What could inspire a more terrifying nightmare of Hollywood excess than the garish façade of a Planet Hollywood restaurant? Perhaps the sum of its muscle-bound financial backing parts: Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now reduced to a miserable eight locations, the Planet Hollywood brand is synonymous with the corporate derailment of quick expansion. Anyone remember the Miami Beach and Coconut Grove operations? No? Right.
It figures that local rabble-rouser Liz Ferrer and enfant terrible Michael Anthony Farley have taken their curatorial cues from the "acting" and Hollywood-centric nature of the once global operation for 'The Planet Hollywood' of Newer Genres showing through Edge Zones' Art Basel presence in Little Haiti, the Zones Art Fair.
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"Certain contemporary art practices -- installation, performance, relational aesthetics, social sculpture et al. -- are notoriously hard to document or commodify. 'The Planet Hollywood' of Newer Genres questions how these practices fit into our dominant culture of object display. Here, objects that exist as a facilitator of an action or document of a non-object based art happening are displayed in an evolving installation that attempts to graft a provisional aura to an indexical remnant."
This statement from the curators gels with the project's nomadic mission and their concern with "the limits of visual and living arts and the performance space." Ferrer and Farley are both artists who combine performance, image/object-making, and happenings. And because Zones is a "unique fair with a performance centric mission," they bring a meta approach to the temporality of the performative arts. With Little Haiti already off the beaten arts path, the placement and timing of the show's offering -- especially within the context of Basel at large -- mirrors the original grandiosity of their inspiration.
Performances will run the span of Art Basel with a headquartered space and numerous satellite offshoots highlighting the versatility, if not impossibility, of an art form that you can't afford the luxury of scheduling around your availability.
Spontaneous and some scheduled performances will happen throughout the week from this roster of artists: Julia Sinelnikova, Jen Clay, James Thomas Marsh, James Mayhew, Sophia Park, Kalan Sherrard, Leyla Mozayen, Bruno Giuliani, Varvara Voetskova, Dino Real, Kathryn Marks, Jon Konkol, Maria paz Valenzuela, Kevin Blackstone, Antoinette Suiter, House of Gunt, SSTR, Local Honey, DAZZLESTORM!, Michael Anthony Farley, Ellen Degenerate, Poncili Creacion, and Ellen Turrietta, Orlando Estrada, Sebastian Duncan Portuondo, NEOCAMP, and Vincent Tiley.
Just like their Hollywood counterparts, these performers will be subject to the mores of their personal excessiveness -- how successful they'll be will rest solely on the bombastic-ness of their performance. Aesthetically, at least, and certainly in intent, they'll be a more welcome addition to the fair roster this year than a gross thematic eatery.
"The Planet Hollywood" of Newer Genres from December 2 - 7 at the Little Haiti Arts District, 8325 NE 2 AVE, Miami. Locations and performance times vary. All events are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule of events all 305-798-9928 or visit zonesartfair.com.
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