September 29, 2017: Your Arts & Culture Adventure Picks
This post is a part of a series of posts curating adventurous arts and culture experiences in Southeast Michigan. Sign up for email updates (choose “Arts & Culture Adventures” list).
UMS Wallace Blogging Fellow Amanda Krugliak is an artist, curator, and arts administrator best known for performance and conceptual experiential installations, most notably as curator at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities since 2007. Amanda is most recently recognized nationally as co-creator artist/collaborator with Richard Barnes and anthropologist Jason De Leon for “State of Exception,” an exhibition about De Leon’s “Undocumented Migration” project. Her essay about the work of Richard Barnes will be included in the upcoming book “Object Lessons,” about the University of Michigan Collections and Museums, and a collection of her essays will be included in a catalog commemorating the U-M Institute gallery, which will be published in December 2017.
Another fall in Ann Arbor, students are back, bicycles and cars are multiplying, people walking and talking are around every corner. You can almost feel it, the momentum, the buzz, the new day. Whatever heartbreak or ennui lingers, it’s time to whack your alarm clock, get out of bed, shake it off, and polish your platforms. Baby, Times, they are a changin’.
The Moth: Creepy
October 3
6:30 doors open, 7:30 stories begin
Circus Bar, Ann Arbor
How cool is it to be able to be part of The Moth in your own backyard? Whether you are sitting comfortably in the audience with a cold beer waiting to hear a story, or chomping at the bit waiting to tell one like your life depends on it, The Moth Ann Arbor remains one of the very best Small Town/Big City experiences. If you want to sign up to present, put your name in the hat, the odds are pretty good. Whether you are a teller or a listener, it’s great to feel connected to your fellow humans; you just might become a regular. This month’s theme is aptly named Creepy. Start talking to yourself in that mirror. Get there early, and buy your tickets online soon, it’s always a sold-out house.
Outrage! The Art of Protest
October 6-27
Opening reception, October 6- 10 pm
Gallery 22 North, Ypsilanti
Because things are as scary out there as any cliché you ever saw in a horror movie from Psycho to Bride of Chucky, to I was a Teenage Werewolf… Gallery 22 North, a relatively new and hip contemporary space in Ypsilanti presents the work of Michigan artists exercising their freedom of expression. Through a wide range of media and perspectives, the show embraces creativity along with critical inquiry as a way to effect real change.
Arthur Jafa:
Love is the Message, The Message is Death
Offsite MOCAD video installation
September 21 – October 22
Fridays from 1-7 pm, Saturdays from 12-5 pm
1086 Bellevue, Detroit, Michigan, or by appointment, call MOCAD
Recently shown in New York, and now a site-specific video installation in Detroit, artist Arthur Jafa’s sublime and timely video installation offers both “a sense of outrage and despair” as well as “flashes of joy,” says New Yorker Magazine.
The installation combines clips from a variety of sources creating a panoramic collage representing what it means to be black in America in 2017. MOCAD gets it right, showing the work as a site-specific installation in Detroit, in a building on Bellevue located near MLK High School adding to its resonance and. The work on location embraces and unites community, and includes clips of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama, Nina Simone, LeBron James, as well as images of church soloists, police harassments, and senseless tragedies. MOCAD offers a challenging series of public programs to accompany the installation.
Jason Ferguson’s One-Man (freak) show
Through October 21
Public Pool Art Space,
3309 Caniff, Hamtramick
The Nature of Being, replication of the artist’s skeleton.
If you are looking to feed the existential beast inside of you, take a visit to Public Pool to see new work by artist Jason J Ferguson. Ferguson’s projects over the years, from rooms of a house reimagined as carnival rides to the textbook dissection of shoes and armchairs, explore the familiar in an eerie and unsettling way, turning creature comfort on its ear. The artist re-examines what we think we know to the realm of the uncanny and absurd. In One-man (freak) show, Ferguson explores identity and mortality, and includes in the show a 3D printed replica of his own skeleton based upon MRI and CT scans taken in a University of Michigan laboratory. Through bodily replication, he perhaps searches for the exact location of the soul, and finds inherent folly in the process.
Radicaldemocracy, a digital archive and exhibition
Ongoing and open 24 hours a day
The best thing about the digital world is that “Aaaha” moment, “Eureka,” finding something really cool to look at, read and tinker with, revisit, even just sitting at the coffee shop with your latte or in your living room at 2 am in your jammies. Ann Arbor born and well- travelled, savvy artist/designer David Olson has compiled and launched RadicalDemocracy, a visitor friendly archive/exhibition/digital treasure box of historic documents, quotes, posters, ideas, and conversations that embraces the power of the people and our long history of engagement and activism to insure democracy and protect human rights. The archive is completely downloadable, free, open source, and includes links to grass roots opportunities, movements, and gatherings happening now, documented in real time. Check it out!
Two Conversations on Post-Truth
Thursday, October 5, Alternate Facts
6:30 reception and 7 pm Dialogue
The Jam Handy, 2900 E.Grand Blvd, Detroit
Friday, October 6, The Lie That Tells the Truth
6:30 reception and 7 pm Dialogue
Woods Cathedral, 1945 Webb Street, Detroit
Culture Lab is a knockout arts organization that engages world-class artists, designers, and architects in a series of thoughtful discussions. These provocative conversations forge new connections between creative thinkers in Detroit and internationally. They also breed more rigorous discourse because of the unique combination of ideas, perspectives, and experiences of those involved playing off one another, informing us from all sides.
This month’s s offers an incredible star power lineup of visitors including artist Edgar Arceneaux and Mel Chin, artist and writer Coco Fusco, and critic Hilton Alsa among others. Each night is a different mix and promises challenging investigation and interplay about the post-truth morass we are in, and innovative solutions to build ourselves a lifeline.
UMS Wallace Blogging Fellow Amanda Krugliak is an artist, curator, and arts administrator best known for performance and conceptual experiential installations, most notably as curator at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities since 2007. Her essay about the work of Richard Barnes will be included in the upcoming book “Object Lessons,” about the University of Michigan Collections and Museums; University Press and the Institute for the Humanities will publish a collection of her essays about art in 2017.
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