Monday December 31, 2007
Ay Miami at lastnightsparty, which really sort of captures it pretty well. Also: Paris in Miami. Plus, added lnp/miami to the links.
Critical Miami represented as a graph: Our man R. created this image, generated by Websites as Graphs, which represents all of the outgoing links on this here web page as a series of clusters. Explanation here, but the money shot is the annotated version at flickr, which explains what each cluster actually represents. Judging the accuracy is beyond me.
“I’m thankfully no longer with the company, and the last I heard the project’s delivery is now late by around 5 months. So, when your new Comcast Personal Web Pages sucks a fat donkey cock, you can blame the shitty management at Affinity Internet and the even worse decision making of Hostway Corporation. ¶ How’s that for professionalism?” — Alex Cabrera, who recently outed himself as the author of Habla Mierda, from his about page. Yowzer!
Friday December 28, 2007
New years eve weekend
Tonight
- Mars is the closest to the Earth it’ll be until 2010. Check it out tonight at Bill Baggs State Park, where the Southern Cross Astros will have high-tech viewing equipment set up for you to check it out on. Also showing: the Orion Nebula. More info here (scroll).
- Jazz at MoCA: Doug Walker.
- Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays.
- Plug Miami plus with the supposed last-ever show by Avenue D.
- Tonight and through February: Shows at the Spiegel Tent. Pictures and description of Absinthe theater.
Saturday
- Junior Orange Bowl Parade= in Coral Gables.
- Winter Nights and Lights at the Seaquarium, all weekend through new years’, plus including “a magical winter snowfall every 15 minutes” and fireworks every night.
Sunday
- Watch out, it’s the King Mango Strut. Photos from last year.
- Zen Art Faire at Wallflower.
- DocuSpain presents Balseros, a documentary about the 1994 mass-immigration from Cuba.
- I’m thrilled to tell you that there will be no stupid boat parade this year.
NYE Monday
- Lewis Black at the Fillmore
- R. Kelley at the American Airlines Arena. Catch him now before he goes to prison!
- OceanDance. Hollywood, and where I’ll be.
- Spam All-Stars and ANR at Studio A.
- Chucrchills: buncha bands plus a special edition of Eve Theatre de Underground.
- Bayfront Park’s New Year’s Eve with Conjuncto Progreso.
- Or head over to any watering hole you can find. Mucho events at the Herald, best bets, and more at the Sentinel. Also: New Years dinner options, and New Years parties.
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Thursday December 27, 2007
Be still my heart!: The audio archives of Tropical Currents with Joseph Cooper are online, going back to mid-2006. Thank you to Steve Malagodi and/or whoever made this happen. Check out the show from December 10th, about the housing market.
En vivo y en directo tracks 30+ reactions to the SotP closing, about as good a tribute as I can think of. Comments here.
Blogroll
Um, actually, I’m not sure what that means. But anyway, I made you something for Christmas — a re-shuffled right column, with links to other blogs. I had a whole complicated categorized system, and just simplified it at the last minute, so the whole thing is still pretty rough and in progress. Suggestions welcome.
Also, and this should go without saying: light posting for the rest of the week.
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Wednesday December 26, 2007
Housing prices are tanking faster in Miami then in any of the other 20 major metropolitan areas in the US: down 12.4% over the last year (vs. the 6.7% national average). The factors feeding the decline are scheduled to continue for 12 to 15 more months, so look for a bottom around the summer of 2009. (And don’t buy a home today unless you know what you’re doing, otherwise you’re almost guaranteed that it’ll be worth less in 6 months then what you paid for it.)
Grammar test: what is wrong with the first sentence of this article?
Christmas tree recycling instructions: if you’re served by Miami-Dade waste management, just leave it on the curb before January 25th. If not, drop it off at one of 14 collection points. Soon to come: free Christmas-tree wood chips! Update: And in Broward.
Carlos gives us the story Miami Lakes Vice Mayor Nancy Simon and the Miami Laker, which has now resulted in the Laker’s decision to stop covering politics in the town. The pertinent Herald articles are here and here. Petty small-town political coverup at its finest.
As requested, the Boyz of Bazel. There were 11×17 glossies of this floating around. Nice work, gentlemen. (via freegums, unless (update) somebody has a link to a larger version of this file??)
Friday December 21, 2007
Calvin Godfrey has your 305-legit last-minute holiday-shopping suggestions: Opa-locka flea market and Bay of Pigs gift shop.
Interview with Miami Fever.
Pre-xmas tension weekend
You’re not doint anything this weekend. You’re finishing up your holiday shopping, or, if it’s done, cowering indoors, becasuse everyone else is finishing up theirs. I was out Thursday morning, and the streets and stores were a madhouse. Imagine what Sunday will be like. Ho. Ho. Ho. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And no Christmas “events” here.
