Author: dlectricity

We are so excited to welcome Rashaad Newsome, headlining artist of Dlectricity 2017!

Newsome is committed to engaging with the city of Detroit through a summer residency leading up to the festival as he prepares three pieces for Dlectricity 2017.

Newsome’s practice brings together video, music, collage, and performance. He is known in the art world for reclaiming the vogue scene in his work—the artful 1970s underground queer ballroom dance scene, brought into the mainstream by Madonna in the 1990s that Newsome aims to take back for the queer black community.

For the production of his vogue-themed video work, Newsome makes a point of hiring actual vogue performers as a way to give the community visibility in the art world. Newsome told the New York Times Style Magazine, “Just by putting these bodies within an institutional art-world context is already a major statement, because I didn’t see work like or about this ever in a museum or gallery until I started making it.” Check out the rest of his interview here.

Newsome was born in New Orleans and these roots inform much of his work, particularly the staging of his “King of Arms” New-Orleans-style procession on Friday, September 22, at 7:00 p.m., circling the Detroit Institute of Arts to kick off Dlectricity 2017.

Newsome received the 2017 Rush Arts Gold Rush Award and is part of the 2017 NY Live Arts Live Feed residency program. He has exhibited and performed at the Studio Museum in Harlem, The National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC, The Whitney Museum in NYC, The Brooklyn Museum, MoMAPS1 in NYC, as well as numerous other locations nationally and internationally.

Currently, Newsome has work at MOCA Jacksonville, FL as part of the “Synthesize: Art + Music” exhibition, on view now through September 24.

Newsome also has a solo show at MMoCA in Madison, WI, showcasing both early and recent video work documenting vogue culture, on view now through December 3.

Thank you so much to Hyphen, an artist management firm founded by Andrea Glimcher, for proposing Rashaad Newsome as the 2017 Dlectricity artist-in-residence.

Thank you so much to the Knight Foundation for their generous support of this residency, and to the Detroit Institute of Arts for hosting all three of Newsome’s projects.

Check out a studio visit and interview with Newsome from 2016 here.

Check out an interview with Saint Heron, a collective album produced by Solange Knowles (Newsome designed the cover art) here.

Cleveland-based neon master Jeffry Chiplis is coming to Dlectricity!

Chiplis has been a fixture in the art world for decades. He has shown work at White Box Gallery in New York as well as at the Scope Art Fair. His use of neon as a primary material makes him stand out from his peers; he was featured in a solo spread in Art in America.

Through it all, he has remained loyal to Cleveland and to his use of repurposed neon. In an interview with CoolCleveland.com, he jokes that he avidly “upcycled” before it was “trendy” to do so.

For Dlectricity, Chiplis is bringing an iteration of his “Neon Repoetry” series, recycling letters and shapes from neon signs to write original poems and create visual installations. Removing neon tubes from their original context allows them to take on new meaning. Chiplis welcomes open interpretation of his poems and his work.

In his spare time, Chiplis is a collector of carrot memorabilia and his collection of items numbers over 10,000. He is featured on the carrot museum website here.

Chiplis’ project will be located on the outer wall of the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art. Thank you so much to the N’Namdi Center for hosting this project!

One of only three artists coming to Dlectricity 2017 to have presented at all three festivals, Detroit-based collective Apetechnology is back!

Apetechnology combines tech and art to focus on the human relationship with technology. Referring to their work as “Detroit Retrograde Futurism,” the group looks back on the once-celebrated “future” with a critical eye.

The collective had a show at Public Pool Art Space in Hamtramck in 2016. Their piece “Slendrotron,” an electronic Gamelan orchestra that plays music randomly generated by a computer algorithm, was featured in a show of other multimedia work.

For Dlectricity 2017, Apetechnology is presenting “The Shadows of Slendrotron (The Monkey God’s Great Leap),” a robotic performance piece inspired by traditional Javanese puppetry that brings the “Slendrotron” orchestra to Dlectricity. “The Shadows of Slendrotron” includes the live performance of an adaptation of a play from the Hindu epic Ramayana using automation, puppeteering and robotics accompanied by music from the electronic Gamelan orchestra.

Apetechnology’s piece “MechanoShards” at Dlectricity 2014 explored synchronized motion, light, sound and musical composition using 20-foot tall mechanical constructions created to look like shimmering crystal shards.

Collective members Chip Flynn, Leith Campbell and Leo Garza will present “The Shadows of Slendrotron.” Flynn founded Apetechnology in 2002, returning to Detroit to hone in on aesthetic machine design; Campbell explores all forms of technology while simultaneously testing the limits of improvisation; Garza is a S.A.G. puppeteer who has recently done media modeling work for Disney/Pixar.

