We operate as thought partners, as publishers, a two-person book club, and an Aries Twin support group. Ultimately, All Faux Everythings is an outlet for us to process and synthesize 25 years of shared experiences in the art and music world. It is a way for us to time travel and scrub the timeline through sampling and archiving. It is a way for us to participate in the contemporary art world, but on our own terms. The products of All Faux Everythings are the cumulative residue of our decades-long conversation that started to take form as we began our journeys to transition from careers in Hip Hop to the visual arts. This story originates from our teenage years, when we were part of rival hip-hop collectives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the mid-1990s. The rivalry between our respective collectives soon gave way to a strong collaborative bond as we became more fully immersed in the underground music scene in Detroit and had to navigate the broader music industry. Since then, together, we have toured and traveled extensively, migrated across the country to Los Angeles, run music labels, started print studios, received our MFAs, and landed full-time faculty positions at powerhouse arts institutions.
In our running 25-year dialogue, we intersperse the philosophies of Fred Moten and Sadiya Hartman, West African and Caribbean spirituality, the esoteric and occult, pop culture, classic hip-hop, our fondness for film, “Last Angel in History”. We continuously stay inspired by funk music and examine our connection to it through our previous lives as musicians. We have toured internationally with such bands as Arrested Development, shared the stage with groups such as Black Eyed Peas, and De La Soul. We have helped launch the careers of acts like producer 14KT and singer Mayer Hawthorne. We have helped establish print shops for the techno label, Underground Resistance. We also explore our relationship to funk through our lineage. Michael is the son of Motown legend Larry ‘Squirrel’ Demps of the renowned group the Dramatics. All of these experiences are starting to reemerge in our work in unexpected ways.
