DiVa Fair

Someone assumed from a previous post that because I had work at the Digital Art and Video Fair (see above) that I was going to Miami. I AM NOT GOING TO MIAMI. It's bad enough having to see work by artists like Takashi Murakami in NY, much less having to travel to see it.

But, um, I certainly appreciate artMovingProjects taking my work down there so I can stay here in my ivory tower. The DiVa fair is being held in shipping containers on the beach, so a certain aesthetic distance is maintained from the general orgy of commerce. As befits the true vanguard.

- tom moody 12-07-2006 11:09 pm

How's that whole art in shipping container thing working? It sure as hell didn't float at ISEA. At ISEA it looked like artists were crammed into poorly conceived and under funded metal boxes. Some artists tried to turn them into white art boxes by pinning bed sheets to the metal walls. The attempts were laughable. It would have been interesting if any of it was something more than an attempt to make good of a bad situation. Somewhere there was a germ of an idea that flopped spectacularly upon execution.

My question is this; did the Miami organizers go to ISEA, see the art and actually think that is served the artists well? Or is this one of those cases where two oranizations had the same idea at the same time. Maybe they even did it right this time!(?)

- joester 12-08-2006 12:21 pm


joester, I DID NOT GO TO MIAMI.

Anyway, I haven't gotten a report yet. From the photos I saw on the DiVa website, their containers are painted white on the inside in a stab at gallery ambience. It would be a nightmare if you were showing paintings because the wall is crenelated (?) and not flat and you can't do much in the way of adding shelving or hanging hardware. But then paintings look like pure shit even in the toniest art fair "booth."

If you have a fairly minimal sensibility, which artMovingProjects does, and are showing media on a few computer and video screens, and it's exceptionally strong work, which of course this is, you could make the rough and tumble ambience work for you.

So, without having seen the DiVa fair because--and I can't say this often enough--I DID NOT GO TO MIAMI, and without having seen ISEA, I believe I can say we pulled it off where they failed.

(I have been listening to Jazzy Joyce and have decided full-on boasting is going to be my "new style.")

- tom moody 12-08-2006 6:43 pm


I KNOW, BUT IT'S STILL A GOOD QUESTION, AND YOU'RE MORE LIKELY TO HAVE HEARD THAN I AM.

The containers are also hot, have low headroom, and are generally unpleasant places to be in. There's someting about there being only one entrance that spooks me a little. It's not a pleasant art viewing environment.
- joester 12-08-2006 8:52 pm


You're probably right. I am feeling somewhat constrained, since the gallery is helping me to rise above the common muck of broke obscurity, to say what I really think about art fairs generally.

Here's just a tiny limited dose (not talking about DiVa--since I've never seen it--so much as the Armory, etc): Yeah, yeah, I read in the Times that fairs are career makers because "10 times the number of people see your work."

What they don't say is, they see it under the worst possible conditions--paintings stacked against walls or hanging chock a block with completely incompatible work.

The chances of you being "discovered" in that fucked up environment have more to do with everyone being there in a buying/selling mode, as opposed to the usual hands-off feel of the galleries. Or something. I honestly do not understand the appeal of fairs.
- tom moody 12-08-2006 9:09 pm


I didn't think you were going to Miami, I just thought it sounded like fun... but after reading about all the particulars I am not so sure.
- Thor Johnson 12-09-2006 1:53 am


I was trying to make it sound like fun, but my facade of boosterism and bonhomie with respect to anything having to do with art fairs requires constant shoring up and I backslide (witness this post). Joester made me even more depressed. Bed sheets. I'm proud to be represented at the fair, despite all the whinin'.
- tom moody 12-09-2006 4:25 am


****never, EVER, fly standby.****

here's some reports from the front lines, which are clouded by 14 hours worth of dewars consumption. thank you ernesto and maria!

i'll start with the DIVA 8 BIT screening. They did it on the terrace of a schmancy hotel. I felt bad wiping my snot onto the embroidered nappykins. It was really really really, end of the world-type windy. A small crowd chose to brave the elements. The ones that didn't get blown off the roof into the atlantic by the wind, or blown into the bathroom with blood ears thanks to my last-minute, sneaky cranking of the house system to RED, liked the movie.

Lesson learned: If you want to show your movie outside, don't.

I'll now go back earlier in the day to the Aqua fair.

The Aqua fair reminded me of a parody of a Fellini movie, perhaps as conveived by Jimmy Buffet. I guess the space was an old hotel (crappy 60s Florida chic style.) I came to this conclusion near the end of my tour of the 60 or so art-stuffed rooms, when, through the Scotch haze, I remarked to myself about how amazing it was that so many artists chose to create headboards this year. And that they all used the same material!

So, you wander through all of these tiny art-stuffed rooms, each one convieniently apportioned with a bathroom, and look at the art-stuff. I'm not sure how many of you have visited indoor flea markets, but that's the best way to describe it. Except instead of Elvis impersonators they had a Laurie Anderson impersonator, complete with electric jews harp.

