The Oceanfront area: Our new Platform for artistic programs
Dear Mr. Echols
The new Oceanfront area in Collins Park has been created as a platform for virtually all of Art Basel Miami Beach’s cultural programming. Situated directly beside the beach, the Oceanfront marks the point where the artworld interfaces with the broader public. We are delighted to have Creative Time, the legendary New York City-based public art organization, as a partner in the launching of this new dimension of Art Basel Miami Beach. Having solicited many proposals, Creative Time and Art Basel Miami Beach commissioned Los Angeles artist Pae White to create this “social space” .

Free of any admission charge, the Oceanfront – located at Collins Park, between 21st and 22nd Streets – offers visitors many opportunities. In the mornings, they can attend the discussion panels of the Art Basel Conversations series, featuring prominent figures from every artworld domain. And every night during Art Basel Miami Beach, the Oceanfront will feature at least one special event. The evening series will be inaugurated by the annual Art Loves Music concert on the beach; the following evenings feature the Art Perform program curated by Jens Hoffmann of the Wattis Institute, the Art Video program curated by Meredith Johnson of Creative Time and the Art Film evening curated by This Brunner. Rounding out the experience, the Oceanfront Cafe will offer visitors the possibility to have brunch in the morning, then light meals and refreshing drinks from dusk to midnight.
Oceanfront project by Pae White
For the 2009 premiere of the Oceanfront, Pae White will create an immersive and interactive cityscape that will provide a new experience with each visit. By day, large color blocks will dominate the landscape. At night, these color blocks transform into a shadowy group of buildings that house various merchants and performers. In addition to this labyrinth-like metropolis on the sand, White will design an open-air stage that will host the Art Video, Art Film, and Art Perform programs and Art Basel Conversations.

Born in 1963 in Pasadena, CA, Pae White graduated from Scripps College, Claremont and received her MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. White has exhibited internationally at institutions such as the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona (2008); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2007); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio (2007); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2004). White was a featured artist in the Skulptur Projekte Münster, 2007 and in this year’s Venice Biennale.

Art Basel Conversations
Thursday, December 3 through Saturday, December 5, 10 – 11 am
As in previous years, the Art Basel Conversations will be inaugurated by the Artist Talk premiere, which this year features Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The Art Basel Conversations are “Museum Directors: Change in Generation,” “Collector Focus: Latin America” and “The Future of the Museum: The Portable Museum.” There is time allotted after each Art Basel Conversation for the audience to engage with the panel in a more informal fashion.

“Museum Directors: Change in Generation” brings together the next generation of museum and institution directors to discuss their visions for the coming decades. In “Collector Focus: Latin America” prominent art collectors from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico explore the dynamic way in which Latin Americas’ collecting scene has grown and internationalized in the last decade. “The Future of the Museum: The Portable Museum,” will offer fresh insights on future models for exhibition-making.

Art Video
Thursday, December 3 and Saturday, December 5, 7 – 8.30 pm
Curated by Creative Time, the Art Video program includes discussions with the featured artists and curators.

Thursday, December 3, 7 – 8.30 pm
“Video Art and Mainstream Distribution”
Artist video is often created for and sited in pristine white box spaces, where there is a deliberateness to the viewing environment and the context of the work is clearly articulated. Tom Sachs and his collaborators the Neistat Brothers challenge this tradition through humorous, low-tech, do-it-yourself performances presented both in the gallery and outside it. Like Sachs and the Neistat Brothers, Marc Horowitz uses media outlets such as YouTube and network television to distribute his hilarious interventions throughout the United States. These artists are innovators in exposing mainstream audiences to artist video, and pushing the borders between conceptual practice and everyday experience.

Tom Sachs and The Neistat Brothers
“Waffle Bike”, 2008 (8:06), “Obstacle Course”, 2006 (3.32), “Space Program”, 2008 (12:09)
Marc Horowitz
“Bishop, CA”, 2009 (4:10), “Nampa, Idaho”, 2009 (3:10), “Craig, CO”, 2009 (4:02), “Wasenburg, CO”, 2009 (3:08), “Paradise, IN”, 2009 (2:10), “Ewing, KY”, 2009 (4:11)
Followed by a conversation with Casey Neistat and Marc Horowitz.

