Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

UPCOMING EVENTS / PAST EVENTS

MOCAD hosts musical, literary and artistic events throughout the year. Check back often or contact us at info@mocadetroit.org if you would like to be kept up to date on upcoming events.

All events are free and open to the public and take place at MOCAD unless otherwise indicated.

Follow MOCAD's upcoming events and announcements :

FAMILY DAY
Sunday, July 17th from 12PM to 4PM
Wildly Circusly Times at MOCAD
Admission: Free

MOCAD becomes a three ring show for our neighbors, friends and especially for you and your family. Watch and learn how to perform aerial antics with Detroit Flyhouse! Learn crazy hula hoop tricks as we offer free classes from Audacious Hoops of Grand Rapids, MI! All while listening to a live performance from the Kent County String Band as they perform all of your old timey favorites. It's going to be hot, fun and physical. Families of all ages are welcome to come and participate!

For more info on the Detroit Fly House visit
http://www.detroitflyhouse.com/

For more info on Audacious Hoops visit
http://www.audacioushoops.com/

DANCE
Friday, July 15th at 8PM
MGM Grand presents: NUT
Admission: Free

NUT is one in a new three-part performance conceived of by MGM Grand and Biba Bell. MGM Grand founders Jmy Leary and Biba Bell are dancers/choreographers based in NYC, San Francisco and Detroit who are interested in engaging movement with structures of space, architecture and site and seeks dance that elucidates subtle potentials of deviation in choreographic form and builds structures by means of process and encounters. They have a background as dancers, performers and choreographers, and approach performance as a fundamental practice and meditation that informs thought, trajectory, affective states and as a reproducing machine of motivation.

The performance NUT is structured like its namesake: a fruit with a skin, meat and a seed. At its core, NUT is based on the structure of Motown's famous female trios, with a lead dancer and two backup dancers. Questioning the aesthetics of "produced" dance and how it is expected to affect an audience and a venue, this performance will be one of MGM's rare forays into making dance conceived of in and for a theater. NUT is MGM's first dance created during the winter months, beginning in Cambridge at MIT, continuing on to be developed in Detroit and taking to the stage at The Kitchen in New York City earlier this year. It will continue to be performed throughout the US in 2011.

MGM Grand, the dance troupe, is Biba Bell, Jmy Leary, Piage Martin, and Robert McNeill. Together they have been making highly structured dances since 2005. The project continues to develop as a touring entity. Its creative premise critically engages with the intensive states and spaces of performance. The work imagines venues in the most unpredictable of locales, and manipulates the sonic, sensorial, and visual dimensions imbedded in sites both frequented and forgotten. MGM Grand's inception in a one-car garage in San Francisco continues to be an apropos metaphor, continuing to define the group as committed to the singularity of a dance through repetition and unfixed performative contexts. Every rendition is in relation to a series. MGM promotes a transient, flexible, mobile relationship with a dance, that accumulating versions manifest as a combination of craft, object and bodily experience.

MUSIC
Saturday, July 9th at 8PM
The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Arab American National Museum present
Omar Souleyman with special guest Ara Topouzian
Admission: $9.00 | all ages

Tickets on sale at Book Beat (Oak Park), Peoples Records (Detroit), Hello Records (Detroit), Stormy Records (Dearborn), at the MOCAD Store or through paypal below. Please note: If you purchase tickets online your name will be added to a will call list at the door.

Omar Souleyman is a Syrian musical legend. Since 1994, he and his musicians – Rizan Said keyboard and Ali Shaker Ali – bozouk - have emerged as a staple of folk-pop throughout Syria, but until now they have remained little known outside of the country. To date, he has issued more than five hundred studio and live-recorded cassette albums which are easily spotted in the shops of any Syrian city.

From rural Northeastern Syria, Omar began his musical career in 1994 with a small group of local collaborators that remain with him today. The myriad musical traditions of the region are evident in their music. Here, classical Arabic mawal-style vocalization gives way to high-octane Syrian Dabke (the regional folkloric dance and party music), Iraqi Choubi and a host of Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish styles, among others.

This amalgamation is truly the sound of Syria. Together, they commonly perform the Ataba, a traditional form of folk poetry used in Dabke. Acting as a conduit, Souleyman struts into the audience with urgency, vocalizing the prose in song before returning for the next verse. Souleyman's first hit in Syria was "Jani" (1996) which gained cassette-kiosk infamy and brought him recognition throughout the country. Over the years, his popularity has risen steadily and the group tirelessly performs concerts throughout Syria and has accepted invitations to perform abroad in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Lebanon.

Ara Topouzian is an Armenian-American musician whose proficiency at the KANUN (Middle Eastern harp) has made him a nationally-recognized artist. He has performed in concert, at music festivals and many celebrated venues across the United States, with the top musicians in Middle Eastern music.

Topouzian's traditional musical style keeps to his Armenian heritage but has expanded to include music from around the Middle East, as well as jazz, fusion, new age and blues.

The recipient of numerous awards, Ara Topouzian's music has been heard and sold around the globe. Showing an interest in music in his early youth, Ara played music throughout the public school music program and in college, he began studying Armenian and Middle Eastern classical and folk music. Performing with a local Armenian band, Ara eventually branched out and began performing as a solo and ensemble musician throughout the Midwest and East Coast.

In 1991, he formed American Recording Productions (ARP) with the intent to record and preserve this type of world music. To date, his award winning record label has produced over thirty recordings of Armenian and Middle Eastern music. ARP products are distributed internationally in major retail outlets and can be heard on several world music and NPR radio stations. He has performed at several Armenian weddings and social events, world music concerts, nightclubs, and folk festivals throughout the country. Ara's music has been featured in several PBS documentaries that have been aired nationwide. Along with his Detroit-based world music ensemble, Eastern Winds, Ara has performed with several popular Armenian, Greek, and Middle Eastern performers and ensembles (including Eastern Winds) throughout the country.

Some notable musicians he has performed include: George Mgrdichian, Onnik Dinkjian, Mal Barsamian, John Berberian, Joe Zeytoonian, James Stoynoff, and the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra. He also has performed with jazz, fusion, rock, and blues artists/ensembles such as the following notable artists: Wendel Harrison, Sean Blackman, Colton Weatherston, and Immigrant Suns.

