I See the Spotlight in You Opening Night
Miami, 2018
Miami is a hot world without mountains and a long rainy season. Miami Beach was like a temple to Larry Caligula Flynt. Miami is too remote - there’s the city, the Everglades, the Keys, and the sea. The state itself is Trumpian and racist. I felt blackity black in FL, not Berkeley Black which was to grow up on Cheeseboard pizza, Parliament, and progressive ideas.
The MIA is corrupt, lawless, prone to the wrath of God, too dark at night, and there’s too many weird bugs I couldn't identify. I did enjoy other wildlife like iguanas, wild peacocks, manatees, alligators, and egrets. I would stalk peacocks because they are quite beautiful in person. I became a peacock groupie.
The Miami art scene is small; a kind of high school social hierarchy. It’s its own little mixed generation universe of weirdos, punks, and bougie hipsters. All were of variable background and aesthetic values. As hip, woke vocabulary evolved so did Miami's, but within a Miami context. Where we say BIPOC in the west, Miami would say Afro-Caribbean, African-American or Latinx, being a more accurate description of its population.
Join us for a community activation celebrating the interdisciplinary diaspora narrative.
The Miami art scene is small; a kind of high school social hierarchy. It’s its own little mixed generation universe of weirdos, punks, and bougie hipsters. All were of variable background and aesthetic values. As hip, woke vocabulary evolved so did Miami's, but within a Miami context. Where we say BIPOC in the west, Miami would say Afro-Caribbean, African-American or Latinx, being a more accurate description of its population.
Mami and papi, I would learn, was a term of endearment for non-white people. I thought it was corny, a slang I associated with the NYC suavecitos. Then I realised there is a sense of belonging expressed in the mami and papi. It's the sweeter equivalent of brother or sister. One just is.
There were a lot of art words for art people. Activation meant to get people involved in something active. The narrative is the story expressed in an artist's work. Diaspora was another since almost everyone in Miami is a part of one diaspora or another. Community was often used since everyone was a part of the place.
I could move nouns and adjectives around and have the same impact. That was another art scene word Miami liked, which came from tech capitalism. My favorite usage was storm impact windows. I think of Storm from X-Men making an impact because she's a bad bitch.
The infuenceters in Miami were collectors, the glam and hip artists and galleries. One had to be strategic about which young and emerging artist to feature. Others, like the gem humans I worked for, would be experimental or academic. The rockstars of the moment were Black or Latinx artists doing mind blowing installations or mixed media. Frankie did one of a the lifecycle of the monarch with a greenhouse at the Museum of North Miami. Another amazing group exhibition was The Other Side of Now: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Perez Museum. Wynwood had been the center of the art scene until it turned into a tourist destination for graphic prints of flamingos, splatter pop art graffiti, overpriced coffee, and mannequins tempting the Supreme Gucci superstar DJ-skater-stripper by night.
Between Overtown and Little Haiti, Wynwood was a mecca of the young, tech savvy youth who partied at the beach or went to the gym. Every trendy boutique blasted electronica and reggaeton. Yeezy sneakers were more popular than Air Jordans with the young set. A lot of young girls and women looked like variations of either Cardi B or a Kardashian. No one is particularly blonde in Miami. They had a different language than my generation: a person was hot, not beautiful or attractive. A party was lit, not just fun. A bad situation was hella sketch, not just awful ( somehow through social media and human migration, young Miami picked up a Bay Area slang adverb ). The young Miamian also used the improbable irregardless, which meant regardless, in a statement.
Sex was going on all the time in rapid fluidity either through hook-ups or by transaction. Sexuality itself was fluid, but less overt than more progressive cities. Miami culture, in general, is traditionally Latin straight-centered with a body commodity since a lot of people can make money being scantily clad.
