 | |
 |
 |
why fast is good
The concierge has moved from the front desk to the bar. Or so it appears on a wintry Saturday night at Storied Places in Mont-Tremblant, as a toddler navigates a wineglass-laden coffee table and young parents mingle. Once strangers, these vacation homeowners meet for weekly cocktail hour – like speed dating for families. Call it the accelerated neighbourhood. Now that catching up with old friends is hard and making new ones even harder, resort communities are reinventing the idea of the neighbourhood in as little time as it takes to check in. Instant communities provide what the time-crunched modern nomad craves: social capital with facilities and people that mirror your interests, like the equestrian-themed resorts of High Point in Langley, B.C., and Turquesa Equestrian Estates in Arizona or Playa Grande, a “creative utopia” conceived by architect Richard Meier for the Dominican Republic. It’s an idea the Danes call bofællesskaber, or living communities, only on a luxurious scale that caters to travellers. Social capital through real estate is a value you can literally bank on.
If Warhol was inspired by the soup can, then today’s avant-garde artists are inspired by instant noodles, creating bite-size doses of quick art for the masses. As Malcolm Gladwell writes in Blink, sometimes two seconds is enough. Last summer, a drive-thru window at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver exhibited video art to motorists via an interactive touch screen, infusing a bit of culture into the commute. Don’t drive? L.A. artist Ruben Ochoa’s mobile gallery delivers culture to you in a van, while Toronto’s Vendart project brings art to the street with its regularly relocated hot pink art fridge. American artist Clark Whittington pioneered the idea of using dispensers to disseminate art when he created the Art-o-mat in 1997. Taking his cue, the Distroboto project in Montreal uses a converted cigarette machine to sell objets d’art for a toonie, while mixed-media artist Rhonda Simmons of Vancouver has refurbished feminine hygiene vending machines to dispense pocket-size priceless works for $4 a piece. The other thing we love about quickie art: It takes the snobbery out of staring at a canvas for hours debating whether or not you like Yves Klein blue. |
Instant Art