Alive at Satellite - Performance Art takes over Miami Art Week for Satellite Art Show 201811/26/2018 Performance Is Alive has partnered once again with Satellite Art Show to present Miami’s only non-stop performance art program during Miami Art Week. Alive At Satellite features live and video based performance art projects from over 20 artists across the globe. The 4-day performance program celebrates SATELLITE’s mission to honor the significant impact of performance art - an often underrepresented medium during contemporary art fairs.
This year performance artists will embrace the location shift from Miami Beach to the Ice Palace’s 33,000 sq ft parking lot in downtown Miami by exploring beyond the boundaries of a centralized performance zone. Performances are often interactive and durational, allowing the viewer to become sensorially immersed within their experience. Political protest and the quest to harness identity thru social conflict are recurring points of motivation for Alive at Satellite artists. We invite you to join us in protest, drink tea with us on the back of an artist and to witness your first (and perhaps your only) face ballet. In the true spirit of SATELLITE - no two moments will be the same.
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We are delighted to collaborate with Satellite Art Show again this year during Miami Art Basel Week (December 6-9, 2018). This year, Satellite Art Show moves to its largest location thus far and will be located across from NADA Art Fair (Miami, FL). Over the past 2 years, we have presented the most comprehensive performance art program available and look to present the same for 2018. Check out our programming from 2017 here. Artists are invited to submit performance, performance art, live art, action art, durational and performance based video projects to our #AliveAtSatellite Open Call. Projects with complex technical needs may not be well suited for the space. Performances will be held outdoors and throughout the fair grounds from 3pm-10pm. Consider lighting, power and tech needs within your proposal. There is no application fee. Submission deadline is September 1st, 11:59 EST. Selected artists will be notified in mid-October.
Last December, artist and writer, Alexandra Hammond asked the visitors of Performance Is Alive at Satellite Art Show, "What Keeps You Up at Night?" It was a pleasure to witness the piece in it's full 3-hour duration. Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to participate in the conversation because there was never an empty spot at the "campfire!" I came up with a cascade of responses as I simultaneously eavesdropped and welcomed our guests. What keeps me up... planning art fairs, worrying about artists traveling internationally, posting on PIA... I'm sure you can create a laundry list of your own and I hope you do in comments! Luckily, the dutiful ethnographer transcribed her conversations of which I am pleased to share with you here for our latest Artist Feature. - Quinn Dukes
Last December #AliveAtSatellite artist, Ayana Evans, presented "Slick and Gritty" - a video screening and panel discussion organized to benefit Geraldo Mercado's family members who fell victim to the disastrous path of Hurricane Maria. The family farm was destroyed and US aid was minimal in their rural area of Sierra Alta. Geraldo's grandparents, Ruder and Brunilda Caraballo, as well as his great-aunts Rosa Sanchez and Catalina Sanchez, struggled to replace the roof on their homes.
