryn and Dan Mikesell at home in their collection.

Lester Bangs, a rock critic and more, once said in an interview with Jim DeRogatis: “I double back all over myself” which means that he might at first go negative then later come to embrace that which at first he criticized.This article is not based on any particular interview or any set of questions put to the Mikesell family, yet much of what I know about this family comes from conversations with them. This article is about generalities yet it is also based on real worldly observable accomplishments—-This article is about a family that collects.

The Mikesell family.

This family that collects also runs an art residency program called the Fountainhead Residency. In addition to the residency Dan and Kathryn Mikesell manage a two story warehouse where dozens of artist have studios.

As we know there are many families who collect, and at least one collection, here in Miami, that I know of, has a modest residency program added to the collection / exhibition program. As well we know that there are many collecting families whose collections, especially here in Miami, are open to the public or prudently opened on special occasions due to limited access restrictions imposed by location or residential zoning laws–or to certain expectations of privacy. For those collections located in commercial / industrial settings these family collections have become simulacrum like versions of public institutions that are normally kept afloat by both public and private funding. In this world of private collections gone wild we have seen a proliferation of private collections gone public with the additional aid of 501 non-profit tax exemption and other perks that go along with that class.

Although the Mikesell’s collection is not open to the general public at this time, nor is it a non profit 501, it is often open to locals in the Miami arts community on special occasions due to the limitations of its residential address.

As for non profit exemption, the Mikesell family do not seek non profit status–they simply explain at their residency website, rather coyly, that they are “not for profit”. Which means that that door is closed for now, to profit gained from selling or trading works in the collection?

View inside the Mikesell household.

Then what motivates collectors if not a “profit” model? No doubt this is a subject that includes a critique of intentionality–private verses the public consumption of art as well as privatization versus the public access to art works–private property versus public–for instance can anyone really think that they actually own an artwork (above being the caretaker of it) especially if a works content is social in nature?…Questions: Must one have the right to flirt with social privation? Want answers? Then these questions must concern what essentially effects the utility of circulation, distribution and dispersion of art–otherwise the consequentialist protagonist might just favor an elitist hierarchy in which only an elite class will be privy to any progressive artsy discourse.

I suppose that I really don’t want to speculate, for now, in this article at least, on such interesting tautologically head spinners or travel in those muddy hermeneutic waters with out a leek proof boat and a stout paddle. However, politically speaking, moralisms and ethical concerns or just plain old phenomenological intent inherent in art works and artistic intentionality should concern us all very much when the issue of privatization absorbs these concerns into the institution of collecting thus deflating arts greater social potency–otherwise, this will always run the risk of encouraging an introverted subjectivity, alienating the viewer from the social phenomenon by misdirecting and leading down to the debts of rings of mercurial territorial fires, if what is meant to be said out loud is instead internalized.

BACK TO THE MIKESELL FAMILY:

Politically whether they be this way or that–right or left handed, might they, or just anyone, for that matter, just be overshadowed or pale in the light of what ever is produced for the public good–not being driven by the “hidden hand” of Laissez-faire art market exchange or speculation?

Skye and Galt Mikesell at home.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD RESIDENCY:

Can what’s seemingly implied in a name truly reflect in that name, necessarily be a predetermined articulation of those whom ever are working under its current marquee? In other words can yesterdays fiction based on drawing straw men, set a predetermined contemporary outcome? The resulting quandary is how I have come to view the Mikesells. In my view, one that has more to do with their enthusiastic and appreciated contribution to Miami’s burgeoning arts scene rather than a suspect banner.

There are two ways to read the name Fountainhead–The first is the title given to a novel written by Ayn Rand…the second is to believe that the term fountainhead refers to the belief that the source of creativity emerges from within, each of us, in isolation–our inner muse–not effected by paradigms or other existing ideas or caused or affected by things outside of us–an outer muse. The Former, the novel, written by Ayn Rand, illustrates a radical self-interest from a radical right wing libertarian ideology. The latter is the idea that the genesis of human creativity bubbles up from within. The former can easily be taken with a grain of salt, for either way you look at it, it is ultimately about liberty and freedom to create freely in an open society. And if Ayn Rand were alive today, she too might likely have recanted much of what she believed.

Building collections.

However, there are two major problems that most will have with Ayn Rand’s objectivistic faux philosophy that concerns her once notorious hatred for altruism and her assertions that pure creativity is not effected or inspired or expounded on the work of others lest they be human parasites. It is precisely these two particular issues that I see as the pivotal point from which the Mikesells make their point of departure from Rand’s philosophical position of radical self-interest, regarding how trickle down self-interest effects community. Because, I see Rand’s myopic self-interest being replaced by a far greater self-interest involving the community’s self interest–especially, the self interest of Miami’s art community. For it is self-interest of community which is at the heart of good old lefty libertarianism and anarchism which, too, seeks less control and oversight from the State or what we see today as a growing state sponsored acquiescence towards corporate plutocracy.

The opposite of this Randism of self-centered self-interest is the profound enthusiastic giving of ones time and other resources with out the guarantee of expecting the same in return. Artful and authentic moves that concern making things happen around us are akin to unrequited love…. This altruistic maneuvering, to me, is the keystone supporting the arching reach of the arts and its cultural possibilities that ensures arts always “becoming”, always bringing art to every crevice of everyday life directly…not holding it hostage to the highest bidder.

A family dining room.

Firstly, anyone involved in the arts has a story–a narrative flowing out of an inherited nurturing environment or from more or less a spontaneous contingency or a chance encounter that catalyses an ongoing infatuation with the arts–less defined. As well, there does exist amongst many collectors a transparent narrative that directly reveals there involvement in the arts–on the flip side, there is the hidden narrative that’s crafted and contrived from sleek streamlined exquisite manipulation secreted behind gold plated doors–not exactly what I think the Miksell’s are up to or about though. And since the the Mikesell family’s narrative as collectors began approximately 12 years ago…their story is still new and emerging.