The infuenceters in Miami were collectors, the glam and hip artists and galleries. One had to be strategic about which young and emerging artist to feature. Others, like the gem humans I worked for, would be experimental or academic. The rockstars of the moment were Black or Latinx artists doing mind blowing installations or mixed media. Frankie did one of a the lifecycle of the monarch with a greenhouse at the Museum of North Miami. Another amazing group exhibition was The Other Side of Now: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Perez Museum. Wynwood had been the center of the art scene until it turned into a tourist destination for graphic prints of flamingos, splatter pop art graffiti, overpriced coffee, and mannequins tempting the Supreme Gucci superstar DJ-skater-stripper by night.
Between Overtown and Little Haiti, Wynwood was a mecca of the young, tech savvy youth who partied at the beach or went to the gym. Every trendy boutique blasted electronica and reggaeton. Yeezy sneakers were more popular than Air Jordans with the young set. A lot of young girls and women looked like variations of either Cardi B or a Kardashian. No one is particularly blonde in Miami. They had a different language than my generation: a person was hot, not beautiful or attractive. A party was lit, not just fun. A bad situation was hella sketch, not just awful ( somehow through social media and human migration, young Miami picked up a Bay Area slang adverb ). The young Miamian also used the improbable irregardless, which meant regardless, in a statement.
Sex was going on all the time in rapid fluidity either through hook-ups or by transaction. Sexuality itself was fluid, but less overt than more progressive cities. Miami culture, in general, is traditionally Latin straight-centered with a body commodity since a lot of people can make money being scantily clad.
The local news wasn't very interesting to me. There would be an ' alligator invades a backyard pool' story or an ' iguana falls dead from a tree during a cold snap' story, or a high speed chase on the causeway because life really is like Grand Theft Auto. One hilarious story I came across involved a player for the Miami Dolphins.
He got rooked by two prostitutes and somehow someone got the transcript of his 911 call. He left the two girls alone in his house to go workout, he said. When he returned they had ransacked the joint of jewelry, cash, clothing, video games, and gear.
Dispatch: Sir, how much would you say was the value of your personal property?
Quarterback: Oh uh...like $ 1 million, you know what I'm sayin?
In Miami, nothing was happening or going to happen without social media. Its use was crucial to market an exhibition or event. Email, like reading, was fast becoming obsolete with young Miami. Latin millennials were so slick, they would hack a free rent promo at a trendy luxury condo, live out the promo timeline, and then bounce. They didn't have to worry about the consequences of breaking a lease or their FICO score, which doesn’t exist in Argentina or Colombia. The family that owns the FICO patent are from Marin county in the Bay. No surprise there!
At the gallery, I worked for a super cool couple who met at the first iteration of the gallery in Wynwood in the mid 90s. They were good people in partnership with a shared loved of art. After they remodeled and sold the Wynwood building, they moved up to Little Haiti into a another that had once been a gas station. They gutted it and turned the main space into a gallery with two adjacent studios. One was rented to a bookmaker and publisher, the other to a master printer who became a good friend I nicknamed Farmer Tom. Tom, like Pops, was from Detroit. I think that's what drew me to Tom - he had a soulfulness about him. Talking to him was like listening to a philosopher-printer.
I started doing basic administrative tasks in prep for the next exhibition. Then the installation phase began. Installs could be hard and complex depending if it was a group or solo show, its context and theme. During the installation phase, days could easily go into 10 - 12 hour stretches. Once the show had been curated, the installers came in. My job was to help coordinate and be the point person on site.
We were cool after that. It’s a hobby of mine taking the salt out of men who think they’re the shit. What are women doing in other places? Where are we from, indeed? These are good questions.
A few installers were part of the noise punk scene that was at its peak between the 90s - mid 2ks. I heard shows were chaotic, fun, and experimental. One of my favorite shows at the gallery was a group show of several artists and musicians called I See the Spotlight in You. They were a squad of men and one woman who went back over 20 years together. They had fascinating stories of the drug wars, dead bodies, and noise shows at Churchill's Pub. Cocaine Cowboys is a trippy, low-budget documentary about 80s and 90s Miami.