Ara performs an array of Armenian and Middle Eastern instruments including: Kanun (laptop harp), Duduk (Armenian oboe), Metal G-clarinet, Dumbek (Middle Eastern hand drum), Def (Middle Eastern tambourine), and a variety of Middle Eastern frame drums.

visit http://www.aratopouzian.com/ for more information

http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/item.asp?Item_id=34

FAMILY DAY
Saturday, June 18th from 12PM to 5PM
Block Party
Admission: Free

This multi-phase workshop at MOCAD promises to have a wild mix of fun activities, artist workshops, music and art, art, art for everyone! Sponsored in part by the Detroit Wig Out and the Family Hootenanny, this daylong party will be the ideal mid-summer's art party for the entire family. At noon, Detroit artist Nivek Monet will lead a workshop to create a backdrop for a puppet theater performance conceived of performed by attending children and led by the Matrix Theater's Puppetry Workshop at 1pm. A raw food demonstration and healthy snacks will be provided for the crowd at 2pm, followed by a breakdancing workshop led by urban dance crew Hardcore Detroit at 2:30pm. The last hour of the afternoon will feature ice cream, a pinata and dance music! Music for the breakdancing workshop and for the piñata will be provided by the 100 Limousines Dj collective featuring Dj's Anibal and Jeremy Kahlio.

CURATOR TALK
Saturday, June 11th at 2PM
Luis Croquer
Admission: Free

MOCAD Director + Chief Curator, Luis Croquer, will lead a walk through MOCAD's Spring/Summer 2011 exhibition that he curated, entitled barely there. This contextualizing discussion will illuminate the thoughts and ideas behind his vision for the exhibition.

MUSIC AND PERFORMANCE
Thursday, June 9th at 7:30PM at MOCAD
MOCAD and The Detroit Symphony Orchestra present:
An evening of Endingness
A musical program presented in conjunction with Pablo Helguera's work Endingness
Admission: Free
Seating is limited, first come first serve beginning at 6:30pm
Performance begins promptly at 7:30pm

Pablo Helguera
Endingness, 2005
composition for chamber orchestra

Franz Joseph Haydn
Symphony #45, (Farewell Symphony), 4th movement, 1772

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Music Director Leonard Slatkin, will perform Pablo Helguera's Endingness and the last movement of Franz Joseph Haydn's "Farewell" symphony, as devised by the artist, to complete the three-part artwork included in our current exhibition.

Image credit: Pablo Helguera, Endingness, 2005
Courtesy the artist

FILM
Saturday, June 4th at 8PM
Images Festival and MOCAD present And Again
Admission: Free

This trio of films looks at military action and conflicts: from Afghanistan more than a century ago, to the Vietnam War of the recent past, to the ongoing War on Terror. These stories unspool their core narratives, moving their focus outward from the historical events they draw upon to encompass present day corollaries.

Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed
Dir. Miranda Pennell
(2010, 28 min, Video, UK)
Pennell's video uses, as its source material, a written memoir about the Afghan borderlands of the British colonial empire in India at the turn of the 20th century. The text, Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier, recounts the daily life and dealings of a medical missionary, including his exchanges with natives and mullahs in the region. Pennell uses still photographs from the same time period to counter the narrative of the text by performing a close and careful reading of these other images. At times she uses the sound to complete a narrative with the image while, at other times, she uses the sound to draw parallels to the present day.

History Minor
Dir. Ryan Garrett
(2010, 19 min, Video, USA)
Armed with a 16mm camera and vintage field recorder, Garrett plays the role of an embedded journalist documenting a Vietnam War reenactment in Jackson, Mississippi. In doing so, he mimics the conventions of vérité documentary, as well as Hollywood and pop culture emulations of that style in representations of the Vietnam War. The re-enactors always appear in full character, reflecting upon their experiences in the war, an action that is at once wholly fictionalized, yet tinged with a hint of the real (most of the men are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars). Garrett's film is in itself a reenactment—using the tools, aesthetics and conventional modes of reportage from the era—which asks the viewer to question the implications of relating to history on a purely subjective level.

And Again
Dir. Adele Horne
(2010, 56 min, Video, Canada)
The town of Playas was built on the empty desert landscape of New Mexico in the 1970s to house copper smelter workers and their families. In the late 1990s, the company closed up shop on both the smelter and the town, forcing the former employees to move on without work or homes. Emptied of most of its inhabitants, Playas caught the attention of the US Department of Homeland Security, who helped purchase the entire town to use as a location to train law enforcement and the military how to respond to terrorist attacks. Having relocated to the surrounding area, the town's former residents now serve as day laborers brought in to play the roles of terrorists, hostages and bombing victims on the streets and in the homes that once were their own. Juxtaposed with these training exercises is a theater workshop in which the local community stages scenes that tell the story of Playas from their perspective.

The Images Festival is North America's largest event dedicated to experimental moving image culture in all of its forms. It is committed to an expanded concept of film and video practice: alongside film and video screenings, the festival presents groundbreaking live performances, media art installations in local galleries and new media projects. Toronto's 2nd oldest film festival goes out of its way and over the edge to provide Toronto with an annual extravaganza of image making and is a critical forum for independent media arts practices. For more information and the Images Festival archive please visit www.imagesfestival.com

Image credits: Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed | Dir. Miranda Pennell, History Minor | Dir. Ryan Garrett, And Again | Dir. Adele Horne

FILM
Friday, June 3rd at 8PM
Images Festival and MOCAD present
Reconsidering the New
Admission: Free

As we move from a mechanical, analog age to a digital era, some things are left behind: the sound of a typewriter, the smell and texture of a mimeograph, the color of Kodachrome. We also lose and forget old problems and difficulties, which are, of course, replaced with new ones, along with new sights, sounds and smells. This program offers a few different perspectives on the passing of time, things that are lost and the spaces in between.

The End of Photography
Dir. Judy Fiskin
(2007, 3 min, 16mm, USA)
A quiet lament for the passing of a medium, Fiskin's soundtrack consists of a list of things that will be lost along with the practice of traditional chemical photography. Accompanying this list are black and white shots of an empty suburban neighborhood—photographs free of people—providing a stark counterpoint to the current glut of digital images that privilege the person over context and composition.

Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks near Irvine California, by Lewis Baltz, 1974
Dir. Mario Pfeifer
(2009, 13 min, 16mm, Germany)
Pfeifer uses dual 16mm projections to revisit or "reconsider" one of the industrial structures that photographer Lewis Baltz documented in his historic New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. As the camera tracks through the interior of the present-day metal workshop, the 1974 Baltz book is examined from back to front. An interview with J.R. Billington, a company owner in the building for nineteen years, discusses the socio-economic situation of military manufacturing in Orange County from the 1980s up to the present day.