What motivates people to be in this so called Art world in the first place? If we take the high rode and assume that it is not nor should it be merely for the sake of profit, then if not for profit then why do we do what we do. Obviously profit can be more than monetary gain. For instance, self fulfilling satisfaction sought from diving into the art world’s mosh pit is another kind of gain. This is that kind of authentic engagement with the unknown that comes from that sort of fountainhead from with in—its just healthy enthusiasm and curiosity that inspires us to go forward with out clear foresight or results or outcome known–oh the horror vacui of it all.

This kind of authentic involvement can be more than the speculative gain because it involves uncertainty. And its in this kind of uncertainty that I think fuels many people in the arts. Especially the artistic flavor of less pedantic art — superseded by discovery and invention or discovery and research.

Seeking surplus value in the arts as though market forces were the final end is a shallow way to view art. It causes an increase in hoarding art commodity as the personal source of fetish–is all too easy….where as, increasing surplus value of lived experience is another matter all together. Any old capitalist can invest private capital into commodity exchange or production; yet not just any capitalist goes that extra mile to invest resolutely into the void and take that leap into that unknown quantity of being outside oneself….

A Michael Loveland work on view at the Mikesell’s house.

Instead, if we look at profit as different from that which is a result of market exchange, then we can get further into what it is that we expect our expectations to be….of what art and its potential can be–rather than being stuck investigating art’s value or how its price as a commodity earns and maintains that value. Perhaps, if the profit in art is anything metaphysically gained from an exchange then it is arts capacity to act as a catalyst for awareness, or for lack of a better way to put it–As Adorno would have us believe–art is the fetish of all fetishes that reduces…

Never the less, and thankfully so, the art market exist and this family does buy art locally, or trade residency space to artist for art work…thus adding to the collection.

And as it goes with artist: artist emerge so do collectors…. Artist, viewers and collectors  can also be passive….the opposite are those like the Mikesells who collect and maintain a high profile by supporting many of Miami’s cultural organizations.

They have what I respect; they have endurance, they show up. They ride the ups and downs like any artist that I know. They are not rich, relative to other collectors, and like all emerging artists this family is an emerging collecting family whose collecting goes beyond the object to include collecting knowledge and experience from DOING – being hands-on involved in the arts community…whether it be financial or hands-on working support for such non-profits like Locust projects’ or Legal Art’s programming to many other worthwhile community assets. These people are involved–being active or adventurous is how we move forward.

“An adventurer is not someone to whom adventures happen, but someone who creates adventures.” A quote from Guy Debord (Potlatch in 1954).

Left: The family out collecting. Right: Kathryn and Skye with TYPOE work at Spinello Gallery.

DRIFTING EXPROPRIATION:

To be adventurous you can’t be passive–you must engage…move forward. From the point of being adventurous comes another interesting tactic to the way the Mikesell family collect that I label for now as: “Drifting Expropriation”, which in a nut shell is wondering about, in this case, in Miami, taking / expropriating art made for the street. The activity is simple. While wondering around the streets they [initially inspired by their son Galt] locate some kind of art(y)fact that is removable from its site and carefully remove it. It can be anything from unique stickers to graffiti tagged signs or images painted on what ever is removable.

It all helps to disclose another subtext of this article, perhaps…”property is theft” (a phrase coined by the french anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon), which seeks to get at what Private Property really is, if it exists at all.

Galt’s door.

Through the grape vine, I heard about this approach to collecting, as a way to expropriate street art freely–that which is left to the weather the storm of what inadvertently leads to gentrification. It’s as though this family unit were some kind of contemporary urban aesthetically charged archeologist looking to save a piece of inspired pre-gentrified urban development? What ever you want to make of all this–this family’s drive and seemingly endless enthusiasm impresses me. What’s also interesting, to me, is how this activity is also, coincidentally, a simple version of the Dérive / drift, the “Situationist International’s” practice of drifting about the urban environment as a conscious raising activity looking with keen eyes affected by local psychogeography. [I recently wrote an introductory article on psychogeography here at ARTLURKER, A running dérive through psychogeography*. My twist on psychogeography involves running instead of walking...which as it turns out, the Miksells curiously enough use both running and biking as a bifurcated approach to checking out the town.]

Skye’s door.

On any Sunday, I joined the family activity by running a 7 or so mile round trip with Kathryn Mikesell, down the road, and back, which turned into a rendezvous with Dan, Galt and another kid who were already hard at work finding and removing decals / stickers from many various surfaces [its a case for decalcomania--they dislocate a sticker / decal then stick it on their clothing to transport them home]

As I hinted, at the beginning of this article, like Lester Bangs, I too “double back all over myself” for at first when I made the connection with the name Fountainhead as a name for a residency I thought perhaps that this family was wearing Ayn Rand on their sleeves, so at first I objected…but then as I got to know this family I realized just how far from Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy this family really is. So all I can do now is to tell my own tale of another weird Miami story where what appears on the facade may not reflect what is inside the building. Or put another way “A Rose by any other name is NOT necessarily a Rose?” For altruism is really at the core efforts of what I can tell of this family, no matter what I might have claimed before.

Dan’s door.

Also in this emerging Miami arts community there seems to be a huge audience for contemporary art yet while concurrently, alarmingly so, there exists a wanton lack of collector support. It goes with out saying that Miami needs a hell of a lot more families and individuals like the Mikesell family who do much more than passively absorb all the eye candy of old Miami. We need more than conservative art voyeurs.

