UPCOMING EVENTS / PAST EVENTS / VIDEOS

MOCAD hosts musical, literary and artistic events throughout the year. Check back often or contact us at info@mocadetroit.org if you would like to be kept up to date on upcoming events.

All events are free and open to the public and take place at MOCAD unless otherwise indicated.

Follow MOCAD's upcoming events and announcements on MOCAD's Facebook page and on MOCAD's Twitter page.

Sponsorship for the Museum of Contemporary Art
Detroit's programming is provided in part by The Kresge Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc, and Masco Corporation Foundation.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 8pm
FILM AND PERFORMANCE: TRUTHEATERTHEATER AND IMAGINARY COMPANY
Admission $6.00

Trutheatertheater and Imaginary Co. present tales about the unbreakable spirit of love in the form of a 40 minute live performance entitled “The Unbroken Circle of Broken Things”. A mix of puppet theater and chaotic multi-media performance, with an 8 foot tall shadow screen, homemade lighting tricks, far out costumes and the story of Axon – the last woman on a small island who must decide whether to cut down the last living tree. She is a cold soul in a desperate land, but before she can strike her axe three spirits emerge from the tree to tell their tales with humor, song, magic, and an old trunk that may hold the key to another realm. Axon must decide whether these are false visions or if she can transcend time and space and leave her worries behind. Meanwhile, the stars bare witness and create the constellation of the axe to commemorate the story.

Trutheatertheater consists of four touring artists – Peter Glantz, Erin Rosenthal, Roby Newton, and Leif Goldberg. These four fermented in Providence, Rhode Island as part of Fort Thunder, The Looney Bin, The Dirt Palace and other “ethereal ponds of passion”, the legends of which have become highly influential fodder for the imaginations of a successive generation of DayGlo art punks. Trutheatertheater has performed in places as varied as abandoned transportation buildings, the woods of northern Ontario, and as the featured performers at the RISD Museum's celebrated show: Wunderground: Providence 1995- 2005.

Individually, members of Trutheatertheater have published their work in Picturebox, Inc, shown at the Whitney Museum, performed in theaters and rock clubs globally, and distributed on DVD by Load Records. Notable former projects include Forcefield (Art Collective), Urdog (band), Milemarker (band), Near Earth Object (puppet show), Califunya: The Most Beautiful Show That Ever Lived (live variety show with Becky Stark and Miranda July), and produced the Lightning Bolt Power of Salad DVD on Load Records.

Visit Imaginary Company at their website and on Youtube

Saturday, June 13th from 2PM to 5PM
PRESENTATION: GARY PANTER

Prolific comic artist and punk art prankster, Gary Panter, has influenced multiple generations of artists. From his iconic designs for album his work creating covers for albums by the Screamers and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, his involvement with seminal LA punk zine/label Slash, the frequent appearances of his Jimbo strip in Art Spiegelman's RAW magazine and, most popularly, his groundbreaking designs for, Pee Wee Herman's children's show, Pee Wee's Playhouse in the 1980's. Providence Rhode Island's legendary artist collective Fort Thunder owes a debt of gratitude to Panter. He designed artwork for the most recent Dirtbombs LP. He has also worked with Frank Zappa and Philip Stark. Such notable contributions have left Panter in the rare position to leave an indelible mark on contemporary pop culture while remaining able to
retain an uncompromisingly underground status.

For this special event, Gary Panter will engage the audience in a live drawing session that will culminate in a one hour slide show and presentation by Mr. Panter of his work and influences.

Gary Panter's website.

MOCAD and the Crofoot present
Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 7PM
MUSIC: BLACK DICE W/ WOLF EYES and AWESOME COLOR
All ages | Admission $10 in advance, $12 at the door

BLACK DICE — the massive experimental rock trio pays a long-overdue return visit to Detroit at the MOCAD. With their new record REPO, this Brooklyn trio has never worked harder at crafting a set of concise, sonically battering, or flat-out bizarre tunes than on this collection of fringe-surfing tone bombs. Yet a new roadhouse blues band philosophy has simultaneously emerged, allowing the group to loosen up and casually toss off a record packed with blurry hooks and zoomed in riffs. "Repo" irreverently mulches the sounds and images of radio, TV, and Internet into a fertile compost pile squirming with new, raw life.

With the Wolverine State's own noise legends WOLF EYES — Wolf Eyes have evolved into a single super-organism. A rich tapestry of wires and pedals inextricably link Nate Young, John Olson, and Mike Connelly and their respective towers of homemade electronics, guitars, horns, gongs, etc. It all has fused into a single, monolithic machine-entity. Their sound is rotten with metal, reeds, consciousness-erasing islands of black doom, bass-heavy rippers, late night free terror jams, and pure mayhem.

