Home away from home
Mike Kelley’s posthumous project starts a life of its own this week.
Photo by Corine Vermuelen courtesy MOCAD
Kelley’s “Mobile Homestead” in front of Michigan Central Station, 2010.
Photo by Corine Vermuelen courtesy MOCAD
Artist Mike Kelley, who died last year at 58.
Published: May 8, 2013
Only rarely
is the public presented with new work from an artist who has been dead
for more than a year. But that’s what we’re getting this week in
Detroit, a sort of gift to our community from beyond the grave,
presented by one-time metro Detroiter Mike Kelley.
Kelley may be best known around these parts as an original member of Destroy All Monsters. That group, as much a seminal punk band as a kind of art collective, was at first composed of University of Michigan art students, including Kelley, as well as Jim Shaw, Niagara and filmmaker Cary Loren. Later, after Shaw and Kelley left for California, it was joined by proto-punk heavies such as former Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and MC5 bassist Michael Davis.
Though he left punk rock behind to pursue a career as an artist, Kelley stayed true to his working-class and punk roots. In 2012, shortly after his death, a New York Times critic called him “a pungent commentator on American class, popular culture and youthful rebellion.”
Like many posthumous works, this one is architectural. In fact, it’s a full-size model based on his childhood home in Westland. This isn’t the first time Kelley has mined the buildings of his life for art. In 1995, he produced Educational Complex, an architectural model of his past schools, including his Catholic elementary school and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Unlike those projects, however, the new “Mobile Homestead” is a full-scale replica of the single-story ranch-style Westland house Kelley grew up in. The project, envisioned in response to a London-based arts organization’s invitation for Kelley to produce a site-specific project for Detroit, went up this year on an empty lot owned by Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on Canfield Street, behind the museum’s parking lot.
The house is built upon a complex basement area that mirrors the floor plan of the original Kelley home. The individual basement rooms, however, can’t be entered directly from one another. Instead, ladders and labyrinthine hallways in a sub-basement link the rooms.
If that sounds high-concept, the first floor is much, much simpler: community space. Kelley was obviously a good guy, since he conceived the piece of “public sculpture” to have a public purpose, to be used for community activities and as a community gallery for the people in the neighborhood. The artist was determined that the work be relevant to its new neighbors.
Another unusual feature is the structure’s detachable facade mounted on a chassis. The front of the home can be removed and pulled like a street-legal trailer, and this mobile facade is to be used for public events through the community at large.
And yet, Kelly had said that the work has at its center the tension between the proud public purpose and antisocial private burrowing into others’ spaces. He had written in 2010 that the project “grew out of my initial desire to buy the actual house that I was raised in.” The plan, which involved haphazard and illegal tunneling, as well as a home the owner didn’t want to sell, was obviously unworkable, in fact, hilariously so.
All of which shows there’s something of the wag about Kelley, who imagined his “Mobile Homestead” as having a “parasitic relationship” with Greenfield Village, the assortment of 19th century homes Henry Ford assembled in Dearborn, writing that his replica home was “a somewhat ironic comment on such grandiose notions of history; it is an everyman’s home, associated with Greenfield Village simply through proximity when it is driven into the parking lot, and perhaps the village itself.”
It’s a piece that raises a lot of questions. Is it a commentary on the complexities underlying a working-class home? Or about what the threshold is for a home to be considered a work of art? Or how great a person must be to have their home institutionalized?
Or, frankly, to hell with what it means. It’s maybe Kelley’s final goof on us all from the great beyond, a prank that will send countless heads turning at the out-of-place suburban home on Canfield Street, or as the facade is driven around town, inciting curiosity, wonder and — likely — a lot of laughter. It sounds like just what Kelley would have wanted.
“Mobile Homestead” events begin at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 11 with opening ceremonies, continuing from 7 to 10 p.m. with a free video presentation in the museum; finishing from 10 p.m. to midnight with a live music show emceed by John Sinclair, with a performance by the Früt and a DJ set from the Blackman ($6 admission). From noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 12, expect live low-power radio broadcasts of performances and interviews, as well as children’s puppet theater and a neighborhood barbecue. From 2 to 3 p.m. there will be a panel discussion about the creation of “Mobile Homestead” featuring Marsha Miro, James Lingwood and Mary-Clare Stevens.
Michael Jackman is managing editor of Metro Times. Send comments to mjackman@metrotimes.com.
Kelley may be best known around these parts as an original member of Destroy All Monsters. That group, as much a seminal punk band as a kind of art collective, was at first composed of University of Michigan art students, including Kelley, as well as Jim Shaw, Niagara and filmmaker Cary Loren. Later, after Shaw and Kelley left for California, it was joined by proto-punk heavies such as former Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and MC5 bassist Michael Davis.
Though he left punk rock behind to pursue a career as an artist, Kelley stayed true to his working-class and punk roots. In 2012, shortly after his death, a New York Times critic called him “a pungent commentator on American class, popular culture and youthful rebellion.”