In conclusion, as Miami’s contemporary arts community grows so hopefully too will community support for the arts. The more collectors that emerge and actively get involved in an arts community, the better for all. Like the endurance test of long distance running, the example that the Mikesell family set, will hopefully inspire those who sheepishly lay low, to get more involved in Miami’s growing arts community. Then as our community moves progressively forward, we can all still be relieved to know that Miami is still on its way to transcending its past as just another dumbed down tourist destination–promoting that less thoughtful decaying visual aroma that we still get a whiff of now and then…that kind of old Miami putrid commercialized smell that turned so many despondent and sour and caused the international arts communities to view Miami’s indifference to an international discourse as but a memory, constantly recuperating the South Florida pastiche…a past that if you need reminding of you need only take a trip to Key West to know what kind of image Miami is still fighting against–the land built on coral and swamp, but filled with cheap and shallow tawdriness, like acid in your contemporary, progressive face, eyes of mundane kitschy campiness saddening and maddening, dumbed down affection that solicits and sells itself to another kind of cultural neanderthal–the accidental drunken tourist who seeks passive mediocrity and the same in other kindred spirits[.]

Other odd things that Galt Miksell finds around railroad tracks and other pathways.

And the beginnings of my own expropriated art collection.

*  http://www.artlurker.com/2010/09/a-running-derive-through-psychogeography/

For more information on The Fountainhead Residency and Studios please visit: www.fountainheadresidency.com

This post was contributed by Richard Haden.

Investing in the Art Market has the same effect of slash and burn farming. Short term gains at sake of sustainability.

The current art education model is failing. Potential master’s degree students either have the choice of spending two hundred thousand dollars plus to attend top tier universities, or risk time and smaller amounts of money on state run options. Neither work. The obvious draw back of big name universities is the cost. In the state school option the risk is relevancy and in some cases quality. Art has never been something you get into because of money, but demanding hopeful students to be indentured servants of the banking industry is far from ideal. The high cost of education also feeds the art market, serving to inflate prices and detract from centers of culture.

Miami’s position in the education arena is shaky at best. Miami came in last place on a national ranking of cities’ brainpower according to bizjournals.com, with a 10.8% high school graduation rate and an 8.59% bachelors degree rating. The connection with the overall education of cities and it’s relationship with the art community is not direct, as LA and New York ranked 41st and 32nd respectively to Miami’s 53rd. What is direct is the affect that a cultural center, like a leading university, can have on a community. And it is precisely this that is absent in Miami.

A visualization of the yearly boom and bust of Miami’s art scene. This macro trend seems to be falling since 2007; perfectly aligned with the economic fall out.

Miami has the potential to emerge as a player in the international art community, yet as of now we are still mainly defined by our annual role as hosts to Art Basil Miami Beach. Miami finds itself in a dilemma. Miami may be on the brink of being a recognized for its art scene, but remains perpetually in the state of tourist destination, a problem that respected institutions would help to change. Unfortunately, none of our universities are assuming the position of a leader in contemporary art, and Miami finds itself void of options.

Enter in Art + Research, a program from Craig Robins’ Anaphiel foundation. The program is designed to be a fully funded research residency. The program solves the high cost of current generation education woes and with a faculty including Daniel Birnbaum, Liam Gillick, Guadalupe Echevarria, Matthew Higgs, Steven Henry Madoff, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, it brings a level of credibility previously unknown in Miami. A program such as this could create an opportunity for Miami to start a transition away from being a tourist capitol to one of production and research. The only problem is that the program was set to open in 2009. There are currently no updates to the website, Anaphiel.org, and the only definite response I was given when I tried to make contact was that the project was “on hold.” This is not surprising as Robins, a property developer, depends on the real estate market for funding.

Miami is already a poster child for the housing bubble, but is it possible that Miami could become a poster child of an art market bubble? The galleries that spring up during December and then go vacant – or at least quiet – for the rest of the year are painfully reminiscent of the many vacant condos here whose sales were based on speculation. The problem is that there is a cultural drain from that kind of behavior; it is the art world equivalent of slash and burn farming.

The unrealized McMansion neighborhood, “Parkside Estates”, is a reminder of our recent past focus on an end product and not a process, or people. The lot remains empty as speculation fell out.

Miami has a couple of options, perhaps the most sustainable of which is to make a shift away from a product-based model to a production-based model. Miami clearly supports the market and its end product, museums or giant private collections, but I would like to see some more support of artistic creation. Art + Research is a huge project, it is ambitious, idealistic and could work on surer ground, but maybe the idea needs to be scaled back to make it a realistic fit for present day Miami. At a smaller scale a new precedent could easily be set and more residencies would provide support for Miami based artists as well as an international community of artists, not just galleries and collections. It is no secret that people want to come down to Miami so we should use this desire as a way of establishing Miami as a place for production. The few residencies we have – Fountainhead, De la Cruz, even Deering Estate at Cutler – are good, but limited, and if the local educational institutions such as UM, FIU, or FAU persist in exhibiting an endemic lack of concern to foster more art programming and research perhaps those with resources need to start pooling them so that interesting talent will come to Miami to live, work and teach. This would at least fill the void created by a lack of a leading graduate program and, perhaps more importantly, help tide us over until this education model fixes itself.

A quick way to see how much this switch is needed is to imagine what is spent on our museums and ‘private museums’ then compare that with funding for residencies and artist’s grants. It is not that our museums do not have a role to play, they do. But the role they play is only a small part of a community.  At some point we need to invest not in the art market, but in our own community.

I originally wrote this article back in July of 2010. I didn’t release it because I decided that I was too critical of the situation, and I was hypocritical because I was planning on leaving Miami. But that is exactly what is at stake. If Miami is going to stay relevant it must compete to keep what made it great in the first place; its artists[.]

