MIAMI.- One of the most exciting platforms of Art Basel Miami Beach is «Art Projects», where 9 projects by internationally renowned artists from 7 countries are on show in public spaces in Miami Beach. These works engage directly with the spectator, interrupting the daily routine of passers-by in poetic, alienating, or surprising ways.

«Art Projects» offers fascinating insight into leading con-temporary artists' interpretation of new art in public spaces. Most of the pieces are newly created or installed site-speci-fically for Art Basel Miami Beach.

All 9 of the projects are located in the Art Deco District of Miami Beach, within walking distance of the Convention Center, exhibition venue for 200 international galleries. The «Art Projects» include installations on streets, a performance, and sculptures in parks and on a roof. A map in the Show Guide to Art Basel Miami Beach directs visitors to the individual works, enabling them to locate and experience a number of important, engaging, entertaining, and beautiful site-specific works of art, while exploring the city of Miami Beach at the same time. These or similar pieces by the participating artists can be purchased from the exhibiting galleries.

Most of the works on show are purchasable and have been created especially for Art Basel Miami Beach. The unique collaboration between artists, galleries, Roc-Off Productions Fine Art Services, the Show Management, and the City of Miami Beach makes for a top-flight exhibition of art in public spaces. Nothing comparable to «Art Projects» can be seen at any other art fair. «Art Projects» underscores the extraordinary, unique character of Art Basel Miami Beach and illustrates the extent to which the concept of the show transcends the scope of traditional art fairs.

Christian Jankowski's (maccarone inc., New York; Galerie Klosterfelde, Berlin; Lisson Gallery, London) project for Art Basel Miami Beach will comprise three life-size bronze sculptures of street performers dressed as Che Guevara, Salvador Dali's «anthropomorphic cabinet» woman, and a Roman legionnaire who calls himself «Caesar». They are inspi-red by visits to Barcelona and other cities that attract margina-lized artists and buskers, some of whom make a living by posing as historical or fantastical figures covered in bronze makeup, standing motion-less for hours as they are photographed by tourists. As familiar figures from our cultural consciousness, these «living statues» provoke intriguing questions about the transition from older modes of production that valorized the artist to a mass-media-obsessed culture that, by its very nature, ad-dresses the audience.

«1:1», the piece by Tea Mäkipää (Galerie Anhava, Helsinki), displays the anatomy of a modern apartment house. Piping, electricity, phone lines, ventilation shafts, etc. form the functioning and full-scale infrastructure supplying a two-story building – without the walls, ceilings, and floors that usually hide them. By supplying various resources, these channels establish the basis for comfortable living in multi-story buildings. «1:1» reveals these physical connections as well as the human relations they symbolize, even if only the voices of the inhabitants are present, via loudspeakers.

«Wait Till It Grows» (Tree House), 2006, by Puerto Rican artist Michael D. Linares (Galerie Anhava, Helsinki) is a time-based sculpture made out of both inanimate and animate materials. A wooden structure built around a young tree serves as a gathering area and a stage from which to watch the tree gradually embracing the house. The work visualizes the origin of the symbiosis between a wooden house and a tree.

Likewise made partly of wood is the monumental «Pergola» that French artist Daniel Buren (Galerie Kamel Mennour, Paris) will be building for Art Basel Miami Beach. The pergola consists of 14 flat arches measuring a total length of 38 meters. The arches are covered by a series of transparent, colored plexiglas panels laid side by side in pairs. Buren's project for Art Basel Miami Beach 2006 is an installation in situ.

The sculpture «Giant Spinning O» by Jonathan Monk (Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen) is a circle in aluminum that spins freely when touched by hand or wind. The diameter of the work is the same as the height of the artist, thus inscribing his body figuratively in a Vetruvian circle. Like Monk's other sculptures, this new work quotes Minimal Art from the 1960s, in this instan-ce in combination with Kinetic Art. The design and the fact that the piece moves also recall the classic Mercedes logo as seen at the company's headquarters in Berlin.

The Palm d'Or Social Club (maccarone inc., New York) will present a real-time shoot of a scripted television sitcom at Art Basel Miami Beach. The fair-going public will be engaged to participate. These dynamic interactions will vary as new and dif-ferent approaches are developed in situ. Screenings will be held daily in the Palm Café. The Palm d'Or S.C. was founded in 2003 to establish a social group and a context that overcome geogra-phical distances.

The UFO by Erwin Wurm (Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne) takes us for a ride to another galaxy. We dive into a space of associations oscillating between future cars and shop-soiled utopian proto-types. Haven't we read recently about the sky car that goes 600 km/h and costs one million dollars? One hundred of them were reserved by the US Army to use in their fight against drug criminality at the US borders.

Workmen push a tourist bus that has broken down to the nearest garage. A situation that takes place daily throughout the world. With his performance, Albanian artist Sislej Xhafa (Yvon Lambert, Paris, New York) explores shades of legality surrounding tourism and migration, and questions individual existence through simple, poetic gestures. Sislej Xhafa's «Elegant Sick Bus» (2001-2006) highlights the poverty of labo-rers in a post-globalized world. By staging a clash of cultures, the artist confronts the complexity of socio-economic and poli-tical realities inherent to daily existence – both as specific to Miami and on a global scale.

The versatile Thorsten Passfels (painter/animated filmmaker/ construction worker/architect/songwriter) is using flotsam, buil-ding rubble, and found material to make the furniture on which tired visitors to «Art Positions» can sit down and have a refre-shing drink at the bars this year. The German artist's design is deliberately trashy-poetic.