THINKING BIG IN A SMALL WAY
Okay. Design Week. Partially funded by the City of Santa Fe Economic Development Fund-and wouldn't you like to get your hands on delivery of those ducats?-this is the week we proclaim Santa Fe's status as a "leading international design center." If you're waiting for the punchline, that was it. If putting "Santa Fe" and "leading international design" in the same sentence makes you think water and oil, flying pigs, snowballs in hell, etc, well, no one could blame you, but the City's economic development department would call you small-minded and I would agree with them. There's no point in setting a goal of mediocrity; if you're going to entertain a pipe dream, it may as well be a pipe with some girth, right?
The problem, the strange problem, is that we're thinking huge-as in move over London, take a hike New York, piss off Barcelona, bite me Berlin, so sorry São Paolo, choke on it Chicago and get out of the way Paris 'cause Santa Fe is coming through-and yet our first allegedly annual design week is tinged with an air of provinciality. There is an intensely
regional focus to the more than 40 events scheduled for the week, which is not in and of itself a bad thing, it just makes the whole "international" bit ring a little like off-the-cuff, ignorant hype.
As confident as I am that a bunch of locals in natural fiber pants are going to love the multiple Feng-Shui seminars, I'm uncertain this will convince Ron Arad to close his shop in London and open a studio in the Railyard. As delightful as an organized brunch with Santa Fe interior designers sounds, I will be surprised out of my shoes if anyone from Alessi shows up for a chile-dusted deviled egg. I'm sure that a refresher course on the basics of Santa Fe Style will be tops for anyone remodelling a batch of vacation rentals, but I have a hunch that it being the cover story Dwell and Wallpaper are fighting over is a bit of a rumor. Finally, touring the Parade of Homes winners and examining serapes will be useful activities for avoiding sunburn, but has anyone done the research on whether or not that sort of thing is really going to energize an influx of global design talent and birth a creative economy of progressive artistic innovation? Hey, I'm just asking.
Now, I pray-and fervently too-that my flippancy is rammed down my throat by a week's worth of compelling, well-attended programs that prove we don't just have our heads stuck up a big adobe ass, but actually do have something to offer the design community, any design community, international or otherwise. I'm confident that the Tuesday, July 21 Artist and Creative Professionals Live and Work Housing Design Charette will be not only illuminating, but capable of changing the course of development in Santa Fe, which is nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately the all-day event is even longer than its own name and I'm afraid no one will show up. This, really, is the heart of my concern-Design Week 2005 may not be perfect, but at least somebody is trying to do something. As always, however, its success has more to do with we lazy Santa Feans deciding to have a stake in our community than any failure on the part of the event's organizers. Sadly, when something depends on our community being proactive participants, 16 years of conditioning has taught me to expect disappointment. It's also led me to be suspicious of our tendency to reinvent the wheel. Why doesn't the Economic Development Fund do something to augment ART Santa Fe, an event that already has 10 years of history in making this an actual international art destination? I would also be happy to learn that the Fund's minders have called SITE Santa Fe to express, in pure dollar value, the City's gratitude for putting us on the international contemporary art map, but I bet that hasn't happened. So I'm back on my knees, praying that "international design" and "Santa Fe" isn't an expensive experiment with round holes and square pegs, when we could be financing the expanded esteem of established events or, crazier than that, promoting existing, grass roots scenes with worldwide worth.
There's no way we'd get Western Interiors and Design Magazine to partner up on promoting the High Mayhem Experimental Multimedia Festival, but we could probably get a bunch of fly-by-night German 'zines and a few Dutch Web sites pretty hopped-up. Last weekend's Loud Louder Loudest! event at High Mayhem's quasi-secret, house party-vibe location (
) was not, on the surface, anyone's idea of economic development. But by the time the final act, Denver-based Nova-Sak, began wandering the grounds and bombarding everyone in a wild haze of feedback, it was clearly something more important than theoretical design-it was tangible, in-the-moment, hell-bent-for-leather creativity.
The one-man sonic implosion, equipped with a belt-mounted wireless transmitter fed by around six feet of cable with a contact mic at the end, proceeded to strap and tape his audio proboscis to a heavy steel plate, a piece of sheet metal and anything else that caught his attention, including a bonfire, all the while relaying his fuzzy squeals, honks and howls back through a large stack of speakers. Of course, it's not the size of your speakers, it's the way you make them squawk and Nova-Sak has a gift in this regard. By the time he was spasmodically attacking the surface of his sheet metal with a knife and bending it around people's bodies and other convenient objects, the combination of physical intensity and controlled noise burn was something like a less-angsty-more-manic meeting of Marina Abromovic and Jimi Hendrix. The thick stench of unfiltered, unproduced, pure art was a welcome slap in the face, like waking from a guilty slumber of over-designed and superfluous crap. In the simplest terms, it was real, here and now.
Just in case there's a few bucks left in the old Economic Development Fund.