Title Image Credit: Mattmagnum. Some rights reserved.

This post was contributed by Jordan Service.

Elmgreen & Dragset Powerless Structures Fig 101.

Aaron Holz
How do you continue telecasting a football game when you’ve just announced that John Lennon has been shot?  Howard Cosell admitted the difficulty live on Monday Night Football. How does a young artist in England enjoy reading about the party in Miami when their nation proposes cutting funding for all art colleges to zero during the same week? The “artworlds” are at odds with each other as often as the world itself.

Tracey Harnish:
The art world is a gigantic universe filled with multiple realities.  Money is thought to be the big mover in all plays of the field, but it is high passions that are the bloodline that feeds the beast.  ABMB waxes the wheel with spectacle, keeping the current electric. When the largest museum complex in the world, the Smithsonian Institute, is responsible for the repression of an art piece, it is akin to taking an axe to the wheel. Worldwide our nation makes the statement that we have little tolerance for a point of view that is called outrageous by one small politicized group that yells the loudest; the result is the art world is held hostage by ignorance.

Jason Gringler:
I don’t think art leisure is in contrast with issues effecting contemporary art; not at this juncture in time.  After all, aside from the commerce and parties, art fairs are a great way for artworks to be seen by a global community.  Although the system is flawed, it is an invaluable system. The issue around Fire in My Belly is an unfortunate incident, but as a result of the censorship, ten times as many individuals are viewing the piece through networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo etc.. This is definitely a positive outcome.

Jonathan Viner:
I have a love/hate thing with both Miami and the DW/NPG brouhaha.  Vis-a-vis Miami:  the more private jets we can lure, the better, but yeah, it’s a cheezy scene.  But fun.  As for DW/NPG, it’s just so heavy handed, desperately political, and martyr-complexy, but you can’t help but feel for and love the poor guy, and therefor his work. Life is complicated and tragic and whatnot.  We should just soothe one another, I guess.

Nancy Oliveri
Ignorance is an essential ingredient in manipulating an electorate to vote against it’s own best interests. A powerful artwork like “Fire in My Belly” requires visual intelligence and cultural literacy from the viewer that is not cultivated in the American public education or media.  These are the same qualities that a modern Democracy requires for survival.  Contrast the intellectual and aesthetic freedom on display at the privately funded Miami Art Fair with the Smithsonian’s publicly funded censorship and there is the evidence of an intellectual, aesthetic two tier system that mirrors the greatest unequal distribution of wealth since the Depression.

Campbell Laird:
The Art World always needs some Giddy-Up & Art Basel Miami delivers the Weird, the Wacky & the Overwrought in spades. Form without content seems to rule the day but no matter the usual sweaty bankers, trust fund party-ers, famous wanka’s and seriously Rich collectors of ‘bizarro incomprehensible ginormous stuff’ indulge until they pass out prostrate & naked on a Miami beach somewhere! On and waaaay off the main Art Basel site there is a Feverish mix of Art, Music, Innovation, Technology and Cocksmenship! Whats not to love! Gird thy Loins! Get down there! and Kick up a stinka! Art is starting to live Again Baby and not a Cleric in sight!

P. Elaine Sharpe:
Beyond the fact that these events shared a date in common with Day Without Art, this query is a little like comparing apples and oranges. While both involve a certain kind of contextualized perusal of the workings of art, one is free market and the other is policed by public funding. American right wing conservatives have found two targets in Wojnarowicz’s video. The more convenient subject is the one of ants crawling on a crucifix, a benign event which happens in cemeteries around the world every day. The less-discussed but more likely culprit in the object/revulsion/fear sweepstakes is the instant in which a man is finding comfort in his own staff and rod, stroking his penis. A similar video was shown in Miami at Raul Zamudio Gallery’s Scope booth. The piece (by NY-based artist Agni Zotis) is of a male curator stroking himself to climax under cover of darkness while a group of bystanders urge him on. Both these videos are arousing, stirring deep-seated fear and revulsion in equal measure with passion, and unfortunately the art worlds we inhabit are still driven by men who fear the revelation that they may not measure up. The difference is that in Basel the market controls what will be shown as opposed to artworks being censored by politicos who are self-appointed arbiters of my inner moral life.

Babs Reingold:
First things first! No artists. No art. No issues. Which in brief leads me to believe neither censorship nor the rich effect serious artists. Let’s forget for the minute knee-jerks against censorship and the outlandish 
dealings of the rich. Are they connected? Sure. Politicians 
and moneyed people seek acceptance, publicity (or notoriety), and inner-
circle massaging. In both cases, a disgustingly high degree of 
ignorance exists about contemporary art. The point, however, is not federal funding, nor parties, nor sales, though at times all are essential. Let’s not ignore the starting point. Art is first about the work.

Kathy Schnapper:
Art Basel-Miami was from its beginnings a prime mover in transforming Miami from a regional to an international art center. South Florida has been one of the areas that has been hardest hit, and slowest to recover, from the current economic recession. The success of the fair gave a much needed boost to the local economy, and will have a lasting effect as other fairs and conventions look to Miami for their future events. David Wojnarowicz’s video would have not have created a stir if it were shown in a private venue. Correctly or not, many people outside of the art world claim a ‘right’ to veto works that are shown in public, tax-payer supported venues. The censoring of this work comes at a time when civil liberties of many kinds are under assault, and we will not make headway in resolving these issues until we can discuss them within a larger social and economic context.

