Package Tour to Art Basel Miami Beach

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The artist packs a red bag: other bags, belongings, fragments of hope and his art. This is luggage for a journey South—to distant Miami, where palm trees promise warmth…

But the ticket exists only within the frame. A wooden crate becomes an aeroplane seat, a crumpled backdrop becomes the ocean, and the flash becomes the southern sun.

The red bag remains proof of readiness to depart. It may contain everything for a new life, except the new life itself.

Miami never arrives, the dolphins never reach anywhere, but the dream acquires a body, colour and coordinates within an image.

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The Research Institute of Astigmatism set up a portable departure point at Kuznechny Market for Para-South—an imagined territory between a Saint Petersburg market aisle, a tropical resort and a global contemporary art fair.

The original plan called for a tall stool, artworks and a pig’s head. During the experiment, however, it became clear that the necessary equipment was already available inside the market. The forgotten chair was replaced by a wooden crate supplied by a vendor from a neighbouring stall. The pig’s head gave way to a red bag full of bags. Organisational deviations thus became the project’s principal artistic method.

The crate, used by the market to store and transport goods, became a pedestal for a human body. The participant seated on it temporarily assumed the position of an object awaiting appraisal, purchase or further transportation. Artist, viewer and accidental passer-by entered a single system of circulation alongside vegetables, paintings, packaging and dreams.

Behind the participant stood a tropical landscape with palm trees and two dolphins. Its folds, tears, clamps and mismatched sections were left visible. Para-South did not attempt to imitate an actual coastline convincingly. It demonstrated that any collective vision of prosperity can be assembled on site—from a printed backdrop, a few stands and a flash of light.

The dolphins were heading for Art Basel Miami Beach, but their route passed through the “Pots”, “Plants” and “Roots” departments. Here, the global art fair appeared not as a specific place, but as a horizon of desire: a distant point against which a local artist locates their own position.

The red bag full of bags became the luggage for this journey. Its contents remained unknown. It might contain a pig’s head, a work of art, a change of clothes, groceries, documents or all the supplies needed for a future international career. The bag did not contain prosperity—it contained the possibility of prosperity.

A colour target was placed on top of the bag. The institute’s scientific equipment—a Fujifilm GFX 100S camera, a flash and a tripod—was used to record a deliberately artificial space as accurately as possible. The reality of the dream was tested through resolution, colour and detail. The more precise the photograph became, the more clearly the seams of the set appeared.

Throughout the shoot, the market continually crossed into the staged frame. Shoppers, artists and vendors passed by; trolleys, crates and cabinets containing paintings moved through the space. Sometimes they partially or completely obscured the person seated before the tropical landscape.

At first, these intrusions seemed like interference. Then it became clear that they were the work’s central subject. Local reality prevented the dream from becoming a sealed advertising image. The market entered the frame and reminded us that the path to artistic greatness always runs through the material world: through logistics, chance, exchange, proximity and the need to give way to a trolley.

PARA-SOUTH is not a parody of the human desire for the sea, wealth or international recognition. The work takes that desire with the utmost seriousness. It merely offers a more accessible transport system.

To find themselves in Miami, participants need only sit on a wooden crate, pick up a red bag, look towards the camera and agree, for a moment, that two dolphins are already swimming towards Art Basel.

They may never reach it.

But their movement has been recorded…

The experiment has been declared successful. Para-South is open. The package tour continues.