On any given week, turn your FM radio transmitter to 91.1, and you'll get a bunch of static.
But this isn't just any damn week. This is Art Basel. And for a few more days, turning to 91.1 will open a sonic passageway into the Pulse Miami exhibition bathrooms and the playful underbelly of the art world.
It sounds strange, but it's all part of Cannonball Miami's tireless dedication to bringing the national and international art world colliding with our local flair. In fact, the local non-profit couldn't be more proud to present the Bad at Sports Art Basel 2013 takeover, live and in effect.
"One of the important parts of our residency program is the visiting residency," said Cannonball Program Coordinator Dominique Breard. "We invite national and international artists, cultural producers, writers, and curators to come into the residency and develop public programs, interact with our local community and open the doors of our artists to the rest of the world."
Cannonball resides and operates in downtown Miami at 1035 N. Miami Ave., in the same building as late-night crowd favorite The Corner. For the second year in a row, they've been invited by the great Pulse exhibit to put together a unique presentation.
"They're very generous with that," Breard said. "As a non-profit organization, it's very difficult for us to be able to afford such an opportunity, so we're very grateful."
This year, it's all about "art for everyone," so they invited Chicago-based podcasters and pirate radio hosts Bad for Sports to open up discussion in a not-so expected place. Like, how often do you answer nature's call only to find yourself face-to-face with live art talk?
"We thought no one better than Bad at Sports to come down and create some gossip and non-serious art critique," Breard said. "They've been at Nada for several years, so we invited them over to this side of town to cover the fairs. They've set up their pirate radio station 91.1 FM in the bathrooms of the art fair, and they're going to be interviewing people, arts professionals, artists, and collectors throughout."
Continuing in the inclusive vein, Cannonball and Bad at Sports collaborated on commissioning five unique prints, each in a series of 100, from both Miami and Chicago-based artists available for purchase for just $35 - a lot less than the lofty works hanging in each gallery's cubicle.
"It's not only huge exposure for the organization, but also, once again an opportunity for us to invite and commission artists to create particular projects," Breard said. "We have the radio station, and we have the posters that were created specifically for this fair... we want everyone to be able to buy some art this art fair."
Of course, they don't do these things because they have to. They do them because Cannonball wants to encourage a love and appreciation of art that can bring the community together from the 305 to worldwide platforms.
"We're lucky enough that we don't have to sell during the fairs. We're not tied to that," she said. "Our funding mechanism is complicated and definitely challenging, but it doesn't come from fairs. Actually, we have the liberty to be a little bit more playful for this type of situation."
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