Tonight
- OK, one Christmas event: Seraphic Fire sings The Messiah at Carnival Center.
- BFA exhibition at the Frost Museum, FIU.
- Sheryl Underwood at Miami Improv.
- Yer annual Sweat Stocking Stuffer. Not an uninspired gift shopping opportunity, with cupcakes to boot. Oops, is this a Christmas thing?
- The Steadfast Tin Soldier at PlayGround Theatre, all weekend. OK, I give up.
- Important: began the Miami season at Spiegel Tent.
Saturday
- As long as we’re into the holiday spirit now, how about a gingerbread house decorating workshop at the Ritz-Carlton on Key Biscayne. You get masterful pastry-decorating instruction, refreshments, and a snappy RC apron to keep, for $50. Somebody please take pictures.
- Mano a Mano at the Carnival Center: the new school of clown.
- Plaid Xmas Edition at Churchill’s — the usual 20-odd bands, $5 admission, $3 if you’re wairing plaid.
- Otto Von Schirach and crew at PS14.
- Ursula 1000 at PopLife/White Room.
- Also, if you try hard enough, I am sure you will find The Nutcracker playing somewhere.
Sunday
- Nothing much. Did I mention that the weather will be hot all weekend? Maybe the ocean’s warmed up by today and it’s a good day to head to the beach. Stay away from the mall.
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Thursday December 20, 2007
Sites gone from the Miami scene that I’ll miss as much, if not more then SotP: Category 305, Boom or Bust, Miami Vision Blogarama. What the hell is going on here? Update: Celeste responds. Long story short, lots of snafus, but the archives of C-305 will be back up at some point.
“It should be noted that while the above outlined County obligations and terms represent the major elements, they do not constitute all of the provisions in the draft BSA [Baseball Stadium Agreement].”
— Michael Lewis explains how you, my dear tax-paying amigos, are soon to receive the anal reaming as it pertains to the Marlins stadium deal.
Comment moderation at Herald.com?
Storm clouds gather around the reader comment situation at Herald.com. It seems that the future holds a registration system and/or comment moderation for the Herald, and with the ratio of useless/offensive comments that currently plague the site, I can’t say that I see this as a particularly bad thing. But I would also encourage the Herald to borrow even more liberally from how comments work on blogs. For example, the few comment excerpts at the bottom of articles never correspond to the articles at the top of the comments page. And why have a separate comments page, anyway? But more importantly, there is a glaring fallacy here:
The number of visitors to MiamiHerald.com in November was up 66 percent from the year before, according to Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal, and registration might slow or even temporarily reverse such strong growth.
With all due respect, Mr. Schumacher-Matos, the Herald’s Ombudsman, is getting himself very confused: what’s putting the breaks on Herald.com readership is the registration system required for reading the site, which is not only invasive and tedious, but broken — I’ve personally repeatedly re-registered for the site, only to have it forget me after a couple of months. I’m back to using bugmenot to access it, which of course does nobody any good (like the slipshod “data” they collect with the system had a hope of being of any use to the Herald to begin with). The obvious non-controversial solution is to make the site as easy as possible to read, and require registration for commenting. Throw in a few simple social-networking features, and your offensive comments will decline drastically, and be much easier to enforce.
I do appreciate the difficulty of the Herald’s position here, though — deleting comments is tricky, because once you take an active role in comment moderation, you are more responsible, both in a commonsense way and in a legal way, for the comments that remain on the site. And of course journalists prefer to error on the side of free speech, reader-friendliness, and (more recently) “interactivity.” Of course in this situation, those three ideals stand somewhat in opposition to each other.
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Wednesday December 19, 2007
As promised, here is your photo of DJ HOTTPANTS, DJ Of The Future.
Anne Tschida asks the musical question, ‘Is Art Basel is, or is Art Basel ain’t Miami’s baby after 2010?’ Caution: this article is replete with words like “nascent.”
The SotP fiasco makes the Herald. A fairly ho-hum rundown of things, with quotes from Rick, CL Janh, and Val. Update: And some juicy speculation from Carlos Miller. For the sake of coherence let’s keep the comments here.
12 of Miami’s ‘future stars‘ in Ocean Drive, including Lolo, Colby Katz, ANR, and a number of “fashion and accessories designers.” (via whl)
Tuesday December 18, 2007
Ladies and gentlemen, your county commission is out of its collective fucking mind: They just approved $347 million for a new Marlins stadium (more then double what the actual team will contribute!), overrode the UDB veto (to allow building past the development boundary, and note that Katy Sorenson, Rebeca Sosa, Carlos Gimenez, and Dennis Moss are the only ones that stood up against development), and generally passed the whole downtown overhaul that was proposed last year. I’m with them on the streetcar and on Museum park, but not much of anything else. Update: The budget for the 800-unit replacement to the Scott and Carver housing projects can suddenly accommodate only about 150 units. (thanks, Carlos)
This article about the new Krome detention center has a video that was not at all worth the effort (wouldn’t work in Firefox, played in IE but crashed my browser when finished). The gist: conditions were appalling and people were dying, so congress made them fix the place up a little, but it’s still sort of a hellhole.