Prichard, The
Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson
(2011, 11 min, 16mm, USA)
Prichard is a small city near Mobile, Alabama. Everson had intended to film in the downtown shopping area but, when he returned to the city, the shopping area was no longer there. Continuing his investigation of 16mm, single-take filmmaking, Everson's Prichard, The is a film about one man's struggle with his automobile.

Make It New John
Dir. Duncan Campbell
(2009, 55 min, Video, UK)
Deftly combining news and documentary footage from the 1980s, as well as new 16mm footage imagining conversations with Irish car factory workers, Campbell tells the story of John DeLorean, his eponymous car and the workers in the Belfast-based car plant that were hired to build it. Part documentary, part classical tragedy, the film deals primarily with the unraveling of DeLorean's dream against the backdrop of a Northern Ireland struggling with unemployment and sectarian violence. DeLorean was the son of a Romanian foundry worker who worked his way to the upper management of General Motors. A gifted engineer and innovative businessman, he founded the DeLorean Motor Company in 1975. Production of the distinctive stainless steel DeLorean sports cars began in 1981, but sales were poor and, in 1982, amid scandal and strife, the factory, which employed 2,000 workers, closed after having produced just over 9,000 cars. As in his previous film Bernadette, Campbell uses a charismatic figure to illustrate the spirit of a particular moment in history.

Image credits: The End of Photography | Dir. Judy Fiskin, Reconsidering The New Industrial Parks near Irvine California, by Lewis Baltz, 1974 | Dir. Mario Pfeifer, Prichard, The | Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson, Make It New John | Dir. Duncan Campbell

EXHIBITION WALK THROUGH
Saturday, May 28th at 2PM
Carlie Dennis & Zeb Smith
Admission: Free

MOCAD exhibitions staff, Carlie Dennis and Zeb Smith will lead a walk through MOCAD's Spring/Summer 2011 exhibition entitled barely there. This contextualizing discussion will illuminate the processes and challenges around the exhibition's installation.

The exhibition walk through will replace Saturday's normally scheduled Museum tours.

MUSIC
Friday, May 27th at 8PM
Rodriguez with special guests The Growlers
Admission: $8.00 | all ages

Rodriguez, born Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, rose out of Detroit with his 1969 debut LP Cold Fact. A trippy, folksy exploration of inner city life in Detroit, backed by renowned Detroit musician Dennis Coffey on guitar and production, the album has recently been rereleased, hailed as a genuine “lost classic.” Songs like I Wonder, Sugar Man and Inner City Blues had, in the meantime, become a call to arms for generations in South Africa, Australia, Zimbabwe and New Zealand, where Rodriguez’s openness about taboo topics like the sadness of a life of poverty, his songs about drugs and the damage they could do, held profound meaning and became a rallying point for people without a vehicle for personal expression. His poetic handling of these topics coupled with his frankness about sex and sexuality, led him to become a folk hero of sorts, though the most of the world had long-since thought the artist to be dead.

Meanwhile, in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, Rodriguez continued on in relative obscurity, singing songs to friends in the neighborhood, his fame in South Africa unknown to him until 1998 when his eldest daughter found a website dedicated to him on the Internet. Through a series of entertainment industry contacts, his two albums, the aforementioned Cold Fact and its follow up Coming from Reality, have been rereleased in the US and abroad to critical acclaim. He has subsequently had short films made about his journey and has toured Africa, Europe and the United States to sold-out stadium audiences. Now this lost hometown gem is returning to the city to perform for one night only at MOCAD in celebration of the opening of our new spring/summer exhibition, barely there (part one).

Joining us for this very special night are The Growlers, a vivacious group of pop wanderers hailing from Cosa Mesa, California. Combining the mellow jangle of indie rock with a loungey, surfy, Mexicali twang, this wonderful band is the ideal act to open what promises to be one of MOCAD’s finest evenings of live musical performance.

For more info on Rodriguez visit
http://www.sugarman.org/

For more info on The Growlers visit
http://thegrowlers.com/

MUSIC
Friday, May 13th at 9PM
MOCAD presents at Cliff Bell's
Baby Dee with special guest Frank Pahl's Scavenger Quartet

2030 Park Avenue
Detroit, MI 48226
(313) 961-2543
Tickets $8.00 at the door

Hailing from the rustbelt capitol of Cleveland, Ohio, Baby Dee presents the most shockingly, unique, intense and personal take on the American songbook since Tom Waits held relevance and Will Oldham re-introduced American indie rock to country and folk blues. Upon initial listening her idiosyncratic vocal approach and sincerity may be found to be somewhat discomfiting but, like all of the most rewarding listens, it's incredible depth of spirit gives you more and more with each successive return.

Baby Dee uses harmonium, piano and harp, accompanied by minimal string arrangements to produce rich and beautiful chamber pop, for lack of a better descriptor. Neo-baroque vaudeville may describe elements of it, if such concepts could be crushed against the bawdiest tunes of Cole Porter and creepy songs about teeth, bones, and bawdy ruminations displaced sexuality and childhood nightmares.

MOCAD is proud to present Baby Dee along with special guests Frank Pahl's Scavenger Quartet at Detroit's premier jazz venue, Cliff Bell's.

For more info on Baby Dee visit
http://www.babydee.org/

For more info on Cliff Bell's visit
http://www.cliffbells.com/

Baby Dee | Photo by Tore Hallas

BENEFIT EVENT
Saturday, April 30 from 9:00PM-1:30AM
Detroit Wig Out
Admission: $10
Magic Stick

The third annual Detroit Wig Out is a one-night party of Detroit-bred music, fashion, and entertainment, featuring performances by local bands, a wig walk styled by a local salon and clothes designed by Peace Love Spandex. All proceeds from this celebration will benefit MOCAD's Block Party, set for June 18. Past beneficiaries of the Wig Out include National Bone Marrow Transplant Link in 2010 and Gilda's Club Metro Detroit in 2009. Tickets are now available at the MOCAD Store, at the Magic Stick and through Wig Out.

PUBLIC TALK and BOOK SIGNING
Saturday, April 23rd at 3PM
Klaus Kertess: Seen, Written
Admission: Free

MOCAD is proud to present an afternoon with influential art critic Klaus Kertess. He will present his new book Seen, Written, a collection of writings and essays by Kertess and will be available to sign books after his talk.