‘ I once saw a crack house on fire.’ Cliff, who curated the show, told me. ‘ Completely engulfed in flames! No one came - no MFD, no cops. The street was deserted and I just watched it burn. No one was in there. That was one of the saddest and most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.’
The one woman was Jan of Jan & Dave, a popular noise band duo that played on opening night of Spotlight. Their theme was mosquito surfers. They had been together for years; weird avant garde punks devoted to irony and sarcastic theater through rock n roll. They made awesome mosquito props to decorate their amps, fake blood splattered around the stage, on their instruments, into their faces, and at the audience.
At the gallery, I worked for a super cool couple who met at the first iteration of the gallery in Wynwood in the mid 90s. They were good people in partnership with a shared loved of art. After they remodeled and sold the Wynwood building, they moved up to Little Haiti into a another that had once been a gas station. They gutted it and turned the main space into a gallery with two adjacent studios. One was rented to a bookmaker and publisher, the other to a master printer who became a good friend I nicknamed Farmer Tom. Tom, like Pops, was from Detroit. I think that's what drew me to Tom - he had a soulfulness about him. Talking to him was like listening to a philosopher-printer.
I started doing basic administrative tasks in prep for the next exhibition. Then the installation phase began. Installs could be hard and complex depending if it was a group or solo show, its context and theme. During the installation phase, days could easily go into 10 - 12 hour stretches. Once the show had been curated, the installers came in. My job was to help coordinate and be the point person on site.
The installers were a gang of artists and musicians themselves who could do the craziest things by cleat, fabrication, wiring, build-out, knocking out walls, buzz saws, hammers, drills, ladders, lighting, or with a scissor lift. The more complex an installation, the better. Most were Gen X mad scientists, a few were older millennials with the DIY analog ethos of a Gen Xer. While I worked on the back-end with images, I was also their back-up if they needed a hand. We’d geek out on music and I’d put on a fun playlist - 80s metal or hip hop, punk, 1970s rock, or funk.
‘ And where are you from?’ One geezer punk asked me.
Sigh. ‘ Berkeley…California.’ in my best friendly-fuck you tone.
The look on that dude’s face was priceless. Within seconds he processed that I was from a part of the country others may aspire to. Miami inspires images of Escobar and Miami Vice. Berkeley inspires images of academia and Philip K. Dick. What did you expect, homie? Minnesota? Illinois?
‘ And where are you from?’ One geezer punk asked me.
Sigh. ‘ Berkeley…California.’ in my best friendly-fuck you tone.
The look on that dude’s face was priceless. Within seconds he processed that I was from a part of the country others may aspire to. Miami inspires images of Escobar and Miami Vice. Berkeley inspires images of academia and Philip K. Dick. What did you expect, homie? Minnesota? Illinois?
We were cool after that. It’s a hobby of mine taking the salt out of men who think they’re the shit. What are women doing in other places? Where are we from, indeed? These are good questions.
A few installers were part of the noise punk scene that was at its peak between the 90s - mid 2ks. I heard shows were chaotic, fun, and experimental. One of my favorite shows at the gallery was a group show of several artists and musicians called I See the Spotlight in You. They were a squad of men and one woman who went back over 20 years together. They had fascinating stories of the drug wars, dead bodies, and noise shows at Churchill's Pub. Cocaine Cowboys is a trippy, low-budget documentary about 80s and 90s Miami.
‘ I once saw a crack house on fire.’ Cliff, who curated the show, told me. ‘ Completely engulfed in flames! No one came - no MFD, no cops. The street was deserted and I just watched it burn. No one was in there. That was one of the saddest and most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.’
The one woman was Jan of Jan & Dave, a popular noise band duo that played on opening night of Spotlight. Their theme was mosquito surfers. They had been together for years; weird avant garde punks devoted to irony and sarcastic theater through rock n roll. They made awesome mosquito props to decorate their amps, fake blood splattered around the stage, on their instruments, into their faces, and at the audience.
