Working on…
Jide Aje
Showcases the production of the artists current body of work.
The drift documents the artist at work while interacting with audience.
Wall of Freedom
Adil Akhtar
Wall of freedom will provide an opportunity to the audience to feel free of all the inhibitions in expressing themselves. They can paint, draw or say anything.
All of us think that we are not free in this world, it will be interesting to see how do we react when we do get a freedom of expression.
Once done with the wall of freedom the audience will also be asked to video record an explanation of their expression in 30 seconds.
The finished canvas and the videos will be available for exhibition.
Drifting on the currents of time and place
Jan Anderson
The Burton Historical Collection in Detroit Public Library’s main branch is the location for a certain type of drifter, simultaneously navigating Detroit’s streets and the decades, reflecting and critiquing conventional narratives of the city.
In “Drifting on the current of time and place” participants are asked to choose a location (either at random or one they have a specific connection to) and will be given a simple set of instructions* on how to use the Polk City Directories to trace the historical trajectory of this location and any subsequent side-branches the exercise may lead to.
Any artifacts created through this process and returned to the Kunsthalle will be displayed for the duration of the show.
Note that the Burton Historical Collection is open Tues/Wed from 12pm-8pm and Thurs/Fri/Sat from 10am – 6pm. Instructions for the drift will be available either from the Kunsthalle or via this link. The Detroit Public Library’s main branch is at 5201 Woodward, approximately 1.5 miles due East from the Kunsthalle.
Field Art Fair
Maia Asshaq
I’m going to set up a one-table art fair in a large open field behind my home on Roosevelt between Michigan Ave + Risdon. All of the objects featured will be gathered from the same field ahead of time and will be available for purchase. The documentation will either be in the form of photos, video, but my hope is that enough people will come and leave a few word review of the fair that I will turn into a poem.
Moon Ride
Assocreation
Moon Ride is the physical encounter of a society on its way to another dimension of reality. Imagine if there was no light at night without human effort – not even moonlight. That’s the premise of this project, in which participants are invited to hook up their bikes to bike trainers previously transformed into generators. Every step on the pedals generates electricity, illuminating a giant balloon light that balances in the night sky on the roof of the Kunsthalle in Detroit. The cyclists’ effort determines the brightness of the balloon.
To participate bring your bike to the citydrift/Detroit outpost on 17th Street & Warren across from Kunsthalle Detroit from Dusk – 11 pm Friday July 19 & Saturday July 20, 2013.
Bumper Cars
Thomas Bell
Ongoing Participatory Sculptural Build of bumpers and auto parts.
Drifting In My Sleep
Thomas Bell
I will live stream my sleep the night of the Friday July 19th and record a written record of my dreams that evening. I will also pull still images from the live stream and create drawings / paintings the following morning based on my dreams.
R (to the 3rd power): Reimagine Renovation Revolution
Victoria Bell
As a Detroiter from Detroit, sometimes visions of daily blight eat away at my positivity, angering my peaceful soul.
I’m not a developer.
I don’t own a bulldozer or construction company.
I’m not a politician.
But I hate seeing the rotting structures down the street from schools, playgrounds and people I love.
R3 is art as activism.
Art in protest.
Art for change.
Art for possibilities.
Art for hope.
My drawings, doodles, & sketches of what could be in front of what IS, eases my anger, slightly.
Catharsis: Eco-Anxiety (Detroit)
Mike Bianco
Eco-Anxiety is a recently defined psychological phenomenon, and has emerged as common form of chronic fear for many people. Characteristics of Eco-Anxiety range from neurosis of ecological catastrophes (global warming, species extinctions, etc.) to anxiety derived from – and focused on- effects of the environment on an individual’s immediate surroundings (weather change, crop loss, urban blight, etc.). Detroit is no stranger to environmental degradation, and many of the city’s citizens live with chronic Eco-Anxiety without diagnosis, and few know how to process or cope with it.
In response to this growing psychological phenomenon, I am proposing a virtual “drift,” a telephone hotline to assist people with Eco-Anxiety. Through this hotline I will collaborate with citizens to make cathartic artworks. I will employ techniques developed by Michael White and his practice of “Narrative Therapy.” Citizens will be asked to engage in a dialog about their Eco-Anxiety, and will be encouraged to externalize their anxiety through the act of making narrative artworks. It is my intention to offer catharsis, self-reflection, and positive re-direction for citizens to proactively address their Eco-Anxiety.
