by Anne Gabriel
I just want to survive it.
For the uninitiated, Frieze week is LA’s major art week where anyone involved in contemporary art (fully or tangentially) gets sucked into a spinning vortex of art fairs, exhibitions, openings, events, and parties—non-stop (seemingly) for 7 straight days.
Frieze (held at the Santa Monica Airport), the largest fair among them, is joined during this time by it’s hipper cousin Felix (held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel), the new contender, Post-Fair (held in a Santa Monica Post Office), the uber exclusive Future Fair (held at a mansion in Bel Air), the general mall art fair LA Art Show (held at the LA Convention Center), and the Other Art Fair (held in a hip Eastside neighborhood). To hit all of them is doable and also lunacy and yet still helpful if you want to see what LA has to offer.
This article is not about the art I may or may not see or all of the parties I most likely won’t get into—no, this article are notes on how to survive it all.
1) Naps
Maybe you have other ways to stay awake all day and all night, but naps saved me. At my house, on my friend’s couches, angry when I’m woken up by the alarm at 9pm yet five minutes later getting dressed and ready from the clothes hanging up in the back of my car. Makeup smeared—umm, it’s supposed to look that way.
2) Find openings with food
If you’re going to feed me, I’m probably gonna show up. It’s so nice to roll up and not have to worry about where I’m going to find sustenance—plus it takes the edge off. By day three there is an edge.
3) Find parties / events without lines and without drinks that cost $25 a pop.
There is always, always something going on during Frieze week. You don’t have to wait in lines or pay $25 for a cocktail if you don’t want to. In fact, I elected to not attend several “must go to” parties in lieu of hanging out with artists at the local bar—which incidentally was pretty fun.
4) Talk to people NOT doing Frieze week – it will save your sanity.
Being out and about all week means that you inevitably end up in places with other people who are not part of the art world who can sense the mixture of extreme exhaustion and excitement in you and want to strike up conversation to find out what world you are a part of. This happens so much. Talk to them, they want to know what you’re doing—you also want to know what they’re doing because it might be more fun than looking at non-stop contemporary art.
You’re welcome.