Sweat Records re-opening, plus Rachel Goodrich
I’ve been sitting on these photos for a couple of weeks, waiting for an opportunity to post them. The short version: The new Sweat record store (/coffee bar!) is impressive, with fully-stocked bins and empty-canvas walls, and the evening was lots of fun.
DJ Of The Future, Hottpants spins at the store. This is my second photo of Daniel that for some reason doesn’t include his face — to be remedied ASAP I promise!
Omar Sommereyns (right) shows off his baby, Map Magazine to Jesse Jackson. And attention: it really is very impressive. Please to direct your eyeballs and advertising dollars their way.
Here we go. So, count me forever among the hordes of Rachel Goodrich devotees. One nice thing about having 3751 MySpace friends is that when you play a show, the people that pack your house have an undeniable affection for you. Rachel returns that affection, and was as exited about her crowd as they were about her. Her songs are great, and her performance was homespun and rollicking. Typical between-song banter: “We’re going to fuck this next song up, but that’s okay, because you guys are drunk, right?!” Also, the kid seen holding the kazoo for Rachel in this picture was great. Perhaps a younger brother that got dragged along to help, he was perfectly bored-looking and reluctantly, eye-rollingly supportive throughout. Great bass player, too.
After a big autoharp number (“Can somebody run out to my car and get my autoharp?” (which actually happened)), Rachel closed with a sweet song on ukulele. Note the semi-audience, semi-crew guy holding her microphone. There were lots of these folks at the show, sort of like a living-room performance.
The Jacuzzi Boys, sort of a Velvets-influenced thing, but with stuffed birds, only good. Really. Going on tour in January, I see. Send us a postcard, gang.
Update: Article in the Herald.
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Monday December 17, 2007
Whoa: Homestead’s city commission just passed a moratorium on building in the city’s eastern portion.
The pile of rubble formerly known as the Sheraton Bal Harbor.
Can’t say I’ve ever given a thought to the plastic-wrapped plates of food that most restaurants on Lincoln Road display for would-be diners. Looks like the Miami Beach Commission has noticed, though, and decided to outlaw the practice on the grounds that it’s déclassé.
A few more noteworthy Art Basel reports: Rotund World, Art Fag City, NY Times on Concrete Waves, The Next Few Hours, Knoxville Art Blog. Also, some distant reflection from our man in California. (The “but is it art” thing was a joke, although I confess to enjoying the blurring of the line between art and prank, which probably makes me seem ever the less in possession of a clue re what the former is. So be it.)
Stuck on the Palmetto is dead. Rick chose not just to stop blogging, but to take all the old posts off the internet. No idea why. I’m very bummed out about all this, as plenty of others. Update: Carlos Miller weighs in.
Friday December 14, 2007
Kreamy 'Lectric Santa weekend
Friday
- Have you seen the Pablo Cano thing [pdf] at MoCA? You have until the 29th. $15.
- The Miami Gay Men’s Chorus holiday show, all weekend.
- More Andy Warhol movies at Miami Beach Cinematheque. Tonight: Vinyl.
- Miami International Conference on Torah & Science, if you please.
- The fucking legendary Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa returns to Miami for three shows. Oops — the first one was yesterday. Two — I give you TWO shows. Tonight and Saturday, plus a lineup of Miami’s best. Go both nights. I wonder if they’ll do any Christmas carols?
Saturday
- Vacant Lot. 7 short films screened at Tower Theater, then a “performance showcase” (?) at Circa 28.
- Hot Import Nights. Some car thing. I couldn’t yawn any wider.
- Battle of the bands finals at Studio A.
- Femme~Fest at Tobacco Road. I’m going to assume this is a night of performances by women’s bands, not a female-only party, but I couldn’t stand to look at their MySpace page long enough to confirm this.
- Roundhouse Miami looks awesome (rock show + video mashup at the planetarium), but $25? Ouch.
Sunday
- Alexis Valdés performs at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium. ¿En español?
- They have such crap in Broward: Symphonic music of Led Zeppelin. Wrong on so many levels. Who thinks this is anything but lame? Update: Brett O’Bourke thinks it’s just spiffy, thank you.
- Hey!: Anita Baker at the James L Knight Center.
- Battle of the bands finals at Studio A, night 2.
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Thursday December 13, 2007
The South Florida Water Management District is working on ranking the priorities of various elements of the Everglades restoration project, so that they’ll be ready as the budget of the program gets slashed. How’s that half-full glass looking, there? (And speaking of whom, we have a Rick sighting.)