Poetry: Prompt & Found
Danielle Blasko
My proposal is to stage a poetry reading of found poems and poems written in direct response to writing prompts. Following the reading, I will facilitate a write-in for attendees complete with a “think-tank” of prompts and inspirational found objects to inspire on-demand writing contextualized within the urban setting. The experience is easily replicable with different outcomes undoubtedly being created in each unique setting.
Buttering Ram
BUTTER PROJECTS (John Charnota + Alison Wong)
Butter Projects invites drifters to join us to make some noise in Detroit. Step right up for your turn at the Buttering Ram to smash discarded material that will be collected and transformed for use in various artworks on display at Kunsthalle Detroit. All participants will have an opportunity to contribute to a collaborative installation.
Quick and Dirty Rehab Workshop
Mary Beth Carolan
The Quick and Dirty Rehab Workshop will be held on Friday, July 19th from 5 – 9 pm and Saturday July 20th from 3 – 7 pm in North Corktown. Participants will sign up for a FREE four-hour workshop on dry walling, patching and painting. It takes mental, emotional, and physical agility to pull off a rehab project. Various aspects of this process will be addressed including workflow agendas and how to get good help when you just can’t go on.
BYOBeverage and Snack Potluck!
Ephemera from the event will include artifacts (paint chips, dust, etc.) and photographs or video.
The Free Market: Antithesis of Capitalism aka A Freegans Paradise @ MBAD
Halima Cassells
This drift will call forth community to walk through and experience the awe-inspiring installations that define the enchanted grounds surrounding the MBAD Bead Museum in the heart of Detroit. Constructed by the hands of artist and expert on African material culture, Olayami Dabls, each lanscape-altering piece is constructed of entirely of objects now serving a second life. It is this concept that is foundational to The Free Market… and why we think this site is very appropriate.
The drift will include people walking through the area, bringing with them at least 1 object to give, and walking away with an object of their choosing. We will be giving space, water and music.
Greetings from Michigan
Jenna Crowder
A collaborative, performative reading of Sarah Heady’s “Greetings from Michigan” read to vast lots/reemerging prairie spaces in Detroit.
Secrets & Stories
Christina deRoos
Secrets & Stories will reveal themselves through conversations with strangers to me in SW Detroit. Beginning with a set of photographs I will approach individuals of all ages that I do not already know and offer to trade a photograph for a secret or a story. I will capture audio of the secret or story revealed. I will not collect names or other identification of the individuals involved, nor will I ask whether they are sharing a personal secret or a fictitious story. I will capture a new photograph from each location where I receive a secret or a story. Documentation will consist of prints of the original and new photographs and the audio recordings.
Billboard Advertising Public Transportation
Stephen Garrett Dewyer
Detroit is a city where privatized transportation via the automobile dominates the landscape with highways. The scale of the billboard (including height) make it inaccessible for the public to change the image on a billboard. By placing a billboard within the liminal space of the pedestrian, Billboard Advertisement for Public Transportation both advertises public transportation and allows viewers to change the image.
City Poem
Molly Dierks
On July 19th, a net of balloons will be released in Detroit, each bearing a scroll containing directions and a question dealing with one of a number of emotions (love, nostalgia, envy, anxiety, fear, wonder, anger, happiness, loneliness, inadequacy, hope). The questions are purposely open ended and nonspecific (what does it mean to be happy?) and the directions will give an email address for the submission of short answers as well as a blog where the address of the found balloon can be entered on map. A graphic will be constructed using the lines of poetry the respondents write and a map of the city with the location of the found balloons. The graphic will be interactive in a simple way. The graphic poem will create a dreamscape of the city with the fears and hopes that tie people together to create an open ended emotional geography. A number of blank scrolls will also be brought do that participants can craft and release their own private emotional connection questions.
Marching Orders
Wilson Duggan
Marching Orders is a Detroit “Choose Your Own Adventure” that will examine the urban landscape by way of a collective improvisation. 20-30 minute group walks will leave from the Drift Hub throughout the weekend, their routes decided intersection by intersection.
Stencilation
Dianetta Dye
Stencilation will be a collaborative and interactive event. Taking stencil artworks of images and city lancscapes and transferring them by multimedium onto fabrics, clothing, paper, etc. This event will be live, passerbys may want an image transferred onto their t-shirt or jeans etc. They may choose to layer several images and create their own citydrift original.
