Whether he's on the front lines for the Borsht Film Festival (where he's a founding member), behind the scenes at the MI CIELO Fine Art Exposition (which he curated), handling the imagery for the World Erotic Art Museum (where he is Art Director), or sounding off alongside the likes of Otto Von Schirach (where he appears as Alligator Jesus), David Tamargo is all about making Miami a more vibrant place to work and to play. But the vivid visualist's hunting of our urban wildlife may give him an even greater legacy. Niteside tagged along with Tamargo as he and his posse went after the legendary Miami Sloth.
What, briefly, is urban hunting? Urban hunting is hunting the man-made animals found in an urban landscape that we pass every day.
What animals have you hunted? Tyrannosaurus Rex, zebras, eagles, Jew Fish, the giant lobsters in Islamorada, those pink snails that have invaded South Beach... pretty much anything that makes its presence known is liable to get hunted.
Are any of the animals harmed in the hunt? We never harm them. Never damage them. Never do anything but accentuate their presence by interaction. I approach this from an anthropological viewpoint -- these primarily endemic animals serve as a sort of subconscious advertising; interaction restores some of their dignity.
What made you decide to go after the Miami Science Museum's legendary sloth? These things actually used to roam South Florida. Thousands of years ago humans interacted with these animals, and they were hunted to extinction. Sloths were actually some of the earliest South Florida residents, so why not interact with this thing, this ghost of Miami, especially since it greets everybody as they're about to leave by catching 95 at the highway's very beginning? The sloth sits at the porthole to the rest of the Northeastern United States, so it's only befitting that this ancestor to South Florida is right here -- and in our sights.