From 1966 to 1975, Klaus Kertess co-founded and directed the Bykert Gallery, representing Chuck Close, Barry Le Va, Brice Marden, Deborah Remington, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Saret, Paul Sharits et al. Since 1975, he has published essays in Artforum, Parkett, Art in America and numerous other publications and has published monographs on Peter Hujar, Brice Marden, Joan Mitchell, and Jane Freilicher. Kertess has recently completed essays on the work of John Chamberlain, Albert Oehlen, and Matthew Ritchie. He has curated numerous exhibitions including the 1995 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, Willem de Kooning: Drawing Seeing/Seeing Drawing for the Drawing Center in New York (1988) and more recently Meditations in an Emergency (2007), the inaugural exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. He received the Lawrence A. Fleischman award for scholarly excellence in the field of American art history from the Smithsonian Archives for American Art in October, 2009.

"Klaus Kertess's essays have the passion and first-hand knowledge of an art world insider not to mention the sweep and rigor of an art historian. His vigorous, vivid prose takes us on journeys into the heads of key artists of our time. These texts help us to understand not only their hearts and minds but the physicality and sensuality that is the
process of art making."

Adam D. Weinberg
Alice Pratt Brown Director
Whitney Museum of American Art

"Klaus Kertess is one of the most prescient observers of living artists in our midst, and these essays attest to that. Repeatedly, and for close to fifty years, Kertess has brought his powers of discernment and poetry to some of the best art of our time. This book is important for anyone interested in understanding the artist's mind and process and the fascinating trajectory of Kertess's own distinct and influential sensibility."

Lisa Phillips
Toby Devan Lewis Director
New Museum

"Klaus Kertess has one of the liveliest, most astute, unusual and independent eyes in all of contemporary art. A poet-seer-seeker, Kertess spots art early, says things others don't, and says them in a voice so clear, unaffected, open, honest, and free of jargon that you rarely notice that he's taken you to the deep end of the ocean of art."

Jerry Saltz
Senior Art Critic
New York Magazine

FAMILY DAY
Sunday, April 17th from 12PM to 4PM
Gilda Snowden: Learn to paint the Cass Corridor way
Admission: Free

This workshop, with Kresge Fellow Gilda Snowden, will show children and their parents how to create different textural methods of painting associated with Snowden's work and with the Cass Corridor movement from which her early works sprung.

Detroiter Gilda Snowden is a graduate of Cass Technical High School, Detroit and Wayne State University, Detroit, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Art and Master of Fine Arts in Painting. She is Interim Chair and Professor of Fine Arts at the College for Creative Studies, Detroit and is also Gallery Director of the Detroit Repertory Theatre. Snowden's works have also been exhibited throughout the United States, as well as in Mexico, Canada and West Africa. Her works are featured in a number of publications, as well as private and corporate collections, including Post/Newsweek, the Neiman-Marcus Corporation, Ameritech, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and The Detroit Institute of Arts. Snowden has been associated with the vital and inventive Cass Corridor movement that sprung from Detroit's MidTown neighborhood in the 1960's and 70's. In 2009 she was one of 18 Kresge Fellows in the visual arts.

Gilda Snowden [image source]

Wednesday, April 13 at 8PM
Detroit SOUP and the Bruce High Quality Foundation host a hangout at the garage at 9227 Mason Place, Detroit

RALLY
Tuesday, April 12 at 7PM
Teach 4 Amerika
A new project by The Bruce High Quality Foundation
Presented by Creative Time
Hosted by College for Creative Studies' Woodward Lecture Series and co-sponsored by MOCAD
Admission: Free

Wendell W. Anderson Jr. Auditorium
Walter B. Ford II Building
Walter and Josephine Ford Campus
College for Creative Studies

Teach 4 Amerika is a five-week, 11-city, coast-to-coast road trip that crosses state lines and institutional boundaries to inspire and enable local art students to define the future of their own educational experience. Traveling the byways of America in a limousine painted as a school bus, The Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQF) will visit university art departments, art schools, art institutions, and alternative spaces across the nation, bringing together concerned educators, artists, arts administrators, and—most importantly—students to brainstorm on the future of art schools. What are they for? How should they be organized? If not for careers, what is the essence of art itself? These fundamental questions have long haunted artists, and the BHQF are interested in putting the questions back in the hands of students across America through a combination of dynamic public rallies and intimate conversations.

Bruce High Quality Foundation

DANCE
Sunday, April 10th at 3:30PM
Raices/Roots by La Chispa and Company
Admission: Free

Raices/Roots, an exciting performance of Flamenco dance presented by La Chispa and Company, featuring Valeria Montes, Jesus Munoz, Alfonso Cid, Chayito Champion, Vicente Griego and Jose de la Vega

For other events and locations visit: http://artxdetroit.com/

PANEL
Saturday, April 9th at 12PM
DISCUSSION: Chronicling a City in Change
Admission: Free

Chronicling a City in Change - A discussion on current photography of Detroit's urban landscape, the community's national/global image and the potential for a newly framed future

Moderator: Toby Barlow, Chief Creative Officer, Team Detroit
Panelists include: Dr. Craig L. Wilkins, Vince Carducci, Corine Vermeulen, Sean Doerr, Eric Smith, Bill Gaskins and Jim Griffioen

For other events and locations visit: http://artxdetroit.com/

PANEL
Friday, April 8th at 12PM
DISCUSSION: Nine Artists Respond: Who are the Artists in Your Neighborhood and What is the Role of the Artist in the 21st Century?"
Admission: Free

Nine Artists Respond: Who are the Artists in Your Neighborhood and What is the Role of the Artist in the 21st Century? - In three short-form conversations, nine artists define and discuss intersections between the community and the artist

Moderator: Dr. Shaun S. Nethercott, The Matrix Theatre, Founder & Executive Director
12:00 – 12:30 pm Matthew Olzmann, Rick Robinson, Cedric Tai
12:40 – 1:10 pm Louis Aguilar, Frank Pahl, Sioux Trujillo
1:20 – 1:50 pm Rachel Harkai, Invincible, Senghor Reid

For other events and locations visit: http://artxdetroit.com/

Art X Detroit
Thursday, April 7 from 6PM to 8PM
6PM READING: Rachel Harkai
7PM MUSIC: Joel Peterson's String Quartet for a Pair of 45's with a performance by special guest Zeena Parkins
Admission: Free

To celebrate Art X Detroit MOCAD is playing host to a very special night of art, music and literature. The evening will begin with a reading by 2010 Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship recipient Rachel Harkai. The reading will be followed by the premiere performance of Kresge Performing Arts Fellow Joel Peterson's String Quartet for a Pair of 45's. Closing out the night will be legendary NY New Music harpist, Zeena Parkins.

