RUS Miami. Three artist collaboratives explore the city's solild waste
Written by Carlos Suarez de Jesus
Page 2 of 2
Resting an elbow on his rickety rave roadster, Rodriguez holds forth on its origins. Basurama, found the decaying flatbed in an empty lot in Little Haiti. It was groaning under nearly a ton of busted concrete from a construction site. They approached the owner and offered to pay for it only to be told they could have it for free, if they would cart the eyesore away.
The RUS collaborators turned it into an amped up sound and light system complete with a generator and web cam. The public was invited to activate the traveling installation using disparate elements like a car alarm, a distributor cap or an oil filter, placed on a grid. These triggered sensors that repeated beats sounding like “timbales, bongos, guitars or violins,” Rodriguez explained. Car parts were also turned into musical instruments and when people pressed attached keyboards the red and white lights strapped to the truck twinkled responsively.
During the exhibit’s opening spectators were also able to engage with Scrapyard Challenge’s interactive installation which Rodriguez referred to as a “junk guitar.” Moriwaki and Bruker-Cohen hung the side panel of a blue Toyota SUV on a wall, covering it with strips of red duct tape and silver conductive tape. The public was encouraged to arm themselves with water guns and take pot shots at its surface. If the spray dosed a certain spot, the butchered buggy sonically burped and its lights blazed intensely.
“They were using a technique called circuit bending,” says Rodriguez. “They went to dollar stores and bought stuff like Sesame Street toys that made beeping cars sounds then stripped them to use in their sculpture.”
On a wall next to it, the Basurama boys teamed up on a wall piece poetically evoking American car culture.
Logo Car Map consisted of metal automobile logos, pried from rusting jalopies and arranged to suggest a map of the United States. The logos were often reworked in nonsensical fashion. “Sedan de Ville, de Ville Seville, Neville,” read one of their catchier phrases. Another wall piece featured Xeroxed copies of glossy hot rod magazines that typically depicted scantily clad models in provocative poses.
As if tossing a bone to local NASCAR aficionados, Basurama invited Spanish chef, Montse Guillen, to create a lavish “White Trash” buffet for the visiting masses. “Montse served a traditional lentil dish, complimented with Spam, Cheese Wiz and roasted marshmallows,” cracked Rodriguez.
A few days after Basurama’s rollicking party, Rodriguez stood under a fishnet bursting with the garbage he and his fellow collaborators generated during their brief stay in Miami. The junk swayed precariously over his noggin like the sword of Damocles.
Absent of people, the now empty space appeared sad, the junk oddly peeled of its impact.
As Rodriguez surveyed the left over ephemera, one was left wondering how the visiting Spaniard - accustomed to the rambling plazas and bustling public spaces of Madrid - must have felt by comparison in pedestrian unfriendly Miami.
Researching garbage output versus consumption became inconsequential for the artist when he ended up stuck several days here without wheels before his return flight home. Rodriguez felt very much marooned and hopeless. In a town where people remain hostages to their cars and gas prices, Basurama’s timely project was as sobering as the artist was happy to high tail it from Dodge.