As if that weren't enough, AWESOME COLOR opens — Awesome Color is a group of noise provocateurs and impressionists, ace players with Punk rock flair, inspired citizens of a small modernist nation of musical, visual, and literary outrage on the outskirts of Brooklyn, or a rainbow amalgam of all of the above at once. Following a non-stop touring schedule after their debut release (including stints with Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth in the US, UK, and Europe), the band took their honed brand of turbo chemistry into the studio and created the highly anticipated latest record, Electric Aborigines.

Black Dice on Myspace:
www.myspace.com/blackdicemyspace

Wolf Eyes on Myspace:
www.myspace.com/therealwolfeyes

Awesome Color:
www.myspace.com/awesomecolor

Buy tickets here.

Saturday, June 20th from 12PM to 4PM
FAMILY DAY: BLOCK PARTY
All Ages | Free admission

A day of family crafts, interactive activities and great fun as families gather to help in the creation of a fantastic installation in MOCAD! Our café will be serving up fresh and healthy eats for parents and kids as everyone enjoys a wild and magical, art-filled afternoon.

Friday, June 26th from 8pm to 12pm
PERFORMANCE: MIDSUMMER NIGHTS IN MIDTOWN
All Ages

The UCCA and Wayne State University present MidSummer Nights in Midtown, the new summer series presents an eclectic music mix, street painting, street theatre and activities for families and children. The event will introduce the public to Midtown Detroit's wide array of museums, galleries and entertainment venues.  Admission is free throughout the summer series.

LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots

Installation from 8:00pm-12:00am, with performances at 8:45pm and 10:30pm.

LEMUR builds robots that are new types of sculptural musical instruments.  The robots will perform with human beatbox and vocal performance artist, Adam Matta in an exotic inter-active installation that invites audience participation.

Slavic Soul Party!
Will perform live at 9:30pm and 11:15pm – A Balkan Worldbeat
party this fiery 10-piece brass band from NYC delivers some of the most danceable rhythms this side of the Atlantic, melding Gypsy, East European, Mexican and Asian jazz and soul.

Visit the MidSummer Nights in Midtown website for more information

Friday, July 3, 2009 at 8pm
MUSIC: MUCCA PAZZA
All Ages | Admission $7

Mucca Pazza is a 30 piece orchestrated circus that marches and plays music loud for all to hear. Their musical influences are as colorful as the bright spandex glitter-encrusted outfits they flaunt. Expect a diverse group of folks: some, lungs filling up with air to out play one another and others, cheerleading the group forward and on!

Visit the Mucca Pazza website or visit their myspace page

Wednesday, July 15th, 7pm
PRESENTATION: COMIX 101 WITH ART SPIEGELMAN
Admission $7
A public presentation about the history of Art Spiegelmans work at MOCAD

Art Spiegelman came out of the politically charged era for comics of the 1960s and 1970s, and kept the movement's momentum for the past forty years.

During his early years, he contributed to underground comic publications such as “Real Pulp” and “Young Lust”, as well as co-created the acclaimed comic magazine, “Raw”. In 1986, “Raw” launched his career into foresight with “Maus I: A Survivor's Tale” the true story of his family's experience in Germany during the Holocaust in which Nazi's were Cats and Jewish families were mice. With this publication he was able to give a serious political edge that comic readers craved. In 1992, he published the second half of the story “Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began” which led to a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Also in the year he began to work at the New Yorker, helping to create some of the most controversial covers in the magazine's history.

Spiegelman left the New Yorker in 2004, after ten years, to protest the “widespread conformism” that he believed the magazine was linked to. This was fresh after he created one of the most memorable covers of the magazine's history of the Twin Towers. In 2005 he was named one Time Magazines “Top 100 Most Influential People”.

Recently, Spiegelman has re-released the 1978 edition of his anthology Breakdowns, in which he includes an autobiographical comix-format introduction entitled, “Portrait of the Artist As A Young %@&*!” as well as children's book called “Jack and the Box”. On May 29, 2008 the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit will present an exhibition on Breakdowns.

July 19th from 12 noon to 4PM
FAMILY DAY: FAMILY HOOTENANNY PRESENTS MOMMY AND DADDY BAND ROCK-OFF
All Ages | Free admission

A gathering of kids and their grownups for the purpose of singing, stomping, shouting, strumming, silliness and otherwise making music for the whole family. Past Hootenannies have included such sonic entertainment wonders as: Homemade country ditties about popsicle soup and being stuck in playpens, tear-inducing renditions of Muppets songs and acoustic-punk jams about woodland creatures.

Visit the Family Hootenanny Myspace at:
http://www.myspace.com/thefamilyhootenanny