The Feed
DETROIT (Dare-Dare / Imagination Station)
What is the role of the arts and the imagination in Detroit today?
This was a key question addressed through an incredible collaboration between “the straits” Imagination Station, Montreal’s DARE-DARE, and EN MASSE. Along with Douglas Scholes (his site), another MTL based artist with one of the city’s finest moustaches and biggest hearts, I was invited as an ambassador to the EM project in oder to explore this theme, motown style.
this is Douglas
Our site was across the street from the abandoned Roosevelt Station, in historic Corktown, a scant 20 minute walk from the downtown core. Despite it’s proximity to the heart of town, sidewalks in the area had largely been consumed by the grass that they once contained in their borders. Boarded up, burnt out houses were in equal number to those which appeared occupied.
Fresh from the San Diego Art Fair explosion, I entered into this project with apprehension, not having any idea as to the surface we were painting on, and the atmosphere of this infamous city of decayed american dreams. Over the course of seven days there, this beat up city absolutely won my heart over…I left inspired and completely invigorated as an artist, with a responsibility to be causative in my art and actions towards social, economic, emotional, and above all, spiritual development, for the better.
Douglas and I worked side by side for that work, with the incredible support of the DARE-DARE “SATELLITE” team, Martin Dufrasne and Gonzague Verdenal. this team was truly the family away from family! We made and ate meals together every day for dinner (generally tacos…at my insistence), and plugged away at our robots, talked profoundly, laughed, and at times, danced until the wee hours!
Roy and a portrait of his recently deceased wife, 'Orvy'. Roy is the former caretaker of the building he stands in front of
This collaboration is part of DARE-DARE’s two-month long project “SATELLITE” in which the group visits Detroit and Tijuana to work with like-minded organizations to host Canadian and local artists and create original works of art specific to the region. This project strives to establish connections internationally with other artists and share the vision of DARE-DARE to a wider audience.
DARE-DARE's Martin D.
One of the most profound introduction to the great mindedness of so many cats in car town was through the words of Bill Wylie-Kellermann a United Methodist pastor who has served city parishes in Detroit, and is currently director of Graduate Theological Urban Studies. I shook this man’s hand in the church halls the DARE-DARE team volunteered at on our first morning, at the local soup kitchen.
Working to extract an ‘essence’ of his city, Bill wrote this from an article entitled The Angel of Detroit (October 1989) while ”attempting to get at its ethos and moment, its life and integrity as a spiritual power “:
Die and arise. In your weakness is your hope. You are at an end and a beginning. Recollect your best history and come alive. You will do this if you set the lives of your people above your own. Attend to the least, the poorest, the homeless. Defend them from the ravages of corporation and economy. In their empowerment is your life. Cast off your bondages. (This too may feel like dying.) Begin with drugs and guns. Your people pray for this; join them in action.
Instead of Murder Capital, become the city of nonviolence. It can be so. Your industrial heyday has gone to rust. You will not see its like again. Now think small. En courage the modest, an economy of creativity and self-reliance. Nourish the projects of human scale, the works of community and struggle. Let your empty lots bloom green; you will find there a hidden economy all its own. Sit light upon the river, but not as real estate frontage for the rich. Be in right relationship to its life, and through it to the region, to earth itself. For your sins, enough. Now you have my blessing. Sing to glory and come to life.
I’m very moved by these words! Thank you Bill!
the full wall, primed and ready to go
The work on the wall was tough. We chose to prep the face of an abandoned hotel that sat across the park from the train station. It’s once bustling business had long collapsed, and now served home to those without homes, sleeping, eating, shitting, and generally ‘living’ in the squalor, lighting fires on hardwood floors to stay warm over the cold nights. One doesn’t have to work hard to understand how so much burns in this city!
The wind blew hard cold rain at the wall most days, which meant i worked mostly by myself over the days. I was joined by some remarkable local artists at time, making it entirely worth all the hours of painfully cold and stiff hands and feet!
Sintex was the first…one of Detroit’s premiere graff artists.