Rachel Harkai is a graduate of the Creative Writing and Comparative Literature programs at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A 2010 Kresge Artist Fellow and recipient of four Hopwood Awards for both poetry and nonfiction, Harkai is the former host of the Living Writers Show, a literary talk show on WCBN-FM 88.3 Ann Arbor, and a former Writer-in-Residence for the Hub City Writers Project of Spartanburg, South Carolina. From 2008 to 2010 Harkai was a Writer-in-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a non-profit organization that places professional writers in Detroit Public Schools as teachers and mentors. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, Spork, Portland Review and elsewhere.

Composer/musician Joel Peterson has 22 years of experience performing and teaching music. He has programmed music and art in Detroit for 16 years, including over 200 events a year at Bohemian National Home from 2005-2008. Peterson studied double-bass with Detroit Symphony Orchestra Principal Robert Gladstone and Dan Pliskow, as well as guitar with John Denome. He is a founding member of Immigrant Suns, Scavenger Quartet, Lac La Belle, Odu Afrobeat, Xenharmonic Gamelan and BoxDeserter. He has collaborated with Rhys Chatham, Eugene Chadbourne, Damo Suzuki, Faruq Z. Bey, Frank Pahl, Thollem McDonas, Tatsuya Nakatani, Steve Cohn, Amy Denio, Gino Robair, The Violent Femmes and many others.

Detroit native Zeena Parkins, is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp. She has also extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. Parkins makes use of anything within reach as a possible tool with which she can enhance the sonic capabilities of her harps. She has appeared on over 70 CD's and in hundreds of concerts in both large and small spaces all over the world. Zeena Parkins is a sought after collaborator, performing with Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline, Lee Renaldo, Bjork, Kaffe Matthews, Thurston Moore, Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith and many others.

For other events and locations visit: http://artxdetroit.com/

Rachel Harkai

Joel Peterson

Zeena Parkins | Photo by Michelle Lance

PANEL
Thursday, April 7 at 12PM
DISCUSSION: On the Mark: From Proposal to Award
Admission: Free

On the Mark: From Proposal to Award - Three short-form conversations explore the impact of supporting and sustaining the careers of artists through the prism of Detroit's Kresge Artist Fellowship program, the national Creative Capital program in New York City and the Creative Workforce Fellowship program in Cleveland. Presenters include:

RUBY LERNER, Chief Executive Officer/President, Creative Capital;
GRISHA COLEMAN, composer/choreographer, Creative Capital grant awardee and Kresge Artist Fellowship panelist;
GREG TATE, musician/writer and longtime essayist for The Village Voice and Kresge Artist Fellowship panelist;
BRAD LEITHAUSER, poet, novelist, professor and Kresge Artist Fellowship panelist; among others "I Do" – What makes a compelling proposal and a compelling project?

12:00 – 12:30 pm "I Do" – What makes a compelling proposal and a compelling project?
12:30 – 1:00 pm "Demystify Me" – Insight on panel processes, review and jurying
1:00 – 1:30 pm "Through the Looking Glass" – The impact of such awards and professional training on an artist's career

For other events and locations visit: http://artxdetroit.com/

OPENING
Wednesday, April 6 at 5PM
Art X Detroit
Free Admission Please RSVP to 313-420-6000

Be the first to explore a unique exhibition of new works created by the 2009 Kresge Visual Artist Fellows, and enjoy performances by Kresge Eminent Artist Marcus Belgrave and Kresge Artist Fellow Joel Peterson. Valet parking, refreshments and cash bar available. Hosted by: WDET's Ann Delisi and Nick Austin.

For other events and locations visit: http://artxdetroit.com/

MUSIC
Friday, April 1st at 8PM
Michael Morley/Gate, Blank Dogs, Dark Red and Mountains
Admission: $8.00

Michael Morley performs solo as Gate on this very exciting occasion. Michael Morley is one third of pioneering New Zealand experimentalists the Dead C. Willfully obscure, real life legends, the Dead C brought together avant-garde jazz, and a wandering, playful sense of experimentalism. They added a sincere sneer and a little punk rock nihilism and opened the door for fuzzed-out, abrasive, free noise to become the sound of the underground for a generation to come.

Blank Dogs are the project of Mike Sniper, a multi-instrumentalist songwriter living in Brooklyn, NY. Recording for the In the Red label, Sniper has released several albums under the Blank Dogs moniker of skuzzy, indie-pop that are essentially solo albums. As a touring band the group raises and catchy, fuzz-laden throbbing wall of sound that is a marvel to behold live.

Detroit's Dark Red maintain a similarly psychedelic sound but with a more bombastic view of minimalism and drone, punching out sweet and simple pop tones with a gritty, wall-of-noise sensibility.

Mountains are a psychedelic folk music group from Brooklyn, NY using acoustic instruments and electronics to explore the inner depths through minimalist drones and heavy repetitions.

Gate/Michael Morley

Blank Dogs

Dark Red

Mountains

PERFORMANCE
Saturday, March 26th at 7PM
Rachel Mason: The Songs of the Ambassadors
Admission: Free

The Songs of the Ambassadors is a music-based performance project which connects directly to the body of political figures sculpted by Mason. In two albums, Mason recorded 26 songs from the point of view of various leaders. Mason performs a selection of them as a song cycle, by changing from one political figure to another in live concerts along with video projections and elaborate costume changes.

Rachel Mason is a sculptor and musician. She received her BFA from UCLA and MFA in Sculpture at Yale in 2004. Her work finds autobiographical ties to history as she inserts herself into the minds of characters both fictional and historic.

For more information on Rachel Mason visit
http://rachelannmason.com

Rachel Mason | Background image by Adam Helms

READING
Thursday, March 24th at 7PM
MOCAD reading series curated by K. Silem Mohammad featuring Alli Warren and K. Lorraine Graham
Admission: Free

Alli Warren works in psychoacoustics on the Left Coast. Recent chapbooks include No Can Do, Bruised Dick (a collaboration with Michael Nicoloff), and Well-Meaning White Girl. She works in Berkeley, lives in Oakland, and co-curates The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand.
http://theingredient.blogspot.com/

K. Lorraine Graham is the author of Terminal Humming (Edge Books), and her visual work has appeared in the Zaoem International Poetry Exhibition at the Minardschouwburg, Gent, Belgium, and the Infusoria visual poetry exhibition in Brussels. Lorraine lives in Carlsbad, CA, with her partner Mark Wallace and Lester Young, a pacific parrotlet. You can find her online at spooksbyme.org.