Mira Gerard:
Context alters the comprehension and meaning ascribed to works of art. A thoughtful and timely exhibition presented in a major museum, containing elements that may threaten those who wish to stifle ideas and expression, can stir up volatility and controversy. An art fair may easily pass unnoticed by most except for art-world insiders, art lovers, and collectors. Both are important and vital, as is every other possible venue where art can be displayed and experienced. David Wojnarowicz’s video is as powerful today as it ever was– a current, a basenote, a source of strength that will not be easily silenced[.]

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth via Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art

Image courtesy of Hyperallergic.

Yes its another post-Basel Basel re-post this time focusing on two prolific Brooklyn based blogs: Paddy Johnson’s Art Fag City, a blog that has raised the bar so significantly and so consistently, that it has become an art world staple and Hyperallergic, a self proclaimed anti-establishment forum edited by Hrag Vartanian that is garnering an audience with verve, pod-casts, a weekly e-newsletter, and relentless tweets.

For Hyperallergic, Kyle Chayka wrote a scathing commentary on the intentions behind Jason Rubell’s exhibition/project Time Capsule, Age 13 to 21: The Contemporary Art Collection of Jason Rubell in a preview based on information gleaned from the Rubell Family Collection’s website.

On Art Fag City, a slightly more constructive – in that Paddy visited the show – but equally superficial mention of Time Capsule hangs a critics wish regarding what could and should have been on a backdrop of a hasty observations relating to the main exhibition How Soon Is Now.

Again from Art Fag City, this time a candidly negative and unabashed review of sorts on SCOPE.

And balancing the good cop bad cop routine Hyperallergic provides comparatively more invested coverage featuring among other things Agustina Woodgate’s teddy-bearskin rugs.

If you want to read more from these two blogs you’ll have to surf them independently because I now find myself more interested in the nature and motivation for contemporary art journalism than disseminating outsider reactions to Miami art happenings. Which is odd because I was sure I sat down to discuss content and opinion not intention and method.

Nevertheless, lets run with it for a second before you think I am failing to make a compelling meta-reflective point by critiquing critiques and ask what can be said for art blogging today?

In this fast paced, self-shot, multi-media dimension vulnerability to disinterest can curtail the desire to provide a worthy, if not competitive information service. Despite an increasing bevvy of consistently tenacious writers any blogger, like the proverbial actor, is only as good as their last post, however even established voices, for whom obsolescence is more a distant inevitability than an immediate concern, continue to labor, sometimes out of love, sometimes out of narcissism, often under duress, to supply a demand appraised predominantly through web statistics. With such concerns, the temptation to secure ratings by producing digestible, easily syndicated culture quips can take precedence and before you know it the publication is drowning in dysfunction along with the interest of readers who find themselves consuming more marketing strategies than actual information.

Ultimately its a crying shame. We have this medium, perhaps the only thing humans ever invented that they didn’t fully understand and certainly one of the few things whose explosive potential we cannot adequately contain, and what do we do with it? Not nearly enough came the cry. No time. Too busy trying to make money[.]

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

PULSE from artlurker weblog on Vimeo.

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

G.-E. Debord, The Naked City: Illustration de l’hypothe´ se [sic] des plaques tournantes en psychogeographique [sic] (1957), originally bound into Asger Jorn, Pour la Forme (Paris: Internationale situationniste, 1958) (Map: RKD, The Hague.

This article is meant to set the historical context for what will follow–a series of articles about running a dérive, today.

This article is about running. This article is also about adding a Relationally Antagonistic Aesthetic twist to running. And finally this article is about running an alternative version of the Situationist International’s concept of the dérive .

The dérive or drift is an activity related to exploring the Psychogeography of the urban environment.

‘…avoid the consumeristic mood, by running away from it, along side of it–run unmediated–immediately in any direction–towards the free solicitation of desire.‘

For those of you who are not familiar with the Situationist International, or the terms psychogeography, dérive or drift or with Guy Debord’s phrase Society of the Spectacle (or simply the Spectacle), I begin this article with paraphrased and copied excerpts  from various articles, essays and books, in my collection to preface a background history for you on the subject of this article: Running as an relational alternative to analyzing Psychogeography.

Let’s cut to the chase (pun intended).

“Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”

Another definition has to do with the metaphorical “toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities…just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.”

“Psychogeography was originally developed by the *Lettrist International in the journal Potlach– the originator of what became known as Unitary Urbanism. Psychogeography, and the term ** dérive was first used by Ivan Chtcheglov, in his highly influential 1953 essay “Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau”  (“Formulary for a New Urbanism”). The Lettrists‘ reimagining of the city has connections to predecessors like the Dadaist and Surrealists, while the idea of urban wandering relates to the older concept of the flâneur, theorized by Charles Baudelaire.”

*Both, members of the Lettrist International and the Situationist International who participated in the psychogeographical practice known as the dérive are referred to as Unitary Urbanist. Also, members of the Lettrist International would eventually split off to form the International Situationist

**The term dérive translates into English as drift or drifting

The Unitary Urbanist, superseded Charles Baudelair’s “gentleman stroller of city streets” who walked the streets to taste and experience the mood of the city, as gentleman critic and reflecting consumer.

The Unitary Urbanist’s approach sought to intensify its critique of the city beyond the mere consuming peripatetic stroller. “It demanded the rejection of functional, euclidean values in architecture,” such as “form follows function” as well rejected the separation between art and its surroundings, or art from daily life. The implication of these two negations attempts to nullify the strategic power of modern urban design, and its seemlier fixation with maintaining strategic hold on alienating flows of commerce or perpetuating a continuous flow of alienating social relations.

So it goes today, still, that like the Unitary Urbanist we too seek to intervene and “corrupt one’s ability to identify where “function” ends and “play” (the “ludic“) begins, resulting in what the Lettrist International and the Situationist International believed to be the utopian foundation–where one is spontaneously free to constantly explore free of determining factors.