What’s wrong with this picture? Northbound Biscayne Blvd. at 110th street. Thanks to Skip Van Cel, who says: “I do not believe there is a school nearby. It is either an official looking prank or maybe an art piece.”
On Miami Beach, hybrids will soon have designated spaces in some parking lots, and 25% discounts on parking fees.
Wednesday December 12, 2007
Miami Beach in the 1950s.
Chinese tourists robbed of $300,000 in jewelry. notice anything fishy about that line. Maybe this line will help: “The tourists said they were making a delivery to a buyer in Miami and they told police that whoever robbed them knew what they had in the car.” So, guess what, dude: if you and four of your “friends” are delivering 300 G’s worth of jewelry, you’re not a freaking tourist. And no shit they knew what you had in the car.
List of films and television shows set in Miami
CSA Week 3
I didn’t post anything about CSA last week because I was too busy. The haul was similar to the first week, with a few variations and one very nice surprise: a small jar of wildflower honey! Who knew they have bee farms down here?
This week brought more surprises — oranges! And: the first tomatoes of the season. Oversized organic cherry tomatoes. Also a big avocado, more green beans, scarlet turnips, parsley, and an overabundance of greens, (collards!), including Mizuna. Everything has been crazy delicious, but it has required a few adjustments. Most importantly, I had to set aside my kitchen-contraption aversion and buy a salad spinner. It’s not so much for the spinning itself, but you just need a easy way to very seriously rinse vegetables, because they sometimes come from the farm with more dirt then you’re used to seeing on vegetables. (Grit in your food = no fun.) A good colander in a big pot would have worked, but my colander is too big, and actually the spinner option is useful when stir-frying.
Here’s the gist of the cooking strategy: I cook up a great big pot of brown rice at the beginning of the week. It sits in the fridge. When I want to whip something up, I’ll dump the following into my cast-iron skillet over a little olive oil: some of the rice (sometimes I’ll substitute a hash-browns*), whatever rinsed and chopped vegetables seem like a good idea, and one or more of a) garbanzo beans, b) tofu, c) egg. The only trick here is the order that things go in. Some greens are delicate and ready-to-eat, and those go in at the very end, while others need a bit of cooking. Tofu benefits from a little browning, so if it goes it goes in first, while the garbanzo beans pretty much just need to warm through. So on.
One decent variation: throw some of the hash browns (see below) and green beans into the pan (wok works good, too) with a bit of chopped onion (note CSA: some delicious local onions would be nice, as would potatoes). Stir around until the potatoes brown a little and the onion turns clear. Chop some dill while this happens. When it’s looking good, add some garbanzo beans (oh sorry: “chick peas”). Now!: pour some white wine into the pan. This will sizzle and steam dramatically and make you feel like you’re doing some serious cooking. When the wine starts to boil a bit, sprinkle in some flour (this works nicely) and stir. That’ll thicken the wine into a sauce. Add the dill, some salt and pepper, and cook for 30 or 60 seconds more and BAM! Ready to go.
My mission for this week: catch up on eating as much of this stuff as possible, and get that fridge empty for Saturday. Meanwhile, two other bloggers doing much more interesting things with their CSA shares: Tinkering With Dinner and Miami Dish. And while I’m dropping links, everyone should go read Michael Poland’s article on how to eat, which I’m pretty sure I’ve linked before.
* Works like this: You take a potato, skin and all, wash it a bit, and coarse-grate it. Grab a handful, squeeze it over the sink to drain out as much water as possible, and fling it in a pan. Let brown. Sprinkle with salt and flip. Amazing hash browns.
Update: For those confused about what’s going on here, see the Redland Organics CSA page.
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Miami Fever’s photos from Photo Miami. (I just got dizzy typing that sentence.) Also, did you know that MF has a video stream? Here is a nice one of a South Beach club line.
Another glowing review of Sheba, the only Ethiopian restaurant in Miami. Here is the Meatless Miami review. I still haven’t been.
Tuesday December 11, 2007
Kites, Haulover Beach marina.
Port tunnel commercial
Something called, rather ominously, “Citizens for a Safer Miami” has produced this commercial in an effort to get the Miami City Commission to pitch in it’s $50 million contribution, which is something around 5% of the overall project’s budget. What is CfaSM? Who knows — a google returns exactly one result: the Herald’s article.
Can I get an Eye on Miami breakdown on this? (Of which, btw, ‘This Charter Review Task Force is a farce.’)
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Nothing in it for us, but look: Tropical Storm Olga, the 15th named storm of the season.
Monday December 10, 2007
What's up with an outing?
So, I’m a little bummed that many readers of Stuck on the Palmetto are going to think I had a hand in Rick’s threatened retirement/hiatus from blogging. Here’s what happened: Rick did a post with some stupid, pretty offensive shit in it (nothing new there). Bob Norman posted a response, the gist of which was, not only is this politically incorrect, it commits the even worse offense of not being funny. In the ensuing discussion, Bob said the following:
Otherwise, he’s a decent blogger — works his ass off on SotP, that’s for sure. By the way, Rick, who pays your salary to blog all day?
