Biscayne Writers Beehive Connects Miami’s Blogerati
Posted on | December 9, 2009 | Comments Off
Art Basel 2009. It was interesting to showcase writing in the midst of visual art at Miami’s Independent Thinkers inaugural show at the Mitrani Warehouse in Wynwood. We had to figure out how to grab people’s attention in an atmosphere where art is defined as a painting on a wall. Who would want to read a novel during an art show? Or even a three-page short story or blog post for that matter? This was a party, after all, not a place for serious contemplation of the human condition.
Franceasca Seiden, director of Miami’s Independent Thinkers, suggested I plaster the wall with random writings and words. I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about at first, but the suggestion was a seed that got planted into my subconscious as I looked at the bare walls of the rectangular space I had to work with.
But I wanted the room to tell a story. I didn’t want it to be random words that people would look at and forget.
I knew that if I kept my literary turtle pace and not freak out, I would create the right atmosphere and figure it all out. Once I knew which room I was getting inside the Mitrani Warehouse, I started digging into my memory files for ideas. I had already created/dreamed/imagined what I wanted to do, and it was just a matter of fitting it into this rectangular-shaped room.
Hmmm. Enter the 7 Chakras. Since I took my yoga teacher training in 2005, I have organized everything according to the Chakra System:
Red – The Root Chakra is our foundation, our home, our safety, our childhood. On the body, this chakra is located at the perenium and goes down the legs, which connect us to the Earth. So I think of myself as the Porto Rican Princess. I wondered if I could display anyone who wrote about their childhood into this category at the entrance of the room.
Orange – The Creative Chakra is where the reproductive organs are located. All human creation comes from this region, whether it is babies, art, or a new business endeavor. For me, this is when I became a sexual being. This incident initiated my interest in travel, so I think of myself as the Virtual Gypsyz traveling from city to city, where my relationships with cities became love affairs. Therefore, anyone who submitted writing about travel, sex, or creation would be featured on the next part of the wall in the Biscayne Writers room.
Yellow – The solar plexus is where we source our confidence and will power. Manifesting our dreams and desires comes from the center of our bodies, a.k.a., our core. When someone hurts us, we feel a metaphorical punch in the stomach. When someone loves us, we feel butterflies or honey in our bellies. Some call the stomach the second brain. I, personally, tapped into this power when I moved to Miami in 2003. It was the first time I moved to a city without having a job first, so I had to make my own work. I used my experience and confidence to write my own column, start my own company and buy real estate. I often had to play Devil’s Advocate in order to achieve my goals, which is why I assigned the Devil archetype to this particular Chakra. So anyone who wrote opinion pieces that defied social norms I would categorize into this section of the Biscayne Writers room.
Green – This is the heart Chakra. It is located on the chest and when all the previous Chakras are filtered through this one, an individual can create win-win negotiations. In my personal story, I think of myself as a Fairy who would become whatever anyone else wanted me to be in order to get the love I so wanted from others. My struggle was to stop this pattern in order to create negotiations that not only benefited the other person, but also benefited myself. I figured this struggle was common, so surely I would be able to post some writing by others in this section.
Blue – The Chakra of expression allows us to communicate our truths through art, music, words, food, fashion, business. There was a time in my life when I worked for people who shut down this particular Chakra in my system. I was haunted. Frustrated. Angry. And it took me a while to understand that my work was directly affecting my health because for the first time in my life, I had started working for a paycheck rather than for passion. I became an evil Witch, who was more concerned about profit than quality of life. Any writer who submitted words about career or the occult would go into this section.
Purple – The Chakra of imagination could accommodate any piece of literature. After all, life is merely a manifestation of our imagination and fiction/poetry captures this. But it is also the Chakra of intuition. It helps us imagine the future so we can make better choices for today. Science Fiction fits well into this Chakra, which is where I classified my characters, the Urban Mermaidz, a bunch of sci-fi sex and the city chics trying to redefine what it means to be a single female on Planet MyAmi.
White – This is the Chakra of Understanding. Enlightenment. Anything spiritual would go into this section. Faith. The invisible connection that binds all of us. My way of practicing this Chakra has been through community work, when finally, I disappear, and I become a Goddess, a ray of light (to borrow from Madonna).
