CIFO creates tension with `Prisoner's Dilemma'

If you were one of the ''chosen,'' here's how you experienced Friday morning's brunch to present The Prisoner's Dilemma: Selections from the Ella Fontanals Cisneros Collection at CIFO, an Art Basel highlight every year, and an out-of-the-ballpark experience this year.

You savored the imported cheese and cold cuts, the spinach triangle, sipped a pomegranate or orange juice mimosa in a patio setting tastefully dotted with tables in bright yellow linens and minimalist vases holding single green fronds. Then you glided inside to see the show, and as you're noticing the tension in the eyes of the monitor showing the show's centerpiece Tensión superficial by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a security guard walks over, taps you on the shoulder and asks, ``Could you please come with me?''

Immediately, you regret the indulgence of buying a big designer purse at Nordstrom. Security guards have already put the purse to the size test at the Convention Center in Miami Beach, and you think, here we go again. But the security guard asks you to follow him into a room, and you figure, he doesn't want to embarrass a guest in such well-to-do company, so you follow him. After all, you have nothing to hide. It's not like you put a croissant in there or something.

The security guard escorts you to the back of the art space, way back into a room full of electronic gadgets. On the wall, black and white photographs of people being assassinated on the streets are being projected.

He asks you to sit in a lone seat in the room. He stands over you. When you do, a light shines straight into your eyes.

This is getting creepy. But this is an art show, and if he doesn't want to check your purse, then surely, he just wants you to see his art.

''Are you a performance artist?'' you ask.

''No, they just asked me to do this,'' he says, sternly.

''May I close the door or would you prefer that it stay open?'' he says.

By now, you're thinking that your curiosity is going to kill you one day, but you want to see where all of this is leading.

``Sure, close the door if you want.''

He does and returns to tower over you and ask what you know about ``all those people who want to assassinate President-elect Barack Obama.''

And now your journalist instinct kicks in: ``How do you know that people want to kill President Obama? What facts do you have to back this up?''

The guard goes into a monologue about all the famous people who have been killed, then thankfully, the interrogation is over. No explanation given. He opens the door and says you're ``free to go.''

When you find yourself outside, your legs are inexplicably shaky and you feel guilty of something -- the prisoner's dilemma, indeed.

-- FABIOLA SANTIAGO

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