Image credit ARTLURKER.

Submissions are now closed.

Hear ye, hear ye! Submissions are now closed for the Miami Writer’s Prize, an annual prize aimed at encouraging residents of Miami Dade County to write critically about art.

This year’s prize is currently being judged by a panel of preeminent web publishers – Noah Becker (WHITEHOT MAGAZINE), Hunter Braithwaite (THEREISNOTHERE), Paddy Johnson (ARTFAGCITY) and Hrag Vartanian (HYPERALLERGIC).

The winner will be announced via www.artlurker.com on May 18^th, 2012. An awards soiree in their honor will be held at Locust Projects’ new space at 3852 North Miami Avenue on May 24th, 2012.

For more information on the Miami Writer’s Prize, please go HERE.

Courtesy Ella de Burca in collaboration with SPRINGBREAK.

A response to the exhibition ‘defacto’ by Ella de Burca in collaboration with SPRINGBREAK. The exhibition took form as a daily 6 hour walk during gallery hours in February 2012. ARTLURKER asked the collaborative to respond to the exhibition. The following text, direct quotes taken from Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’, Georgio Agamben’s ‘The Coming Community’ and Seth Price’s ‘Dispersion’ was the result. By adding direction lines and emotion ques a hypothetical conversation was created.

DEFACTO

EPISODE ONE: [PATHOS]

SCENE 1:

MIAMI BEACH BOARDWALK
INCREDIBLY SUNNY WEATHER

[A MAN IS SELLING COCONUTS TO THIRSTY BEACH-GOERS ON THE BUSY BOARDWALK. PEOPLE GATHER AROUND AND WATCH AS HE PERFORMS THE TASK OF PREPARING THE RIPE FRUIT FOR CONSUMPTION. HE METICULOUSLY CRACKS OPEN THE SHELL, PEELS OFF THE TOP LAYER WITH HIS STRONG HANDS, AND STICKS A STRAW IN IT, PRESENTING IT TO A CURIOUS LITTLE GIRL IN A PINK HAT. SHE CARRIES IT DELIGHTEDLY TOWARDS HER PARENTS. THE MAN’S EYES FOLLOW HER, PLEASED. HIS ATTENTION IS CAUGHT BY THREE STRANGE LOOKING MEN IN THE DISTANCE, WALKING SLOWLY TOWARDS HIM, DEEP IN CONVERSATION]

CUT TO

[GUY DEBORD, GEORGIO AGAMBEN AND SETH PRICE WALKING, PRICE IN THE MIDDLE WITH DEBORD ON THE SIDE NEAREST THE SEA. ALL THREE MEN ARE BAREFOOT, DRESSED SOMEWHAT INAPPROPRIATELY FOR THE HOT WEATHER IN STIFF CITY CLOTHES]

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [SPEAKS SOFTLY] [...] but the life that begins on Earth after the last day is simply human life. 1

[LOOKS TOWARDS SKY]

SETH PRICE: [MATTER-OF-FACT, EXPRESSING WORDS WITH HANDS] The problem arises when the constellation of critique, publicity, and discussion around the work is at least as charged as a primary experience of the work [...] Does one have an obligation to view the work first-hand? What happens when a more intimate, thoughtful, and enduring understanding comes from mediated discussions of an exhibition, rather than from a direct experience of the work? 2

[GEORGIO LOOKS TOWARDS SETH]

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [KNOWINGLY] if we try to grasp a concept as such, it is fatally transformed into an object, [...] and the price we pay is no longer being able to distinguish it from the conceived thing. 3

[GUY TAKES A LEAF FROM A BUSH AS HE PASSES BY]

GUY DEBORD: [INSPECTING LEAF, INTROSPECTIVE AND SPEAKING QUIETLY] With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and trans­mitted directly among the living – an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. 4

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [FROWNING] [...] if the word through which a thing is expressed were either something other than the thing itself or identical to it, then it would not be able to express the thing. 5

[GUY STARTS TEARING APART THE LEAF AS HE SPEAKS]

GUY DEBORD: [SADLY, WITH EMOTION] [...] in societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. [...] everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation. 6

[SCATTERS THE BITS OF THE LEAF ON THE BOARDWALK]

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [SOFTLY EMPATHIZING] The name always and only names things [...] 7

[GUY RUBS HIS FACE AND LOOKS TOWARDS THE SEA]

[THEY WALK IN SILENCE, THINKING]

SETH PRICE: [EMPHATICALLY] One must return to Fountain, the most notorious and most interesting of the ready-mades, to see that the gesture does not simply raise epistemological questions about the nature of art, but enacts the dispersion of objects into discourse [...]