It was all a very interesting way to curate the show, but it still didn’t answer HOW I would showcase the work. Would I put random sentences from each writer’s piece into each Chakra section? How would I give each writer credit for his/her work?
It was at this point that I thought of audio. I had been to many art shows that play looping audio that a patron could hear upon entering the exhibit room. Aha!! Yes! This would set the Biscayne Writers room apart from the visual elements of the Miami’s Independent Thinkers show.
Sean Scott Maguire
Alejandra Amaris
Sofia Moreno
Angello Pizzaro
JJ Colagrande
Jenni Wagoner
It was a brilliant idea until I thought of the DJs and bands that would be playing in the larger warehouse. I would be competing with their significant sound systems.
So I Googled my memory files, trying to locate someone I had met earlier this year that could help me. Like a Googlebot spider searching for keywords, I landed on Sam Sayyah of Subliminal Media Solutions. I had met him through Amir Youseff of HW8 Productions back in August. Sam had demonstrated a couple of “audio spotlight” speakers that project sound in one direction.
“These would be perfect in my exhibit!” I thought. “They will add the WOW factor I will need for people to remember the Biscayne Writers room.”
And so, we had two speakers installed in the rectangular-shaped Biscayne Writers room.
Suddenly, the walls were talking, and another Google search of my memory files led me to Amir Youssef’s other company, Wrap Stars. He had a 4×8 wall panel of Marilyn Monroe’s face juxtaposed with the words, “If these walls could talk.” So I picked it up from his office located at NE 71st and 4th Court, thinking I could put the panel on one of the walls, only to discover that it was too tall. Doh! It barely cleared the ceiling. I tried to turn it so it would go against the wall, but instead, it became a wall itself, separating the Biscayne Writers room into two sides.
Hmmm. Perhaps I was not on the right track with the Chakra system. “This is the brain!” I thought. The Biscayne Writers room will be an installation of a writers brain. One side will be the left brain. The other, the right brain. One side would be dark; one side would be light.
I trekked to Home Depot and priced black lights. One four-foot black light for a fluorescent ceiling fixture would cost me $15!
I bought two.
“Hell,” I thought. “I’ve been dreaming about this Art Basel since last year. I may as well invest everything I’ve got into it.” I ended up buying two more energy-saving black lights for $5 each to install in a lamp I had borrowed from Laraine Hart, one of my fellow Miami Thinkers.
At this point, my writing brutha Angello Pizarro stepped in with ideas of his own. He wanted to create a collage of his earliest writings and show their evolution into his latest writings. This became part of the “light side” of the Biscayne Writers room. We figured it would be easier for people to read in regular light rather than dark light. I complimented his wall with my own wall of evolution from 1985 journal entries about Coleco Vision and “boiled hamburgers” at Burger King to stick drawings of Femmebots struggling with private equity B-O-Yz who wouldn’t listen to ideas coming from female mouths.
The dark side totally fit the mood of my Femmebots blog. Femmebots are villanous luscious Latinas who brainwash B-O-Yz with their “Boob Tubes,” i.e., iPhones clipped to a boustierre.
“Aha!” I thought. “I could get a few real girls to become the Femmebots and display the words of the writers on their Boob Tubes. They would become the distribution platform!”
But I knew I wouldn’t be able to get Femmebots to stand in the room for four days straight, so on the Saturday before Art Basel officially began (Nov. 28), when I was wandering around South Beach looking for signs, I walked into one of those cheap electronic stores – the kind that looks like everything is HOT. I glazed over most of the electronics until my eyes stopped on a couple of digital photo frames.
Photo frames!!
“Hmmm. I could scroll through the writers’ poetry and blog posts with a photo frame!” I thought. Each one cost $85. My budget was getting a little out of control. I didn’t have much money to spend. And who knew if I was going to sell any of this shit during the show?
I didn’t buy anything there. I decided to let the suggestion simmer in my subconscious until something else triggered it.