You remember that quote from Dead Man? No, not "stupid fucking whiteman," the one about how Nobody was amazed how they moved all the same white people from town to town. I was pretty amazed how, besides the headboards, they moved the same art from room to room, at exactly the same pace as my journey through the space! Maybe they had an artporter beam.

You with the finicky eyes would probably be able to tell the faux-cute fat-painted animal jamboree painting from the faux-cute fat-painted animal jamboree drawing. Or the endless videos of middle aged women looking at their obscured reflections in high-rise glass. Or the crumpled plastic tubes from the crumbled plastic oblisks. Or denuded TV tubes from renuded TV tubes. But I think it would take a feat of super human finickiness to actually CARE to tell the difference, cus as far as I'm concerned, the stupid fucking white man put the same shit in every room.

I understand that this is not fair to the artists involved, and I am sure that there's a lot of interesting/beautiful stuff in those cramped little rooms. Similarly, there's probably lots of beautiful stuff on the internet, but I wouldn't say that the internet, on its own, is a very good indicator of the beautiful stuff it connects to.

My opinion of the art-crates on the beach is that I'm glad I got to go inside and get out of the rain. I didn't see anyone do anything particularly neat with the spaces, except for the one who gave up and dumped a bunch of sand on the floor of their box. This made more sense to me than the guys who were constantly SWEEPING THE SAND off of these plastic temporary paths that were put down to keep people from God-forbid touching sand on a beach.

Since DIVA is mostly a video fair, the crates worked out pretty good, and were kind of magical after it got dark.

And in contrast to the overstuffed motel rooms of Aqua, the DIVA boxes were almost uniformly spare. Some boxes (gasp!) were even dedicated to INDIVUDIAL WORKS OF ART. Have we learned nothing from China people! Shipping containers are meant for overstuffing with worthless, poorly produced products, not hightlighting indivual artworks! Retards.

As for the work itself, again, I think it's basically impossible to decode anything (if there's even anything to decode in the first place) in an environment that encourages flippancy. In the first place, it's fucking South Beach. Similar thought: would you stage a volleyball tournament in the Sistine Chapel? Hey, let's leave the (insert funny modern art museum used by artist to stage roller-derby etc. here) out of this.

I had a nightmare later that night / this morning that I was at a movie theatre, trying to watch, of all things, a Penn and Teller movie, and for some horrible reason the others movies all exited out into the movie theatre I was sitting in! So there were constant interruptions.

Pretty good analogy of these super-duper-large-shows. Hmmmm... Maybe I can put paintings ON THE CEILING TOO!

That's how I spent my day in South Beach. My suggestion is that next year they stage the Basel in closer proximity to the median Spring Break. The frat boys and the "girlfriends for a week" would probably have a great time rolling the containers into the ocean and pissing in the conveiniently apportioned terlets.

J in JC stuck in WPB out!


- j in jc stuck in wpb (guest) 12-10-2006 12:41 am


Thanks for the great report. Right after I read this I got a phone call from Aron of artMovingProjects with more horror tales.
- tom moody 12-10-2006 12:50 pm


spill the beans tom.
- bill 12-10-2006 5:48 pm


I'm waiting for Aron to get back before I "let rip."
Paddy Johnson has this to say about DiVa.
- tom moody 12-11-2006 1:25 am


that is a darn good rant. thanks j in jc! Here in Toronto we are lucky enough to have two competeing art hotels within a few blocks of each other, meaning that the opportunities to look at smallish art objects sitting on bedspreads and dressing tables and hanging over headboards are pretty well endless.
- sally mckay 12-11-2006 1:54 am


"The chances of you being 'discovered' in that fucked up environment have more to do with everyone being there in a buying/selling mode, as opposed to the usual hands-off feel of the galleries. Or something. I honestly do not understand the appeal of fairs."

Art fairs aren't any good for the viewing experience for sure, but I do like them because I see all kinds of artists I wouldn't otherwise see. It really does only exchange one problem for another.

For the record, your optidisk looked great at the fair.
- Paddy Johnson 12-12-2006 8:10 am


hi - i didn't go this year, but i went last year... and had a great time. there was just so much art to see, and it wasn't as crowded and uncomfortable as some shows i've been to in tokyo, or the matisse retrospective in 92.

anyways... i liked the containers very much. i went at night, and the beach at night is the best.

here are two photos from inside containers -

the japanese man in this first one is the tokyo gallerist tomio koyama, who had a booth at art basel.

flickr.com/photos/43686206@N00/70342635/in/set-1514184/

flickr.com/photos/43686206@N00/70342633/in/set-1514184/
- martin (guest) 12-12-2006 9:13 pm


OptiDisc - Miami

- tom moody 12-13-2006 7:47 pm


bedsheets! But actually that does look great.
- sally mckay 12-13-2006 8:29 pm


your piece wasn't up when i was there t but i gotta say that that photo rocks

it's like doctor who. if the time tunnel got stuffed INSIDE the TARDIS.

Imagine the possibilities...

An endless tesselated universe of K9 and Tegan, perhaps?
- j in jc (guest) 12-14-2006 5:36 am


More photos.
- tom moody 12-15-2006 11:08 pm





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