[GUY AND GEORGIO LOOK AT SETH]

[...] the power of the ready-made is that no one needs to make the pilgrimage to see Fountain [...] few people saw the original Fountain in 1917. Never exhibited, and lost or destroyed almost immediately, it was actually created through Duchamp’s media manipulations [...] In Fountain’s elegant model, the artwork does not occupy a single position in space and time; rather, it is a palimpsest of gestures, presentations, and positions.

[SETH TAKES A MOMENT TO BREATHE, LOOKS AT THE SEA, AND BEING AS YET UNINTERRUPTED, CONTINUES]

[...] distribution is a circuit of reading, and there is huge potential for subversion when dealing with the institutions that control definitions of cultural meaning. 8

GUY DEBORD: [FIRM] But even when such a society has developed a technology and a language and is already a product of its own history, it is conscious only of a perpetual present [...]

[PULLS ANOTHER LEAF OFF A BUSH AND HOLDS IT UPWARDS BY THE STEM]

[SPEAKING TO LEAF] [...] knowledge is carried on only by the living, never going beyond the memory of the society’s oldest members. Neither death nor procreation is under­stood as a law of time. Time remains motionless, like an en­closed space [...] 9

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [QUICKLY INTERRUPTING] [...] this life is purely linguistic life. Only life in the word is undefinable and unforgettable [...]

[LOUDLY] Exemplary being is purely linguistic being. 10

GUY DEBORD: [ENERGIZED BY GEORGIO’S INTERRUPTION] When a more complex society finally becomes conscious of time, it tries to negate it – it views time not as something that passes, but as something that returns. This static type of society organizes time in a cyclical manner, in accordance with its own direct experience of nature. 11

[THE TRIO PASS BY THE COCONUT MAN, WHO IS PREPARING ANOTHER COCONUT FOR A GROUP OF INTERESTED TOURISTS]

SETH PRICE: [GENTLY TAKING THE LEAF FROM GUY] [...] that work which seeks what Allan Kaprow called “the blurring of art and life” work which Boris Groys has called biopolitical, attempting to “produce and document life itself as pure activity by artistic means,” faces the problem that it must depend on a record of its intervention into the world, and this documentation is what is recouped as art, short-circuiting the original intent [...]

[STOPPING MOMENTARILY TO PLACE THE LEAF ON THE BOARDWALK]

[...] Groys sees a disparity thus opened between the work and its future existence as documentation, noting our “deep malaise towards documentation and the archive.” 12

GUY DEBORD: [LOOKING TOWARDS THE SEA DEFEATEDLY] [...] historical thought is still a consciousness that always ar­rives too late, a consciousness that can only formulate retro­spective justifications of what has already happened. It has thus gone beyond separation only in thought. 13

SETH PRICE: [LOOKS AT GUY ENCOURAGINGLY] The last hundred years of work indicate that it’s demonstrably impossible to destroy or dematerialize Art, which, like it or not, can only gradually expand, voraciously synthesizing every aspect of life [...] Meanwhile, we can take up the redemptive circulation of allegory through design, obsolete forms and historical moments, genre and the vernacular, the social memory woven into popular culture: a private, secular, and profane consumption of media [...]

[SMILING] Production, after all, is the excretory phase in a process of appropriation. 14

GUY DEBORD: [ADMITTINGLY] [...] the spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images. 15

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [LOOKING DOWN] [...] the spectacle is nothing but the pure form of separation. When the real world is transformed into an image, and images become real, the practical power of humans is separated from itself and presented as a world unto itself [...] In the figure of this world separated and organized by the media in which the forms of the state and the economy are interwoven, the mercantile economy attains the status of absolute and irresponsible sovereignty over all social life.

