MIAMI, FLA.- Faena Art, the international non-profit organization led by Ximena Caminos, announced its inaugural programming for Faena Forum, the Rem Koolhaas/OMA-designed cultural centerpiece of the Faena District Miami Beach, opening in fall 2016. Dedicated to fostering dynamic cross-disciplinary collaborations that transcend cultural, geographic and philosophical borders, Faena Art’s inaugural program will launch with a District-wide, thousands-strong processional performance that will bring together artists, performers, architects and community leaders from around the world. The celebration will continue with a broad range of cultural initiatives presented throughout the year—from new commissions and site-specific installations to groundbreaking debates to artist-led social ”collaboratories.”

“Faena Art bridges the local and global, and we envision our Miami home, the Forum, as a gathering place for artists worldwide,” said Ms. Caminos. “I look forward to embarking on our first full year of programming by extraordinary visionaries. We hope that the bold ideas presented at the Forum will engage and challenge the public, encouraging dialogue and cross-cultural investigation.”

Directed by curator and art historian Claire Tancons in collaboration with architect Gia Wolff and musician and composer Arto Lindsay, Faena Forum’s inaugural processional will feature performances by Miami-based artists and collectives in addition to three commissions by international artists. The Cuban art collective Los Carpinteros will present “Conga Irreversible,” Spanish artist Miralda will create “Miami Global Banquet,” and Italian born artist Marinella Senatore will present “The School of Narrative Dance.”

“Conga Irreversible” which was first presented by Los Carpinteros in the Havana Biennale in 2012, will be reimagined in the context of Miami for the processional. The complex choreography is danced to conga music played in reverse, which upends expectations of traditional music and movement from Cuba. The work will be performed by Miami-based dance groups and musicians alongside many of the original performers.

Miralda’s work often engages with food as a means of community building, and for the procession he is staging both a vehicular and food component. Via barge, limousine, shopping cart, car and more, traditional foods from the original communities of South Florida will be transported through the city and the streets of the Faena District, symbolically coming from the hotels along Collins Avenue to be shared with the public as a communal banquet.

In “The School of Narrative Dance,” Senatore will invite the public to participate in her nomadic system of education, to foster the creative power of a crowd and start a dialogue among history, culture and social structures. Her multidisciplinary school is based on emancipation, inclusion, self-cultivation and compassion and is focused on storytelling. Her work unites many groups and individuals in order to celebrate the wide variety of skills and talents every individual can offer or develop. In the work, the role of the artist as author and the public as passive recipient is constantly questioned. Her method encourages thinking about the possibilities of art as a powerful agent of exchange, inclusion and cultural growth.

Several projects by Miami-based artists and communities will be commissioned and produced, uniting Miami's unique Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage and artistic innovation. The cross-disciplinary event will signal the opening of Faena Forum as a space for a multiplicity of bodies and voices, as well as a partner and resource for other local institutions, including the New World Symphony, local high school marching bands, dance groups and community organizations. As part of the curatorial process, an open call invited local artists to submit proposals to participate in the processional. A full list of participants will be announced at a later date.

The inauguration will continue with a site-specific performance created by New York-based choreographer Pam Tanowitz, in collaboration with OMA and the firm’s lead architect Shohei Shigematsu, which will feature music by composer Dan Siegler. Working with dancers from her own company in addition to dancers from the school at Miami City Ballet, Tanowitz will create choreography that breathes life into the new building, celebrates OMA’s architecture and sets the tone for the many cultural practitioners and diverse public that will experience the Forum.

Throughout the year, Faena Art will present a vibrant cultural program at Faena Forum featuring performative and participatory activations of the space, including:

• Co-Commissions and Site-Specific Installations
Working in collaboration with its sister institution, Faena Art Center Buenos Aires, Faena Art will commission local and international artists and collectives across disciplines. Commissions will travel regularly between the two cities to establish and deepen dialogues across the Americas. Faena Forum will also co-produce works with other commissioning organizations worldwide to bring the finest and most ambitious multidisciplinary projects to the city of Miami. These will include the new full-length ballet Tree of Codes—created by artist Olafur Eliasson, choreographer Wayne McGregor and producer/composer Jamie xx, and based on a text by Jonathan Safran Foer—co-commissioned by Faena Art, the Park Avenue Armory, Manchester International Festival, Paris Opera Ballet and Sadler’s Wells, which will be presented at Faena Forum from November 25 through December 3, 2016.

• Soledades
Organized in collaboration with Argentine philosopher Florencio Noceti and Alex Poots, Artistic Director of The Shed in New York City, Soledades is a series of solo performances by practitioners of music, philosophy, poetry and science. Participants for the first season of Soledades include Argentine physicist Gabriel Catren; Brazilian writer and composer Arnaldo Antunes; Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negrastani; American media ecologist Michael Wesch; and Russian pianist and post-minimalist composer Anton Batagov.