Having always wondered about this, I seconded the question. And here’s where it gets interesting: through some presumably long-ago private conversation, Bob actually knows who pays Rick’s salary. This caused Rick to interpret Bob’s question as a Threat to Out him. He promptly put up this post, and hasn’t been heard from since. It reads, in part:
The Daily Pulp’s Bob Norman, who knows exactly what I do for a living, has made, what I perceive to be a threat to that anonymity and today, Critical Miami’s Alesh Houdek piled on.
Now, I don’t doubt Rick’s sincerity — he seems genuinely spooked. But isn’t this a little of adding 1 + 1 and getting 4? Why in the name of the lord would Bob want to out Rick’s identity? And if he did, why would he threaten to do it, first? And even if he did want to make the threat, is simply asking the question, even winkingly, a threat? Frankly, I just don’t see it.
Many of the commenters at SotP seem to see it (or maybe they’re just empathizing with Rick’s alarm). Nobody has been able to really explain it but whatever. Listen up! Bob hasn’t outed anyone, not even close. All he’s done is made a remark that, were it not for the subsequent drama, would be transparently seen as off-handed. Also: I did not, do not, and have never known what Rick does, so the statement that I “piled on” just baffles me. Rick recently had a feature where he invited his readers to ask him personal questions, and now he’s freaked out by a personal question? And I’m being fingered as a secondary cause of his temporary (and make no mistake, it is temporary) quitting from blogging? Go figure.
Someone relatively new to all this asked me today about the beginning of the “arch-rivalry” between me and Rick. The truth is I don’t know. I think we both just enjoy arguing, and can find the few requisite things we disagree about. But honestly I’ve never felt anything like malice or hatred towards him; frustration is about as far as it ever goes, and my real reason for sparring with him is that it’s usually fun. The first blogger get-together was after one of the first of these apparently “vicious” exchanges, and we got along great then, so I’ve generally assumed that he feels the same. I’m bummed that he seems genuinely upset now, and I hope he realizes he just mis-read the situation, and hops back in the saddle soon.
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BTW, the two articles below are showing excerpts, because they were too long. Click “See full article” at the bottom of each for the whole thing.
Aqua, Wynwood, more Pulse, Geisai, Photo Miami, Aipad, Casa Lin, Art Miami
Shana Lutker’s Hear It Here, at Art Perform, was a bit of a dud, at least from the little bit I saw. Maybe it got cooking later, but for me it confirmed a long standing suspicion that performance art is much easier to pull off in a small enclosed space.
Wynwood: This piece is officially the best thing all week. A kid from Dash high school made it, and promised to send me his information, and of course didn’t hasn’t yet. But and so yes, they were offering to take people’s pictures, right there on the street. This skewers more things that deserve skewering in one stroke then most people manage in a career, and it brings to new heights to the “But is it art?” issue for dessert. Rock over London, rock over Miami, Mission Accomplished. Update: Ilan Wilson-Soler. Thanks to everyone who helped track him down, and thanks Ilan for the kick-ass piece. Let’s have more like this.
At Twenty Twenty, Jen Stark’s How to Become a Millionaire in 100 Days (answer: make 10,000 pieces of paper a day, which is exactly how this piece came about).
Did you hear of a fair called Fountain? Me neither, but I stumbled across it, and was pretty impressed. Here’s one of a few of David Opdyke’s great little sculptures.
William Lamson’s Vital Capacity. A guy is in a vertical chamber, encased in a box up to his neck, his face covered with up-facing spikes. Balloons get dropped on him, and he must keep them up as long as possible by blowing, because, imagine a constant barage of balloons popping right in front of your face. Great use of a vertical LCD.
Bob and Roberta Smith (what is up with those names?), 26.05.07 Never Trust an Hippie. I hope you can read this (and btw it’s over 100 inches wide).
It’s always a treat to see one of Robin Griffiths’ pieces.
Brandon Opalka’s mural covers the entire side of Dorsch. (It’s going to have to be a “to-see,” because my photo here just really isn’t doing it any justice.) Do we have a candidate for Largest Artwork in Miami?
THIS IS AN EXCERPT — CLICK BELOW FOR THE REST!!
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Moore space, Design Miami, Scope, Pulse
Wow… lots and lots to get through here. And I’m leaving out lots more great stuff. Tonight is the party in the Design District/Wynwood, otherwise try to make it to the Positions party — I have photos from last night which I’ll post later, but it was wacked out. OK, here’s yesterday:
Moore Space: Claire Fontaine, Instructions for the Sharing of Private Property. An actual, unabashed, lockpicking how-to.