The Secret History of Longfellow St.
Seth Ellis
My father was born in Detroit and lived here until he was twelve, at 2516 Longfellow St. The family moved away in 1946, sixty-two years before I moved to Michigan. The only photo I have that actually locates him in Detroit shows him on their front lawn, hiding behind a tree, pointing a pop gun at an invisible enemy across the street. It’s the only remaining evidence of his childhood in the city.
My proposal for The Secret History of Longfellow Street is to create a series of small plaques, like historical information signs, to be temporarily installed along Longfellow Street, telling the story of the imaginary adventure my father was having that day. The “history” will be site-specific; the specific geography of the street will be presented as a child’s imaginative landscape.
The aim of the project is to access and re-present Detroit’s past in a playful, imaginative, personal way, looking beyond the usual large-scale narratives we all receive about Detroit’s Golden Age and current troubles.
Cyclical Drifting
Jason J Ferguson
The drift will consist of a performative action that will be repeated and documented over the course of 10 days. I have mapped a cyclical route that I walk once a day, every day, while wearing a GoPro HD video camera mounted to my head. The walk takes me through back entrances and out storefronts of major local establishments downtown. This cycle is repeated over 10 days and the resulting videos are seamlessly stitched together to create a final 60 minute film. In the vein of Robbe-Grillet’s writings, the results will be a dreamlike cycle with no clear end; as the walk is repeated subtle elements will change.
Flatland Star is an experimental blues, funk. hip hop. rock and rhythm band from southeast Michigan. The band formed in May 2011 and has a diversity unseen in most bands bridging cultural, social and musical chasms. Every member of Flatland Star comes from a different musical background ranging from folk to gospel making for a unique blend of sound that is proper for any venue.
Flatland Star is:
The Incredible Scoop Sos!: Voc
Daniel Davidson: Guitar
Sean Friday: Bass
Brian Matthew: Piano/Accordion/Organ
Tuna: Drums
D. Woods: Drums
Joseph Nabozney: Guitar
Conrad Herring: Piano
Moonlight Mobile Theater
Rolando Garcia II
A mobile film / performance theater packed into a converted school bus. We will be able to load and unload easily to setup an instant drive in experience or performance space complete with projection, sound and possible concessions.
Autodrift
Gilded Empire
The contours of the city, the affordances of an automobile and the space between will be wandered and wondered.
The drift will start in the upper left corner of Detroit. It will continue until we run out of gas, city or day. No maps, GPS, or compass will be used.
Research for Gray Areas and Prismatic Space: Ramadan
Yvette Granata
This project will create a light map of the city of Dearborn, the area bordering the east of Detroit and home to the largest Middle Eastern community in North America. It is also the month of Ramadan, the Islamic community’s holiest month, for which many homes and establishments decorate their facades with lights as part of their celebration. During this drift, we will drive down all of the streets of Dearborn and use long exposure photography to trace the lights of Dearborn during Ramadan. City lights, car lights, neon signs, and Ramadan decorations will all be captured and blended as we move along the map of Dearborn from West to East. The interaction of culture, light, and movement will be documented by the camera and displayed upon completion of the drive.
Flâneur
Scott Hocking
I’m going to go for a stroll.
Perfume Drift
Peter Hopkins
I will bury 5-6 bottles of perfume with specific titles (joy, guilty, desire, etc) in various hiding spots near Kunsthalle. The drift team will walk, uncover these, spray the perfume either on themselves or in the air, and describe specific moments related to the title of the perfume.
Paradoxes & a Quick Fixes : Thought Experiments
Alyson Jones
The drift will start and end with enjoying getting stuck in paradoxes. The paradox will be used as a tool for small group wondering sessions.
The participants will explore the question, What I want in Society? Each participant will be asked to contribute by offering a idea. That idea will be presented for discussion to the group. At the end the group will have a collective statement that speaks to the question.
The Last Thing I Did in the Rain
John Kannenberg
During the citydrift/Detroit opening weekend, the installation will consist of a sound recording of rain, and a printed sign with the following text:
“What was the last thing you did in the rain?
Text me your answer.
I’ll text you back sometime when it’s raining, and let you know what I’m doing.”
