Big Ideas, Little Haiti

One of the benefits of having artists hanging around town is that while we’re working, they’re thinking. The bad ones are usually thinking about themselves, but the good ones patrol the city like Basho: considering structures and alterations, movements and stagnations — everything the rest of us take for granted.

And what indigenous urban fruit is riper for examination than Little Haiti — a place, in contrast with downtown Miami, that bustles with micro-activity at every hour of the day? Two of our more ruminative artists have done just that, published a scholarly (but highly readable) article on the subject in the art journal e-flux, and now will lecture on their observations as part of the “Convention” exhibit at MoCA. At this Saturday’s Workshop, Gean Moreno and Ernesto Oroza will discuss how objects in Little Haiti are re-appropriated and what those novel applications have to say about urban planning, architecture, and the way urban social communities function at the smallest and — for Moreno and Oroza — most important level.
Sat., June 13, 2 p.m., 2009