View this email in your browser Press Release Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit For Interviews and Images Contact: Mike Kulick [email protected] Elysia Borowy­Reeder [email protected] 313.832.6622 MOCAD 2014 WINTER SEASON This Weekend At MOCAD ­ DEPE Resident Sameer Reddy Join MOCAD this weekend for a series of events with Department of Education and Public Engagement (DEPE) Resident Artist Sameer Reddy. Reddy's practice aims to catalyze spiritual catharsis through aesthetic encounter, drawing on his parallel professional practice as a healer. The Tabernacle, his installation at MOCAD, incarnates a sacred space within the secular walls of the museum, problematizing the physical and conceptual demarcation between holy and profane. PERFORMANCE: True East PERFORMANCE: The Sound of My Voice FAMILY DAY: Sandpainting and Mandala Making Video interview with the artist FINAL WEEKS ­ CLOSING SOON James Lee Byars: I Cancel All My Works At Death On view through May 4, 2014 I Cancel All My Works at Death is the first comprehensive survey of the plays, actions, and performances of James Lee Byars (Detroit 1932 ­ Cairo 1997). Spanning the period from 1960 (when he created his first action in Kyoto, Japan) to 1981 (when de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam presented a year­long survey), the exhibition, which is titled after Byars' now­famous speech act, adopts the premise that the artist and his work are better mis­remembered than re­experienced. I Cancel All My Works at Death therefore presents none of his actual performances; nor does it include objects made, owned, or used by him, nor vintage ephemera­­with the exception of obituaries published in newspapers at the time of his death. What it does include are suits and costumes, scripts, theater posters, props, puppet videos, a detailed timeline, among other elements. It also includes new, un­authored solo actions and group events that will be carried out sparingly and intermittently during the run of the show. The exhibition is curated by Triple Candie, a phantom­like institution that existed in Harlem as an alternative space from 2001 to 2010. Run by two art historians who now live in Philadelphia, Triple Candie produces exhibitions about art but devoid of it and realized without the involvement of artists. Recent projects include Epigraphe pour une preface: The Original is Unfaithful to the Copy (FRAC Le Plateau, Paris, 2013), Of the Siren and the Sky: The Life and Work of Michael Whipple (Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, 2013), and Maurizio Cattalan is Dead: Life and Work, 1960­2009 (Deste Foundation, Athens, 2010). At the request of Triple Candie, this exhibition has been dramaturged by Jens Hoffmann, MOCAD's guest curator. State of Exception On view through May 4, 2014 The exhibition State of Exception, originally installed at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities Gallery in 2013, represents the collaboration between artist/photographer Richard Barnes, artist/curator Amanda Krugliak, and University of Michigan anthropologist Jason De León. The exhibition presents backpacks, water bottles, border restraints and other objects left behind by undocumented migrants on their journey into the U.S., and audio interviews from migrants relaying their own perspectives and experiences, and their relationships to these objects. The exhibition also features video and photographs shot by Richard Barnes on location along the U.S. Mexico border. State of Exception conveys the complexity and ambiguity of these found objects, and what they may or may not have revealed in terms of transition, humanity, commerce, culture, violence, and accountability. This exhibition is made possible by the support of The University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities and MOCAD. Vdrome Vdrome Ongoing program Vdrome is an online platform that offers regular, high quality screenings of films and videos directed by visual artists and filmmakers, whose production lies in­between contemporary art and cinema. They are all narrative films and all a minimum of 15 minutes long. Each screening is presented during a limited period of time. Vdrome is on view at MOCAD and online, the program is organized by Edoardo Bonaspetti, Jens Hoffmann, Andrea Lissoni and Filipa Ramos. The Richard and Jane Manoogian Foundation has provided leading support for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit since 2006. General operating support for MOCAD is generously provided by Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, General Motors Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, Masco Corporation Foundation and The Taubman Foundation. Additional funding for programming and educational initiatives is provided by Edith S. Briskin/Shirley K. Schlafer Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and Renaissance Media. Valuable in­kind support is provided by Dykema. The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit is also supported, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation For the Arts, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Leveraging Investments in