Dressed up as mosquitoes themselves, they screamed into their mics about being a surfing mosquito from Mars who sucks the life out of humans. While younger people stood dumbfounded ( What the fuck is going on? Where is DJ Aoki? This is weird. I can’t put old people on my Instagram! ) The Gen Xers and Boomers in the room were cracking up.
What an awesome night that was!
The hardest installation went on for an entire arduous month. It was a conceptual solo exhibition by a Spaniard who was doctoral candidate at Goldsmith's in London. The artist's dissertation was a mix of what humans ingest relative to our environment ( hair, microbes, bone, blood, sodium, dirt, et al ) the geology of the region, sculpture, and grillz, trap rap bling, which is rooted in African adornment. The Spaniard had done research for a few months between Colombia and Haiti.
What an awesome night that was!
The hardest installation went on for an entire arduous month. It was a conceptual solo exhibition by a Spaniard who was doctoral candidate at Goldsmith's in London. The artist's dissertation was a mix of what humans ingest relative to our environment ( hair, microbes, bone, blood, sodium, dirt, et al ) the geology of the region, sculpture, and grillz, trap rap bling, which is rooted in African adornment. The Spaniard had done research for a few months between Colombia and Haiti.
My job was to support the artist with setting up a workshop for others to make small clay sculptures called bocadillos for the exhibition, source materials and supplies, and show them around the city's local and historical spots.
Then we went on the hunt for iguanas parts. For a fauna aspect to the show, the Spaniard wanted to use iguana tails submerged in tubes with formaldehyde as part of the exhibition. I remember getting formaldehyde was impossible since it's a controlled compound. The artist sourced another viscous synthetic material called formalin to the preserve the tails.
Four of us drove up to Broward to meet an iguana hunter. Apparently there are iguana and python hunters in FL because both are invasive species to the region that destroy vegetation, takeover swimming pools, and eat other native creatures.
The iguana hunter was a FL bro who drove a black 4x4 truck and set-up shop in part of a warehouse in Broward. Iguanas are beautiful to me up close, but to him they were just his line of work - like a bone collector. He told us he was a 3rd generation hunter himself. We got several tails from the iguana hunter and stored them at Jake's house in a freezer. Jake was the genius-muscle at the gallery. It was his job to help rig or engineer whatever hairbrained scheme someone came up with ( moving parts, lighting, and sound ).
Jake was a skate-punk who liked Slayer growing up in New Mexico. He joined the navy after high school where he learned mechanical and electrical engineering. He now goes to far flung and exotic places working on satellite systems for cruise ships. Jake is essentially a nomadic nerd and one of the coolest, funniest people a person could encounter. His Instagram posts will have me on the floor. He could be working on a project in Dubai, but homie will post a photo of the burrito he had for lunch. Weird bathroom signage in Japan. A gigantic plate of pasta in Italy. He may experience the landscape of a place, but he lives for the food.
For the Spaniard's show, a line was drawn at captions in Esperanto for his work. That was too esoteric for Miami. We switched to English and Spanish. For opening night everything was lit under black light, which visually was very cool. The exhibition was a lot of detailed, complex minutia, but a fascinating process and experience.
Another memorable exhibition was framed around avant garde feminism ( another concept that is adored in the Bay Area, New York, and Japan, not so much in Miami ). It had everything from painting, graphic art, angry spoken word, sculpture, written text, experimental video, and a staircase designed by a gallery artist and fabricated by undergrad students.
The staircase haunted my dreams. It hadn’t been constructed or finished correctly and there was a lot of behind the scenes wrangling and disagreement. Between competing demands, well intentioned but unrealistic expectations - humans clashed. The staircase moved several times throughout the gallery during the hot and humid opening night. Myself and a few other people rolled the staircase outside behind a makeshift stage in the parking lot. A vinyl fabricator recovered it in Pantone colors to match the colorstory of the exhibition, while a South Korean pop band rocked out.