Saturday, December 5, 7 – 8.30 pm
“The Watcher and the Watchedˮ
Jill Magid, an artist who explores the personal boundaries of state surveillance, uses catalogued CCTV footage to construct film noir-like narratives with herself and her location as subject. Magid uses the tools of photographic evidence to explore the deeply conflicted condition of one’s loss of control. In her work the camera, and its operator, move from anonymous watcher to intimate participant. In Kon Trubkovich’s videos, the camera takes on an aggressive and controlling identity. Tackling the tension between freedom and captivity, the subjects of his work participate in Sisyphean activities that keep them from escaping their condition. Both Magid and Trubkovich navigate the borders between personal liberty and institutional restraint, implicating the viewer in the power dynamics presented in their work.

Jill Magid
“Trust”, 2004 (18:00), “Camera One Wester Park”, 2005 (11:00)
Kon Trubkovich
“Repeat Offender”, 2005 (11:07), “Ant Farm”, 2007 (9:54)
Followed by a conversation with Jill Magid and Kon Trubkovich.

Art Perform
Thursday, December 3 and Saturday, December 5, 9 pm
In its fifth year, Art Perform now features an intensified program of longer performances by rising international artists. This program will again be conceived by curator Jens Hoffmann, director of the CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco. It will take place on Thursday and Saturday at 9 pm. The participating artists are Claire Fontaine, Simon Fujiwara, Loris Gréaud and Mario Garcia Torres, Kris Martin, and Kelly Nipper.

Thursday, December 3
9 pm – Simon Fujiwara
This autobiographical play, written and performed by the artist, restages his first encounter with a modern artwork, “Horizontal Stripe Painting” by abstract expressionist Patrick Heron, when he was 11 years old. Featuring a counterfeit reproduction of the original canvas as backdrop, Fujiwara’s play re-enacts multiple versions of this encounter, taking us on an increasingly absurd art-historical and personal journey told through the memories of a repressed pubescent boy.

9.30 pm – Kelly Nipper
With the physicality of sculpture, memory of film, body of a camera and mind of a crystallographer, Nipper’s performance suspends time and space by counterbalancing expressive movement with the process of assembling a human-scale icosahedron to examine the patterns of a hurricane.

10 pm – Kris Martin
Flemish artist Kris Martin has never performed before and does not think of himself as particularly talented in this form of artistic expression. His contribution to Art Perform will be an autobiographical monologue describing how he became an artist. Sitting somewhere between reality and fiction, confession and storytelling, Martin’s piece will revolve around key (and perhaps embarrassing) moments of his own upbringing that all of us have experienced in one way or the other.

Saturday, December 5, 9 pm
9 pm – Claire Fontaine
In this performance, the punch mannequin called a Body Opponent Bag (BOB) is installed on the stage and several professional fighters are invited to use a variety of methods to beat it, displaying a frightening use of physical force and aggression. While BOB is an anthropomorphic object constructed for the purpose of being beaten up, he also functions in this performance as a ready-made sculpture that becomes the catalyst for a projection of hatred.

9.30 pm РLoris Gr̩aud and Mario Garcia Torres
Using the film “Groundhog Day” (1993) as a starting point, this project is an intervention of repeating daily events, both almost unnoticeable and obvious, into the routine of the art show. Mimicking the film’s fictional phenomenon of a loop in space and time, the daily repetition of an odd sequence of events creates a sense that the show is re-lived over and over again each day, culminating in an onstage interview between Art Perform curator Jens Hoffmann and Phil, the character from “Groundhog Day”.

Art Film: “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child”
Friday, December 4, 8.30 pm
This year’s Art Film event features an exclusive work-in-progress sneak preview of the documentary feature film “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child,” preceded by a panel with a selection of participants, moderated by Bob Colacello. “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” is directed by Tamra Davis and features a long and never-before-seen interview with Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), shot shortly before his death. The (90-minute) documentary further comprises footage of Basquiat in his studio, interviews with approximately 50 people who knew him intimately, rare archival material and work by the artist. Art Film is curated by Zurich film connaisseur This Brunner.

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