[Non]Space
Shaina Kasztelan
Through the eyes of Google Street View, “Non-Space” rediscovers and reinvents past landmarks and artwork throughout the North End Studio’s surrounding area. This drift will be a digital walk through the neighborhood, screen-capturing colorful graffiti, candid portraits of passers-by and interesting architecture. These images are then layered on top of each other, meshing together every single block photographed by the Google Street Van. By doing so I intend to create a “Non-Space” which is not specific of a single street or home but a pixelated conglomeration of all of the places within the selected region.
Tack
Matt Kenyon
Tack: A small, sharp, broad-headed nail.
Tack: The alignment of a sailing vessel with respect to the wind when moving upwind
Tack: A course of action meant to minimize opposition to the attainment of a goal.
Tack: An area of land held on a lease
This project will explore the circulation of people and images in Detroit by creating a new perspective on the everyday experience of having something stuck in one’s shoe.
We plan to epoxy small photo portraits to the surface of hundreds of thumbtacks. Once in place-these photos will be completely obscured by the application of paint. The altered tacks will then be placed on sidewalks, hallways, buses and other such public spaces. Once someone steps on one of these tacks-the process of walking scuffs off the paint and reveals the photo underneath. Each image revealed will be shaped by the unique circumstances (sidewalk texture, distance walked upon etc.) of it’s creation/revelation.
100 feet from Home
Shannon Lee
My house will be a meeting point during a set of short (distance) derives in which I will return to every time I finish creating/collecting imagery on a 100 ft roll of 16mm clear leader film. With every step I take, a film will be created on location with rubbings of textures, collages of nature and 2-dimensional found objects, and inspired drawings directly on the clear leader.
The constricting elements of this drift project act as a symbol of fear I must overcome of my new surroundings as a recent transplant to Detroit. At the same time, these constrictions will force an intimate familiarity to my neighborhood and home, to the extent that it may evoke nostalgia of a child playing on the sidewalk.
Cracked
Collin McRae
I intend to respond to the forms that have been created by badly maintained roads. I will draw attention to the natural shapes of the cracks in Detroit city roads by carefully filling them with non-invasive yet eye-catching materials such as flour and turmeric. I purposefully choose materials that reference cooking to turn attention to the rich cultural life that thrives in Detroit in the face of hard times.
After the Fire
Middlecott
Burned buildings re-imagined for the future.
We will walk from East Side Detroit to the Kunsthalle Museum on the West Side. On our walk we will photograph burned-out buildings to later draw directly over them imagining what they could become in a utopian future. We want to take an optimistic look at Detroit’s future, realistic or not.
Sauna Ultimate Finland World in the USA
North End Studios
North End Studios will host a drift from Kunsthalle to our Authentic Finnish Sauna.
We will have the Sauna running starting at 10:00pm on July 19th, 2013.
A tour guide will arrive at 10:00pm to lead those interested from Kunsthalle to North End Studios; a short walk through foliage to a secret european backyard.
North End Studios is very close to Kunsthalle, and participants may stay for as long as they want, and walk back by themselves.
<3 We want to heat people up.
The Sauna can fit over 10 people comfortably.
*No dress code*
Deconstructing Yeezus: unpackaging misogyny and social context
Abbéy Odunlami
It’s been written about more times that I can count or care to further read. But Kanye West’s latest album, a tightly packaged giant exclamation mark of minimalist sound art presented as hip hop, is apparently the tipping point of male misogyny in hip hop. So why would this artist, who most might consider an emo rapper be the lynchpin for a matter so interwoven into our social conditioning as misogyny?
In a drift through the streets of Detroit, I’ll lead a ground in discussion as we look for willing strangers, soon to be participants who might have the Yeezus album on them and allow us to listen to a single track on their device. We will unwrapped the then recently absorbed track, questioning intent, context, and its cultural significance. This will occur till the album has been completely heard. 10 songs, 10 strangers/participants, totalling 40 minutes of listening time and however minutes of discussion time.
The Detroit Moment / Crackin’ but fackin
Steve Panton & Kathleen Rash
The recent mass protests in Brazil were widely reported as being due to a host of issues including poor transportation, poor education, poor health care, political corruption, excessive spending on sports stadiums and evictions to facilitate big developments.
The “Brazilian Moment” was the point at which the country, almost to a person, saw through the madness and refused to accept it any more. Detroit is familiar with all of the issues that led to the Brazilian Moment and more …. The recent announcement that over $200 million dollars of public money would go to subsidize a new ice-hockey stadium for a Michigan billionaire in a city that can’t even keep the street lights on, being only the latest example …. yet responds on the whole with acquiescence.
