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Akiko Nakayama uses liquids with different characteristics and other external factors to bring painting to life.

“Alive Painting” is a performance piece in which Nakayama uses different media to capture passing moments. During the performance, paints blend in real time and the viewer is able to concentrate on philosophical meaning. Nakayama’s work celebrates the ephemerality of life.

Based in Tokyo, Nakayama performs versions of “Alive Painting” around the world. Most recently, she performed at the Ars Electronic Festival in Austria in 2016, TEDxHaneda in Tokyo in 2015, and at the inaugural Media Art Festival in Takamatsu, Japan in 2015. Last month, Nakayama will be performed “Alive Painting” with the band Arsenal at the Lokerse Feesten in Lokeren, Belgium.

After receiving her MFA from Tokyo Zokei University in 2014, Nakayama has become a standout member of the Tokyo art scene. She had a solo exhibition in Tokyo in 2016 and was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2017.

This performative installation will take place inside the sanctuary at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul sanctuary. Thanks to the Cathedral Church for hosting this project, and to Detroit Renewable Energy for sponsoring “Alive Painting!”

Check out her unique, vibrant and lively “Alive Painting” performances on her website here.

Alive Painting is sponsored by:

Sebastian Duncan-Portuondo, Angela Eastman + Maxime Robillard are coming together to bring a project that embraces many mediums to Dlectricity 2017!

“Every Side of Here: Searching for the Sacred” combines different genres of live score, performance and projection to bring wonder to viewers. The project draws on everything from scenes of people singing in religious spaces to packed dance floors in order to create connections between historical and contemporary ideas about the sacred. The performative and interactive event will be located on the grounds of the First Congregational Church.

In addition to this performance, Duncan-Portuondo, Eastman + Robillard will create a participatory mural project on the wooden wall that was built to keep the public out of the recently damaged porch area and facade of the church. You can read more about the damage that the church experienced HERE.

Sebastian Duncan-Portuondo is a Miami native, recently relocating to Detroit as an MFA candidate at Cranbrook Academy of Art. He uses light-based media to engage with community and shared memory, crafting architectural interventions, performances and installations. Angela Eastman is also an MFA student at Cranbrook, working playfully in sculpture and performance to study the connection between ecology and collective identity. She is currently completing an incubator residency at Talking Dolls Detroit, an experimental studio space co-run by another Dlectricity artist, Wes Taylor. Maxime Robillard lives in Queens, playing many roles while working as a musician and producer, furniture maker, installation artist, and set designer for photo and video shoots. He and Eastman have been collaborating since 2008.

Bringing together their unique styles and media, the trio’s work will address the overlap of traditional and contemporary; order and disorder; contemporary and divine.

Thank you so much to First Congregational Church for hosting this project!

Check out Angela Eastman and Maxime Robillard talking about their work here!

Check out their progress on Instagram: @refractologist (Duncan-Portuondo), @angelaeastman

Stay tuned to Fox 2 Detroit Tuesday, September 5, 2017, at 7:45 a.m. to hear Dlectricity headlining artist, Rashaad Newsome, and festival chair, Marc Schwartz talk about what’s new at Dlectricity!

Learn more about Rashaad Newsome’s projects HERE.

Thanks to Fox 2 Detroit for their continued sponsorship of Dlectricity!

 

Welcome to Dlectricity Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jason Isaacs!

Isaacs has worked in arts education in the US and UK for over 20 years, working primarily with immigrant populations. He currently runs his own production studio and educational consultancy that serves non-profit organizations specializing in taking on issues of race, culture and representation in underserved communities.

“The Black Love Project” is coming to Dlectricity 2017, bringing untold stories of the magic of black love in America. Isaacs aims to showcase the existence, endurance and magic of black love despite the negative perceptions of black togetherness. Bringing a unique twist to the installation in Detroit, Isaacs will set up an on-site Black Love chamber to allow the community to record their own stories and contribute to the conversation. Isaacs also invites the community to bring their own Black Love photos in film or digital format to create a collection that will be made freely available online.

“The Black Love Project” is a large-scale, site-specific, non-linear 12-minute video loop to be shown at the Warren entryway of the Wright Museum of African American History. Thank you so much to The Wright for hosting this project!

Come ready to share your own Black Love story.

We are so excited to welcome our first ever photo-montage installation to Dlectricity 2017!

Facing Change: Documenting Detroit is part of the organization Facing Change: Documenting America, a non-profit collective of photojournalists working nationally to independently document America today.

Inspired by the Farm Security Administration’s storied photography program during the Great Depression that documented rural poverty, the Facing Change organization hopes to tell a wide range of real stories.

Facing Change: Documenting Detroit is a summer fellowship program that pairs emerging Detroit-based photographers with established mentors to develop their skills and build portfolios while documenting Detroit. The 2017 fellows will present their photography work at Dlectricity, projected onto the facade of The Wright Museum of African American History.

2017 fellows include Alexa Borromeo, Anthony Lanzilote, Corey Turner, Damon Adams, Erik Howard, Jeff Pearson, Jeremy Brockman, Junfu Han, LaToya Colts, Mishira Davis, Marisol Dorantes-Silva, Sal Rodriguez, Samantha Otto and Viviana Pernot.

2017 program mentors include Samantha Appleton, Nancy Watson Barr, Carlos Diaz, Kholood Eid, Brenda Ann Kenneally, Kathy Kieliszewski, Alexis Lambrou, Patricia Lay-Dorsey, Joanna Lehan, Andrea Mellen Birnbaum, Brian Palmer and William Valicenti.

The fellows work to bridge a gap where traditional journalism is often missing in order to tell stories that are uniquely Detroit. You can check out some of the fellows’ projects on public view around Detroit: in the windows of 1220 Library Street, Grand on River (5001 Grand River Ave, Detroit), and at Field and Kercheval. Check out more information here.

