Cannonball – ready for a blast in Miami

By admin, September 24, 2014

I am off this weekend for a three month writing residency with Cannonball in Miami (USA), which will culminate with the iconic Art Basel Miami and the madness of “fair week”.

Of course, any trip to the States necessitates a visit to New York and, given that I left America in the December following 9/11, it will be a significant visit from many perspectives. I will also return to San Francisco, my home for five years.

What will I be doing in Miami?

Apart from getting up to speed on my Cuban dancing and cocktails, this will be a slow time for observation, research, conversation and writing – but writing without the daily cycle of online deadlines.

I will be searching for the answers to the questions:   Have artists become more self-determined, taking leave of the “traditional” gallery system of representation by honing modes for creative thinking in sync with more localised definitions of market and mobility?  How do artists and independent spaces reclaim ground adjunct to art fairs and the museum sector?  And, what modes are artists employing to reach beyond these tradition demarcations; to broker the urban space as a venue for cultural engagement?

I will flesh these ideas out in a lecture that I will present in Miami – “Latitudes and Attitudes: Self-determination and the sustained project” – which will map landscapes of unconventional exchange from SLOT’s gritty curbside to Manila’s congested streets and the tri-cultural lanes of Malaysia. Simply, it will be a jockey ride between global perceptions and local realities.  How could that not be fun?

My travel has been supported by a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.