“Cities have a psychogeographical relief, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones”–such as Gated communities, barricades, boundaries, territories, easements or walls that segregate or contain.

Railroad track split at NE 71st Street, Miami.

“Rooted in Urban sociology– “This is the city has been explored by scholars like Georg Simmel (1997 [1903]), Walter Benjamin (1999) and many others….As well Henri Lefebvre (1991), and Michel de Certeau (1984), along with other “theorists and artists who have been inspired by the concept of psychogeography — have all asked in their different ways, how are social forces and relations crystallized in the fabric, institutions, and encounters of the city? And how is that external reality then transcribed onto the interiority of modern experience? The history of the word suggests that, if anywhere, it is between the two that the city exists.”

Linked to Psychogeography is the Spectacle:

Spectacle: “The spectacle is not a collection of images,” Debord writes. “rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.” [commodified social relationships]

“The commodity can only be understood in its undistorted essence when it becomes the universal category of society as a whole.” – Georg Lukacs

“The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life. The relation to the commodity is not only visible, but one no longer sees anything but it: the world one sees is its world. Modern economic production extends its dictatorship extensively and intensively.” – Guy Debord

“Stairway to the spectacular,” demolition on NW 71st Street, Miami.

Running a Dérive / Drifting in the Psychogeographical:

The Situationist International attempted to analyze the totality of everyday life through the use of the dérive. Debord and his comrades, made enthusiastic use of the dérive (drift), to discover how the psyche is influenced or affected by urban geography and its material milieu–an analogy to this study of environmental influences is the study of how language affects the psyche through psychoanalysis. Various districts in Paris became the laboratory for this new form of theoretical psychic analysis–its place for praxis.

Graffiti Canyon, on the railroad easement starting below NE 79th Street, Miami.

By reading beyond the limited scope of this article one will find in the Situationist archive  [ http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/ ] that the dérive was practiced concurrently, along side other critical art practices such as Detourning maps, paintings, photo imagery, film and so on. As well the Situationist also staged other artful in situ political interventions.

Complimenting the Situationist critique of urban psychogeography was the lesser known Situationist International practice of creating uniquely ludic (playful) situations. This practice attempted to create alternative situations that would invoke inchoate and ambiguous experimental social Situations as tactical reactions to the strategic power of urban design and its powerful tendency to maintain the self-perpetuating urbanization of petrified life. These creative practices were limited only by the temporal nature of constructing micro utopian “situations” in already existing urban spaces.  [intentionally, examples of these constructed situations were left to survive only as oral history...little written record exist in the archive of the successes or failures of these created situations]…

The idea of undocumented work still survives as a strategy to avoid the inevitable recreation of works that lead to re-presentation which in turn leads to the commodification of art and to the commodification of social relations. This being antithetical to the theory of creating unique situations, which in theory is antithetical to consumerism–which is pretty much the corner stone of Situationist critique.

“Towering Triangular Absence”

The International Situationist idea of creating situations have inspired many contemporary artist–Dave Mckenzie and Tino Sehgal come to mind. McKenzie sometimes plays with the idea of not documenting work as does Tino Sehgal…as well both artist practice a similar project inspired by the Situationist and other avant-garde groups such as the Fluxus whose program works at the manipulation of existential psychic phenomenon — ambiance and mood.

In the spirit of the Situationist International, Tino Sehgal’s practice entails what he calls the making of “constructed situations”…such is an example of the desire to create alternatives to the existing urbanization of ‘petrified life’…even if the ‘petrified lifers’ happen to be the one’s asked to question the institutionalization of spacial and social relations as passive drifters through the Guggenheim Museum (which Sehgal managed to drain in 2010–replacing its static volumes with temporalizing forms of performative dialogue and desire to create new and undocumentable improv in place of the existing so called ‘petrified life(r)’ Museum.

From this theoretical analysis of existing urbanization to the creation of alternative situations emerged the greater urgency and perspective, that the study of existential affections such as mood and ambiance, are what better informs the totality of urbanization…. This promised a more intensive chase to the heart of the matter. Rather than the traditional seemlier attraction of architectural academia, a much larger totality was in view as it seemed more fecund to study the relational totality in the Heideggerian sense, than the limited relational encounters of occupied, enclosed space. The study of urban mood and ambience, would unfold and mutate into unpredictable views of temporal formations fixed in spontaneity and ludic conviviality–the goal being the examination of existing social relations that might lead to the creation of positively charged ambient situations–antithetical to their previously described methodical analysis of existing urban ambiance or atmosphere. Nicolas Bourriaud references these situationally inspired temporal manipulations in his anthology titled: Relational Aesthetics, pages: 9, 12,19, 85, 95, 113.

“Not The Concept House Again”

For this group of radicals, exploring Parisʼs psychogeography, was the study of changing ambiance (which I have argued on the Situationist list blog, similar to Heideggerian moods); ambiance = moods of the city. The City has moods that are akin to weather. This weather is the expression of various nuanced social factors as well as its edifying architectural and artefactual support. These micro climates are the neighborhoods, the business districts, the industrial centers, the entertainment centers, the railroad easements, deserted areas, fractured localized space, the overlapping of each, etc or the borders and interstices where social and cultural marginalization flourish. The degree to which this local totality varies has to do with the accumulation of personalities, cultural capital and economic capital or lack there of–whether by accident or by strategic design. Discovering all this is to experience the totality of tacit knowing–and to feasibly articulate and share this knowledge would be at best the explicit sharing of representational fragments of archival trace as one comes to the realization of how limiting explicit knowledge really is.