The initial fundraising goal for Slick and Gritty was successfully surpassed per the tireless promotion and advocacy of Evans. The family has been busy with repairs and I thought it would be a perfect time to re-connect with Ayana and Geraldo for updates and event reflections. There is still much work to be done in Puerto Rico, please consider donating to the Viajero Hurricane Relief Fund. Last December, a plastic covered and patriotic "Diane The American Swimmer" portrayed by NYC based performance artist, Diane Dwyer, set the out to Miami Beach with a very specific message about climate change. Learn more about this great "American Swimmer" in our latest artist feature! - Quinn Dukes
It is with great pleasure that we jump back into one of the founding components of this site, the Artist Feature! Multi-media artist, Trevor Amery, joined the #AliveAtSatellite programming during Miami Art Week at Satellite Art Show. His performance initiated with the cross-country journey from California (where he is completing his MFA at UC San Diego) to Miami Beach, Florida. In our interview we discuss the importance of community within Amery's practice and he recalls the terrifying capsize experience while performing Baidarka. - Quinn Dukes
We have been hard at work reviewing hundreds of performance proposals from incredible performance artists across the globe for #AliveAtSatellite, Performance Is Alive's non-stop programming at SATELLITE ART SHOW during Miami Art Week 2016. We are incredibly delighted to present these daring projects from an amazing group of artists. Throughout the fair’s duration multi-media performance artists confront a myriad of contemporary issues such as body politics, race, economic inequality, climate change and intimacy in the digital age. Over twenty short form, durational and video based performance works will be presented throughout SATELLITE 2.0. We hope to see you in Miami but if you can't join us on the beach, stay tuned for live stream details! - Quinn Dukes + Alexandra Hammond SATELLITE ART SHOW // The Parisian Hotel, 1510 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, FL 33139 EXHIBITION HOURS PRESS PREVIEW: December 1st: 12 – 3 pm December 1st: 3 pm – 10 pm December 2nd: 12 pm – 10 pm December 3rd: 12 pm – 10 pm December 4th: 12 pm – 6 pm Confirmed artists include: Agrofemme and Ian DeLeon (NYC), Thomas Albrecht (NY), Trevor Amery (CA), Joseph Bigley (NC), Monica Jahan Bose (DC), Hector Canonge (NYC), Alberto Checa (FL), Dominique Duroseau (NYC), Ayana Evans (NYC), Sean Fader (NYC), Whit Forrester (Chicago), Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Chicago), Philip Fryer (Boston), Elan Jurado (NYC), Olga Kozmanidze (Moscow, RUS), Jenna Maurice (TN/CO), Sergio Mora (FL), Violet Overn and Emma Sulkowicz, Miriam Parker in collaboration with Christina Smiros and Jo Wood-Brown (NYC), Sarah H. Paulson (NY), Miles Pflanz (NYC), Selma Selman (Bosnia/Herzegovina) Alexandra Sullivan (NYC), Marcela Torres and Chase Calloway, J.R. Uretsky (RI) PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Away from the Miami convention center and the massive white art fair tents was the Artist-Run Satellite Art Show at the now derelict Ocean Terrace Hotel, an art deco building awaiting demolition or redevelopment. The unairconditioned corridors and rooms-turned-galleries of the old hotel were nevertheless a breath of fresh air on the heels of a day at the sparkling big money fairs. Each room of the Ocean Terrace Hotel had been transformed (to a varying degree) by the gallery, nonprofit, or artist-run space that occupied it. The decidedly non-white-cube conditions of the building demanded an installation approach. Most rooms dealt not only with the walls of the rooms themselves, but also made use of bathrooms, floors, ceilings, windows and doors. In this sense (and augmented by the heat and humidity of a Miami evening) Artist-Run was an exhibition that consciously engaged the body of the viewer. Likewise, explicitly performative events that took place in the hotel were intimately intertwined with the space itself. A few examples are summarized below. Beast Boutique, Yellow Peril Gallery (Providence, RI) Artist Jennifer Avery’s Beast Boutique was a composed clutter of photographs, photocopies, and hybrid doll-stuffed-animals-garments. She called it “the chaos of the forest”. Walls, floor and all corners were inhabited. Upon entry into the boutique, the artist would ask if the viewer would allow her to choose a garment for her, assuring, upon a friendly sizing-up, that she would “choose the perfect one.” Through this interaction, the viewer noticed that the installation was, in fact, populated with these wearable artworks in brightly-colored, frankenstein-stitched silk, lace, wool and fur, often displaying vestiges of their former use as more conservative garments. Some were full masks, others shawl-like necklaces adorned with oversized talismans made of stuffed-animal parts. Hand-made stuffed dolls (all alike) were lined up along walls and in corners looking