Terminal Humming by K. Lorraine Graham (Edge Books, 2009)

FILM
Wednesday, March 23 at 7PM at the Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor
The Ann Arbor Film Festival and MOCAD present SONIC ACTS: MODULATING THE HUMAN SENSORY APPARATUS.
Admission: $9.00 ($4.00 discount to MOCAD members)

This program takes a closer look at how artists, over the last fifty years, have been using a broad range of cinematic techniques to investigate the analog and electronically induced play at the boundaries of perception. Ranging from stroboscopic patterns and psychoacoustic drones to visual chaos and pure silence – all used techniques tickle, hypnotize or physically assault the senses resulting in hallucinating trips, exercises in abstraction, and sublime audiovisual spectacles.

"Modulating the Human Sensory Apparatus" is guest curated by the Amsterdam based Sonic Acts festival, and presented by Sonic Acts' co-founders and curators Lucas van der Velden and Gideon Kiers. Since 1994 Sonic Acts has developed a reputation as a progressive and pioneering international festival with a specific interest in contemporary and historic developments at the intersection of arts, technology, music and science.

If you enter this code - AAFF49MOCAD - when buying online tickets, you will get $4 off the advance ticket price ($9 standard)! This screening may sell out in the theater's smaller screening room, so advanced tickets and arriving early are recommended.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America. The 49th AAFF takes place March 22 - 27th and presents 188 films, videos and live media performances from more than 25 countries with over 30 U.S., N. American and world premieres.

For more info: http://aafilmfest.org/49/

Sonic Acts: Modulating the Human Sensory Apparatus

FAMILY DAY
Sunday, March 20th from 12PM to 4PM
Soft Scapes with Annica Cuppetelli
Admission: Free

Cranbrook graduate Annica Cuppetelli hosts this workshop for children and their parents, creating a dimensional art experience with fabric.

For more info on Annica Cuppetelli's work visit http://annicacuppetelli.com/home.html

FILM
Saturday, March 19th at 7PM
Hydra Decapita and Last Angel of History
Admission: Free

Hydra Decapita (2010) 32 min.
Dir. by The Otolith Group
From 1993 to 2002, the Detroit-based electronic music duo Drexciya released an influential series of recordings that imagined a fictional world system entitled Drexciya, populated by the subaquatic descendants of Africans drowned by slavers during the Middle Passage. The fabulation of Drexciya provides the point of departure for Hydra Decapita, the new work by The Otolith Group that summons a series of spectres of capital in order to convene a seance that immerses audiences within an affective evocation of contemporary economic abstraction.

Last Angel of History (1996) 45 min.
Dir. by John Akomfrah
This short experimental documentary examines the relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing computer technology. This cinematic essay posits science fiction (with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering) as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness. Interviews, visuals and music are inter-spliced to explore concepts of Afrofuturism as a metaphor for the displacement of black culture and roots. The film bases its concepts around George Clinton's ""Mothership Connection"" and features interviews with George Clinton, Derrick May, Stephen R. Delany, Nichelle Nichols, Juan Atkins, DJ Spooky, Goldie and others to explore the link between black music as a way of exploring the future.

Hydra Decapita

Last Angel of History

WORKSHOP
Saturday, March 12 from 2PM to 4PM
The Lot and MOCAD present OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISTS: ARTIST RESIDENCY INFO SESSION
Admission: Free

This artist residency workshop will feature non-profit art organizations in Michigan that offer opportunities for artists, writers & musicians. Ox-Bow and ISLAND talk about their specific programs and discuss the purpose of an artist residency as well as its potential benefits.

ISLAND (Bellaire, MI) is a non-profit arts and ecology center dedicated to connecting people with nature, art and community. ISLAND helps people become native to place by:
-Supporting artists (visionaries, conceptual explorers and compelling communicators) with dedicated time, space and resources to create new work
-Restoring the old and developing the new skills and traditions of community self-reliance
-Creating and sharing a broad collection of tools for ecological living.

ISLAND RESIDENCY PROGRAM: The goal of the Hill House Residency is to support talented emerging songwriters, writers at all stages of their career and non-studio artists with a two, three or four week stay in a semi-secluded log cabin near East Jordan, Michigan.

OX-BOW SCHOOL OF ART & ARTISTS RESIDENCIES (Saugatuck, MI) is a non-profit arts school whose mission is to serve as a haven for the creative process through instruction, example, and community. Ox-Bow is a protected place where creative processes break-down, reform, and mature.

OX-BOW SUMMER & FALL RESIDENCY PROGRAM: Ox-Bow offers residencies of one to five weeks during the summer and fall. This program offers artists the opportunity to reside and work in a secluded, natural environment with a small private studio. During the summer months, artists can take full advantage of the energetic and discursive community participating in the summer program. Fall is dedicated to the artists-in-residence, and given the small nature of the program, residents have a remarkable opportunity to create a close community of like-minded, and diverse professionals.

READING
Thursday, March 10th at 7PM
MOCAD reading series curated by K. Silem Mohammad Featuring Mel Nichols and Marie Buck
Admission: Free

Mel Nichols teaches digital poetry, creative writing, literature, composition, honors courses, and writing for artists at George Mason University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines, including Fascicle, New Ohio Review, Practice, Van Gogh's Ear, The Tangent, and Gargoyle. She is co-editor of illuminated meat, and an editor of the online journal English Matters. With Rod Smith she curates the Ruthless Grip Poetry Series at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center.

Mel Nichols' recent books are Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (Edge 2009, National Poetry Series finalist) and Bicycle Day (Slack Buddha, 2008). She teaches at George Mason University.

Marie Buck lives in Detroit, where she studies, teaches, and and co-edits the small poetry journal Model Homes. Her first collection of poetry, Life & Style, was published by Patrick Lovelace Editions in 2009, and she is currently working on a new manuscript, "Pwnage." Her work has recently appeared in Abraham Lincoln, Sustainable Aircraft, and Satellite Telephone.

Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon by Mel Nichols (Edge Books, 2009)

ARTIST TALK
Friday, March 4th at 7PM
Green Brain Comics and MOCAD present Jim Rugg
Admission: Free

Jim Rugg is the co-creator of Street Angel, the PLAIN Janes, Afrodisiac, and USApe. He has drawn comics for Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible, Felicia Day's the Guild, Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics, Vh1, New York magazine, and McSweeney's and created illustrations for Walt Disney, Capcom, Universal, EA Sports, and Smirnoff. His work has been honored in Communication Arts Illustration Annual, Print Regional Design Annual, AIGA's 50 Books/50 Covers, American Illustration 29, and the Society of Illustrators Annual, and 2009's Best American Comics.
http://jimrugg.blogspot.com/

Jim Rugg, Afrodisiac

Jim Rugg, Street Angel

WORKSHOP
Friday, March 4th from 4PM-7PM
Green Brain Comics and MOCAD present Comic Jam II
Admission: Free

The "Comic Jam", usually held at Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, comes to MOCAD for the second year in a row. Participants are encouraged to partake in the creation of spontaneous, improvised comics and free form drawings with other artists and illustrators. Stations with the materials for various collaborative drawing opportunities will be set up. Paper and other materials provided, participants are encouraged to bring their drawing tool of choice. The public is encouraged to come at the end of the party to witness the results of the evening's jam session, which closes with a presentation by special guest Jim Rugg.

FILM and PERFORMANCE
Thursday, February 24th at 8PM
Gravity was Everywhere Back Then
Directed and animated by Brent Green
Feature film with live soundtrack of narration, music and sound effects
75 minutes, color, 2010
Admission: $6.00

"Leonard and Mary meet in a car crash. They fall instantly in love, and live happily ever after... until Mary gets sick. Desperate to save her, Leonard decides that if he builds a house for Mary, it will heal her. Inspired by the real actions of the eccentric Leonard Wood, filmmaker Brent Green brings to life this love story like no other in his first feature-length film. Shot entirely on the full-scale town he built in his backyard, Green combines animation, stop-motion and live-action in an ethereal opus to lovers and tinkerers everywhere."

This film screening will include a band providing a live soundtrack. Brent Green plays guitar and narrates the film. Donna K does the all of sound effects. A backup band of various musicians perform the soundtrack for the film live.

Brent Green is a self-taught animated filmmaker and artist who lives and works in Cressona, PA. His films have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival (2006-9), MoMA, the Getty Center, Warhol Museum, IFC Center, the Walker Arts Center, the Kitchen, Hammer Museum, EMPAC and a ton of other museums and festivals around the world. Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then is his first feature film.

Donna K. lives in a rural Pennsylvanian barn where she makes a lot of stuff like art and cookies. She has made animations for the fiction journal Electric Literature, the band Drew & the Medicinal Pen and, more recently, for her own musical efforts. She co-wrote and acts in Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then.

Mike McGinley's name was alternately spelled correctly then misspelled in Brent Green's film Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, in which he played the leading character, Leonard Wood. He is the most important member of the indie-cabaret group The Bitter Tears.

Drew Henkels is a day-dreamer and late-sleeper with a (mostly) healthy obsession with the supernatural. His band Drew & the Medicinal Pen provides a soundtrack to the dust-bunny world of his dream logs, films, and photographs.

John Michael Swartz plays the cello and composes experimental computer music. His work covers a lot of ground: from chance, improvisation, and Fluxus-style happenings, to generative algorithmic structures, granular synthesis, and other mathy things.

Gravity was Everywhere Back Then

FAMILY DAY
Sunday, February 20th from 12PM to 4PM
Winter Thaw Craft Day!
Admission: Free

Parents, put your fun hats on and join us at MOCAD this Sunday for a Family Day chock-full of fun activities with materials and assistance provided by the MOCAD staff for you and your family! Several workstations will be set up to create a fun, craft-based environment designed to expand your child's view and understanding of art through various activities and workshops. Say yay for Family Day!

MUSIC
Saturday, February 19th at 8PM
Rhys Chatham Brass Trio
Admission: $8.00

Avant-garde composer and multi-instrumentalist Rhys Chatham has reached legendary status in experimental music circles. The Paris-based, New York-born composer began as a classically-trained prodigy, but by 1975, Chatham was fusing the overtone-drenched minimalism of John Cale and Tony Conrad with the relentless, elemental intensity of the Ramones. He is perhaps best known most recently for high-profile productions of his resplendent symphonies for hundreds of electric guitars, works which certify Chatham's position on the front lines of post-minimalist and contemporary music.

For this concert, Chatham takes up the trumpet and joins forces with guitarist David Daniell and drummer Frank Rosaly. Chatham deploys extended playing techniques inherited from the bastions of free jazz - Don Cherry, Bill Dixon - as well as leaders of the minimalist movement - Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, La Monte Young. Live processing of the instrument through a host of electronic devices gives rise to an ebullient cascade of sound and a truly unique and personal voice, carrying forward Chatham's life-long pursuit of fusing the textural intricacies of the avant-garde with the visceral punch of punk rock.

David Daniell is a Chicago-based guitarist and composer who has collaborated extensively with Rhys Chatham throughout the last four years, including the 2006 Die Donnergötter tour, 2007 Guitar Trio tour, and as Concertmaster for Chatham's 100- and 200-guitar ensemble performances. He has worked for fifteen years as a member of the improvising blues-drone trio San Agustin and with many other collaborators including Loren Connors, Tim Barnes, Jeph Jerman, Thurston Moore, Tomas Korber, Greg Davis and Jonathan Kane. Current active collaborations include a duo with Douglas McCombs (Brokeback, Tortoise), a trio with Christian Fennesz and Tony Buck (The Necks), and the quartet Apiary with Steven Hess (Pan American, Haptic, On), Jason Stein (Locksmith Isidore) and Joseph Clayton Mills (Haptic).
http://www.daviddaniell.com

Ryan Sawyer is a Texas-born, New York-based drummer who has performed and recorded with many improvisers and bands, including Charles Gayle, Thurston Moore, Tony Malaby, Josephine Foster, C. Spencer Yeh, Nate Wooley, Lee Renaldo, Trevor Dunn, TV on the Radio, Celebration, Jandek, and Rhys Chatham - particularly as the sole percussionist for Chatham's 2009 performance of A Crimson Grail for 200 Guitars at the Lincoln Center. Sawyer also maintains a number of his own bands and projects - Tall Firs, Glass Rock, Stars Like Fleas, Lone Wolf & Cub, etc - and he led and co-composed the 2008 New York staging of The Boredoms' 88 Boadrum, an 88-minute composition for 88 drummers.