Loris Greaud, Illusion is a Revolutionary Weapon, M46 paint ball gun with IKB (International Klein Blue) paint balls. Can you imagine?
Design Miami: DM takes itself very very seriously, but that’s not to say there isn’t great stuff to see, both from a practical/beautiful and a spectacle perspective. Lodged firmly in the latter, Demisch Danant’s concrete chair.
“Designer of the Year” Tokujin Yoshioka’s Chair that disappears in the rain. Much more about Yoshioka’s gorgeous installation here.
Scope: As always, Scope rocked. To boot, at least 6 Miami Galleries (7?) have set up shop there. Here’s Shang Hui’s fiberglass Mermaid. She has a temple on her head.
Didn’t catch the artist or gallery (shame on me), but here’s a ~4 foot paper airplane carved from marble. Shocking craftsmanship.
Li Wei, Bright Apex.
IN THE INTEREST OF SPACE I’M HIDING THE REST OF THESE AFTER A BREAK.
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Friday December 7, 2007
Basel weekend
Mostly Art Basel stuff, with a few odds thrown in. Let’s do this like a schedule. Note: the 5:30 and 8 pm performances are at Positions, which is at Collins avenue between 20 and 21st streets.
And of course there are the fairs. Spring $30 for Art Basel if you can, $12 for Scope if you can’t. But there’s tons of great free shit to do too — The Video/Sound lounge is free, as is the Positions area. That alone could keep you pretty well occupied (see below) but a number of the other fairs are free, with NADA probably the best bet. See my Art Basel guide for normal people from last year.
Tonight
- 5:30 pm Roman Ondak’s Concealed Episode, a performance that “looks at South Florida’s particular relationship with Cuba. . . . Ondak will transform the stage of Art Perform into a target area for a Cuban parachutist. The parachutist will jump out of a small airplane circling the sky above South Beach.” (free)
- 6pm: The Video Lounge presents a 2-hour screening of Miranda July videos! (free).
- 6 – 11 pm: Skate performances, DJ, open-air cinema, and “Art Radio WPS1.org live broadcasts” at Positions (free).
- 8 pm Laura Lima’s Ball Miami — the artist will recreate the 1581 painting Ball at the Court of Henry III, with a set and costumes that the audience (that’s YOU) can wear. (free)
- 8:30 pm Art Loves Architecture: Jacques Herzog, Doug Aitken, and Terry Riley discuss art and architecture. At the Colony Theater. Free, but need to get tickets at Basel information desk asap.
- Interclub at Miami Beach Cinematheque. This is happening daily, with a different combination of events (free).
- The Rapture Festival, an apparently huge electronic festival somewhere in the SW. More information at ICQ channel 5574910.
- Studio A: Ariel Pink(!) plus other bands, incl. local Dino Felipe and ANR (who I think live in the back of Studio A now). (Sorry, I fucked up and had this listed under Saturday. Everyone who missed the show hates me now, and I’m SORRY!!)
Saturday
- 10 am: Art Conversation: Women in Art. At the Convention Center. (free)
- 5:30 pm Shana Lutker, Hear It Here “takes many of its cues from the current Presidential campaign in the United States. For the performance two male actors wearing headphones will stand on a stage in front of a microphone under a large carnival-like banner that reads ‘The Voice of Reason‘. Facing the audience, are two microphones, each feeding directly into the headphones of the actors, that the audience is encouraged to use. The audience members are free to speak into the microphones and the actors on stage repeat what they hear in the earphones. The actors dramatize the audience’s statements, which can only heard by the actors such that the larger audience will not know for certain whether the actor is faithfully repeating the audience member’s words. Since each audience microphone leads to a different actor, the audience could make the actors perform a dialogue or debate. They can make them sing, or fight, or address the audience directly. The posted questions and the props on the stage will lead the audience or actors in certain directions, but the overall effect of the event will be unknown and unplanned.”
- 6 – 11 pm: Skate performances, DJ, open-air cinema, and “Art Radio WPS1.org live broadcasts” at Positions (free).
- 8 pm Donald Urquhart’s Palace of Tears about half a dozen songs interspersed with comical anecdotes and reflections on misery directing the audience’s emotions uncomfortably between laughter and sadness. Cotton handkerchiefs will be provided. (free)
- 8:30 pm: Art Loves Film: The new film ‘Berlin’ by Julian Schnabel, in honor of, and attended by, Lou Reed(!), who, in case you’re wondering what he looks like these days, this. Dude is 65 and still a bad ass. At the Colony Theater. Free, but need to
get tickets at Basel information desk doubleplusasap.line up as early as possible at the Colony — it turns out there are no tickets, and it’s first-come seating. - 9:30 – midnight: Butch Queen Realness with a Twist in Pastel Colors Video Show video montage of “non-stop, non-repeating footage drawn from a variety of sources including music videos and television shows, film of club nights, other artists’ videos, dance performances, abstract designs, and animations.”