Thank you so much to founders Karah Shaffer and Alan Chin for bringing this project to Detroit and Dlectricity 2017. Thanks to the Richard and Jane Manoogian Foundation for sponsoring this project, and to the Wright Museum for hosting this project!

Check out a Freep photo gallery of work from the fellows on the 4th of July here.

Zeynep Dagli is coming to Detroit for Dlectricity 2017!

Her work “Negotiation between Madness & Sanity” takes into account the concept of a disconnect between internal and external struggles and traumatic experience.

The work is a collaborative project with the public. Dagli records people screaming without restraint in an attempt to explore the given right and therapeutic power of screaming. A basic human impulse, screaming both draws attention to the screamer and provokes the viewer.

In her practice, Dagli often collaborates with disabled artists and performers to create work. She completed her PhD in 2009 and has continued making short films for a wide variety of audiences.

This piece will be projected onto the façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Dlectricity will also host a Scream Tent on site at MOCAD for the public to participate in this cathartic process.

This work was previously shown in a solo exhibition at filmpro late in 2014. Thank you so much to filmpro and SAHA Association for their generous support of this project. Thanks to MOCAD for hosting this project.

Check out the project here.

Check out Dagli’s thesis here.

Check out Dagli’s blog here.

Detroit-based animator, educator and artist Gary Schwartz is coming to Dlectricity 2017!

An Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and lecturer at the University of Michigan, Schwartz conducts hands-on animation workshops for people of all ages and backgrounds.

For 6 weeks prior to Dlectricity, Schwartz will be holding an inter-generational animation workshop to produce the work that will be presented at Dlectricity. The project is inspired by the motto of the city of Detroit, “Speramus Meliora, Resurget Cineribus” or “We hope for better things, it will rise from the ashes.” Using paper, puppets and other tools, workshop participants will tell their Detroit stories in animation through the role of shadow puppeteers.

By bringing together a mix of people ranging from adolescents to seniors, Schwartz will use his knowledge and expertise to bridge generational divides and facilitate a piece made by residents that tells diverse stories about the city.

The workshop is hosted by the Luella Hannan Memorial Foundation. The final product will be projected in the front windows of the Hannan House during Dlectricity. At the same time, inside the Ellen Kayrod Gallery of the Hannan House an animation projection studio will be installed for the public to try during the festival.

Thank you so much to the Luella Hannan Memorial Foundation for their generous support of this project and to the Hannan House for hosting this project!

You can view Schwartz’s Academy Award nominated film here, his Youtube channel here, and essays about Schwartz here and here.

“Animal Land” is an on-going video projection project from Arizona-based collaborators Lauren Strohacker + Kendra Sollars. They are bringing a unique version of the project to Detroit for Dlectricity 2017!

Strohacker and Sollars tackle issues of wildlife displacement by visually reintroducing animals to their natural habitats, often urban areas now taken over by humans. “Animal Land” raises questions about human perceptions of cohabitation versus conflict and how it impacts native species.

For each iteration of the project, Strohacker and Sollars conduct extensive visual research and digitally render a different species native to the area in which they are presenting. “Animal Land: Detroit” will bring video projections of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) back to Midtown. In projection, the animals are completely decontextualized in an effort to initiate dialogue about the way the native red fox has adapted to city life alongside the human inhabitants of Detroit.

Check out more Animal Land videos here and profiles about the project , here, and an artist talk here! The project was also one of 50 selected from over 1400 entries for the 2015 Arizona Biennial.

“Animal Land: Detroit” will be projected at the Garfield Lofts above Rite Aid. Thanks to WH Canon Landscape Company for their sponsorship of this project!

Kelley Bell is a graphic designer, animator and projection artist based in Baltimore City. She is an associate professor and associate chair of the Visual Arts Department at University of Maryland Baltimore City.

Bell’s piece “Carnival Love Wall,” first exhibited as part of Animafest Zagreb, will be presented again at Dlectricity 2017. It is a modular projection work to be shown on the façade of the Prentis Building at Warren and John R that combines simple animated shapes and patterns to create a dynamic, complete surface.

In 2016, Bell was part of the Light City Baltimore festival. She collaborated with artist Corrie Parks on the piece “Projected Aquaculture” to highlight shifts occurring in Chesapeake Bay and Baltimore. This spring, Bell showed her work “Babel” at the David M. Brown Planetarium in Arlington, Virginia. The work used the dome of the planetarium to take viewers on a virtual tour. Challenging the concept of monument, Bell virtually mixed historical domes to create a new visual sensation.

Check out “Babel,” “Projected Aquaculture,” a preview of “Carnival Love Wall” and other works on Bell’s website here.

She received a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant in 2013, and her projection series “The Clock Strikes 100” was named Best Public Art Project by Baltimore Magazine in 2011.

Thank you so much to the University of Maryland Baltimore City for their generous support of this project, and to Wayne State University for their support!

Germany-based artist Nikola Dicke is coming to Detroit for Dlectricity!

Her project “Mobile Light Graffiti” uses existing elements of the built and natural world as her canvas in order to analyze the way we examine space. She uses soot-blackened glass on a 7000 lumen overhead-projector to project onto walls, trees, buildings—anything with an interesting surface—and subsequently “draws with light.”

Dicke’s unique method uses performance, painting and sculpture to change the atmosphere of a defined space and create new symbols and ideas. At Dlectricity, she will be drawing with light on the side of the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul.

Dicke has been the subject of much press in Germany. This summer, she is part of an exhibition honoring Durher’s legacy in woodblock prints at the History Museum of Osnabruck, along with 12 other artists.

Check out a video of her work in action here.

Thank you so much to the Cathedral Church of St. Paul for hosting this project!