Driving Miami 2011
15-22 JULY.
There is limited information.
Repeated forms spot the landscape, flat, shrubbery, wet lands summoned up by man to hold a labyrinth of amazing engineering feats of architecture, design and the mass ability to enhance or destroy nature’s abilities.
This scarification of the land is marked deep into the imagination of the suburban dweller. As I zipped by earthy colours of homes, strip malls, factories, warehouses, bus stops, water and flower sales people. There is a certain amount of blurring of the sightlines as to where I was or where I was heading.
There weren’t any full indicators to tell me exactly where I stood within the immediacy of the landscape and all things relevant: was it due to the flatness? I understood that I was in a wilderness, the making of man. It seemed like a capitalist dream, held to the truth by the gang of six. A capitalist dream filled with immigrant labour, revealed the making of their dreams, stained the streets with their blood, Oscorro would etch his heritage blood line into the walls of Wynwood with a can of spray paint - modern totemism.
It was only as we turned into the drive way and came out of the car that I understood the reality of the drive. It was here in the driveway of my host's home that I felt the equilibrium coming back and I could see fully the magnificence of the landscape that was Aventura, California Club Homes and its surroundings: - this gated community.
There was a moment that time became still, as speed held the vision together in a blurr of passing monoliths. Time is suspended, conversation takes over and one loses oneself in the appropriation of time and visuality. Conceptuality is challenged only when the speed ceases and we step out of the space ship.
Time unfolds; suddenly here as you swing off the freeway and into the little towns and districts such as Hollywood, the art district, The African- American Museum or slow down to see the working class area, Little Havana. It is as I step into the rain away from a R&B slow jam, that I see the Bird Road warehouse district that housed the Art Crawl. That night, artists opened their studios to the public. I chatted with Fuentes, 2nd generation Cuban pop artist.who shared the studio, titled Home of The Radical Artist rented for $750 a month.
It was like that in Little Havana, where I smelled, heard, felt the rhythm of the Cuban American, I felt bodies trapped in time. That day when he left his home, that memory was etched into his aesthetic membrane, to be reproduced here, through a culture of remembrance. You understood how they could become so reactionary towards Cuban liberation. Little Havana with the men playing dominoes, seemed so left back, so island, like you could just slip them back there and they won't even know.
There are these stories of bodies being frozen in time held there by memories of when they left - a state of politics, a ritual, a sweet heart, lover, song. They long for that moment that will is passed from generation to generation until for some reason they spoil their diet of living ; for being human.
Then there was the Carnival launch, pounding music played out in a stadium, bodies hidden in the darkness, recesses of concrete stilts holding up a heroic architecture, in celebration of muscle and might, sweat and pain, ghettoes and blood. But here tonight there was another celebration of movement, dance, and culture. But you only saw it when you walked into the arena.
Miami holds back, it’s a jerky sensation of suddenness and of physicality, of presence and absence, of movement and speed. A landscape so spread out that it must be linked by the automation of the human form, this controls how you see into the space, how you navigate through it.
Then there is the contestation of race negotiation and migration, of the U.S racist past and presence that I feel tells another story of negotiation and politics, where the Caribbean Sea laps upon the American shore. Where little brown and black feet leave their markings on white sands.
Dean Arlen
Miami Airport.
22 July 2011
THE DRIVE BY, MIAMI.
A photo journey.
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| IN THE SPACE SHIP |
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| WE'RE HEADING TOWARDS SOUTH BEACH. IN THE TWILIGHT OF THURSDAY. |
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| THE LANDSCAPE ZIPPED BY. HERE SPEED SET THE TONE FOR CONCEPTION. when you reach you are suddenly there off the free way, time and space calms down. The body acclimatizes, morphs into the space, in a performance of capitalism, consumption, sexualization and dance. SOUTH BEACH |
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| FROM HERE, I COULD SEE THE PASSERS BY MOVING, NOW ARRIVING WITH THEIR BAGS TO REGISTER INTO ROOMS. FROM HERE I SAW THE NAKED BODIES, FASHION. THE MUSIC. |
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| YOU COULDN'T TELL WHO WAS WHO. TIME WOULD HAVE REVEALED A LOT. |
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| HE SANG TIGHT, SHE WAS BRIGHT, THIS BEAUTIFUL TRANSVESTITE, WAS BIG! THE GATED COMMUNITY |
GOLDEN BEACH
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FEEDING THE BIRDS |
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ANOTHER SPACE SHIP $2.00 TRIP TO THE MALL |
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| AT A SLOWER PACE, THE READINGS BECAME EASIER. LANDSCAPE SHOT |
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LATIN NIGHT AT THE GALLERY INSPIRED INTERIORS. 111 Southeast 8th Avenue, Suite One, Venezia-las Olas, Fort lauderdale, Florida. AN UPSCALE PART OF TOWN. |
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LITTLE HAVANA |
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MIAMI BLUE |
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THE CARNIVAL LAUNCH |
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A $10 ROTI, $5 CORN SOUP, $20 ENTRANCE FEE. THE ART CRAWL |
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| THE DESIGN DISTRICT. Negotiating here will be an interesting. performance of sending out information and meeting the right mix of people, having the right product. Quality Art! that sparkle the eye of the gallery owners, curators, critics. This topic came up with discussions I had with black professionals. About the art movement in Miami, which seems to be growing. The concept of the Caribbean artist is getting currency. By a movement of artists and critics that are counter positioning the Caribbean Artists as relevant with our own language and vision. They seem very strategic and positioned in the mainstream to get it done. A LAMP POLE |
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VINTAGE CAR CUBAN STYLE |
