Visitors to Art Basel in Miami Beach planning their visits to fairs and parties have yet another great item to add to their itineraries. Twenty-six artworks will transform Miami Beach’s Collins Park into an outdoor sculpture garden for Art Basel Miami’s Public sector. Curated by the Public Art Fund’s Nicholas Baume, in partnership with the Bass Museum of Art, the show will kick off on December 3 with opening festivities featuring four simultaneously occurring performance art pieces from Ryan Gander, Christian Falsnaes, Alix Pearlstein, and a collaboration between Liz Glynn and Dawn Kasper.

For opening night, Glynn and Kasper have teamed up on a theoretical physics-based performance, titled cosmo[il]logical. The piece will take place in the park’s rotunda, which will be transformed into a planetarium under a dome structure installed by the artists which will emit both light and sound. It will project images of of the cosmos on the rotunda ceiling while the artists draw with chalk on the felt floor, which has been coated in chalkboard paint.

“The piece is kind of activated through the act of drawing,” Glynn told artnet News in a phone interview, “and the drawings accumulate over the course of the performance…. The performance explores different theories of perception.”

Going all the way back to the big bang for inspiration, Glynn and Kasper will discuss quantum mechanics and string theory in relation to visual art, drawing a distinction between “things that are visually perceptible and things that you believe in but can’t experience through sight alone.”

“In physics, when matter and antimatter collide they destroy each other,” said Glynn. “We go through the history of the origins of the universe and how we can kind of explain our position within it through physics.”

The artists have taken opposite sides in the debate, with Kasper taking the position of antimatter, which, according to Glynn, she has dubbed “invisible dark energy—all of the things that prevent you from getting out of bed in the morning.” Glynn, for her part, will take a more didactic approach. The divide is a reflection of their unique approaches to performance art. “I’m much more of a research-driven person,” said Glynn. “Dawn works much more with improvisation and sound, so it’s kind of the collision of our two practices as well.”

Gander’s suspended sculpture of plastic barrels and an etched metal plaque, titled Never has there been such urgency, or The Eloquent and the Gaga – (Alchemy Box #45), will be on view for the duration of the fair. He will also perform Thank you, but I am promised to the company of my artist this evening during the opening, a piece that centers around Baume, who will be followed throughout the evening by two actual armed bodyguards. As Baume crisscrosses Collins Park that evening, his comings and goings will be all the more noticeable thanks to the imposing presence of the guards being paid to protect him. In effect, curator will become a performer, a part of the very spectacle he is there to oversee, in a unique blending of art and life.

Pearlstein’s performance, The Shining, will also infiltrate the crowd, outfitting a roving group of actors with personal illumination panels, while Falsnaes will actively engage with the audience, encouraging them to participate in the repeated ritualistic building up and breaking down of a large-scale structure in his piece Front.

Artist List

The full roster of artists, artworks, and galleries for Public 2014 are listed below:

Georg Baselitz, Louise Fuller (2013), Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Lynda Benglis, Pink Lady (2014), Cheim & Read
Matthias Bitzer, Sleep and echo (2012), Marianne Boesky Gallery, Almine Rech Gallery
Sarah Braman, Door (2013–14), Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Ana Luiza Dias Batista, Eva (Eve), 2014, Galeria Marilia Razuk
Sam Ekwurtzel, Incomplete Open Cubes (2014), Simone Subal Gallery
Elmgreen & Dragset, Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 (2014), Victoria Miro Gallery
Faivovich & Goldberg, Territorio del Chaco (2013), SlyZmud, in cooperation with Nusser & Baumgart, Munich
Nuria Fuster, Pump Iron (2014), Galería Marta Cervera
Ryan Gander, Never has there been such urgency, or The Eloquent and the Gaga – (Alchemy Box #45), 2014, Lisson Gallery
Jeppe Hein, Mirror Angle Fragments (3×60°), 2014, Johann König
Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Him and Me (2014), Johann König
Alfredo Jaar, Culture = Capital (2012/2014), Galerie Lelong, Goodman Gallery, Galerie Thomas Schulte
Gunilla Klingberg, A Sign in Space (2012–ongoing), Galerie Nordenhake
José Carlos Martinat, Manifestos (2014), Revolver Galería
Justin Matherly, The degenerated instinct which turns against life with subterranean vengefulness; See you again in your muck of tomorrow (2010), Paula Cooper Gallery
Olaf Metzel, Untitled (2014), Wentrup
Sam Moyer, Zola (2014), Galerie Rodolphe Janssen
Ernesto Neto, nós sonhando [Spacebodyship] (2014), Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Ugo Rondinone, Untitled (2014), Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Gladstone Gallery
Nancy Rubins, Our Friend Fluid Metal, Chunkus Majoris (2013), Gagosian Gallery
Yinka Shonibare, Wind Sculpture IV (2013), James Cohan Gallery
Jessica Stockholder, Angled Tangle (2014), Kavi Gupta Chicago/Berlin
Barthélémy Toguo, In the Spotlight (2007), Galerie Lelong
Tatiana Trouve, Waterfall (2013), Gagosian Gallery
Hank Willis Thomas with Ryan Alexiev and Jim Ricks, In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth), 2011, Goodman Gallery, Jack Shainman Gallery

Art Basel in Miami Beach will be on view December 3–7, 2014. A selection of works from Public will remain on view in Collins Park through March 2015 as part of “tc: temporary contemporary.”