In 2019, we recorded the first part of this story about the history of Miami's contemporary art scene inside Locust Projects, the longest running alternative art space in the city. Locust Projects director Lorie Mertes and artists from a collaborative known as FeCuOp—Jason Ferguson, Christian Curiel, Brandon Opalka, and Victor Villafañe, remember the raw energy of the 1990s. When we meet, the collective is in the midst of building out an immersive environment for Antenna, their first major project in Miami since 2003. The performative and interactive installation aimed to create a social experiment around communication.
In early 2021, we reach out to FeCuOp to talk about how much has changed since they collaborated on the highly interactive, live, and in-person experience at Locust Projects. Only months after they realized Antenna, the global coronavirus pandemic shut down the world for most of a year, profoundly altering how we encounter art.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Sound featured with permission of FeCuOp
Related Episodes: Where Art Meets Sand and Social Behavior, The BLCK Family of Miami on Collective Creativity
Related Links: Locust Projects, FeCuOp, Christian Curiel, Jason Ferguson, Brandon Opalka, Victor Villafañe, Miami Light Project
FeCuOp is a contemporary art collaborative established in Miami in 1997, by Jason Ferguson, born in Trinidad and Tobago, lives in South Carolina; Christian Curiel, born in Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, lives in New Haven, CT; Brandon Opalka, born in Virginia, lives in Colorado. The name constitutes an amalgam of the three founding artist’s names. FeCuOp along with new Miami-based member Victor Villafañe, are like the periodic table of elements; each member’s unique characteristics bring a unique variable property to every collaboration.
Locust Projects is an alternative art space founded by artists for artists in 1998. The arts incubator produces, presents, and nurtures ambitious and experimental new art and the exchange of ideas through commissioned exhibitions and projects, artist residencies, summer art intensives for teens, and public programs on contemporary art and curatorial practice.
Curating Art in a Time of Global Change: IKT Norway
Art and Our Uncertain Future
Prospect 4 New Orleans—The Lotus In Spite of the Swamp
Making a Mountain in Miami: Ugo Rondinone's Bright Boulders
Art and the Rising Sea
Dara Friedman On The Theater of Your Mind
Studio Drift on Nature and Technology
Report from Miami Art Week 2017
Adam Nadel on the Endangered Everglades
Alba Triana on Experimenting with Sound and Light
Miami Art Week + Art Basel Preview 2017
Culture Making in Downtown Miami
Breakfast and the Beat with FreshArtINTL
Samson Young on Songs for Disaster Relief
Architecture with a Sense of Place
Lisa Reihana on Reversing the Colonial Gaze
Introducing Miami Film Festival Gems 2017
Sounds of Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017
Where Art Meets Cultural History
ORLAN on Art Tech
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Spider-Man Crawlspace Podcast
Harlem Is Everywhere
The Art Angle
Gulliver’s Travels
A Tale of Two Cities
The Week in Art
Robservations with Rob Liefeld