For the duration of 72 hours participants in this drift will ask people they come into contact with to explain this situation.If asked why they are asking these questions, participants should respond by stating that they are trying to start a revolution. Participants are encouraged to keep a notebook and jot down some of the response they receive. Any documentation returned to the Kunsthalle will be displayed for the duration of the show.
Alley / Ways
Alejandro Perez and Cara Ciaglo
We often wander into alleyways and in doing so our minds wander as well. The alleyway is an utterly unexplored typology that can become an important aspect of the conversation about the city. Over the course of an afternoon we will document our traversing through a network of alleys and treat them as a path. This project hopes to capture the potential in alleys and what this circulatory axis may provide when the wanderer experiences a squeezed and more personal version of the urban pedestrian experience free from expansive streets and XL sidewalks.
Deconstruction, Design, Detroit
David Philpot & Marsha Music
Philpot’s Drift will be his engaging with creative Detroit friends, in a rare collaborative effort on a single work of art. He will engage them in the creation of one collaged totemic object, a staff for the Drift constructed of found objects and repurposed wood. We will witness the uniting of Philpot’s powerful creative energy with the collective spirit of other Detroiters, gathered at Trinosophes Gallery on Gratiot Ave.
Marsha Music, Philpot’s wife, who is a writer and a 2012 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, will document this Drift, providing digital images and text on the process of this engaged, collaborative creative force, as well as its visual, social and artistic significance in the city.
Intimate Blast Off
Tom Pyrzewski
Participants: Ayaka Hibino, Chris Dargaj, John Ikera, Tom Pyrzewski
The Hamtramck backyard is small and cozy. It’s a little world within a small sector of the city. It can be about perception and transformation – occupying space with love and light, along with the love for labor and small everyday accomplishments. Perception is influenced by the sounds of the town and the smell of good food being cooked by neighbors and restaurants, all within very close proximity.
The ‘drift’ for this project will take place in a Hamtramck backyard. It will include the following actions: sharpening a reel lawn mower, cutting grass, trimming rose bushes with scissors, and other landscaping duties.
A Close Reading of Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”
Jonathan Rajewski / The Free School of Hamtramck
Not strictly a drift, but a reflection on and an extension to the city drift weekend through a close reading of Guy Debord’s seminal work, “Society of the Spectacle”.
The reading will use the recent translation by Ken Knabb and be performed collectively over a period of approximately four weeks, exact dates and venue to be decided later.
There is a particular connection between Society of the Spectacle and the city of Detroit as the first English version of Debord’s book was translated and published here in 1970.
Anyone interested in participating can e-mail sots@fastmail.fm
Here to Stay
Amy Sacksteder
In 2012 I participated in a two-person exhibition at 2739 Edwin in Hamtramck. My research for that exhibition involved gathering foliage and blossoms and using them as stencils for spray-painted paintings I have been working on since.
For my drift, I propose specifically to engage invasive plant species once more. I would like to gather plants, (sweat pea, tree of life, etc) whole trees in some cases from alongside the tracks in Hamtramck, I would then like to spray paint this foliage with bright colors and create a new site-specific installation outdoors. As a part of the same installation, I also want to grab cast-off hunks of concrete and other solid city debris to spray paint as well, with the intent to stack them as cairns (which are often piled by people to indicate a site of memorial or as a record of their having passed by).
Hyper Relic
M. Saffell
To draw, film, and photograph parts of Detroit. The parts I want to collect are scraps of metal or bits of paper which in my view are found art. The parts of the city I will film and photograph are spaces in time which I consider visual relics (images you process after you see them). The photos will be installed and assigned text for the viewer to pars out. The video and the photo text installation should be presented together in no particular order. The photo and text will be combined as a zine.
Man in the City
John Sauve
The Man in the City Sculpture Project is comprised of 30 sculptures located on the rooftops throughout the City of Detroit. John Sauve created the Man in the City project in 2008 and has exhibited it in Benton Harbor Michigan, on New York City’s Highline and most recently on New York City’s Governors Island. The Man in the City Project creates a metaphor for life that transforms the skyline and encourages people to look around. In the discovery process one becomes aware of their own sense of place within the City of Detroit.
