Immersive Musical Experiences by Faena Art During Miami Music Week

This year’s Miami Music Week was one for the books with a new iteration of the Winter Music Conference debuting at Faena Forum and a variety of incendiary performative installations presented by Faena Art.

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” This sentiment, attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is a belief that knits together the hundreds of thousands of music enthusiasts who attend Miami Music Week each year. Faena Forum hosted many of the revelers during this year’s Winter Music Conference, a cornerstone convention where the electric music industry’s most innovative artists, songwriters, DJs and producers talk shop, network and perform live.

Faena Art, Faena’s nonprofit arm dedicated to fostering new models for performative social interaction, produced a range of immersive art experiences across the Faena District. Suzi Analogue, creator of Never Normal Records, took to the Faena Theater stage to perform ZONEZ V4, a multifarious audio/visual ‘moodboard’ that spun elements of sound, film and live performance to exalt the empowered femme identity.

ZONEZ V4. By Suzi Analogue

Special performances by Pam Jones, India Sky and Suzi Analogue with visuals by Helen Peña For F(empower), Kristabel Delgado, Souldreamin & Dana Goldstein

At Faena Forum, Faena Art presented TabomBass by artist Vivian Caccuri. Created as the setting for an ‘anti-concert’—not a standard musical presentation but a contemporary ritual—the work is a sound system composed of stacked speakers, similar to those used at street parties in cultures around the world, from Brazil to Jamaica to Little Havana. Existing somewhere between altarpiece and stage set, Caccuri presented us with a gathering place for the different sounds and traditions that make up the Miami experience and identity. Invited Miami-based and international musicians and performers improvised for about 20 to 30 minutes each in the creation of new polyphonic layering over the African basslines, creating a new hybrid work of art in a constant state of transformation.

TabomBass. By Vivian Caccuri

With basslines by Ghanaian artists Mensahighlife, Ghalileo, Mutombo Da Poet, Keyzuz, Yaw P, Steloo, Wanlov, Panji Anoff, Sankofa, and Kuvie. With Live Performances by Silent Addy, Suzi Analogue, Morgan Bryson, Tama Gucci, DJ Jigüe, Rara Lakay, Yaw P, Paperwater, among others. Dancers: Manoucheka Luma; Albertte Petithomme, and Jade Scott McCartney.