(Above: Sundown Salon #11, A hand-made garment/knitting/crochet gathering)

For almost six years, Fritz Haeg hosted a series of self-organized gatherings called Sundown Salon in his Los Angeles home, which features a geodesic dome, grounds with many garden spaces, and a subterranean cave. Past events  included everything from crafting circles, gardening and cooking workshops, to live music and “pageantry, performances, shows, stunts and spectacles.” According to Haeg, “The salons provided an alternative model to the isolated solitary creator in the pure hermetic white box. Instead, the salon celebrated the truly engaged human, responding to their time, environment, community, friends, neighbors, weather, history, place.”

In 2006, he branched out to hosting these events in other like-minded venues around the world through his new project Sundown Schoolhouse [including an all-day indoor tent/workshop at Arthur Nights in October, 2006 —ed.]. He is now working with the Miami MOCA to find a household that would be equally excited host gatherings in their home as part of an exhibit, thereby helping to develop the project on a broader scale. If you live in the Miami area, this is your chance to become a part of the movement. Read on:

OPEN CALL: LOOKING FOR AN ADVENTUROUS MIAMI FAMILY EAGER TO START A SERIES OF SALON GATHERINGS AT THEIR HOME

For a project at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami, I am seeking the collaboration of an adventurous local family. They will organize and host a regular series of salon gatherings at their home during the run of the exhibition from May 21 – September 13, 2009. I will work with the family to strategize their new salon series, but the events will be entirely self-organized with guests of their choosing.

The selected family (residents who share a single family dwelling) will have the entire contents of their “living room” relocated in exactly the same arrangement in the MOCA galleries for the run of the exhibition. I will develop and design a very simple seating system that is conducive to the social salon gatherings to furnish their vacated living space.

Museum visitors will be invited to make themselves comfortable in the transplanted “living room”. A video will be produced about the family, their lives in the living room before the project, and during a few of the salon events. This will then be presented on their own TV in the museum for visitors to watch. Snapshots, invitations and other ephemera from their events will be displayed in the galleries. The family will also be invited to keep a diary of their experience to be posted online and printed in a ‘zine.

If your family is up for the challenge, excited by the possibility of turning your lives upside down for the summer and eager to open up your house to new possibilities…. send a few photos of your family and “living room” with a very brief message describing why you would want to do this to studio-at-fritzhaeg-dot-com.  Please pass this on this to anyone in Miami that you think might be interested, I will be visiting to meet with potential families on April 21st.

Regards,
Fritz Haeg

project webpage:
http://www.fritzhaeg.com/salon/miami.html
MOCA North Miami:
http://www.mocanomi.org

This project coincides with the release of The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive published by Evil Twin Publications, a 400-page book documenting the salon events I hosted in my Los Angeles geodesic dome from 2001-2006.
http://www.eviltwinpublications.com/sundown.html
http://www.fritzhaeg.com/sundown-salon-book.html