Vision in a Cornfield (Sept. 7-Dec. 30, 2012) is a multidisciplinary exhibition featuring work by the artist collectives Destroy All Monsters, Ogun and Apetechnology. This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and is made, rather than curated, by M. Saffell Gardner, Carey Loren and Rebecca Mazzei. It showcases a site-specific sculptural installation commissioned for the Museum, as well as a selection of mixed media works by Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts. Known as an activist, artist and poet, Pitts founded the Ogun collective as well as a local press called Black Graphic International, and was an important member of the Detroit radical labor group League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
The exhibition opens with a dedication ceremony honoring iconic Free Jazz artist Faruq Z. Bey and the late artist Mike Kelley. Related programming includes dance, musical concerts, readings, film screenings and more.
Vision in a Cornfield is a philosophical and spiritual inquiry into urban identity and the communal sense of self. The centerpiece is a site-specific sculptural installation featuring abandoned vehicles transformed into fetishes, embellished in an African funerary tradition and brought to life through robotics and sound to communicate with each other and with museum visitors. Entitled “Urban Monumentz,” this work represents a convergence of distinct Detroit-based creative communities that have cross-pollinated for decades and who draw from similar lines of thinking, including urban folk culture, Afrofuturism, the discontent of industrialization, existentialism and improvisation.
In conjunction with the exhibition, MOCAD presents the premiere issue of BOX, an homage to a short-lived quarterly by the same name produced in the late 1970s by artists and professors affiliated with the California Institute of the Arts. BOX is published in a limited edition of 150, each of which hold at least 30 works by artists, musicians and writers whose work has a relationship to the themes present in the exhibition. Included in BOX is a second edition of Faruq Z. Bey’s seminal text of music theory and existentialism, entitled Toward a Ratio’nal Aesthetic. The 12” x 12” x 1” BOX intentionally recalls the LP format.
Sept. 7-Dec. 30, 2012
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
4454 Woodward Ave
Detroit, MI 48201