[SPEAKING SLOWER, AND LOOKING AT THE OTHERS] [...] after having falsified all of its production it can now manipulate collective perception and take control of social memory and social communication, transforming them into a single spectacular commodity where everything can be called into question except the spectacle itself, which as such, says nothing but [GESTURING] ‘what appears is good, what is good appears.’ 16

[ALL THREE SMILE]

SETH PRICE: [CURIOUSLY] Is it incumbent upon the consumer to bear witness, or can one’s art experience derive from magazines, the Internet, books, and conversation? 17

GEORGIO AGAMBEN: [THOUGHTFULLY, AND GESTURING WITH HANDS TO EXPLAIN] The being-such of each thing is the idea. It is as if the form, the knowability, the features of every entity were detached from it, not as another thing, but as an intention, an angel, an image. The mode of being of this intention is neither a simple existence nor a transcendence, it is a paraexistence or a paratranscendence that dwells beside the thing (in all the sense of the prefix “para”) so close that it almost merges with it, giving it a halo. It is not the identity of the thing and yet it is nothing other than the thing (it is none-other) [...] An eternal as-suchness. This is the idea. 18

SETH PRICE: [LAUGHS] What a time you chose to be born! 19

FADE OUT

THE CHARACTERS CONTINUE WALKING INTO THE DISTANCE BUT THE CAMERA STAYS STILL

FADE OUT

END SCENE

Footnotes:

1: Georgio Agamben. The Coming Community. Translated by Micheal Hardt.2007. http://www.mediafire.com/?wxmwgw2tddm P 14

2: Seth Price. http://www.distributedhistory.com/Dispersion2008.pdf

3: Georgio Agamben. ibid p 81

4: Guy Debord. Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. http://www.mediafire.com/?59ky4v5ngqv5s47 p77

5: Agamben. ibid p 81

6: Debord. ibid p 7

7: Agamben. ibid p 97

8: Price. ibid

9: Debord. ibid. p 73

10: Agamben. ibid p 17

11: Debord. ibid p 73

12: Price. ibid

13: Debord. ibid p 39

14: Price. ibid.

15: Debord. ibid. p 34

16: Agamben. ibid. p 86

17: Price. ibid.

18: Agamben. ibid. p 108

19: Price. ibid.

This post was contributed by Ella de Burca in collaboration with SPRINGBREAK.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler. 

The Deering Estate at Cutler recently held their annual Sobay Festival of the Arts celebrating the estate’s rich cultural heritage. The site of the former residence of philanthropist Charles Deering hosted a week of events that included exhibitions of Deering estate and LegalArt artists-in-residence as well as Wedding Crashers, a curated group exhibition informed by the site’s history. After a nearly month long “crashing” stint, the show’s great success and appeal deserves some consideration.

This year Special Projects Curator, Ralph Provisero decided to focus on the estate’s popularity as a wedding venue. The “wedding crashers” are the works of art that impose themselves onto the lush, natural, bayside landscape that is so attractive to wedding planners. For Provisero, “[w]eddings can be iconic images of momentary time. The preparation, the party and the aftermath are often based on grandiose images of fantasy or skewed reality.”

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

But in a more complex way, Provisero selected a group of works that also comment (in a broader sense) on the frail order of time and site – both urban and natural. The overarching sense of transfiguration touches on Robert Smithson’s notions of “entropy made visible,” a phenomenon the artist wrote extensively about as indicative of the conditions he observed in the post-war 1960s. Entropy, literally referring to the gradual deterioration of a system, also suggests change, even metamorphosis. For Smithson, over time the universe and any system were destined to decay into a state of disorder and banality. The extended history of the Deering estate that includes a sacred Tequesta Indian burial site, the railroad town of Cutler, a home to Charles Deering, and now a state-run museum and park dramatically illustrates the concept of entropy as a continuous state of transformation. For each history, decline heralded new structures that called for a re-purposing of the site and its space. What makes Wedding Crashers so successful and unique is that each of the works can be read as the artists’ (conscious or unconscious) responses to the entropic state of the site they occupy.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Frances Trombly’s Caution Tape demarcated a patch of lawn as off limits. Through prohibition, the uncannily realistic hand-embroidered “tape” activated an empty space abutting the main lawn frequently used for wedding receptions. Acting as one of the ultimate wedding crashers, Caution Tape contaminated an area of natural beauty with the suggestion that something potentially dark or putrid occurred there.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Similarly Robert Chambers’ Orange Unit singled out the use of natural landscape by surrounding towering palms with orange scaffolding. The scaffolding suggests something sacred about the trees and even disguised itself as a kind of natural reclamation project.  Chambers was one of the few artists to respond to the evolving ecological state of the site.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