For more information on Rhys Chatham visit
http://www.rhyschatham.net
http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/rhys-chatham

MUSIC and DANCE
Wednesday, February 16TH at 8PM
Franco-Swiss dance troupe Compagnie 7273 with Sir Richard Bishop and special guests Leyya Tawil's DANCE ELIXIR with Mike Khoury
Admission: $ 7.00 | Free for members

MOCAD is honored to present the US premiere of award winning Franco-Swiss dance duo, Compagnie 7273. CIE 7273 (Laurence Yadi, Nicolas Cantillon) have been actively working together since 2003. Together they have inspired and worked along with films, live music and experimental ballets. In 2007, the Company developed a new research on the links between folk music and choreographic creation, with the plan of a trilogy. As such, they developed En concert, a set of songs and original music scores performed live on the stage by the choreographers. It was followed by 2008's Laï laï laï laï, a piece for four dancers. In 2009, they continued this evolution by creating Listen & Watch in collaboration with the American guitarist and composer Sir Richard Bishop from Seattle, WA, and Steffen Basho Junghans, a German musician from Berlin.

Sir Richard Bishop is one of the co-founder of seldom heard but highly influential, eighties/nineties experimentalists the Sun City Girls, who were well known for their eclectic, improvised sounds, as well as their funky and strange art house leanings. Bishop's solo work expands upon the wide-ranging mission of the Sun City Girls taking in elements from around the globe and making them all familiar, if somewhat dreamlike and otherworldly. Bishop's complex playing style unites American blues, Indian raga, early American finger-picking folk music and a grab bag of electric-rock subgenres. His building blocks are the droning, buzzing note and the dancing single line.

Leyya Tawil's DANCE ELIXIR was founded in 2003 in California. DANCE ELIXIR has enjoyed national tours, residencies and international engagements throughout Europe and the Middle East. The troupe is engaged in an international dialogue addressing identity and multi-disciplinary collaboration. On this very special evening she will be joined by Detroit-based violinist and improviser, Mike Khoury.

CIE 7273 & Sir Richard Bishop

Dance Elixir

CURATORS TALK
Thursday, February 10th at 6PM
Luis Croquer
Admission: Free

MOCAD Director and Chief Curator, Luis Croquer will lead a contextualizing walk through the two exhibitions that he has curated, Lifestories and Edgar Arceneaux: Miracles and Jokes, Circle Disk Rotation and 22 Lost Signs of the Zodiac.

Jàn Mančuška, While I walked..In my studio in ISCP, 323 W 39th Street #811, New York, 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery.

FILM
Saturday, February 5th at 3:30PM
Watts Blocks
Admission: Free

Watts Blocks is a mash-up video created by artist Edgar Arceneaux and Nattu Coleman that juxtaposes the live concert film Wattstax with Dave Chappell's comedy concert film, Block Party. The resultant film collage explore the cultural legacies of these two events and the films that followed. Dave Chappelle's Block Party (Michel Gondry, 2005, rated R) is a contemporary document of Brooklyn's musical history, it's sense of comedy and community. The live segments include performances by today's top-selling acts culled from the world of Hip Hop and R&B. Kanye West, Mos Def, Jill Scott, and the Fugees, among others, grace the stage alongside Dave Chappell's biting comedy. Wattstax, (Mel Stuart, 1973) which seems to have, at least partially, inspired Block Party, is a film documenting the 1972 Watts Summer Festival, a sold-out, day-long concert that took place seven years after the historic Watts riots. The festival featured many of the most important African American artists of that period—such as Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas, the Bar Kays, and the Staple Singers—and included commentary by community members on the conditions of the Watts community.

The Bar-Kays, Watts Stax

EXPERIMENTAL LECTURE and CONVERSATION
Saturday, February 5th at 2PM
Mirror Travel in the Motor City; with Edgar Arceneaux, Julian Myers and Cornelius Harris (The Unknown Writer, Underground Resistance).
Admission: Free

Drawing upon art historian Julian Myers' and exhibiting artist Edgar Arceneaux's ongoing conversation investigating Detroit's history and culture (which borrows part of its title, as well as its method, from Robert Smithson's 1969 essay "Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucutan") this talk promises to present an art historical, theoretical, and artistic investigation into the repercussions in culture of the Detroit civil unrest of 1967. In the view of the artists, this history, of committed urban struggle in the U.S., is today misrepresented, repressed or demonized, not least amongst contemporary conservatives for whom the political movements of the 1960s remain an unforgettable wound. But, as philosopher Slavoj Zizek often asserts, that which does not exist, that which is disavowed or repressed, will often insist, in phantasmatic form. Following this idea, the conversation will track down some of these phantasms, in cultural form: in music, including Etta James, John Lee Hooker, Theo Parrish, Underground Resistance, and the mytho-poetics of the electro group Drexciya; in art, in particular tumultuous installation of Michael Heizer's earthwork Dragged Mass Displacement at Detroit Institute of Arts in 1971; and in the monuments of existing Detroit, especially the site of the afterhours party where the '67 riots began. Along the way the speakers purport to explore the pleasures and politics of "the underground," in all of its valences. The discussion will also include the thoughts and insights of Underground Resistance member Cornelius Harris, aka "The Unknown Writer".

Edgar Arceneaux, Circle Disk Rotation, 2008. Photo by Corine Vermeulen.

OPENING NIGHT MUSIC & PERFORMANCE
Friday, February 4th at 8PM
DJ Spooky (live) and Aux 88 (Detroit, live)
Admission: $8.00 | Free for members

Paul D. Miller, aka 'DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid', is a hip-hop musician, conceptual artist, and writer, known for his experiments with electronics and turntablism, and for having been one of the originators of the "trip hop" movement and "illbient" sound that revolutionized dance music and hip hop for the coming decade. DJ Spooky, as an artist, has appeared at the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and numerous other museums and galleries. His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Rap Pages, Paper Magazine, and a host of other periodicals. For this special opening night performance Spooky will be presenting a multi-media performance incorporating live video and audio to create a unique collage of sight and sound for the museum audience.

For more information visit
www.djspooky.com

Detroit electronic music duo, Aux 88 have been active on the Detroit dance scene, under various guises, for two decades, consistently putting out high quality, dark and moody electro-pop for seminal techno labels like Submerge and Direct Beat. The duo has recently undergone a transformation, emerging as Black Tokyo for their most current 2010 release. Expect to hear a deep pulse from the stage on this night, representing the darker fringes of Detroit's underground dance music scene.

For more information on Aux 88 and Black Tokyo visit
http://www.aux88.com