MIAMI - The fairs are the fairs — overwhelming in quantity while simultaneously creating voracious desire and exhaustion. What enticed me this year were the new, distinctive, occasionally half-naked projects focusing on collaboration, extraordinary music, situational relationships with food, and unusual sites that included: The Island, Rainbow City, SEVEN, The Oceanfront, Jennifer Rubell’s breakfast installation, Herzog & de Meuron’s parking lot with a view, and synchronized swimmers splaying their legs at pool party after pool party. 

Wynwood projects distinguished themselves from the luxury on South Beach by activating dilapidated spaces. Ducking through a hole blasted through the cement wall border of the Rubell’s fabulous collection — this year featuring rough sex in claymation videos by Nathalie Djurberg and Testerone and Martydom sculptures by Sarah Lucas — one ends up on the other side of the tracks. Entering an abandoned house, visitors encounter another of Jennifer Rubell’s amazing food installations, Just Right. The Goldilocks inspired breakfast featured stacks of bowls, spoons, raisins, sugar, and vats of porridge in different rooms. In keeping with the setting, only the quantity was extravagant, as it was definitely more visually conceptual than delectable.

Evenings in Wynwood had a Burning Man meets Coney Island atmosphere created by the surge of graffiti work in the local galleries and Tony Goldman’s Wynwood Walls featuring stars Ryan McGuinness, Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, AVAF and more, alongside regional artists; and the interactive “Stuck Up” sticker wall touring the country by Anonymous Gallery. Meat smokers on every other corner filled the air with a smell of barbeque reminding me of New Orleans street parades. Giant blow up bouncy sculptures by Miami art collective FriendsWithYou for Rainbow City was launched with a concert by Pharrell Williams and N*E*R*D. The trippy county fair-like setting made us feel like we sipped from Alice in Wonderland’s “Drink Me” bottle and let our inhibitions down enough to bounce like crazy.

Fantastic music seemed to be everywhere from Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery’s closing party with Le Baron DJs; Creative Time’s nightly four-city Oceanfront extravaganza; Art Loves Music beach concert by Metric which had such great acoustics it could be heard all the way down the boardwalk as we lined up for the overcrowded challenging entrance to Deitch/MoCA’s concert by LCD Soundsystem at The Raleigh.

Poolsides were activated with nightly performances including Mariah Robertson’s event for MoMA PS1 and “Interview at the Delano Hotel” featuring naked men, synchronized swimmers, carnival style marching bands, and mariachis leading the crowd to the beach for champagne. But real water adventure was to be had leaving the Mondrian Hotel for The Island, a collaborative Gilligan Island style curatorial project by Shamim Momin’s LAND in LA and Ohwow in Miami. Artists responded to the island through a range of media including Terence Koh’s twin skeletons on the beachfront, Marina Rosenfeld’s sound piece, Scott Campbell’s “Wish you Were Here” grave marker and carefully placed coconut, and Rona Yefman’s TV buried in the bush showed her video of Tel Aviv gangs playing a vicious game of capture the flag and her site-specific postcards photographed on the island responded to the Flagler Memorial for which the island was built.

Off the island, tranquility was found at the Bass Museum’s US premiere of Isaac Julien’s sumptuous, nine-channel film, Ten Thousand Waves. And for those fair revelers seeking to return home unburdened by the memory of their excesses and indiscretions in Miami, Marc Horowitz, like a priest giving absolution in confession, invited people to write down what they wanted to forget, then he swept it under the rug in Analix Forever Gallery’s booth at Scope.  I had fun and I wrote down three things.