Each December, for one sun-drenched week in Miami, contemporary art becomes the center of gravity around which more popular forms of culture orbit. It's a bizarre inverted laboratory where some of the most exclusive facets of society - people, things and companies alike - explode into exhibitionistic view.
As everyone well knows, the narrative of this week - the highest holiday of the attention economy - is told through its most spectacular moments. As was to be expected, only a few of these were deeply rooted in art. The phalanx of collectors, advisors and the like waiting outside the doors of Art Basel's preview day on Wednesday looked like a crowd amassed for Black Friday. The trade show inside did well, with numerous pieces from around the world selling for six and seven figures. Two off-site projects, Andra Ursuta's vertiginous installation at the new Institute of Contemporary Art Miami in the Design District and Ryan McNamara 's immersive ballet at a forlorn resort on the beach, were must-sees for lovers of art.
The other imperatives were mostly social. Tuesday saw a maelstrom of parties along the central stretch of the beach. One moment people were watching a dancer twirl a flaming staff in the surf at White Cube's annual Soho Beach House bash; half an hour later, the show was in a climate-controlled bunker under the Miami Beach Edition, where ice dancers were performing stunts on an LED-lit rainbow rink for the hotel's grand opening. In between the two, at the new Thompson Hotel, Performa threw a party for McNamara's performance. It was divine irony that the artist and his dancers were for some time among the throng of people unable to enter as the event throbbed at capacity.
On Wednesday, VIPs splintered from the fair to dinners near and far. The most quintessentially South Floridian event must have been the island housewarming of the prominent Russian collector Maria Baibakova, who chartered VanDutch boats to speed guests though the twilight to the Spanish mansion formerly inhabited by Cher. Back on midbeach, a lavish Argentinian dinner asado prepared by the chef Francis Mallmann was taking place at the construction site of the billion-dollar Faena hotel, residences and Rem Koolhaas-designed cultural 'forum' slated to open at this time next year.
A dozen blocks away, pandemonium was crashing at the gates of the Raleigh's beach club, where Jeffrey Deitch and V magazine staged a megawatt concert by Miley Cyrus guest-starring the Flaming Lips. Rather than sing her own hits (she played one B-side), Cyrus wailed through a set of rock classics, from the Beatles's 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' to Led Zeppelin's 'Since I've Been Loving You,' as the air choked with streams of bubbles and confetti.
More and more, the week seems like a cocktail of familiar ingredients, spiked with new celebrities, shaken and poured into new hotels. On Thursday, two of the most tongue-in-cheek events delighted. Atop the Herzog and De Meuron parking garage at 1111 Lincoln Road, Kim Kardashian attended a dinner feting her infamous Paper magazine cover. Across the bay, DIS (the collective that orchestrated the brilliantly blank Kardashian look-alike 'Kontest' during 2011's art week) provided the visual amusement for a night of musical performances at the Peréz Art Museum Miami; flyboarders with jet-propelled boots launched themselves high into the air and dove deep below the surface like cyborg dolphins. Meanwhile, on Sunset Island, a more demure event was taking place for the Fondation Beyeler - which is located in Basel, Switzerland - at the home of the Design District developer Craig Robins. The dinner celebrated Marina Abramovic's installation at the Fondation's booth at Art Basel, where the Serbian performance artist tucked weary fairgoers into stretchers for naps.
By Friday, many of Miami's key visitors and events were already a thing of the past; however, the weekend meant a whole new crop of arrivals and an even greater sense of chaos. The elephant on the island - or, rather, missing from it - was the nationwide civil unrest precipitated by recent police killings and stoked by the sort of economic inequality that a place like Miami, and a week like this one, epitomize. A protest convened on Interstate 195, cutting off the most direct route of transportation between Miami Beach and the Design District. To many attendees, it was the most important and galvanizing instance of performative action all week. Of course, the revelry on either side of the highway continued.
On Sunday, the main fair closed, and to celebrate its by-then-zombified dealers, Art Basel and the nomadic nightlife instigator Tolga threw a massive fiesta at the bottle-service club Wall under the W Hotel. In a supernova of lasers and sparklers, Miami art week bid goodbye to the space-time continuum like a black hole set to reopen in 12 months, more gargantuan than ever.
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