- Interclub at Miami Beach Cinematheque. (free)
- Isn’t this the night every year where the whole world descends on Wynwood/Design District for a huge multi-block party? Am I wrong??
- Circa 28, of course.
- DJ set by Moby at Studio A.
- Also!: Flock, presented by iSAW (so you know it’ll be good).
Sunday
- 10 am: Art Basel Conversations: Art Critics, Criticizing Art Criticism (or something). At the Convention Center. (free but they should pay you to attend, right?)
- Interclub at Miami Beach Cinematheque, the Andy Warhol special (Blowjob). (free)
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Thursday December 6, 2007
Miami Beach Parking Receipt Generator. Supposedly they’re on to this, so it’s just for fun. (via) Update: MBPRG got p0wned.
Rather then do a second one, I’ve updated yesterday’s post with photos from NADA and the Stooges show. More later!
Wednesday December 5, 2007
Art Basel day 1
The gates open at noon sharp on Wednesday for the uber-elite guests. Here they are moments before, crowded into the convention center’s lobby. The regular-elite get in at 2 pm, the merely special go to the Vernissage at 5 pm, and the riff raff gets in starting Thursday.
I bring this one up because my man Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the big photographers at the fair. I saw Nice work by Candida Hoffer and Gursky as always, but Tillmans was all over the place. The far wall in this picture shows one of his quintessential photo arrangements, albeit all in frames. The still-lives absolutely slay. (neuger-riemschneider gallery)
The usual suspects at White Cube were rounded out by a huge nazi/horror movie diorama by Jake & Dinos Chapman.
Two magnetized cubes suspended in a corner. Jeppe Hein, 303 Gallery NY.
At von Senger, a concrete-drawing robot. Not a very smart roboy (they had to re-position him once in a while), but he makes up in art brawn what he lacks in brains, yes?
Lara Favaretto. Yes, she wrote that on a wall with a marker and called it art. What are you going to do about it? (“Dimensions variable,” of course.) This is at Galleria Franco Noero, where I also very highly recommend Simon Starling’s “Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty Five,” A projection of a film made by a motion-control camera panning around an exquisite chair, and accompanying diagram. Don’t take my word for that one — check it out.
Last one from Noero — Andrew Dadson’s flowers in black water. Do try this at home.
Arshile Gorky (from 1946) at Matthew Marks Gallery.
At De Carlo gallery, they are probably hating having installed this fake ATM with abandoned baby in silicone. Not to disapoint, attendees kept trying to use the ATM, and ignored the baby in a basket. Hey! How are you so sure that one’s real and that one’s fake!?
George Herold’s paining, Acrylic and bricks on canvas (with, I’m assuming, some sort of Herculean frame and substructure). Aizpuru, which also had more of that rockin’ Wolfgang Tillmans.
At maccarone, an installation dedicated to the Mass MoCA / Christoph Büchel fiasco, mostly framed court documents, e-mails, and a printout from NYTimes.com.
Also there: huge chocolate Santas with dildos butt plugs. also available in a convenient 1’ size. Yawn.
New this year: Art Supernova, a separate little section where each gallery’s art is separated from their storage and office areas, resulting in supposedly a more museum-like atmosphere. Well, slightly. Anyway, here’s a guy who’ll be performing hair sculptures all week. Stop by for a trim.
Nina Katchadourian’s Continuum of Cute. You’re not seeing the whole thing, but it goes from left to right and from top to bottom. Not sure if you can rearrange them to your liking.
A couple of Felipe Barbosa’s soccer ball sculptures. Too many people to get a good photo of his great wall-hanging.
ShanghART never disappoints. This year: Xu Zhen’s reconstruction of an Asian market. Far as I can tell, stocked with real groceries.
Update: Rather then do a new post, here are pictures from later in the day, NADA and the Stooges show:
Note: this is an animation! Three of these in a row, with discretely concealed projectors, at Vacio 9. Very nice.
This spaceman was part of an interesting installation at Ballroom Marfa.
Wilfredo Prieto’s El Tiempo es Oro/Time is God, at Martin Van Zomeren — this watch, suspended from the ceiling by a very long chain, in an otherwise empty and gray-painted booth. Appears to be accurate.
Gnarly balsa-wood sculptures at Roebling Hall. Yes, it’s about cutting wood, but it’s also about the 16 oz. beer can.
Yuken Teruya.
Blow de la Barra’s radiant booth.
Latest from Ian Burns. If you’re not familiar, it’s live video that’s generated by contraptions made from household objects. This one is a jet (Air Force One!) flying through a storm. It involves a tiny camera, live feed, a toy airplane, spinning background, haze effects (a spinning plastic cup between the camera and airplane, and several motors to make the whole thing shake and jostle for effect. Mesmerizing.
