October 16, 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.
I decided to lighten my load and finally parted with a pair of vintage shoes, a thrift store porcelain doll, love letters from 1994…you get the idea.
Before I knew it, an art student retrieved them from my office dumpster, curated me right there on the sidewalk, like a missing person. Words of advice: just let it go. Baby, don’t ever let it go, or you’ll end up as someone’s final project.
It’s October! Where is my bikini? Here are a few picks to ease the anxiety of Global Warming.
Object Lessons
Exhibition
October 13-December 30
Ruthven Building, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
In Object Lessons, a more conceptual exhibition in the old library of the Ruthven Building, University of Michigan scholar Kerstin Brandt and photographer/artist Richard Barnes offer a surprising and intimate look at hidden collections and museums at the University. The room is stripped down to original floors, to add to the sense of traveling through time, and even Ruthven’s desk makes an appearance. Full of taxidermy, photographs, bird’s nests and notebooks, the exhibit offers a trace of our collective history facing brave new worlds.
D-Ciphered: Portraits by Jenny Risher
Now through February 18, 2018
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
Jenny Risher photographs Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of Insane Clown Posse in Delray.
In D-Ciphered, Portraits, at the DIA, Jenny Risher’s photographs chronicling the hip-hop scene in Detroit honor the the amazing artists who have been such an influential part of a vibrant movement and also the Detroit community. The vivid portraits capture the energy and power of the people and their music, also serving as a visual record of the history of this influential genre of music.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
October 28 at 10 pm
Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is another nod to the past, still campy and fun, and silly, and a thrill after all these years. What a great way to celebrate Halloween, performance, and our own eccentricities. A Michigan Theater tradition, the cult classic takes you down the rabbit hole with sweethearts Brad and Janet, soon leading to the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite mad scientist. What more could a girl ask for on date night? Do your research, bring your props, and get ready to rock.
City of Djinn / Lime Rickey International
October 27 at 8 pm
Trinosophes, Detroit
I love seeing anything at Trinosophes in Detroit, this wonderful place that offers edgy, informed international performance, art, and music in a setting that feels like your best friend’s house party. This month, listen to a great double bill of City of Djinn and Lime Rickey International. City of Djinn out of Chicago creates a sonic tapestry of dark, psychedelic, hypnotic sound that emerges from experimental music and Arabic magam tradition. Lime Rickey International, the “alter ego” of voice artist Leyya Mona Tawil, also explores influences of magam. She creates soundscapes in her charged performances, articulating Arab Experimentalism, and embedded in political sub-narratives. She calls herself aptly a “refugee from the future…full of diasporic aesthetics and resilience.”
Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples
November 1 at 7:30 pm
Fox Theater, Detroit
It is impossible for me to think of anything that would cheer me up more than seeing Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples at the Fox. Both have spent their musical careers combining soul-changing music, with inspiring activism. It just might remind you what you are fighting for. Tickets are still on sale, you can have the glow of just being there for the price of a few lattes, or break the bank and have the night of a lifetime. Either is worth the trip.
The Hinterlands Ensemble
The Radicalization Process
November 2-3 at 8 pm
Play House, Detroit
Richard Newman and Liza Bielby have created a one-of-a-kind performance and installation that goes beyond the boundaries of either, following a time continuum, that undulates, offering an immersive You are There theater experience. You’ll find yourself looking through archives, following instructions that place you in your own performance, and finally into the larger play. The Radicalization Process navigates through forgotten revolutionary histories, investigates radical art and politics, till you are ready to stage a political coup of your own.
Tickets or call 313.454.1756 or email info@thehinterlandsensemble.org
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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