One of the first artists selected by Provisero was Jason Hedges, whose work was best experienced on the opening night when Hedges provided guests with fresh barbeque cooked in an outdoor fire pit. The primordial experience of cooking red meat outdoors on rustic looking spits almost summons the Native American tribes and frontiersmen that once dwelled on that site. It was the kind of all day performance that intermittently made you forget you were even part of a performance.  For curator Provisero, Hedges’ environment served as an anchor piece for the exhibition and became a gathering spot for guests at  the opening. Vertical Spits was one of many interactive performances that occurred during opening day, but was definitely the most popular among those who attended. Who grumbles at free steak and ribs?

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Many artists chose the historic boat basin as their site, including Bhakti Baxter, Felicia Carlisle and William Cordova. The oval boat basin is an extremely popular backdrop for wedding photographers with its picturesque view of the bay and became the most obtrusive way to “crash.”  Baxter’s Untitled (Twin Finials) while large in scale were also among the more minimal responses to the theme. For many viewers, the sculptures seem to have always been there, like giant chess pieces marking either end of the basin.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Similarly undetectable was William Cordova’s amauta, a golden plaque mounted on cement blocks on the floor. Inside the main house is Cordova’s second work, pachacuti, installed in the room devoted to Deering’s former Spanish estates in Sitges, Spain. For his participation, Cordova embraced the diverse historical past of the Tequesta site as well as elements of Deering’s fascination and collection of Moorish religious artifacts permanently on view on the second floor of the main house. More than any other artist in Wedding Crashers, Cordova’s amauta and pachacuti embody minimal forms that propose complex considerations on the site’s scientific, ethnographic and cultural transformations. Part of the audience involvement comes from grappling with the uneasy mental negotiation of the decline and decay of entire cultures in the name of change. These concepts propose a version of human entropy that  unavoidably exists in such an intensely historic site.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Nearby the basin slumped Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova’s The Dereliction of a Habitable Structure on one end and Michael Loveland’s Red Right on the other. Rodriguez-Casanova’s sprawling structure embodies the very essence of urban entropy in one of the more direct examples in the show. A functionless sculpture made from everyday building materials lay dormant on the estate’s lawn like a monument to urban decay. The wave of chain-link fence fell onto the floor becoming almost invisible through the blades of grass. Michael Loveland’s Red Right is a quintessential example of entropic metamorphosis. Loveland re-purposed discarded ocean channel markers into a large abstract sculpture that maintained the function of its source materials in an entirely new form.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Some of the works in the show commented on the wedding theme more than others.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

Wendy Wischer’s Illuminating Tendrils 11 is representative of her reflections on the materiality of nature. The oscillating leaves of the silver orb simulated a disco ball hidden within the brush of one of the few spaces of manicured landscape on the estate. Rene Barge’s interactive Contact I and Contact II invited visitors to the opening to play a version of the children’s telephone game by being given various phrases to repeat to each other during the course of the night. The resulting twisted messages were recorded and broken down to incoherent audio impressions that were played back in a small niche in the Richmond cottage. The participatory act drew upon the speculation of idle wedding reception gossip. But more interestingly, it reveals the degradation and superficiality of human presence over time.

Courtesy of Deering Estate at Cutler.

The only artist to capitalize on the estate’s known paranormal history (and venture completely indoors) is Clifton Childree who occupied the estate’s prohibition-era wine cellar. The room, hidden behind a false shelf and a three-ton bank vault door once housed the kind of booze collection that would make anyone salivate.  Childree’s We Want Beer summons the ghosts of alcoholics past and present with a multimedia installation that takes you right back to the days of the desperate camaraderie that came from under cover drinking. Infused with the artist’s signature humor and nostalgia for vaudevillian theatrics. We Want Beer is comprised of a dilapidated cupboard presented by Dear Inc., (a play on Deering’s name and past as an agricultural equipment magnate). The cupboard is smashed and surrounded by piles of debris, overturned chairs and bottles as a shrine to some debaucherous past. We Want Beer also winks at the potential Bacchanalian nature of wedding receptions, which many attend solely on the promise of an open bar.