“7th Avenue Mega Pawning”

This Ambiance or mood divides the city into zones with different psychic atmospheres affect consciously or unconsciously the wandererʼs emotions and perceptions-thus the affect of urban mood effects the body or social bodies psychically as well as psychically those participants in the dérive

Human geography and urban sociology:

Running solo or in a group is to take this notion of the dérive or drift and delineate it as an act that people can do alone or in groups without much experience–we are also capable of performing across cultural or class divides rather than remaining focused on the performative rituals and traits that bind us culturally or collectively, seeking identity. It is for the sake of maintaining critical distance that we must be careful not to slip back into the discourses of collective identity or the fixed community that is bound to the geography we explore–lest we loose that critical gaze and return to the experience of every day life (petrified life).

“The discovery of hidden or blatant power relations is at the heart of psychogeographical practices.” Yet the intention is not simply to be able to describe our environment in different ways, instead it is to release our real desires and aspirations upon the environment.” Running gives us this edge, partly because we are already forced to carefully articulate every step along the way.

Underlying the study of psychogeography is a project to uncover underlying desires that are blocked from gaining real expression by commerce and the representations of  suppressive strategies that leverage freedom. These strategies source the fountain head of alienation which intern focus our desires toward fetishized (or commodified) desirables–to remedy this consumeristic influence we need to rediscover needs that directly tie us to reality by reinvesting natural desires into places where we consider the artificial relationship between the social and the personal to be unsustainable–between the visible and the emotional, limiting–and to avoid the capitalistic narcissistic guilt of never enough or not good enough.

Iain Sinclair wrote about London’s psychogeography: “Walking has been the normal way to explore and exploit the city; the changes, shifts, breaks in the cloud helmet, movement of light on water. Drifting purposefully is the recommended mode, tramping asphalted earth in alert reverie, allowing the fiction of an underlying pattern to reveal itself [...] noticing everything. Alignments of telephone kiosks, maps made from the moss on the slopes of Victorian sepulchres, collections of prostitutes’ cards, torn and defaced promotional bills for cancelled events at York Hall, visits to the homes of dead writers, bronze casts on war memorials, plaster dogs, beer mats, concentrations of used condoms, the crystalline patterns of glass shards surrounding an imploded BMW quarter-light window [...] Walking, moving across a retreating townscape, stitches it all together: the illicit cocktail of bodily exhaustion and a raging carbon monoxide high.” (1997, page 4)

“Ian’s Dandy Flâneur”

Another way to investigate urban psychogeography is just to mosey around while running with no pre-planned expectations. However, a map can add a birds eye view to an area or territory and its borders so that a territory and its distance can safely be estimated [a runner needs a sense of distance to be traveled to avoid the possibility of injury--from overdoing it]. I sometimes look at Google Earth on my computer before I begin so that I can get a better idea of how far I want to go–or which neighborhood or part of the city borders where…For instance if you are new to running, you don’t want to go too far at first because you may injure your knees, feet, tendons etc, if not in good enough shape.

By using Google Earth you can zoom in to see what obstacles may be in the way. Once you have viewed an area from a bird’s eye view or from “Google street view” the actual real ground view becomes a bit like Déjà vu–once you are actually running, holding the memory in mind–if the terrain has not changed from the time that the images were taken, as often happens.

This is running a dérive, or running an urban drift. Let yourself be delighted by running the terrain as something new! Get to know a place in a different way than you did before, and remember that the difference is running not walking.

As you run you will have unusual encounters with signs, architecture, artifacts, debris on the street or empty spaces etc. Alley ways, dogs, clouds, underpasses, storefronts, bus stands, puddles, sea walls or canals, bad drivers…all that come before you will be seen anew. Rivers, lakes, streams or the ocean will solicit as well as other pedestrians, and runners will all seem oddly estranged and you will likely imbue them with new significance.

Running is stepping outside the mediation of the spectacle. Running confirms a quick escape from commodified routes and more importantly running is an exercise in pre-capitalistic intrigue–its primitivism in the 21st century.

“High Voltage Oven By the Tracks”

Look at each image attached to this article and imagine it in relation to you running alone or with others. A large disconnected electrical box next to rail road tracks becomes an oven; a homeless persons accommodations might not look so uncomfortable and advertisement signage may look pointless as will a blank bill board look a lot more wonderfully post-consumerist.

“Student of Life, Savannah Rules” NW 79th street underpass at 7th Avenue, Miami.

Running causes the cardiovascular system to quicken and as a result, the body to breathe quicker. Like a kind of fast paced meditation, this breathing (or panting) is a key to letting go of outside influences–letting go of that which a moment ago may have informed you. The quickened body tells you directly what it needs and feels. As the body’s metabolism quickens, so quicken the senses. You see quicker, you step quicker, and you experience yourself and the environment quicker, more intensely as you go….

An activity as simple as running or jogging is as old as humanity itself. It is pre-capital, hence pre-spectacle. Running is running down something or running is running in fear. Running for the sake of running is surely running toward good health. Also most important to our resolute act of running is that running is running after chance. For it’s the chance encounter that I find most interesting and serendipitous.

Lately I have been running at least 6 miles a day in the heat of Miami. Let me tell you from experience that an unmediated gain comes quickly from the immediate experience of heat…dehydration comes quickly too. At the end of my run I have a large glass of Ice water waiting at my studio right along side the garden hose. When I run up the last short bit of driveway and grab that ice cold glass of water, the furthest thing from my thoughts is the desire for a branded substitute… No corporate swill at this point, only a clear clean glistening glass of cool unadulterated water please.

The dérive: Its not a competition…it is rather a call to run if you can, walk if have to, or role into a drift in a wheel chair if that’s what gets you around (an all terrain chair would be most versatile) Age shouldn’t matter either, if it does then a bicycle or an adult tricycle will work…an auto will do so will a boat, or kayak if you want to travel in the canals– a dérive(ing) or drifting Imagination will ultimately do fine too.