like a cross between 19th century children’s toys and the mummy cats of the ancient Egyptians. Walls were plastered with images of these props and the artist (fully painted and adorned as a human-animal fairytail character, performing in a wooded setting), layering objects with images and creating a complex visual mythology. Beast Boutique was at once scary and exuberant. It had the enclosed, non dream logic of a fairytale and the sense of humor of a neon forest. Stupid Bar // Open Space at Artist-Run Miami // images by Q. Dukes Stupid Bar, Open Space (Baltimore, MD) Stupid Bar was the creation of Baltimore artist-run gallery Open Space at Artist-Run in the Ocean Terrace Hotel. This was an actual bar complete with a few varieties of drinks, a stripper’s pole and constant Karaoke performances. It was impossible to tell whether these were performed by friends and associates of the gallery or visitors to Artist-Run, as everyone was invited to participate while enjoying canned beers and cocktails and reading the myriad handmade signage adorning the walls and shelves of the installation like so many neon signs and beer posters at a dive bar. Because of the hotel room setting, Stupid Bar also held a tinge of nostalgia for a teenager’s room where a secret party might place after parents have gone to bed. A large chalkboard hung on the wall immediately to the right upon entry stating: “Postmodernism is just a cool word for Postmodernism.” Another in red, green and black advertised the fact that all drinks were $11 while another commanded, “Notice this notice.” In spite of the jokey atmosphere of Stupid Bar, it was a locus for the free spirited exuberance of TSA’s Satellite Art Show, a taste of what actually makes people love art. Stupid Bar’s funny signs, its dildo microphones and underwear-clad gender-bending karaoke divas generated something profound that viewers and artists could participate in and sink their teeth into. As Paddy Johnson put it in Art F City, “[Artist-Run] gives artists a voice, and somewhat counter-intuitively that’s most needed here in Miami, during the biggest art fair week in the country.” Stupid Bar was a gathering place and a way station for this energy. - Alexandra Hammond, Miami Art Week Correspondent rtist-run shout outs!
Interview with Carlos Martiel By Quinn Dukes This year performance art pervaded Miami Art Week 2015 (for better and for worse). Most notably at the non-traditional, multi-destination, Satellite Fair organized by Brian Andrew Whiteley and the curatorial project "Time Sensitive" curated by Jesús Fuenmayor at Pinta Miami. As you can imagine, the sheer density of events, shows and performances prohibited us (Alexandra Hammond + myself) from being able to view the full performance roster at either fair but we were determined to catch Carlos Martiel's durational work at Pinta Miami. Martiel caught my attention last October for his durational performance, "Segregation" at Samson Projects (Boston) where he stood motionless between two layers of barbed wire. Upon entry, audience members were separated by country of origin and viewed the performance from opposing sides. Martiel notes on his website, "One of the entryways permitted the entrance of U.S. born whites and Europeans. The other, permitted the entrance of blacks, latinos, asians, and middle easterners, as well as any individual who was not European or U.S. born white. People were not allowed to mix for the duration." Similar to "Segregation", Martiel's arresting performance at Pinta Miami offered viewers an opportunity to deeply contemplate personal and political freedom both as an individual and within a larger, social contstruct. As a former pupil of Tania Bruguera, his performance philosophy should come as no surprise - but I find Martiel exceedingly daring - willing to acknowledge and face consequence. This is no easy feat within commercial performance/performer relationships. Following his Miami performance (Dictadura), I reached out to Martiel to learn more about his pre-performance preparations and post-performance insights. I am honored to share our conversation with you as a part of this week's Artist Feature. -Quinn Dukes QUINN DUKES: What led you to create Dictadura? CARLOS MARTIEL: At first, when I was invited to make a performance work for PINTA in Miami, I wanted to do a project that had a relationship with Cuba, given the number of Cuban exiles who are in this context, most of whom were fleeing Cuba from the current political regime. During the research process for the project, however, I decided to include a larger number of countries in Latin America that have also had some form of dictatorial regime just like the case of Cuba. But unlike Cuba, the vast majority were supported by the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. In the United States, many people have no idea about the history of Latin America, or the macabre role the United States played in inflicting pain to the Latin American family, with its foreign policy of transforming Latin American military