Thank you so much to The Knight Foundation and Bluewater Technologies for their generous support of this project!

Thank you so much to the Detroit Institute of Arts for hosting this project!

Michaela Mosher’s job as gallery coordinator at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art makes her a key player behind-the-scenes of Detroit’s art world, but she is also an accomplished artist in her own right beyond her work as a coordinator and exhibition designer.

Originally from Flint and educated at CCS, Mosher is a multi-disciplinary artist with an emphasis on installation and performance. We are so excited to welcome her back to Dlectricity to present “PRIMETIME,” a project featuring multiple video installations and live performances curated by Mosher.

Mosher and Dlectricity curatorial and production manager Alivia Zivich will both be presenting video installations in the show, along with artists Katie Barkel, Oren Goldenberg and Chris Tysh, Kaio Huvaere and Matteus Huvaere, Ginny Martin, Oksana Mirzoyan, Clifford B. West and Harry Bertoia.

Theater company “A Host of People” (Sherrine Azab and Jake Hooker, with Torri Lynn Ashford, Aja Salakastar Dier, Karilú Alarcón Forshee, Chantel Gaidica, Chris Jakob, Billy Mark, Dorothy Melander-Dayton, Sam Moltmaker, and Maddy Rager) will present live performances of “Neither There, Nor Here,” an original multimedia interdisciplinary play directed by Sherrine Azab that examines the experiences of people with liminal identities of race, gender, culture and sexuality. Performers create dishes representative of their mixed identities, using the format of a cooking show to guide the work.

Mosher’s work in exhibition design is currently on view at the N’Namdi Center exhibition, “Round in Circles,” on view through August 26. The installation and performances for “PRIMETIME” will also be held at the N’Namdi Center. Thank you so much to the N’Namdi Center for hosting this project!

Check out her video work here.

Check out her website here.

Check out the current exhibit at N’Namdi Center that she designed here, on view through August 26!

FaShon Vega is a Detroit-based artist with a passion for design. He is creative director of The Bottega Art Campus, a creative performance and installation space that serves as a community art center. He also founded “GLoW: Detroit,” a mission to bring permanent light, art and safety to the streets of Detroit neighborhoods and works as a designer for “BANKAi: Academy for Heart and Design,” helping businesses update their branding.

Vega is passionate about creating art and light in his community, making him a perfect match to bring light to Dlectricity. His project “Star Tours,” in collaboration with THREE13 ACTION DESIGN, is part live action performance, part cosplay and part strolling installation. Multiple light “Stunt Saber” battles between the light forces and the dark forces armed with light sabers will take place throughout the evening, culminating in an epic battle at the end of the night. Performers will interact with audience members when not performing.

His new youtube channel Hate by Design will uncover through vlogs and “weekly dives” the way design impacts our daily lives. Subscribe here and learn design hacks, tips and tricks.

Thank you so much to Wayne State University for hosting this project. The Star Tours performances will take place on the green space at Woodward and Warren and other locations around the Dlectricity footprint. Be sure to take a photo with a Star Tours performer if you see one!

Three groups have donated their space, time and expertise to bring DLECTRICITY’s audience the best show in the state: Phoenix Free Running Academy and THREE13 AD have pulled together the state’s best tracures (parckour and free running enthusiasts), martial artists and stuntmen to transform Midtown Detroit into a galaxy far far away. Thank you so much to everyone contributing to this mobile, energetic and light-filled installation!

Pope.L, a Chicago-based artist who has been making public interventionist art for over twenty years, will present Reenactor at Dlectricity 2017. A video artwork projected on the façade of the Detroit Historical Museum, the work will run continuously throughout the festival weekend, day and night.

Pope.L writes, “I call Reenactor my Civil War film but the war I’m referring to is any great trauma that marks the land and its people such that ghosts are spawned and made restless in memories that haunt our living landscape.” Live music performances by Marcus Elliot and Ben Willis will accompany the video’s soundtrack during festival hours.

If you visited the Detroit Institute of Arts’ 30 Americans show last year, you may have seen video footage of The Great White Way, a performance piece by Pope.L that addressed social injustice by documenting the artist make a 22 mile crawl up Broadway in Manhattan while dressed in a Superman costume, completed over the course of nine years.

This year, he’s been getting a lot of attention from the art world. He was a VIA grant recipient for Artistic Production based on installations at Documenta 14 and had a solo show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York. He also won the prestigious Bucksbaum Award at the 2017 Whitney Biennial for Claim (Whitney Version), an installation of walls creating a space covered inside and out with curing slices of baloney that raises questions about identity, community and healing. He will have a solo show at the Whitney in 2018.