The moment came a few days later when I had to go to Costco to pick up some groceries. They had photo frames for $79 each, AND they had interactive touch screens. OMG! It was the sign I needed to act. I bought two. And thanks to Tao Rey for helping a clueless sista out and installing them!
Now that I had my audio, my visuals and my lighting together, it was time to assemble the Biscayne Writers room. And then it occurred to me that calling it the Biscayne Writers room was kinda boring.
Back to Googling the memory files. The Femmebots story was highly influenced not only by my own experiences working in the corporate world, but also by the artwork of Clutch Deluxe, who used to throw art show parties everyone knew as The Yummiest. He had created a series of 3-D bees that always appealed to me. And last year, when I started to think of the Internet as a network of Beehives with queen bees in charge, these images suddenly had a context.
And so, the Biscayne Writers Beehive was born, and the Femmebots became the honey inside. I’m sure you can guess who the queen bee is…sorry, I’m a Leo, I can’t help myself. ;-D
At this point, I thought I would cover the walls with Burlap to give the room a Beehive look. So I bought 10 yards of it at $5/yard at Abram’s Fabrics on Biscayne Boulevard (they’ve been there more than 30 years, so I thought I’d patronize a local company). But as opening day drew near, and time was running out, I opted instead to paint the walls white with the help of Handy Manny (thanks, Manny!).
The last element that came together was a door with a window cut-out, provided by Nicole Soden, another Miami Thinker. This brilliant, gorgeous Femmebot came to my rescue when I was still scatter brained and trying to figure out what the hell to do. When I told her I wanted to separate the room into two sides, her face lit up, and she ran to the bigger part of the warehouse to show me the door that was removed for the film room.
“Aaa!” I exclaimed. It was exactly what I needed. Julian Sula, one of the artists in the show, helped me stencil the words, “Bee the media you want to see” above the window, where we placed my computer. During the show, we had the computer’s web cam filming visitors’ every move…at least, in the beginning. The computer kept logging off after a certain amount of time, so FromtheBox.org did a much better job at market researching attendees of Miami’s Independent Thinkers than the Beehive did.
So, as the show progressed, I decided to adapt. I compiled a playlist of all the mash-up videos I created throughout the year and called them, “Memoirs of a Femmebot.” The videos showed scenes of my family since 1969. Forty years of memories. And people loved sitting and watching these with the Subliminal Media audio spotlight speakers providing a direct soundtrack into their ears without headphones.
Two lesbians said the Witches of Coconut Grove chapter was “out of the box.” Bill Kearney said the Botchit Breaks mash-up was better than a lot of the art he saw throughout Basel. One guy brought his NY gallerist into the writers room because he thought it was different. Megan Van Groll, a feminist artist from Austin was interested in understanding Latin feminism.
This window invited people to the light side of the Beehive, which was warm and perfect for talking deeper about writing and life. Angello made connections with other writers and recited hip hop impromptu. Jose Javier Rodriguez discussed his stream of consciousness style. JJ Colagrande and Jenni Wagoner recorded mp3s of their writing. A girl from Tampa confessed she has been writing since second grade but thought it was too dark and too deep to expose for public consumption, until she saw our wall of doodles and inner-most thoughts (”This is what I was talking about!” exclaimed Franceasca Seiden, referring to her early suggestion. Ooooooh! Durrr. I suppose I will always be a slow literary turtle with delayed reactions).
I didn’t sell anything – no paintings, no photo frames, no writing. But my parents drove all the way from Orlando to see the Beehive. Jennifer Nieves, an actress from New York, flew all the way from New York to be one of my Femmebots. And people connected with the literary arts during Art Basel 2009.
In the end, I realize that this art show had nothing to do with monetary profit. It was all karmic profit. It was about Beeing the Media We Want to See instead of relying on the corporate powers that bee to decide who we are.
My mission was accomplished: The Biscayne Writers Blogerati pollinated Art Basel with W-O-R-Dzzzzzzzzzz.
What next?
I am letting go again.
Not planning not plotting not wanting.
I just Bee.
I don’t need a schedule.
I have what I need no need to succeed.
I don’t care. They don’t care. We all fall down!
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