The Launch of Superblue and the Rise of ‘Experiential Art’ Centres
The way that the next generation is experiencing art is changing, and the pandemic only promises to catalyse that transformation. We take a closer look at the imminent Superblue launch in Miami in that context and review its critical success factors.
In what could turn out to be a turning point for the art world, Superblue is slated to open its first Experiential Art Centre in Miami this spring after original plans to open last December were delayed by the pandemic. It positions itself as a venue showcasing immersive installations by a diverse set of interdisciplinary artists. Superblue has been officially set up as an independent entity from the Pace gallery although it shares significant foundational synergies with the gallery ranging from the leadership (Co-founders include Pace CEO Mark Glimcher and ex-director of Pace’s London gallery Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst), the artist roster and the privileged access to the art world network. They are however not the inventor of this format. Nam June Paik’s audio-visual installations and Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms would be considered the spiritual forerunners. The more recent innovator for digital art experiences has been teamLab, a Japanese interdisciplinary artist collective established in Tokyo in 2001. Incidentally, it is now represented by Pace and happens to be one of the participants in the inaugural Superblue exhibition. It opened its own ‘Borderless’ digital art museum in Tokyo in 2018 and attracted more than 2.3 million visitors in the first year itself, making it the most visited single artist museum globally. Independent operators like Grande Experiences have been taking immersive exhibitions themed on Van Gogh and Monet on tour around the world successfully for a few years now.
With the proof of concept now validated, Superblue now attempts to take teamLab’s idea forward and pitch it as a futuristic museum attraction for next generation audiences in the west. The launch exhibition Every Wall is a Door expands on teamLabs’ creative vision of ‘Borderless’ art with fluid interactive installations which push the boundaries of what art is and how it is experienced. Other than teamLab, it features celebrated multi-disciplinary artists like Es Devlin and James Turrell. The entrance also has a kinetic installation by Amsterdam-based artist studio DRIFT.
So, what is so innovative about “Experiential Art” anyway? Many curatorial voices may assert that from a visitor’s point of view, art has always been about being experiential. Whether it was an awe-inspiring imperial portrait bust of Augustus in a faraway Roman outpost, serene Buddhist frescoes and rock cut sculptures in the dimly lit Ajanta caves in India or Michelangelo’s magnum opus in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican — were they not all ‘experiential’ art for their time and age? Rather than get dragged into the semantics and temporality of it, let us cut to the present. Contemporary public art has been experimenting with infusion of technology in its practice and delivering larger-than-life executions. But to be considered truly experiential for Millennial audiences today, it also has to be multi-sensorial and actively invite audience participation with immersive yet interactive experiences. Superblue’s planned installations tagged with the promise of “Created by artists, completed by you” aim to deliver just that. However, its claim also does obliquely open up the debate on whether traditional museum experiences can be considered experiential anymore.
While such Experiential Art Centres may appear to be intended as an improvement on museums and galleries, they are actually taking a leaf out of the Art Biennial playbook. Caroline A. Jones in her 2016 book The Global Work of Art: World’s Fairs, Biennials and the Aesthetics of Experience has argued that contemporary art biennials are just event structures that fulfil the overarching market appetite for art as experience by enabling the nurturing of this taste and helping to define and codify this aesthetic. She asserts that this needs to be analysed as conjoint phenomena that feed off each other. Those of us who attended the 2019 Venice Biennale would remember the unprecedented spurt of video art and installations. Unlike Biennials which are periodic interventions often in distant touristy getaways like Venice or Kochi, Superblue endeavours to be a permanent setup in a commercially vibrant global hotspot in the US like Miami. More critically, unlike biennales, it is not held back by legacy or diplomatic agendas of local governments and can scale up freely based on market dynamics.
Disruptive ideas often fail because the underlying business model is either not robust, scalable or sustainable. That’s where Superblue needs to have the right strategy in place. A regular ticketed entry at $36 for adults is significantly more expensive than one would be paying for a blockbuster museum exhibition in most places. A more aggressive pricing would have been prudent given the prevailing conditions and to generate more visits initially, but limits on ticket sales due to continuing social distancing rules coupled with an assessment that people may pay more for the novelty may have influenced the decision. In a welcome move, the artists stand to get variable royalties as a percentage of the ticket sales. This creates steady income for the artist without needing to sell the work and makes the creative development more sustainable. Installations of this scale do not come cheap and will require significant outlays upfront for production and installation. However, as the museum going demographic become more digitally native over time, footfalls will grow faster and support future projects better. In the short run however, the sustainability of the venture may get tested by the long tail of the pandemic and continued weakness in tourist inflows. Superblue therefore needs to initially build traction and repeat visits within its local community through active engagement. It has announced plans to do that through a flexible events space armed with a year-round calendar of talks, performances, workshops and programs targeted at families. Meaningfully differential pricing for locals and students should also be considered.
Donors, patrons or strategic investors may also be required to keep the clock ticking initially, but the real test will be whether Superblue can create a self-sustainable business model with multiple and diverse revenue streams. The flexible programming space apart from talks and workshops is planned to be used for social event rentals, while a shop and a restaurant tick off the other boxes. But Superblue needs to go beyond and take the experience to the virtual world enabled by VR, and make it available online. That would create an additional longer-term source of income, while making it accessible globally. For its artists like teamLab, Devlin, Turrell and others who play with the variables of light, space, depth and colour and ask the audience to participate perceptually, Virtual Reality may challenge them to push their creative boundaries even further.
Once, the world begins to come out of shadow of the pandemic, people will be eager to venture out and explore more diverse experiences. The US appears to be at the vanguard backed by a more robust vaccination programme. Miami has been both a buoyant tourist economy and a vibrant cultural hotspot, and appears to be a foresighted choice for Superblue although Los Angeles would have been the expected inaugural location. Superblue will initially be clubbed with other art destinations like Art Basel Miami and the bevy of contemporary art museums in the city. However, given the experience it offers, it can compete with unrelated leisure-based visitor attractions tapping into a much wider target audience who may not necessarily visit the regular art museums. Once the trend of experiential art centres and digital art museums begins to gain momentum across the world, Superblue can then benefit from its pole position and be the thought leader while scaling up earlier than others.
The Italian translation of this article was published in the Rome Based Fondazione Ducci’s art magazine ‘ART FOND’ and can be read here: Il lancio di Superblue e l’ascesa dei centri d’arte “esperienziale”