Creativity in partnership with The Ford Foundation, and ArtPlace, a collaboration of top national foundations to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S. MUSIC + FILM MOCAD and the 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival present Phill Niblock Thursday, March 20, 7pm Admission: $7 ($5 for MOCAD and AAFF members) A maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde, Phill Niblock combines ideas from minimalist music, conceptual art, structural cinema, systems art, and even political art. Niblock makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents filmwork that looks at the movement of people working. Presented in conjunction with the 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival. LECTURE MOCAD and the Critical Studies and Humanities Program present Vanessa Place: Empire Aesethetics: It's not the point, it's the platform. Thursday, March 27, 6pm at Cranbrook Academy of Art, deSalle Auditorium Admission: Free Vanessa Place, conceptual poet, artist, and CEO of VanessaPlace Inc., presents a talk wherein she maintains that in our current age of global semiocapitalism, there is no point to the art object beyond its function as a platform for trading signifiers and signification. This might be good news; we shall see. READING MOCAD and Cranbrook Academy of Art present Vanessa Place Friday, March 28, 7pm Admission: Free The Boston Review called Vanessa Place “the spokesperson for the new cynical avant­garde,” the Huffington Post characterized her work as “ethically odious,” literary critic and philosopher Avital Ronell states that Place is “a leading voice in contemporary thought,” and Anonymous on Twitter says, "Vanessa Place killed poetry." Vanessa Place was the first poet to perform as part of the Whitney Biennial; a content advisory was posted. Place is also a conceptual artist, a critic, a criminal defense attorney, and CEO of VanessaPlace Inc., the world’s first poetry corporation, whose sole mission is to design and manufacture objects to meet the poetic needs of the human heart, face, and form. "Your desires are our needs." Place will perform works of empire poetics, in which poetry cashes in on the love of the unique shared affect. Just like Facebook. MUSIC Nazoranai (Keiji Haino, Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi) Monday, March 31, 8pm Admission: $15 ($12 members) Tickets Available Here One of the most legendary musicians to come out of Japan’s underground rock scene, Keiji Haino stands One of the most legendary musicians to come out of Japan’s underground rock scene, Keiji Haino stands as a key figure in contemporary music. Since the early 1970s, Haino has explored the transformative elements of noise and silence, approaching the performance stage with his own distinctive vision of sonic creation. Haino synthesizes sources like Delta blues, troubadour music, free improvisation, and Blue Cheer into an utterly astounding personal musical vocabulary. Nazoranai finds Haino creating extended improv­rock in a trio with Stephen O'Malley, founder of seminal experimental metal groups Sunn O))), Khanate, and Burning Witch, and Oren Ambarchi, a percussionist and multi­instrumentalist who, like his bandmates, works outside conventional approaches to instruments and structure. MUSIC Oneohtrix Point Never Sunday, April 6, 8pm Admission: $10, Tickets Available Here Daniel Lopatin, who performs as Oneohtrix Point Never, deftly balances the experimental with the accessible. Although Lopatin’s latest, R Plus Seven, contains many familiar sonic touchstones for listeners who have followed this acclaimed electronic music composer’s development over the last half­ decade, his Warp Records debut is a major departure from his previous work. Lopatin’s experimental inclinations lurk behind the scenes—in the Oulipo concepts and procedures he adopted to create the tracks—while the music itself comes as close as Lopatin has ever gotten to anything resembling traditional song structure. Which, for Lopatin, is only so close: the work is full of overlapping, abstract musical through­lines, puzzle­like pieces that, when taken together, allow you to glimpse an overarching tableau. MUSIC Mary Ocher wsg Champions of Breakfast Monday, April 7, 8pm Admission: $5 Born in Moscow, raised in Tel Aviv, Mary Ocher plays wonderfully raw and biting avant pop that has invited comparisons to Kate Bush, David Bowie, and Laurie Anderson. Now based in Berlin, Ocher has been gaining notoriety and acclaim thanks to her engaging performances. Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs says, “Her sound is that of a true outsider artist, immaculately self­possessed.” And producer extraordinaire Hal Willner says that Ocher’s music is “beautiful, transportive, disturbing, calming, scary, and fantastic.” Eden, her latest album, was produced by the Canadian garage rock guru King Khan, who accidentally stumbled upon her at a Berlin karaoke night. MUSIC Julianna Barwick Sunday, April 13, 8pm Admission: $8 ($5 MOCAD members) Tickets Available Here Julianna Barwick crafts ethereal, largely wordless soundscapes, all of which are built around multiple loops and layers of her angelic voice.