• Experimental Communities and Artistic Collaboratories
Organized in partnership with Gonzalo Casals, Vice President of Programs and Community Engagement at Friends of the High Line, the Artistic Collaboratories program will advance the Forum and the District’s roles as a gathering place for artists worldwide, as well as a platform for neighbors and South Floridians at large to generate and engage in new interactive experiences. As experiments in art and community building, the Artistic Collaboratories will encompass a wide range of activations of the Forum on Sundays and will take place once per month throughout the year. Kicking off this series during Art Basel Miami Beach this year is the neo-disco roller rink by assume vivid astro focus, activated by international and local DJs and open to the public through December 6, 2015.

• Artist Residency
Faena Art House Residency will be an international residency program committed to supporting contemporary artists across disciplines from around the world, with a strong focus on socially relevant and engaged community practices. Developed in collaboration with curator Caroline Bourgeois, the artist-in-residence program aims to further diversify artistic practices in Miami Beach and make new work from around the world accessible to the local community.

• Faena Prize for the Arts
Currently the most important art prize in Argentina, the Faena Prize for the Arts aims to recognize artistic experimentation, encourage crossover between disciplines and promote exploration of the infinite links among art, technology and design. Spearheaded by a jury of international art world luminaries, the prize attracts proposals for original, site-specific projects in dialogue with the architecture and space of the Faena Art Center in Buenos Aires from artists worldwide. Winning artists are awarded the $75,000 prize to realize their winning proposal, which will be exhibited in Buenos Aires and Faena Forum. The previous jury included Sonia Becce, an Argentine independent curator; Caroline Bourgeois (Curator, Pinault Foundation); Rita Gonzalez (Curator, LACMA); and Katie Sonnenborn (Co-Director, Skowhegan). The current recipient of the award is Los Angeles- based artist Cayetano Ferrer.

• Debates @ Forum
Organized in collaboration with Pierpaolo Barbieri, Executive Director of Greenmantle, Debates @ Forum will feature a series of public debates between leaders from different fields and geographies about today’s most pressing issues from culture to politics to religion. Through this program, the Forum will serve as a space for freedom of expression, dialogue and new consensus through dissidence and debate. Each of the debates will be live streamed online with interactive voting at its conclusion in the parliamentary tradition.

• Elevate
Elevate is a program for rotating site-specific installations for emerging and mid-career Miami based artists, to create immersive environments inside the elevator of the Casa Claridge’s Faena Miami Beach. The project aims to encourage new experiences for the public within this transitional and temporal space. Artists who have recently participated include Typoe, Consuelo Castañeda and Cristina Lei Rodriguez.

Faena Forum
Faena Forum is a pioneering new building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Rem Koolhaas/OMA and the home of Faena Art in Miami. Faena Forum was envisioned by Alan Faena as the cultural heart of Faena District Miami Beach, which encompasses six blocks of new development designed by OMA, Foster + Partners, and Brandon Haw, and the renovation of historic buildings. Faena Forum will serve as an incubator for cultural expression as well as a place for convening and community building that will reshape the cultural landscape of Miami Beach.

“Faena Forum has been designed to radiate art and ideas into the community and throughout the city,” noted Mr. Faena. “With its strategic location at the axis of the Americas and unprecedented architecture, Faena Forum is destined to be a coveted destination for cultural enterprise, one that encourages thinkers and practitioners from across a range of disciplines to collaborate and creatively collide in ways that push their practices and produce new works, new experiences and new ideas.”

The 43,000 square-foot building located at 33rd Street and Collins Avenue in Miami Beach is designed for ultimate flexibility. Two volumes, a cylinder and a cube that are similar in size, can be combined or subdivided to support the production of new projects, commissions, performances, exhibitions and events. The building has two main levels. The lobby amphitheater features pink marble floors and technical capabilities for surround projections. The upper floor assembly hall features a 40-foot-high dome with a central glazed oculus and a floor-to-ceiling panoramic window overlooking Indian Creek. A walkway that spirals up the interior wall of the Forum from street level to the top of the dome provides visitors with a range of perspectives on the space.

The two volumes also create opportunities for public spaces within Faena District. Along Collins Avenue, the curved shape of the east volume accommodates an expanded public plaza that addresses Faena Hotel Miami Beach across Collins Avenue and also Faena Bazaar across 34th Street. On the west side, cutting the cube volume perpendicular to 32nd Street creates a new plaza along Indian Creek and a secondary entry to the Forum.