1.  Our dérive begins at a predetermined location and will proceed through a predetermined area of the city for an estimate-able amount of time or distance (depending of course on the physical endurance of the group (or its lesser member if necessary)

2.   We are encouraged to bring along a camera, note paper and pencil as well as water if you think you might need it. (Watering holes can be found en route too)

3.  To begin the dérive we run or jog a pace that suits the group and if necessary smaller groups can break off from the main group in case some participants want to speed up or slow down the drift.

4.  Everyone is encouraged to discover things along the way that can be photographed or discussed. Recording and documenting is encouraged.

5.  When one wants to photograph something then that persons group can stop or keep going.

6.  When someone stops to photograph or examine a curiosity, without stopping the group then that person will catch back up to the group.

7.  If during the dérive people get separated then a final meeting place can be arranged for all to reunite at the end of the run.

8.  At the conclusion of the event everyone will join up at a predetermined location or the group may choose another destination while running in the dérive. At the end everyone will share experiences, notes and digital imagery.

9.  It is advised to read other articles about training oneself for running especially if running is new to you.

Please feel free to add suggestions to the list above, nothing is set in stone and the dérive will be as flexible and vary as much as necessary in order to expand the concept of the dérive.

Miami, Psychogeographical society.

Richard Haden.

.

References:

1. Various unlisted paraphrased expropriations…from my collection.

2.  Real Cities Modernity, Space and the Phantasmagorias of City Life, Steve Pile.

3. Actual Running.

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“Chlorine Station by the Way”

“Rescue”

“Oh Lazarus”

“Welcome to Little River and Little Haiti”

“Cement Crop Circle”

“Private Property”

“Church For Lease”

“Coming Soon”

“Running Drifter Passing Through”

This post was contributed by Richard Haden.

Psychic Youth, Inc. photo by Federico Nessi.

Time and time again, I’m asked the same question, “are you a performance artist or are you a choreographer?”  I hesitate to say that I am one or the other because I don’t feel like my work fits completely into either of these categories. I’d like to think that my process is fluid and can change focus at any moment without depending entirely on an applied strategy. I have never felt totally satisfied with creating choreography to be performed exactly as planned.

TRI photo by Thomas Hollingworth.

Before I began working collaboratively, my solo performances were created with landmarks. I would devise a beginning, middle and end with only an intention to guide me to these points. I always gave myself the space to lose my head – where I could feel like my body was no longer controlled by my mind, but by an energetic projection of an intention or emotion. I have referred to some performances as having been out of body experiences. In some cases losing memory of what I’d just done or experiencing violent physical reactions like throwing up. I am not always successful in getting out of my head, but that has always been my goal through these ritual dances.

Parrucca photo by Stian Roenning.

Two years ago I began working collaboratively as a member of Psychic Youth, Inc. In the collective I was able to create movement scenarios designed for untrained dancers (untrained in the modern and classical techniques of dance). They are brave visual artists and/or musicians that have unique and powerful body-voices. Some of these dancers include Federico Nessi, Aja Albertson, Marcela Loayza, Ricardo Guerrero and Rick Diaz. I find they can sometimes express through their body in a way I could never have choreographed. They are unpredictable.

TRIBUTE photo by Thomas Hollingworth.

Working with these bodies, gives my work so much more range because they will not and cannot repeat what I offer them verbatim. I urge them not to think they have to recreate what I give them, but to do what they think or remember the movement was.

TRIBTUE photo by Christy Gast.

My choreography becomes a suggested guide or a springboard for new movement. I usually give them a series of tasks or actions that, when done in a particular sequence, have no purpose.  This kind of action dance is a reference to Yvonne Rainer’s “Trio A”, which has always been a source for me to reflect on. I am always inspired by my dancer’s interpretations of these task sequences and like my solo work, I also give them the space to lose themselves. I offer them the outline and they fill in the gaps. The act of creating as they perform brings the group together. Recently, I have been creating games to play during performance so that they are not merely going through the motions, but are bringing consciousness into the work.

PSYCHIC YOUTH, INC. presents: TRI: A Living Ritual Environment. First Installment featuring Ricardo Guerrero, Ana Mendez & Federico Nessi at de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, Miami, Florida, March 13th, 2010.

I love performances that flirt with an element of risk. I especially love performances taken out of the safe haven of a theater where everything is perversely controlled to perfection. Site-specific work such as Meg Stuart’s “Revisited” is an example of taking the escape the audience feels in the theater and rearranging it with reality. The escape catches you by surprise in “real life” rather than anticipating it as the lights lower in a theater. I also enjoy using alternative spaces because they come with their own stories, as opposed to the theater’s blank canvas. I am not a theater “hater”, but after having danced in them for so long, the blank canvas seems sterile. I have seen a handful of amazing performances that have transformed the theater’s predictable entrance and exit stage areas and have also manipulated the perspective of the audience. Chicago based theater company Plasticene’s “Come Like Shadows” is a good example of the possibilities of altering the black box, where the audience is tricked into believing they are the only ones observing the show – a second audience is later exposed on the opposite side of the performance space.

TRI photo by Thomas Hollingworth.

TRI photo by Thomas Hollingworth.

TRI photo by Thomas Hollingworth.

This confusion, between theater space and life space, between trained dancers and action dancers, confuses and influences my own blurred version of choreography and performance art. I build stories through dances and “non-dances”, crossing genres of performance through music and the relation of dance and dance space, where music is not just an audio backdrop to the drama of the dance, but is woven into the fabric of the choreography, such as in my latest performance piece “Walking Spell”, which premiered recently at Miami Art Museum[.]

This post was contributed by Ana Mendez.