My greatest accomplishment was helping an Icelandic artist with his vision for a video installation. He was fascinated with America’s love of marching bands, but he was having a hard time finding a local high school to participate. Most of the public schools around Little Haiti and into North Miami were predominantly black and Haitian. Iceland was also baffled by the complex American paperwork and waivers required to use minors’ image in a video.
Ask a sister from the Bay! We get shit done, sun!
Another memorable exhibition was framed around avant garde feminism ( another concept that is adored in the Bay Area, New York, and Japan, not so much in Miami ). It had everything from painting, graphic art, angry spoken word, sculpture, written text, experimental video, and a staircase designed by a gallery artist and fabricated by undergrad students.
The staircase haunted my dreams. It hadn’t been constructed or finished correctly and there was a lot of behind the scenes wrangling and disagreement. Between competing demands, well intentioned but unrealistic expectations - humans clashed. The staircase moved several times throughout the gallery during the hot and humid opening night. Myself and a few other people rolled the staircase outside behind a makeshift stage in the parking lot. A vinyl fabricator recovered it in Pantone colors to match the colorstory of the exhibition, while a South Korean pop band rocked out.
My greatest accomplishment was helping an Icelandic artist with his vision for a video installation. He was fascinated with America’s love of marching bands, but he was having a hard time finding a local high school to participate. Most of the public schools around Little Haiti and into North Miami were predominantly black and Haitian. Iceland was also baffled by the complex American paperwork and waivers required to use minors’ image in a video.
Ask a sister from the Bay! We get shit done, sun!
First I tried Edison High School up the street. Edison was like a prison compound for teenagers. It was an excruciating example of underfunded public education in a conservative state that is determined to prepare young black kids for service jobs or incarceration. I had to go through metal detectors and check-in with security. I still couldn't get anyone to chill long enough to connect me to the marching band director. The staff at Edison moved as if in constant damage control within a racist society in decline, similar to the public school culture of East Oakland.
Then I hit the jackpot with North Miami Senior High School. The baddest high school marching band in the city.
Mr. Virgil was the marching band director. What made him different was that he was from Trinidad and played no games. He ran the band like a boot camp because it was a pathway for kids to get scholarships to the HBCs in the region, which several had already scored. The band leader was a charismatic Haitian-American who needed to be in Homecoming. He had gotten a full ride to North Carolina A&M.
Once we worked out the logistics and funding, I met the Icelandic artist and his film crew at the school football field for a day of shooting. This involved a camera, a drone, and colored smoke bombs on another hot and humid day. Most summer days in Miami are hot and humid except in winter when it's more bearable for human existence. I spent a grip on hair products in the time I lived there. It was either that or spend my days looking like a Fraggle Rock.
Iceland and his assistant wore parrot costumes he found on eBay. His vision was for them to play melancholy parrots adrift in a weird tropical landscape as they walked around ignoring the marching band. The band was symbolic of the American spectacle, which we cherish because entertainment gives our lives meaning.
It was awesome to watch the process unfold that day. The kids were stealth performing in full uniform around artistic chaos and summer heat. They did hip hop beats, funk beats, and church beats - with massive horns and snare drums. It was quite a get down scene. I learned I'm good at bringing people together, from different countries and cultures and making things happen. I would do a project like that again.
The most trippy people I encountered were the Rubells. They are big time art patrons and collectors. I paused on the name. Rubell? Is someone related to Steve Rubell? Sure enough the husband was his brother. That meant serious New York wealth and the Studio 54 legacy. The Rubells took their over-the-top modern art collection (Basquiat, Kehinde, Warhol, the Georges, Kusama, et al) and bought a massive space in Allapatha, a Dominican neighborhood mixed with warehouses and shotgun bungalows. The Rubells remodeled their place into a brutalist museum filled with maximalist modern art. During Art Basel, I managed to get in a visit before I left Florida. Other than time with friends, that was a super cool way to end my art life experience in the Magic City.
JLo and Pitbull
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