Pope.L will also present Flint Water Project at Detroit artist-run gallery What Pipeline, on view September 7 through October 21, 2017. Flint Water Project is an art installation, a performance and an intervention that calls attention to the water crisis in Flint by bottling contaminated Flint tap water and selling it as an edition in Detroit. This week, he launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the project.

As per the Kickstarter description, “When Pope.L was asked by What Pipeline to do a commission for Detroit, he felt that whatever he did it should not re-victimize the city as had been done too often in the past. What if Detroit could be the hero and come to the rescue of another midwest city in need?” More information at whatpipeline.com (or @whatpipeline) #whatpipeline #flintwaterproject

Special thanks to the Detroit Historical Museum for hosting this project and to the Knight Foundation and What Pipeline for their partnership in bringing Pope.L to Detroit.

Dlectricity is a celebration of the wonder of light, technology, art and electricity—we can only imagine the wonder produced by electric light 111 years ago.

Detroit’s Electric Park opened to the public in 1906, on the west side of the Belle Isle bridge, now the site of Gabriel Richard Park. The park promised to bring attractions and entertainment surpassing the White City in Chicago of 1893, and the Detroit Free Press proudly proclaimed that “Rome with its seven hills will be a poor second to the roller coaster which is to be installed on the westerly side of the park.”

Check out more photos of Electric Park here

It’s only fitting that DTE Energy Foundation is the presenting sponsor of Dlectricity—they are one of the major forces (literally) electrifying Detroit. Their touch is felt everywhere in the city, from infrastructure to public programming to green space in Detroit.

Last month, DTE opened Beacon Park in Northwest Detroit, a 1.5-acre former gravel parking lot that is now a public park and event venue.

DTE is committed to public works and corporate citizenship. They partnered with the City of Detroit to make Detroit the largest city in the US with 100% LED public lighting. They are committed to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions to 75% below 2005 levels by 2040.

Their sponsorship of a festival based on light brings the company full circle in many respects. The incandescent bulb was first used in Detroit in 1883. In the 1890s, Henry Ford worked for the company that preceded DTE.

DTE serves 2.2 million customers with electric utility in southeastern Michigan and employs more than 10,000 people.

Thank you so much to DTE Energy for returning to sponsor Dlectricity—and for lighting up the city every night.

We are so excited to welcome Bluewater Technologies as both a creator and a sponsor at Dlectricity 2017!

The visitor becomes the artist with Bluewater’s interactive, ever-changing display for Dlectricity 2017. “Luminaria Magna” is a massive 25’ by 25’ square lightbox structure connected to pressure pads on the dance floor, turntables and other interactive elements that each control a different characteristic of the light. Local DJs will perform as festival visitors dance and engage with “Luminaria Magna” to create a unique display of energy efficient LED light.

Bluewater’s impressive technology work is on display now as part of the Detroit Historical Museum’s “Detroit ‘67: Perspectives” exhibit. Along with two other local tech companies, Bluewater was commissioned by the Museum to use advanced video and projection tools to create an immersive experience for viewers. The company also supports local artists, commissioning Detroit-based Antonio “Shades” Agee to design interpretive graffiti murals for their office spaces.

As a company, Bluewater places emphasis on strategy, creativity and innovation. Bluewater creates live event and AV technology experiences for strong brands, working with agencies, producers, exhibit houses, architects and consultants. The company is committed to flawless execution, pushing boundaries and providing an experience beyond technology to their clients and partners.

Thank you so much to Bluewater for bringing energy, music and light to Midtown—be sure to take a spin on the dance floor! #BWMoves

“Luminaria Magna” will be located on the grounds of Wayne State University at Woodward and Warren. Thank you so much to WSU for hosting this project!

Check out their tech work at the Detroit Historical Museum.

Check them out on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Using recycled materials and hands-on workshops, Detroit-based organization Arts & Scraps brings accessible art to the people. Particularly serving children in low-income areas, Arts & Scraps provides education and creative experience with an emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.

Ang, Trice Clark, Brian Quintilla and David King from the Arts & Scraps team are bringing the interactive workshop “Light as a Shadow” to the “Electric Park” family-friendly zone at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Workshop participants will create a character out of Arts & Scraps materials and then use that character to cast shadows on the projection wall. Participants will also have the chance to experiment with color mixing and shadow. By combining artistic creation and the phenomena of light, “Light as a Shadow” provides creative education for all ages.

The Arts & Scraps founders saw a need for art programs with affordable materials in the Detroit community, which they have been providing since 1989. Arts & Scraps recycles 28 tons of materials and serves 275,000 children every year, while fulfilling their mission to connect business, education and community.

Thank you so much to the DIA for hosting this project!

Check out a profile on the organization from the Detroit News in 2015 here.

Donate to Arts & Scraps here, or with items from home here.