Like many posthumous works, this one is architectural. In fact, it’s a full-size model based on his childhood home in Westland. This isn’t the first time Kelley has mined the buildings of his life for art. In 1995, he produced Educational Complex, an architectural model of his past schools, including his Catholic elementary school and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Unlike those projects, however, the new “Mobile Homestead” is a full-scale replica of the single-story ranch-style Westland house Kelley grew up in. The project, envisioned in response to a London-based arts organization’s invitation for Kelley to produce a site-specific project for Detroit, went up this year on an empty lot owned by Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on Canfield Street, behind the museum’s parking lot.
The house is built upon a complex basement area that mirrors the floor plan of the original Kelley home. The individual basement rooms, however, can’t be entered directly from one another. Instead, ladders and labyrinthine hallways in a sub-basement link the rooms.
If that sounds high-concept, the first floor is much, much simpler: community space. Kelley was obviously a good guy, since he conceived the piece of “public sculpture” to have a public purpose, to be used for community activities and as a community gallery for the people in the neighborhood. The artist was determined that the work be relevant to its new neighbors.
Another unusual feature is the structure’s detachable facade mounted on a chassis. The front of the home can be removed and pulled like a street-legal trailer, and this mobile facade is to be used for public events through the community at large.
And yet, Kelly had said that the work has at its center the tension between the proud public purpose and antisocial private burrowing into others’ spaces. He had written in 2010 that the project “grew out of my initial desire to buy the actual house that I was raised in.” The plan, which involved haphazard and illegal tunneling, as well as a home the owner didn’t want to sell, was obviously unworkable, in fact, hilariously so.
All of which shows there’s something of the wag about Kelley, who imagined his “Mobile Homestead” as having a “parasitic relationship” with Greenfield Village, the assortment of 19th century homes Henry Ford assembled in Dearborn, writing that his replica home was “a somewhat ironic comment on such grandiose notions of history; it is an everyman’s home, associated with Greenfield Village simply through proximity when it is driven into the parking lot, and perhaps the village itself.”
It’s a piece that raises a lot of questions. Is it a commentary on the complexities underlying a working-class home? Or about what the threshold is for a home to be considered a work of art? Or how great a person must be to have their home institutionalized?
Or, frankly, to hell with what it means. It’s maybe Kelley’s final goof on us all from the great beyond, a prank that will send countless heads turning at the out-of-place suburban home on Canfield Street, or as the facade is driven around town, inciting curiosity, wonder and — likely — a lot of laughter. It sounds like just what Kelley would have wanted.
“Mobile Homestead” events begin at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 11 with opening ceremonies, continuing from 7 to 10 p.m. with a free video presentation in the museum; finishing from 10 p.m. to midnight with a live music show emceed by John Sinclair, with a performance by the Früt and a DJ set from the Blackman ($6 admission). From noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 12, expect live low-power radio broadcasts of performances and interviews, as well as children’s puppet theater and a neighborhood barbecue. From 2 to 3 p.m. there will be a panel discussion about the creation of “Mobile Homestead” featuring Marsha Miro, James Lingwood and Mary-Clare Stevens.
Michael Jackman is managing editor of Metro Times. Send comments to mjackman@metrotimes.com.
> Email Michael Jackman
Mike Kelley Comes Home to MOCAD
Mobile Homestead, a mobile home art exhibit by the late Detroit artist Mike Kelley, has a new address on Woodward Avenue.
By Rachelle Hadley
In other words, Kelley’s work is bringing the suburbs back to the city.
During the exhibition’s opening on May 11, Mobile Homestead will be introduced to the city as not only a permanent addition to MOCAD, but as a community center. The ground floor of the exhibit houses MOCAD’s Department of Education and Public Engagement, functioning as a space for projects, events, gatherings, conventions, and diverse public displays. The structure itself stands apart from the main MOCAD gallery and its other exhibits, something that Kelley planned in conjunction with the museum before his death in early 2012.
“The project is both a homage and gift to the people of Detroit,” says Elysia Borowy, executive director of MOCAD. “Mobile Homestead is a multi-faceted art project, comprised of a moveable trailer, freestanding house, and video trilogy.” Documentary footage of the video project Goin’ Home: Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead Videos and Documentation will be released to coincide with the opening.
Opening ceremony remarks will be made by Marsha Miro, MOCAD board president and founding director, and Mary Clare Stevens, executive director of the Mike Kelley Foundation. The exhibit’s European collaborators James Lingwood, co-director of Artangel, and Maja Hoffman, founder/chair of the LUMA Foundation, will also speak. Activities for the public will follow.
The celebrations will continue inside MOCAD Café from 10 p.m. to midnight, with music performances by The Früt and D.J. The Blackman, with Master of Ceremonies John Sinclair.
Mobile Homestead opens May 11 at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave., Detroit. Admission: Free for members, $6 for the general public. For tickets and more info: mocaddetroit.org.
FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013
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