Wedding Crashers, being what is was, spread all over the grounds and with art works by estate artists integrated throughout, visiting the exhibition was both at times a little confusing and a little like an art show scavenger hunt. That said, the exhibition definitely made you work (and walk) a little more than other shows, and that is exactly what made it such fun[.]

This post was contributed by Melissa Diaz.

Image credit ARTLURKER.

CALL TO WRITERS!!

Hear ye, hear ye! ARTLURKER is again proud to host the Miami Writer’s Prize, an annual prize aimed at encouraging residents of Miami Dade County to write critically about art.

Continuing it’s effort to foster accountability through reinforcement of the blogging format this year’s prize will be judged by a panel of preeminent web publishers – Noah Becker (WHITEHOT MAGAZINE), Hunter Braithwaite (THEREISNOTHERE), Paddy Johnson (ARTFAGCITY) and Hrag Vartanian (HYPERALLERGIC).

To enter simply submit a review of a recent art related event to writersprize (at) artlurker (dot) com by May 4th 2012. The winner will receive an $800 stipend in return for an 8 post writing placement on ARTLURKER.com.

The winner will be announced via www.artlurker.com on May 18^th, 2012. An awards soiree in their honor will be held at Locust Projects’ new space at 3852 North Miami Avenue on May 24th, 2012.

DOWNLOAD the Press Release and Guidelines .pdf HERE.

For more information on the Miami Writer’s Prize, please go HERE.

Image: 2011 LAB (Locust Arts Builders) students, Photo: Chi Lam

Call to South Florida high school art students!

A s part of it’s fourteen-year commitment to provide an approachable arts venue to the South Florida community, Locust Projects hosts The LAB, an annual program that provides high school art students the opportunity to conceive, execute and present collaborative work in a public venue.

The LAB, made possible with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, made its inaugural splash last year and with the second round steaming ahead in Locust’s new 5,000 sq foot exhibition space we can safely assume the experiment as so far been a success.

Through this open call, Locust Projects’ Director hopes to select fifteen art students currently enrolled in local high schools. The students will then participate in LAB under the guidance of contemporary artist Monica Lopez de Victoria of the TM Sisters collaborative. Work by the students selected for LAB 2012 will be developed and exhibited exclusively at Locust Projects and will enjoy a dedicated public opening reception on July 14th to celebrate both the students’ involvement and the LAB program as a whole.

The goal is to promote contemporary art and project based learning as a means to encourage creativity, critical analysis, and problem solving, while building communication skills. This invaluable opportunity will allow young artists to learn the practical and exciting aspects of creating a public exhibition in collaboration with their peers[.]

How to Apply:

1 – Please fill out LAB application form (available here)

2 – Express your interest in The LAB and explain why you would be a good fit for this opportunity. (half page maximum)

3 – Images: 5-10 images of completed artworks or projects. Submit images on CD in .jpg format. Each file should be labeled with artist’s surname and image number to correspond with an image list. Image size should be under 2MB each. Please do not submit original artwork.

Send / deliver materials to: Locust Projects, Attention: The LAB, 3852 North Miami Avenue, Miami, FL 33127

Deadline: March 30, 2012 – applications must be received by 5pm

Applicants who do not submit all the required items may be eliminated from the review process.  Materials will not be returned.

For more information contact: info@locustprojects.org or 305.576.8570

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

Justin H Long, Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz and Eli Broad. Image courtesy Carlos Rigau @ the de la Cruz Collection.

F unner Projects recently closed their performance, Maintain Right, at the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space’s project room this month with a final 2 x 4 wielding performance of their large homemade crossbow in a project that combines elements of performance, participation and sculpture. The minds behind Funner Projects – Justin H. Long and Robert “Meatball” Lorie – greeted guests outdoors in a makeshift garage/ shooting range where they arranged some rudimentary bleachers and joked around with the audience while they hurled stick after stick of blonde 2 x 4 beams into human silhouettes on wooden boards. Taking time to tease the audience with a machete that they used to cut the line that launched each beam towards its target.