Moving through the Weather Underground
Heath Schultz
“Moving through the Weather Underground” is a collage of sorts, a detournement if you prefer the Situationist lingo, compiled of fragments taken from various histories, memoirs, and primary documents relating to the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) — a militant revolutionary group or network, grown from the ashes of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), active from the late 60s to mid 70s. The result is a piece of experimental writing that cuts through time and space via the text and creates series of affective, ideological, philosophical, and politic fragments as told by historians, participants, and friends of the Weather Underground, all given equal weight and largely indistinguishable.
Less a drift in the traditional sense as practiced by the Situationists in the late 50s, and more of an experiment in moving through history via text. This work can be realized through a collective reading. Each participant can, for example, take one paragraph at and continue around the room until complete. Or, participant can dictate the terms of the performance themselves. The result should be a multi-voiced performance of a text, described above, I will provide.
Exquisite Drift
Gary Schwartz
Friday, July 19th
9:00 am – 5:00pm
The “Exquisite Corpse” was a game played by the Surrealist in which someone drew on a sheet of paper, folding it & passing to the next person to draw on until, finally, the sheet was unfolded to reveal a calculated yet random composition. Serendipity is the result of this collaborative project, the Dada-originated “Exquisite Corpse”. Drift participants develop animated sequences from each other’s key (extreme) found objects or drawings. The finished animated sequences will be broadcast to the world as the completion of the Drift event.
American Dream
Jennifer Seibert
Past research projects have questioned how one measures the distances between want, loss, consumption, debt, beginnings, ends, progression, and decline as it pertains to the American Dream, Manifest Destiny, and Westward expansion in relationship to current developments in America such as the housing market, strip malls, and seas of parking lots.
This citydrift will continue to look at the American Dream as it relates to the city of Detroit. In preparation for the Detroit citydrift an animated gif has been created with photos taken at a suburban Detroit shopping mall with text from James Truslow Adams 1931 book The Epic of America in which he coined the term American Dream. I plan to install the individual photos and text around one city block in Detroit (block to be determined) and re-create a similar animated gif with Detroit as the backdrop in contrast with the imagery from the shopping mall.
“But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”
– James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, 1931
Living Space
Hamadouche Shani
Enigmatic objects can be installed in a (public ?) space. Those appropriable sculptures could be a pretext to talk, watch, and perform. They could be used, moved, changed.
These objects may change the perspective of the space and make it “livable” by giving it a “undefined/changing function”.
Prairie Restoration by Neglect
Mavis Farr Smentkowski
On the day of my drift I plan to choose a section block of “urban prairie” to walk… In a meticulous way– I will pick up artifacts and document plant life as well as all interactions…. And I will choose my site based on it having a high likelihood of neighbor and foot traffic interactions.
Wearable Art as Activism
Azzah Smith
My drift will begin on Belle Isle in Detroit with a collaboration of artist/designers creating a patchwork garment with all natural materials. The garment will promote a unified message of hope for Detroit. The process will be documented by video and photography. The piece will then travel through the Woodbridge/Midtown areas enlisting the aid of residents and the community that will add patches with same message to the garment. The finished project with be a cohesive work, wearable with one message.
Silent Disco, or Headphones Dance
Maya Stovall
Headphones Dance is a dance party where people show up with their own headphones with iPod, or whatever audio device playable through their headphones, and dance their asses off. Our bodies will move to our own rhythms while we listen to music through our headphones, in the same space holding a container of exploration.
Sunday, July 21, 5-7p @Finite Studios Gardens, 3303 Mack 48207
Show up with your own headphones with iPod, or whatever audio device playable through your headphones, and dance your asses off. Our bodies will move to our own rhythms while we listen to music through our headphones.
We will dance the gardens at Finite Studios, Sunday 5PM-7PM. If it rains, inside the studio.
Tire Bowling
Maya and Quaint Stovall
Tire Bowling is urban entertainment at its finest. By rolling tires down spray painted lanes, try to knock over Faygo pop bottles (yeah, plastic ones of course). Standard bowling scoring applies.
Saturday, July 20, 7-9p @Finite Studios Gardens, 3303 Mack 48207
“Pay what you can” to rent a tire bowling lane ($1+), and bowl for 2 hours.
We provide gloves to participants for hand protection. Yeah, it’s hard like that y’all. These tires are serious.
Drift #001
Benjamin Teague
Playing an 80 year old mandolin, while in an empty parking lot, lonesome times and lonesome tones.
a posse ad esse
Nick Tobier
From Thursday, June 18, I declared the latin phrase, a posse ad esse in Brightmoor. With a sign board, and in greeting people with the phrase, which translates to “from possible to actual,” each encounter and conversation began with a call to action, and ended with each participant declaring what they would make actual and then continuing to spread the motto through hand written signs and conversations.