Graham Hudson’s Five Tools, which requires no explanation except that the tape measure at the bottom is about a quarter inch from the ground.
André Ethier, at Derek Eller Gallery.
I was required to post something from this gallery because it’s Czech: Jan Kotik, Coat of Arms of Le Sievr de la Mothe Cadillac (1658-1730), Hunt Kastner.
Yes, it’s the Stooges. They were really great, and it’s difficult to imagine Iggy ever in his life having less energy then he had last night. Another thing I learned — lots of kids are into the Stooges way more then I am. They were psyched.
Some well-orchestrated “mayhem.” Folks were invited onstage for one number, then invited back off before the show continued. Still not bad, and people were rowdy! I got hit in the head with a stray flying bottle, which some kid promptly dove for and threw back in the direction of the stage. Also: I think the Stooges played ‘I wanna be your dog’ like three times.
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Everglades anniversary
Everglades National Park celebrates its 60th anniversary tomorrow. As we pointed out a couple of weeks ago, the restoration of the park is in serious turmoil, and the latest is that the Army Corps of Engineers are trying all sorts of tactics to get elected officials to pony up the necessary money.
There is a lesson here about green accounting, and the true cost of the choices that we make as a society. Unfortunately we are not yet at a point of looking realistically at this stuff. Alas, our choices now are to bite the bullet or to let the wilting of the ‘glades continue (I’m looking at you, piss-on-the-UDB Miami-Dade commission). I hope we choose right and make Marjory proud. Anywho, I stopped by last weekend and got this photo.
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Tuesday December 4, 2007
The state of Florida has formed a partnership with Google to create an app to help people find state information on the web. I have a better idea: why not overhaul the state’s websites so they’re spider-crawlable. “Database-based” is no excuse: Critical Miami is database based, and Google does pretty damn well with it, in case you haven’t noticed.
Art Basel the links
Installing something impressive in the Botanical Gardens across from the Convention Center.
OK folks, you know the drill. I’ll be delivering coverage from the show all week, more comprehensive information, and sometime Thursday or Friday, the “Art Basel guide for normal people.” For now, let’s get started with some links, of to which I will be adding later:
- The Herald’s disappointing special section, with a couple of semi-relevant articles, an impossible to use events database, a stupid “art quiz,” a prominent link to itself, and a semi-useful interactive map, which frankly just doesn’t do very much. A couple of interesting bits here, though.
- That’s right: 20 art fairs (plus a couple of things that don’t really count). Of note: Art Miami bit the bullet and changed its calendar to coincide with this week. Moved to a tent, too. High expectations for Scope, which rocked last year. Photo Miami moves to a tent (AIPAD moves into its old space).
- Miami Provocateur has links to all the big ones, and a few more notes.
- Plum TV, on the other hand, is running around getting good coverage. Overview, the elusive comprehensive list of Satellite Fairs (23 listed, not counting AB).
- NYTimes tribute to Sam Keller& (and click around — the whole weird little applet seems full of interesting stuff).
- Art Basel: the Superbowl of art, the Lollapalooza of international art fairs, an art Costco for billionaires
- The tribes of Art Basel Miami silliness.
- Art Basel the official site, which has a big events PDF for you to download.
- And note: (IGGY AND) THE STOOGES free concert on the beach (at Positions) TOMORROW 10 pm!!!!
Updates:
- An overview of Art Basel and the Miami art scene at Smithsonian.com.
- A collection of articles at Haute Living.
- Something comprehensive-looking at MA2Dweek, including, like, hotel availability ($6,000 per-night suite available at the Setai, if you’re wondering).
- Duran’s an idiot’s guide to Art Basel for locals looking for a good time.
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Monday December 3, 2007
Carnival Cruiselines is claiming that John Heald’s Blog “has consistently ranked in the top 25” of blogs, which I find pretty amusing, considering that Technorati ranks it #121,630.
Here’s the model of the new Herzog and De Meuron Miami Art Museum building. Not pictured: some of the vertical columns are hanging vegetation. Looks spectacular, although I didn’t make it to the museum this weekend to see for myself.
Hey everybody it’s art fair week. Local galleries in Basel: Emmanuel Perrotin, Kevin Bruk (in Nova), Gavlak (West Palm Beach, in Positions). Snitzer is autoselected since he’s the selection committee’s resident Florida expert.
Eight county commissioners voted in support of development beyond the Urban Development Boundary last week: Bruno Barreiro, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Audrey Edmonson, Barbara J. Jordan, Joe Martinez, Dorrin Rolle, Natacha Seijas, and Javier Souto. To echo Verticus: “They should be ashamed of themselves.” Update: The proposals are now forwarded to the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which usually gives these things the thumbs-down, but get this: their approval is just another recommendation back to the county commission for a final vote in April. Good grief.