apparatuses into one of torturers, murderers and dictators. It was because of this that I created the project. I remained still, retained by the neck to a steel collar bolted to the base of a flagpole, forced to stare at the alternating flags of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, where dictatorial regimes have had support in some form by the School of the Americas. Each flag was placed for an hour and in historic chronological order, just as if the dictatorships were happening in real time. QD: How did you prepare for the durational aspect of the piece? CM: I really don’t have particular rituals for the preparation of my work. Usually I try to spend an hour alone, before making my performances, but it's not something I can always do. I believe that no preparation is sufficient to deal with the types of works I engage with, the challenge is actually at the time the work is presented in real time and the strategies that you develop internally as the work is happening, for example, careful breathing to avoid discomfort, uneasiness or tingling so that I stay focused. QD: Stillness and duration are commonly core elements to your performances. What draws you to these two methods? CM: I grew up in a society that lives on the edge in many respects, an island surrounded by water, people who endure a lot of financial hardships and even complete lack of basic needs, but must continue to live one way or another and not give up. This has influenced much of the durational aspect of my work. I have also studied and I am very familiar with African cultures and rituals of initiation, where one has to test the physical and psychological limits of the initiates. I believe that we should approach as much as possible to our limits, because only from there life can be seen through different eyes, and perhaps felt with a different kind of skin. QD: Where there any challenges to performing in the context of an art fair? CM: This was my first time participating in a fair doing a performance. It is a difficult experience because some people involved in organizing such events do not understand the nature or dimensions of a performance. For example, they wanted to reduce the performance which was suppose to last 21 hours, divided into seven days, only to three days for economic reasons ... I did not allow that to occur. If one wants to keep an initial idea and be consistent with what one is proposing, you have to be very firm. The relationship with the audience is also very different. I was surprised for example that people came to my performance and took selfies like if the performance was something to hang on a wall like a painting. QD: How did you connect with Pinta Miami? CM: I received an invitation by curator Jesús Fuenmayor to participate in his “Time Sensitive – Pinta Projects”. QD: I see that you have presented performances across the globe. In your experiences thus far, does the reception of your work change per location? Can you offer a few examples? CM: My work does not go in one direction, it is a fluid experience that changes depending on where I live, but also changes depending on the context where the performances take place. I think change gives richness and variety to my work, and better enables me to avoid common clichés. For example, on several occasions I have worked with the theme of emigration and immigration, but I address these topics from different perspectives each time. In Cuba, I made “Where My Feet Do Not Reach” in which I was interested in the idea of traveling through the subconscious of people who could not leave the island. For the Liverpool Biennial, I performed “Horror Vacui,” in which I dealt with the same issues from the point of view of the immigrant who is to assimilate into a different culture. In this context, I sewed onto my skin different parts of a classic English suit. In “Simiente,” a work I performed in Chicago, I wanted to unite in one body the blood of different immigrants living in Chicago, a city that has a large population of immigrants, but all segregated. QD: Is your practice exclusively rooted in performance? If so, what brought you to this methodology? CM: For the time being, I am working with my body and the possibilities that it brings as living matter. I am open to work with other media but it depends more on the ideas than a specific practice. For example, while I was living in Cuba in early 2007 I made a series of drawings with my blood. I would go to public clinics and ask the nurses to draw blood from me, clandestinely, so that I could use it in my work. Sometimes the nurses would refuse or they would not retrieve an adequate quanitity of the blood that I needed for my drawings so this created a big frustration for me. One day, I realiized that time and the body are extrememly important elements for the type of work I wanted to realize and so I decided to make my first performance. Since then, I’ve been working with the body and performance as my practice. QD: Are their any current performance practitioners that inspire you? CM: I really do not receive inspiration from performance artists, I am moved by the reality around me, I am inspired by human contradictions, social problems that I cannot believe have not been resolved yet like immigration, police brutality, racism, to just mention a few... I am inspired by writers like Eduardo Galeano or singers like Mercedes Sosa and Lola Flores. But I do think that there are perfomance artists whose work I find attractive given the content and the vivacity of the work. For example, Paulo Nazareth, Tania Bruguera, Regina Galindo, and Santiago Sierra. Special thanks to Martiel's translator: Jorge Sánchez images from Carlos Martiel's performance Dictadura at Pinta Miami, 2015. // images courtesy of Q. Dukes
