Relentless cataloguing of images is one of the hallmarks of recent history. The Florida Moving Image Archive’s contribution to this year’s aviation-themed Dade Heritage Days is a study in the historical value of images never intended for the history books. Comprising mainly home movies and television and movie advertisements, the…
“When people go to someone’s house for the first time, they want to look through the medicine cabinet and the CD collection,” reasons Rhythm Foundation director Laura Quinlan. The Rhythm Foundation’s Curated Listening series, held as part of Miami Beach’s Second Thursdays arts night, reveals what the music fanatics in…
Thursday, April 10 Modern photography, with advances in computerized wizardry, is as agile and varied as the zillion bits of information transmitted through the human brain upon processing just one image. University of Miami history professor Tomas Lopez explains how technology has altered the photographic arts and rendered your grandma’s…
Mark Mothersbaugh wants to get into your house. It’s not as if he hasn’t been there before. He was once the frontman for Devo, the geek-chic rock quintet from Akron, Ohio, popular in the Eighties for its spastic delivery and highly art-directed image and record covers. What Eighties New Waver…
Well-known for its owner/developers — the dairy-farming Graham family (as in Sen. Bob Graham) — Miami Lakes also enjoyed a long-time reputation as a haven for cows. Drivers zooming along Main Street were often treated to the sight of Holsteins placidly grazing in fenced-off areas. The bovine bunch was removed…
Saturday 4/12 South Florida racing aficionados know: Life is the pits. At least it is during stock car racing season, when the mean machines burn up the track at Hialeah Speedway (3300 Okeechobee Rd.). Not quite as famous as that other Florida race course — the Daytona International Speedway –…
Thursday 4/10 It’s just not groovy to live in grime, baby. Shag-alicious hipsters don’t do the shabby, get my drift? In The Secret Adventures of R.E. Cycle, outta-sight secret agent R.E. Cycle soils his radical duds cleaning up the environment after he is freed from a bottle of Tab. The…
Four artists in search of a drama A television set rises out of a huge flower bud in the middle of a room. On its screen, an opera singer warbles and emotes as 16mm film projections of women and water are cast over its surface. In a nearby corner a…
We’d venture that “new” is not the word that immediately comes to mind when you think of classical music. The New Music Miami ISCM Festival will change that perception. Presented by the FIU School of Music in association with the International Society for Contemporary Music, the event brings together some…
Ever heard of someone by the name of Ida B. Wells? She is the largely unknown but fascinating subject of Constant Star, a beautifully produced study of determination and courage now playing at the Florida Stage in Manalapan. Wells was an American original. Born a black slave in the Civil…
Performance art is not for everyone. Even as symbolic movements, seeing the artist’s body intimate acts of self-inflicted violence, humiliation, or sex are always challenging — even for the willing observer. But one thing is certain: Since the 1960s the artist’s body has functioned as a physical resistance to power…
Maybe all you want out of your pop music is a few minutes of escape, a radio-friendly respite from the heavy humdrum of your workaday existence. Maybe you likes to hang with 50 Cent, who survived a few gunshots (and doesn’t let you forget it) to party another day; or…
The story of the Cuban vocal group Los Zafiros is decidedly cinematic. Four handsome lads from Havana’s working-class Cayo Hueso neighborhood formed the group in 1962. Accompanied by a guitarist, the singers perfected a swinging synthesis of American doo-wop and Cuban rumba. Los Zafiros shot to fame on the island,…
Many playwrights draw from their personal experiences, but Edward Albee appears downright obsessed by his. The veteran, venerable playwright returns again and again to familiar subjects: dysfunctional family dynamics and the inescapable isolation of human beings from one another. Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Tiny Alice, The Play About The…
Where in hell does all this stuff come from? That’s a question constantly posed by readers, moviegoers, and half-soused nightclub audiences. What are the sources of an artist’s art? What weird compulsion enables a performer to stand naked before the prying eye of a camera, an empty canvas, or a…
It was only in 1967 that Great Britain struck from its jurisprudence the “common scold,” essentially a crime of catty insolence for which the convicted party — almost always a woman disturbing the peace by nagging a man — was punished via a public ducking into cold water. Nobody likes…
Lili Renteria believes the stage doesn’t exist just to present theater. The stage exists to present possibilities. Hence the choice of an elegant hand fan as the logo of her brainchild Teatro Abanico, a 200-seat theater and gallery space in Coral Gables. “The fan is not just a visual symbol,”…
Thursday 3 Active girls and guys gone wild. Before the late 1980s, Ocean Drive’s Art Deco hotels boasted a slew of Jewish immigrant radicals, many of them retirees from New York City, where they had been active in the civil rights and labor movements and sometimes even in anarchist groups…
More than 40 years into her career, composer and performance artist Meredith Monk describes her intricate vocal arrangements and particular style of dance as primordial, raw, visceral, and tribal. Since the 1960s, the ever-braided artist has forged a unique niche for herself, writing and performing mostly a cappella works that…
SAT 4/5 Home to prehistoric Tequesta Indians, used as U.S. Army headquarters during wars against the Seminole Indians, the southernmost terminus for trade along the east coast of America, and a magnet for urban sprawl and drug-toting ships, the Miami River is also a prime party spot. And while rollin’…
MON 4/7 Frustrated golfers have rarely referred to the legendary course at the Doral Resort and Spa as “heavenly.” Indeed the challenging — often treacherous — 7125-yard course is commonly known by its decidedly unsaintly nickname: the Blue Monster. This week, though, the Monster should be on its best behavior…
SAT 4/5 Slobbering, roly-poly fatsos. Shrieking cherubs in poopy Pampers. Babies are every parent’s bundle of joy. They are also heaven-sent gold mines for manufacturers of infant wear, rattles, pacifiers, and child-safety equipment. In fact analysts predict Americans will spend about $29 billion on baby purchases this year. New mommies…