The crossbow performance was relocated to the de la Cruz from Little River Yacht Club, where it had previously been part of That’s Not a Knife earlier this year. The title, Maintain Right suggests a kind of momentum or thrust toward something new. It also doubles as cautionary advice to keep a safe distance from the firing area.

Robert “Meatball” Lorie and Justin H Long. Image courtesy Carlos Rigau @ the de la Cruz Collection.

The role of chance is also involved in the performance in that the guys are never able to precisely predict what body part on the silhouette will take the hit. They are able to tinker with the crossbow to try to meet the demands of the crowd, but with every firing came the anticipation that elements outside of their control would alter the course of the projectile. The Surrealists used games of chance in their practices to go beyond the consciousness of the author and attempt to reveal something deeper and perhaps more honest about art and human nature. Maintain Right uses chance to create suspense, excitement and ultimately… fun.

Could this be considered a form of highbrow Jackass? There are probably a hundred ways to sexualize that notion of a long 2 x 4 wooden beam being thrust into a silhouette. And perhaps on the surface, the spectacle of male bravado, humor and subtle violence could be interpreted along these terms. I suspect that may be part of the point. After all, Long and Lorie admit they were “raised on a steady diet of MacGyver and Grade 8 bolts.”

Robert “Meatball” Lorie and Justin H Long. Image courtesy Carlos Rigau @ the de la Cruz Collection.

The inherent carnivalesque nature of Funner Projects happenings set out to subvert what Long and Lorie refer to as “cookie cutter art.” Their events rely both on audience participation and the ability to re-create environments that are both socially engaging and which uphold the integrity that you’re looking at something art-like. In Maintain Right, there are always punctured wood boards on display that function as a record of the performance, even when the boys are taking a break.

Funner Projects like Maintain Right offer accessibility through absurdity – a kind of new democracy in the consumption of contemporary art. Rather than come up with a pretentious conceptual challenge under the banner of ‘institutional critique’ these guys go for a ‘less pretense is more’ attitude that proves to be more effective amongst the incessantly growing art walk crowd. Often relying on humor to lower their audiences’ defenses and creating a balanced environment between the experienced and novice art goers. The crowds at the Maintain Right performances during Art Basel Miami Beach week varied from affluent collectors and museum curators to young hipsters just “checking it out.” What made this phenomenon more intriguing than any other random art walk was that it actually had these heterogeneous art crowds stick around for more than one performance.

Robert “Meatball” Lorie and Justin H Long. Image courtesy Carlos Rigau @ the de la Cruz Collection.

The selection of Maintain Right for the de la Cruz project room was at first a little bewildering. The collection’s pristine 30,000 square foot-ultra-modern building would suggest the kind of art world sanctity that Funner Projects so adamantly rejects. This contrast, between site and artistic intention only heightened the experience making it an effective, albeit strange marriage. Funner Projects maintains the kind of authority over their environments that enable them to literally take their show on the road without compromising or losing intention because of location– a challenge for artists working in public performance-based installation. It is indicative of the trend contemporary art historian Miwon Kwon described as site-specific artwork becoming “unhinged from the actuality of the site” in her formative One Place After Another: Notes on Site Specificity[.]

The next leg of this performance will open in New York’s White Box art space, March 5- 23, 2012.

This post was contributed by Melissa Diaz.

Image credit www.mubi.com

W im Wenders movie “PINA”, currently showing at the Coral Gables Cinema, is a powerful movie about the about the late, innovative choreographer Pina Bausch’s work, the incredible artistic power of the artists she assembled and nurtured, and about dance, performance, and aesthetic principles that will almost certainly serve as signposts for the way the last century ended and the new one began.

Last Friday’s opening night, February 18^th, was marked by a dance solo in homage by  Miami dancer / choreographer Octavo Campos, who worked with Bausch in Germany in the 1990’s, and a live online message from Director Wim Wenders who was then in Seattle, but scheduled to be at the Coral gables Cinema now – on Sunday – for a question and answer session.