Bushwick-based Wild Torus’ baccanale at The Pharmacy (one of Satellite Art Fair’s 2015 Miami art week locations and an actual former pharmacy) culminated in 5-7 naked performers writhing and wrestling (lube, paint and flour-covered) on a square dance floor covered in garbage bag-like plastic tarp. Viewer-participants (participation is encouraged at Wild Torus happenings) were offered black trash bags to cover their art-fair finery so that they could stand at close range without being completely dusted by flour or splattered with paint and lube, which was being doled out in plastic wine glasses by two young men with shaved heads. These attendants were encouraging in spite of what could be read as an intimidating appearance: tall, wiry, shirtless and vaguely punk, wearing jean cutoff shorts. They encouraged viewers to pour the fluids over the wrestling, contact-improvisational knot of bodies on the mat. Flour and fluids: poured on by turns, lubing up the orgiastic mass and then powdering it down. On the wall behind, a video projection of the live action spanned nearly from floor to ceiling, offering the option to experience the scene at hand as a mediated spectacle. This was Miami art week after all, and many of us who were visiting art fairs had spent plenty of time in recent days looking at and snapping shots of artworks through the screens of our smartphones. For a performance collective that specializes in viewer participation, the video projection was an apt comment on touristic looking vs. bodily engagement. Both were available modes of interaction with the work, though most viewers seemed to be compelled by the live action. One might rightly question the relevance of Wild Torus’ work more than 50 years after Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy, Allan Kaprow’s happenings and countless other examples of live art with multiple bodies. But for those of us too young to have attended these now historic performances, the relevance is that we get to experience such a performance in real time and in the flesh. It is one thing to know that such events have taken place in the history of art, and entirely another to negotiate the the social situation generated by the live action. And in spite of the orgiastic, chaotic character of Wild Torus’ performance, it is the subtle social negotiations that make it interesting. Within our culture of internet pornography, media spectacle, and a half-century of body art, the shock value of coed naked wrestling is negligible. What remains potent is the negotiation between Wild Torus members and audience members as they are invited to participate in the performance ritual. Does one feel coerced, uncomfortable, excited by the invitation to pour flour and paint on the performers? Does one put on the garbage bag poncho so that one can stand close to the action, or does one keep one’s distance so that one’s clothes and shoes stay clean? Does one, in fact, jump into the action on the mat? These options are all available for the viewer / participant. Even more than the content or choreography of the Wild Torus performance, it was the exposition of these choices that was of interest. The performance highlighted the fact that we are constantly negotiating our engagement with other bodies in space and that the boundaries of this engagement are up to us. - Alexandra Hammond, Miami Art Week Correspondent for Performance Is Alive Scoping out the live performance events during Miami Art Week (aka Art Basel Miami) is no easy feat in a mass of object-based exhibitions! But we are committed to this mission and recommend the following performance events thru the lasting duration of the week. Hope to see you there and stay tuned for our performance recaps! - Quinn Dukes + Alexandra Hammond
Performance Is Alive is in Miami for Miami Art Week 2015! We are thrilled to introduce Alexandra Hammond, our Miami Art Week performance correspondent. In true Performance Is Alive fashion, we interviewed Hammond to learn more about her background, thoughts on the art fair model and of course, performance art! Enjoy the interview below and stay tuned on our Facebook and Instagram page for live updates.
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CONTRIBUTORSIan Deleón Archives
July 2023
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