Digital / New Media

The Lennon Bus

The Betsy’s first large scale organizational partnership (in 2009) was with The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. It culminated in a residency for Oscar Winner Roger Ross Williams and Zimbabwean singer, Prudence Mabhena in a movie screening (of ‘Music by Prudence’). Betsy and the Lennon Bus later collaborated on additional projects, hosting myriad artists (2009-2020). The partnership also included release of a documentary honoring veterans ): containing old footage, letters, interviews, and photos of WW II soldiers on Miami Beach, as well as poetry by soldier poets Hyam Plutzik, Hayden Carruth, Galway Kinnell, and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Watch the movie: https://vimeo.com/103236988

No Vacancy Project

Since 2020, The Betsy has been collaborating with the City of Miami Beach on a project called NO VACANCY (NV) hosting digital artists who create using The Betsy ORB as a canvas for public art. NV is a juried art competition that celebrates artists, provokes critical discourse, and invites the public to experience Miami Beach’s famed hotels as destination art spaces. The Betsy ORB is an architectural ‘wonder’ conceived by Betsy owner, Jonathan Plutzik and architect Alan Schulman  that connects the two wings of The Betsy-South Beach. Artists are curated from a call for submissions and selected by representatives from the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Committee, Cultural Arts Council (CAC) and MBVCA.  The Betsy has hosted three resident artists in this program since 2021:  Die Cast (which one the Jury Prize), Monica Bravo, and Sri Prabha. 

About COSMOS by Sri Prabha: https://www.sriprabha.com/cosmos.html

Project Frame

In 2021, resident artists Jaime Walden and Hans Tanner created a digital Pastiche with this dedication: For a love of art and one another, we dedicate this work to Lennon/McCartney/Plutzik

There's nothing you can do that can't be done
There is no change, but only re-creation*

Nothing you can do but learn how to be you in time
Who makes a primal garden of each garden.

There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be Projected out of a tireless, winking Eye

Nothing you can see that isn't shown
Out of the perfect nothing, is miraculous.

All you need is love, Love is all you need
Opening and closing in immensity—

See this Beatles/Plutzik Pastiche: https://shorturl.at/kyBJX

*… from “If Causality is Impossible, Genesis is Recurrent, by Hyam Plutzik - hyamplutzikpoetry.com