Octavio’s solo presentation was personal and moving, and a fine entry point for Wenders’ explanation of the 20 years it took to create PINA, from conception to filming: all because he felt that there was no way he could use cinemas to present the way that Bausch’s work had, as he said, completely changed his life. He concluded that the issue was a question of contrived cinematic space, and the way Choreography, and perhaps particularly Bausch’s work, exploit the incredible power of 3 Dimensional space and body volume in complex ways that defy 2 Dimensional representation.

He concluded that using 3-D technology would be the way to go and so on Friday, we all donned glasses usually associated with CGI Sci-Fi to experience an incredibly serious exploration of the figure of Pina Bausch, and the artists, many associated with her for upwards of 20 years.

Image credit www.theasc.com

The film intersperses extended bits of Bausch’s many famous Pieces, vignettes of her artists performing what appear to be self-choreographed, highly personal solos, often in forests, on urban transport, alongside canals, or in fantastical architectural environments. Imbued with the artistic depth of the dancers themselves they compose a kind of structural representation of Bausch’s work – deeply personal explorations of individual and collective turmoil, desire, fear, mortality, and above all love and vulnerability -  assembled in what has to be one of the most complex collaborations ever achieved.

This viewer was left feeling that the performances he had seen in New York and Paris were like the crumbs of a magnificent and on going banquet that took place in Wupoperthal Germany for so many years. It was Pina Bausch and her extraordinary and relentless vision that assembled these artists, kept them together, and helped them, by their own accounts, to go beyond limits, fears and boundaries, to create, collectively, an oeuvre that so deserves the acclaim that it universally receives. This movie is a very worthwhile event. Don’t miss it.

Coral Gables Cinema is located at 260 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134, across the street from Books & Books. Reach them on (786) 385-9689 / www.gablescinema.com / www.facebook.com/gablescinema

This post was contributed by David Rohn.

Dumpster on a vacant 3 acre lot South of NW 22nd Ln at NW 2nd Ave.

H aving just returned to Miami, I took a walk around the Wynwood Arts District this morning. Let me tell you, its so nice to see property owners and waste disposal companies doing their bit for the local vulture population! All parties responsible excluding individual food trucks have been contacted, but I’m still looking forward to my rat burger (or taco) next Second Saturday!

Separate trash pile on same lot.

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

Deathprint still, courtesy Aiden Dillard.

H ere follows a letter from Aiden Dillard, a Director of weird low-budget movies and a resident of Miami. While studying visual arts in New York at Cooper Union in 2003, Dillard transitioned from painting into film making. In 2006, while living in upstate New York, Dillard made his first feature film Meat Weed Madness, followed by its sequel Meat Weed America one year later. After relocating to Miami, Dilalrd made Deathprint (2009), and most recently Hell Glades (2012). Dillard also collaborates with Jay Hines (agurari) in noise music performances with their band Ballscarf.

Dear Artlurker,

Two years ago, I finished and presented my movie “Deathprint” to my adopted hometown of Miami, FL with a grand screening at The Colony Theater in South Beach to a sold out crowd. The movie featured many Miami scenesters, musicians, artists, and performers, whom I was honored to have collaborated with. The idea was fairly simple; to spoof the Charles Bronson helmed revenge classic “Deathwish”, using local car dealer Ted Vernon as the star, and Miami’s culturati as the pseudo Communist filth that he sought to destroy after the murder of his daughter at the hands of an insane artist named Arthur Basel, played by club promoter and actor Nassie Shahoulian. Famed fetish model RubberDoll lent her beauty and sex appeal to embody my ideal Miami policewoman, and the globe-trotting musician Otto Von Schirach’s charisma made him the perfect intermediary friend to both the hero Ted Vernon, and the villain Arthur Basel. The TM Sisters provided their unique artistic and performance talents to the production in their search for the killer of Ted’s daughter, which was orchestrated by the uncanny Clifton Childree who knew more then he was willing to share. Jillian Mayer played Ted Vernon’s murdered daughter with great innocence. A splendid art show called “Schadenfreude” was curated by my former Cooper Union classmate Daniel Newman, and featured literally dozens of Miami artists such as Jim Drain, Dara Friedman, Mark Handforth, Aramis Gutierrez, Daniel Arsham, Nicolas Lobo, Justin Long, Beatriz Monteavoro, Gavin Perry, Martin Oppel, Oliver Sanchez, and more. Gean Moreno also contributed to the show and made many faux “Communist Chic” props for the film such as glittery sickles and hammers and Castro silhouettes. There were many cameos that you all will enjoy, including one by Artlurker’s own Tom Hollingworth at the opening night of the “Schadenfreude” art show scene.

