Concert for the Closing of the Mike Kelley exhibition "Ghost and Spirit"
In resonance with Mike Kelley’s exhibition Ghost and Spirit, the Bourse de Commerce has curated a programme of concerts and performances that address the importance of music in Mike Kelley's work. This programme draws on his influences, close collaborators, and a generation of musicians and performers who have been inspired by his musical explorations.
On the occasion of the closing of this exhibition, the Bourse de Commerce and New York label Blank Forms are hosting a final evening of performances that combine poetry, noise, and extreme rock music inspired by Mike Kelley’s audacious musical affinities.
Program
- 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.: John Sinclair
- 8:00 – 8:10 p.m.: Junko
- 8:10 – 9:00 p.m.: Cannibal (Cary Loren, Cameron Jamie, Dennis Tyfus)
- 9:00 – 10:00 p.m.: Lizzi Bougatsos & Marc Edwards
- 10:00 – 11:10 p.m.: Junko
Japanese singer Junko, a longstanding member of the cult group Hijokaidan, opens and closes the event with two strident incantations. Lizzi Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance, I.U.D.) is conducting a powerful, dizzying sound ritual with percussionist Marc Edwards. Cannibal, the trio consisting of Cary Loren (Destroy All Monsters), American artist Cameron Jamie, and Dennis Tyfus, Belgian musician and impresario of the label Ultra Eczema, are letting all hell loose. Finally, one of Mike Kelley’s heroes, John Sinclair, a Detroit poet, founder of the White Panther Party, and manager of the American rock group MC5, recites excerpts from his poems that nurtured counterculture.
King Buzzo, legendary member of sludge metal band The Melvins, had to cancel his performance for medical reasons.
Jazz poet and political activist John Sinclair has lived many lives: manager of the Motor City ür-punk group MC5, alternative media doyen for publications like Fifth Estate and the Ann Arbor Sun, cofounder of the anti-racist organization the White Panther Party, and all-around countercultural cause célèbre. Since the mid-’60s, he has been a prolific writer and performer of jazz-and-blues-inflected free verse, and an incalculable influence on the Detroit underground—including on one Mike Kelley, who selected the poet to anoint his Mobile Homestead (2011), a replica of the artist’s childhood home on permanent display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).
Cannibal are a supergroup composed of artists Cary Loren, Cameron Jamie, and Dennis Tyfus, whose antic performances have previously explored the pleasures of the “lower forms of music,” ranging from bargain-bin records to erratic electronics to guttural vocal techniques. With Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, and Niagara, Cary Loren was a founding member of the influential Detroit guerilla unit Destroy All Monsters, as well an artist, author, and co-owner of the premiere Motor City-based used bookstore the Book Beat. Cameron Jamie is an artist now based in Paris by way of desolate southern California, known for his diverse artistic output including drawings, ceramics, monotypes, and Xerox artist books. The Antwerp-based Dennis Tyfus is similarly polystylistic, known for his wide-ranging drawings, sculptures, performances, radio programs, tattoos, and proprietorship of the superlative noise label Ultra Eczema.
Lizzi Bougatsos is visual artist, musician, and writer based in New York, known for her decades-long participation in the unclassifiable rock project Gang Gang Dance and as one-half of the hypnotic duo I.U.D. Marc Edwards is a free jazz percussionist who has performed alongside artists such as Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, and Charles Gayle. His projects include the science-fiction-inflected outré jazz entity Marc Edwards & Slipstream Time Travel and the Weasel Walter-led rock band Cellular Chaos.
Known for her vigorous, unrelenting, high-pitched shrieking, Junko is a Japanese vocalist and a long-time member of the legendary noise outfit Hijokaidan fronted by her husband Jojo Hiroshige. In recent years, her intense and occasionally confrontational performances have garnered Western attention, leading to a spate of collaborations with the likes of industrial guitarist Michel Henritzi, Lea Cummings (Kylie Minoise), Sutcliffe Jügend, and Mattin.
Founded in 2016, Blank Forms is a New York-based non-profit organization that supports emerging and under-represented artists working across temporal disciplines such as experimental music, performance, dance, and sound arts. It seeks to create new systems for preserving, nourishing, and exhibiting to the public the work of historically established and emerging artists. Black Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help them document, disseminate, and make.
In resonance with Mike Kelley’s exhibition Ghost and Spirit, the Bourse de Commerce has curated a programme of concerts and performances:
- On 14 September, American artist Will Benedict presents the musical performance Pandemonium
- On 14 October, a concert by the Japanese group Marginal Consort
- On 15 October, a concert by the American trio Dick Slessig Combo
- On 20 October, a concert by Sun Ra Arkestra and by American musician KESSWA, with an introductory lecture by French journalist Joseph Ghosn
- On 21 October, Loris Gréaud and Lee Ranaldo present Cortical: Soundtrack for a Monograph
- On 7 February the artist Lily McMenamy will premiere her latest solo theatre piece “A Hole is a Hole” and the singer Bernardino Femminielli presents his concert « pot-pourri »
