'Affirmative visions from communes, collectives and cults’
This exceptional series of exhibitions and events will dominate the programme for 2016 and celebrate work that is embedded within broader cultural narratives, work that has a profound emotional and identity-forming significance on our lives, work that champions an ethos of cultural multiplicity, collaborative collectives, community forming practices, work that embodies the importance of the broadest possible access to culture across a diverse range of activity and practice.
PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE: AFTER LONDON
RESIDENCY: Monday 4th April – Monday 11th April 2016
After London (we believe in the assets we do not believe in): Wed 6th April, 7pm
After London (nothing is true, everything is permitted): Sat 9th April 7PM
Plastique Fantastique is a group that investigates aesthetics, the sacred, politics and both popular and mass culture through comics, performances, texts, assemblages and installations. It is envisaged as a group of human and inhuman avatars delivering communiqués from the extreme past and the future. Its works are baroque and transformative, they express a subversive urgency and are frequently site-specific. Plastique Fantastique will be in residence at The Horse Hospital for a week during which they will present three public events.
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THE COCKETTES ON FILM WITH FAYETTE HAUSER
SCREENING, LIVE NARRATION and Q&A: Tues 26th April, 7pm
The Cockettes were a loosely organized collective of psychedelic hippie performers who lived together in the Cockettes house in Haight-Ashbury, 1969.
Their extravagant DIY costumes, drag and plays which drew heavily from Technicolor musicals and Hollywood icons to Eastern mysticism, chaotically put their anarchic lifestyles on the stage. Their brand of theatre was influenced by The Living Theater, John Vaccaro’s Play House of the Ridiculous, the films of Jack Smith and the LSD ethos of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.
The troupe mainly performed musicals with all original material and songs. They also collectively produced a rich body of exuberant films which explore counter-cultural ideologies, sexual politics and free-form experimentation.
“The Cockettes brought out into the street what was in the closet, in terms of theatrical dress and imaginative theatre.” Allen Ginsberg
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THE DETROIT ARTISTS WORKSHOP
PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 29th April 2016, 7pm
EXHIBITION: Sat 30th April – 28th May, Wed – Sat 12-6pm
CARY LOREN & JOHN SINCLAIR IN COVERSATION: Sat 30th April, 6pm
The Artists Workshop Society was an artist run collective founded on November 1st, 1964, by John Sinclair, Magdalene Arndt (Leni Sinclair), Charles Moore, Robin Eichele, George Tysh, and ten others, who rented a house as a gallery and performance space on the campus of Wayne State University. Poetry and Jazz performances were featured every Sunday. They also produced their own books, journals and workshops. They introduced visiting avant-garde poets and musicians to Detroit, many for the first time. This small independent and interracial group of poets, artists, and musicians were the seeds that would inspire a cultural revolution in Detroit, whose branches extended beyond its borders. This influence would find its way into jazz, psychedelic rock, heavy metal, noise and other experimental music, as well as poetry and the growth of Detroit’s new alternative presses. The Detroit Artists Workshop: Roots and Branches reveals cultural roots and celebrates artistic sources, clearly found within the Detroit Artists Workshop, that can be followed to the art of Detroit today. We are very proud to be presenting an exhibition of artworks, publications and ephemera related to the Detroit Artists Workshop and affiliated artists.
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WELCOME, SPACE BROTHERS: THE UNARIUS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE
PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 17th June 2016, 7pm
EXHIBITION: Sat 18th June – 16th June, Wed – Sat 12-6pm
UNARIUN, KEVIN & TRACY KENNEDY WORKSHOP: Sun 19th June, 4pm
Founded in Los Angeles in 1954 by advanced clairvoyants Ernest Norman (a scientist, engineer and author) and his wife, Ruth Norman (aka Archangel Uriel), the Unarius Academy of Science is one of a number of organizations who promote spiritual growth through clairvoyant guidance, principles of reincarnation and interaction with spirit guides. An exuberant leader, Uriel encouraged radical creativity in all Unarius members, intuitive painting and the production of past-life psychodrama “documentaries,” and other films made from late ‘70s through the early ‘90s. The films featured Unariuns in otherworldly costumes and full makeup incorporating elaborate sets, guerilla location-filming techniques, and ingenious no-budget special effects in order to channel and re-enact their previous lives together on Earth and other planets for purposes of spiritual healing. This ambitious collective produced three feature films on 16mm and Super 8, and over 100 video productions, which have been repeatedly aired on public-access programs across the country since the ‘80s. Unarius continues to operate out of their Academy headquarters in El Cajon, California.
Alongside the Unarius Academy of Science films will be selection of costumes and props.
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THE SOURCE FAMILY
SCREENING + Q&A WITH JODI WILLE DIRECTOR: Sat 18th June, 7pm
The Source Family was a radical experiment in ’70s utopian living. Their outlandish style, popular health food restaurant, rock band, and beautiful women made them the darlings of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip; but their outsider ideals and the unconventional behavior of their spiritual leader, Father Yod, caused controversy with local authorities. They fled to Hawaii, leading to their dramatic demise.
Years later, former family members surface and the rock band reforms, revealing how their time with Father Yod shaped their lives in the most unexpected ways.
THE SOURCE FAMILY provides an intimate, insiders’ view at this incredible group of people through their own archival photos, home movies, audio recordings, and contemporary interviews with members of the family. Serving as a highly personal, insider’s guide to the counter-culture movement of the early 70’s, the film is inspired by the cult-classic bookThe Source: The Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family (Process Media) which was written by Isis Aquarian and Electricity Aquarian and edited by director Jodi Wille.
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DESTROY ALL MONSTERS FILM ARCHIVE
PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 16th September 2016, 7pm
EXHIBITION: Sat 17th Sept – 15th Oct, Wed – Sat 12-6pm
CARY LOREN IN COVERSATION WITH GUEST (TBC): Saturday 17th September, 6pm
Formed in 1973, the first edition of Destroy All Monsters was formed by University of Michigan art students Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Niagara (Lynn Rovner) and filmmaker Cary Loren.
Their music was that of the suburban dystopian psyche, an unorthodox sound that was equal parts Stooges, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Velvet Underground, and Sci-Fi B-movie shtick. Operating in this capacity until 1976, the band’s music was accompanied by performances and films as well as a magazine of the same name. Edited by Loren until 1979, the magazine consisted mostly of collages and prints inspired by sci-fi movies, underground music, political subcultures, and iconic elements of 60s counterculture as such elements filtered through to the collective’s hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Cary Loren will be curating an exhibition drawing from the Destroy All Monsters archive of films and ephemera.
Cary Loren (born 1955 in Detroit) is an artist, musician and writer. In 1973 he apprenticed with New York City performance artist and filmmaker Jack Smith, and was a founding member of the Destroy All Monsters collective. His work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial of American Art in 2002; Printed Matter and Performa in New York City, 2009; the American Academy in Rome, 2010; the Luff Festival, 2012 in Lausanne, Switzerland; Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, 2014; Dlectricity Festival in Detroit, 2014, and in What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art 1960 to the Present at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island in 2014. His work is in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. He is co-owner of the Book Beat bookstore in Oak Park, Michigan, since 1982.
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