Deathprint still at the Schadenfreude exhibition, courtesy Aiden Dillard.

It was an honor to be trusted to represent so many creative people within this movie “Deathprint”, and I hope that none of my collaborators were ever disappointed with the final product. However, I do openly acknowledge that it was a great disappointment that the movie was not more commercially successful, and was never picked up for major distribution. I spent years trying to market it to major DVD distributors, but was not successful. When I was offered deals, there was not enough money involved to justify the release of exclusive rights as deemed by the film’s executive producers, who also grew very embarrassed with the film when they realized that it’s political commentary was satirical. Thus for years the film was essentially doomed to be imprisoned to a storage shelf, with no possibility of being seen ever, and with the executive producers determined to never let it be seen. It was heartbreaking to spend two years of my life to make a movie that was only seen for one night, and it even began to affect me emotionally and socially as I felt continually harassed by the film’s many participants to let them see it or to let them know when it would be available for distribution, when I myself was forbidden ever to even see it.

Aiden Dillard selling DVD’s, courtesy Aiden Dillard.

Those days are over now though, I have detached myself economically from my former producers, and I have fought for the right to release “Deathprint” into the world by selling and presenting it myself. To celebrate my new economic and creative freedom, I will be having a “Deathprint DVD Release Party and Screening” at O Cinema in downtown Miami at 90 NW 29th ST on Saturday February 11th at midnight after the Wynwood Artwalk. The tickets are $5 each, and I will be selling DVDs for $5 and t-shirts for $12, which is at a great discount from the typical online prices (DVD $12 & t-shirts $20). Please come out and party with me and the cast and crew of the film to see this unique oddity of Miami culture on the big screen. If it is absolutely impossible for you to attend the event then you can also find the film online. I listed it for sale on the film’s website at www.watchdeathprint.com, as well as listing it on my new distribution company’s website www.meatweed.com where you can find my other movies “Meat Weed Madness” & “Meat Weed America”, and my movies are also now listed on Amazon, and eBay, and in the real physical location of Sweat Records. As always, thank you for your support Artlurker. You can view the official trailer for “Deathprint” on Youtube with this LINK.

Sincerely,

Aiden Dillard.

Colin Foord of Coral Morphologic receives his Knight Arts Challenge 2011 Award from Alberto Ibargüen.

“Give us your best idea!” Say’s the Knight Arts Challenge 2012 accepting submissions Feb. 21 – March 19.

Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Art in the Everglades. Opera in unexpected places. Big Night in Little Haiti. Borscht Film Festival. Drumming lessons for Broward county school students. Young at Art Museum for Children. Cultural Passport for Miami Dade County Public School students. South Florida Composers Alliance. Free concerts in Miami Dade Parks. Exhibitions by exiled Cuban artists. Sight and sound installations by New World Symphony. Sleepless Night on Miami Beach. Gospel Sundays. Broward County Film Society. Florida Memorial Steel Band. Site specific art at Vizcaya. Miami Writer’s Prize.

What these programs and many more have in common is that they all won KAC Miami (Knight Arts Challenge Miami), a community-wide contest to find the best ideas for the arts in South Florida is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Knight Foundation created the five-year annual contest in 2008 to help bring the South Florida community together through the arts.

The contest is part of Knight Foundation’s five-year, $40 million Knight Arts initiative, conceived to add to the impact of the arts on South Florida’s community. Over the past four years, the Knight Foundation has invested almost $19 million. There are only three rules for applying: The idea is about the arts; the project takes place in or benefits South Florida; and applicants must find other funding to match the Knight Foundation grant.

Individuals, nonprofits and for profit organizations are eligible to apply. The Knight Arts Challenge will accept applications for the fifth round of it’s community grants contest between Feb. 21-March. 19, 2012.

Have an idea? Visit www.KnightArts.org. The two-question application is designed to be simple to attract applicants who aren’t traditional grant seekers.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote informed and engaged communities and lead to transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.