Sintex was then followed by Mike Han, another artist very implicated in the city’s RICH underground arts community…you need to check this cat’s blog out here — streetculturemash.com!! We were soon joined by Fel3000ft…one of the greats! Dood has been on the scene for as long as any, and again, definitely worth checking out (fel3000.com)! Lastly, but not least, we hooked up with an animator by trade, who ran into Rupert and the team while up in Ottawa for the annual animation festival, by the name of Christopher Carden, at www.toonbots.com. Chris is an illustrator, animator, and founder of toonbots, a Detroit-based animation company specializing in Children’s entertainment and education, when not teaching 3D skills and animation production at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, or playingwith Detroit funk/traditional band, The Acrophobic Sherpas. Everybody in the city wears multiple hats like nobody’s business!
the finished piece in three sections...magnificent!
OSHEAGA 2011
En Masse made its third grand appearance at Montreal’s Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, at the 2011 edition, July 29-31. Again, the music programming was impressive — Eminem and Elvis Costello, the Flaming Lips and Janelle Monae (Ratatat was one particular standout). New to the festival this year, though, was a fully realized Arts Village.
In a pleasantly shaded grove, lit up by EM-customized Chinese paper lanterns after sunset, a select En Masse crew — Tyson Bodnarchuk, Jason Botkin, Rupert Bottenberg, Peru Dyer, Tyler Rauman and Pascal Rodrigue — did its thing while Moniker Designs (recently RIP) worked the silkscreens, the La Pariah collective graffed up recycling bins and La Moustache (recently rechristened See Creature) conducted guerilla animation on the spot, all under the prehistoric eyes of Harvey Macleod’s plywood dinosaur and caveman skeletons. A big hand to Fred Caron (formerly of La Moustache, now a co-director at En Masse), and also to Pat Hamou, for coordinating the whole damn thing (and to Evenko’s Nick Farkas and la belle Evelyne Coté for their help and support).
The mandate this year was different from EM’s previous Osheaga iterations. Having installed standing sheets of plywood and painted them matte black, the EM team whipped up some coolness thereupon with white paint. Once a few elements were in place and the paint dry, chalk was distributed to the passing festival attendees, to riff on and off of what we’d created so far. Contributions ranged from “Susie + Jenn = BFF” to a roughly two-foot-square patch upon which a psychedelic wunderkind spent some six hours crafting a cosmic vortex only he could truly comprehend.
The next day, and the following, final day of the fest, we busted out the buckets and rags, washed off the chalk and repeated the process. One thing’s for sure — the Osheaga crowd isn’t shy about getting its scribble on. See you all next year!
LIGHTSPEED
Life has funny timing sometimes.
We were recently contacted by LightSpeed, a young and highly creative company best described as:
“The next generation Point of Sale system that combines Mac innovation with powerful business logic to offer comprehensive and easy to use tools for retail stores.”
Completed over two days this past September, this was project was certainly a highlight of the year. The LS team pulled no punches, supplying us with a geek’s dream list of drawing challenges, stuffed to the rim with pop-culture references from Star Wars (Chewbacca and a tender scene of Storm Trooper love), to TransAms. Two references stand out importantly though, especially as I write this entry.
Dax, the owner of LS, asked that we include in the piece a portrait of Steve Jobs, who as fate would have it passed away from pancreatic cancer soon afterwards, after a long battle with the illness. This iconographic American computer entrepreneur and inventor described himself not as a high-end programming geek, but foremost as a designer, with an eye for usability in perfect harmony with pleasing presentation. His legacy as co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. has had an influence on the world of computing beyond measure, and will not be forgotten, although greatly missed!
This work has suddenly taken a turn towards a more personal meaning in this time, as we remember Jobs, especially in relationship to LightSpeed and their love and promotion of his legacy.
Going deeper again towards the personal, Dax also asked us to render a portrait of “Disco” Joe, his father. This light-hearted image was based on an old photograph of Joe, taken while spinning discs as a DJ in Uganda, circa 1969. A great and meaningful addition to the piece, adding an important contextual element to what was at the same time an irreverent romp through so much shared popular culture (as EN MASSE projects often are!)
Featuring the work of:
