By Victor Reznik

Mural @ Eat Your Art Out.

Jack Kerouac once took a job as the fire lookout at desolation peak in Washington State Park to find inspiration. The summer he spent on top of that mountain in complete isolation yielded two novels and a series of short stories that many consider his best work. During the first week of December 2009 I traveled to Miami to find that same type of inspiration, but instead of isolation I was seeking immersion. I went to Miami thinking I would find a hotbed of visual and performance artists eager to engage and create, debate and teach. Instead I found “a great excuse to party, and more to the point a thriving market (although just months after an international economic meltdown a much more conservative one) for wealthy art dealers and collectors, who appreciated the over the top courting by the world’s most prestigious art galleries.

I crossed the threshold separated by motion detector sliding doors, and the comforts of the climate controlled processing facility at the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Airport, into the humidity of south Florida, which engulfed me with sticky ceramic beads of sweat. I was nervous, anxious, it was too hot to light a cigarette, and I was over dressed, my luggage weighed me down. I paced, out of boredom triggering the censor and forcing the doors to slide open over and over again. Airports are pseudo efficient processing plants, get in quick get out even quicker, so when your forced to wait in one your confronted with the stillness of time awkwardly deterring your movement. Ft. Lauderdale’s airport did not pretend for a second to be efficient, instead like the rest of south Florida it was a place you rushed to get to and ended up hanging around until you left. I always feel like I’m being judged at airports, partially because airports exist outside of the social strata where dress code or authority establishes hard and fast rules for etiquette. I tried to curb my pacing, like drinking black coffee before bed, the adjustment from New York to Miami would not be kind on my system.

Luke finally emerged in his ‘85 Toyota Tacoma pickup through the stream of Audi’s and late model BMW’s. He pulled up onto the curb and I threw my bags in the bed. I handed him an original vinyl pressing of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Bands album, Whipped Cream and Other Delights. Luke hadn’t shaved in weeks, his eyes sunk into his face, he wore a sand toned military cap with the remnants of many hard fought battles etched into its fabric. Lucas Leyva, the creator of the Borscht Film Festival would be my machete in this jungle of ravenous blood sucking leeches that I was told feed off pocketbooks provided by unsuspecting tourists, and distracted locals.

Luke @ Versailles

I had arrived for Art Basel 2009, the sister event to the Swiss Basel a massive overcrowded collection of art galleries, the vast majority of which are from New York, vying for the short attention spans of would be collectors. Lucas is an old friend of mine, and a staunch supporter, promoter and advocate of the arts in Miami. Through him I would acclimate myself to the local year round art scene, and with the blessing of the Roger Smith News crew I planned on exposing the underbelly of the foreign invasion by cosmopolitan galleries onto the shores of liberty city. Quickly, though I realized I was a foreigner in a foreign land, far from New York and farther from my comfortable northeast safety nets. I only had Luke to rely on, and as I would find out traveling alone, with no money, an abundance of sensitive recording equipment, and no compass (directional or otherwise) is not conducive to telling other peoples stories. My journey trying to discover the essence of Art Basel 2009, became an exploration into the economics of how failure can be successful, how natural illusions are often more true than the illusions of construction, and how sometimes the most poignant inspiration is the kind that doesn’t actually inspire.

Luke with random flipped SUV

Out of all of the curated art I saw over the course of four days in the worlds biggest art convention, the two images that will never leave me were; an 86 year old Cuban world war II veteran brandishing a cane made from a touchtone phone and rare coins he had collected, and an over turned pickup truck with the roof completely smashed in with its contents barely pushing through windshield in the middle of two massive art fairs. Neither the truck, nor the man were much affected by the invasion of artists, gallery owners, art collectors or aspiring journalist/filmmakers trying to make their mark on a city that will remain splintering into multi faceted identities with or without a week long summit to define it.

Cuban Dude

I had one concrete assignment from Aleks A.K.A Marlo, he asked me to catch up with a gallery director from Williamsburg that we had meet a month prior during an exploration of the Brooklyn Arts scene. Marisa from Like The Spice Gallery told us that she would be setting up shop in a suite in a hotel, unlike the hoards of galleries that exhibited work in convention booths around the city. In the meantime I would tour Miami for everything it wasn’t known for, and haphazardly avoid all of the things it was. Ultimately I would find it easier to borrow the perspective of my friend and guide, Lucas, in order to understand both Basel and Miami. The city was in dire need of substance, it was industrial but gaudy, disposable but desperate and like the colliding identities that define Miami’s culture it is constantly renegotiating extremes in order to discover some balance. Kerouac’s desolate mountain peak was an outpost that served as an advanced warning center for those further down the mountain that changing conditions were eminent. In the chaos of over crowding, traffic, oppressive heat, lost souls and vice the rejection of the gaudy extravagance that is inextricably tied to Miami sent me scurrying from the outpost convinced that I had to ring the alarm.

Ralph's Exhibit @ Sushi Samba

stay tuned for the next part.