In the middle of this period, Kevyn Orr, announced that the City of Detroit would petition for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. For a brief while, the declarations frequently included the phrases “Effective immediately” or “I quit.”
Rub and Trace (Mapping Light, Touch, and Time)
Shoshanna Utchenik
Rub and Trace (Mapping Light, Touch, and Time) is a drift that locates the personal, intimate, and fleeting into the public sphere and literally onto a geographic map.
Drifters trace shadows cast by the sun onto sidewalks and streets, using homemade drawing charcoal, and take rubbings (frottage) from textures of interest in the same locations. This intuitive but methodical engagement with the fleeting experience of standing in a certain time and place will produce its own temporal but less-fleeting record, and these will be recorded by geo-stamped photos, which will in turn be uploaded onto Google Earth.
Drifters and passersby experience familiar surroundings in a spectacularly strange, more intimate way than everyday life allows. “Rub and Trace” encourages engagement with others through curiosity and oddity, tactile play, pleasure, shared effort and ritual work.
Ambiguous Definition
Alexander Weyer
Participants will enter the space and be presented with some tape, a piece of paper, and a writing utensil. They will be instructed to place a strip of tape over their mouths. The piece of paper will say “Use me for what you think I should be used for.”
Two projectors will be set up in the space. One projector will be presenting a slideshow of roughly 50 words and their definitions. (eg. of words: found, originate, temporary, senses, cause, phenomenon, reason, justification, create, exist, future, thing, worthy…. etc) together they create meta-narrative.
eg: found
/found/
Adjective
Having been discovered by chance or unexpectedly, in particular.
Verb
Establish or originate (a continuing institution or organization), esp. by providing an endowment: “the monastery was founded in 1665”.
Melt and mold (metal).
Synonyms
establish – institute – set up – base – form – build
The second projector will be setup to a live feedback performance with playback running of audio feedback. The feedback process itself is very meta and self-referential. It also amplifies things out of proportion and creates ambiguities and nuances in things which previously looked fixed and solid.
During the performance the participants will hopefully be using their piece of paper to record their impressions, thoughts, inspirations, pictures formed in their minds, etc… At the end of the performance, the participants will be instructed to use the piece of tape from their mouths to tack up their piece of paper on a wall side by side for display. Everyone will then be able to see and discuss how differently or the same people responded to the event.
Lo&Behold! / The Marcel Duchamp Memorial Chess Club
Richie Wohlfeil
Detroit treasure Richie Wohlfeil will guide visitors to his store on a wide-ranging journey through recent gems unearthed on his relentless crate-digging adventures through the city.
Part soundtrack, part education and part the most eclectic conversation imaginable, come for the music and, if the mood suits, stay for a game of chess with the Marcel Duchamp Memorial Chess Club.
Richie will also be putting together a one-off mix tape that will be
available for listeners throughout the duration of the show.
Lo&Behold! will be open from 12 – 5 pm Saturday July 20 & Sunday July 21. Lo&Behold is at 10022 Joseph Campau St., Hamtramck, MI, 48212.
The Free Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit: The Black Hole of Discovery
Lynn Yarne
I am interested in the way Guy Dubord’s derive links meandering with discovery. While I love a good walk, I am curious about other places/areas of life in which we meander and discover.
I spend a great amount of time on the internet. Most of the time, I am on the internet with a purpose (checking email, corresponding). Other times I am on the internet, I am meandering. Thinking of the internet as space- internet pages are “sites”, blogs blurbs are “posted” similar to the space of a message board- I would like to highlight how surfing the internet is a cyber derive.
I would like to enlist 5+ artists/friends to participate in a internet derive. Because I would like to explore the marriage meandering and discovery, I will limit the meandering to the website Wikipedia. Each participant will be given 20 minutes (of their own time, in their own setting) to meander through Wikipedia. Each participant will be asked to collect one interesting fact or sentence from each Wikipedia entry that is visited. After 20 minutes, the facts/sentences will be compiled- like a poem. The poem/end result will serve as the documentation of the derive.
Lil’camp
Eleni Zaharopoulos
Lil’camp will be a small campsite enclosed in the secluded, over-grown yard of 2894 East Grand Boulevard. I will serve as the grounds keeper and activities coordinator for any campsite visitors, and overnight guests.