“Round in Circles” Exhibition Event
Readings by: Lynn Crawford, Katie Grace McGowan and Chace “Mic Write” Morris
With MC: Ryan Harte
3 Detroit-based writers will be reading work that explores the formal and metaphorical implications of the circular; employs some form or manifestation of a circle, loop, spiral, cycle, spin, circuit or hole; or reflects on a broader, collective feeling of the times, that of moving without getting anywhere, ending at the beginning, of literally going round and “round in circle”s. Ryan Harte is the MC for this event. Presented during Art Detroit Now’s Second Saturday.
LYNN CRAWFORD is a novelist and arts writer living and working north of Detroit. She is a 2010 Kresge Literary Fellow and a 2016 Rauschenberg Writing Fellow. Her books include “Fortification Resort” (a selection of art related sestinas) and the novels “Simply Separate People” and “Simply Separate People, Two” and, most recently, “Shankus & Kitto: A Saga.” Her newest novel, “Paula, So Far” will be published by DittoDitto fall, 2017.
KATIE GRACE MCGOWAN’s work explores empathy and affect. She engages in genre-bending performance, writing creative nonfiction, and working as an amateur private eye. Her practice is rooted in participatory observation, or what McGowan calls invisible theater, through which she explores ideology. By conducting invisible theater experiments—whether posing as the next cosmetic surgery victim or a hapless traveler looking for God —she is given entrée into cultures far removed from her own.
McGowan holds an M.F.A. from The University of Iowa in Intermedia as well as M.A. and B.A. degrees from Wayne State University, in English. Recent exhibitions and performances include Art as Research, at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA), CARPA, at The Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, OR), and “Performance Capitalism and Its Discontents” at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities (Ann Arbor, MI). She currently works as Associate Director of Programs at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the oldest avant-garde and experimental film festival in North America. She is based in Detroit.
MIC WRITE is as much poet as he is emcee, threading the two worlds he’s thrived in to write socially-immediate music that builds strength without weighing heavy. He is mastering his particular alchemy of blending smart, layered, urgent rhymes with pulsing beats & creating bangers that make you bounce on the 1st play, think on the 2nd, and activate on the 3rd.
He is prepping to release an audio/visual project entitled “The ONUS Chain”- a trilogy of visuals & accompanying EP that navigate police brutality, the traumatic fatigue of waiting for change & what independence from the oppression potentially looks like.
Mic has witnessed his gentrification dissect his city & violence against blacks haunt his body; in response he is exploring what it means to be as dangerous as being black/from Detroit would suggest. Can it be used as a response to fight back? Passion has always been integral to his work, but its becoming more pointed & honed- trading the soapbox for the front porch.
“Emcee, poet, educator, and Detroit visionary, Chace ‘Mic Write’ Morris is unstoppable. Mic Write’s reputation as a renaissance man pales in comparison to the weight of his message and unconstrained fervor” – Jerrilyn Jordan, Audiofemme
RYAN HARTE is a Detroit native. He obtained his B.A. in Economics-Philosophy from Columbia University in New York and the Diplôme du Programme International at Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. He contributed to and served as associate editor of “Infinite Mile”, an online Detroit-based art journal. Areas of interest include what makes the art and the story of Detroit unique; gentrification and its impacts; the roles of cities in new idea generation and creative exchange; and the interplay of art and fashion.
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The summer group exhibition “Round in Circles” explores formal and metaphorical implications of the circular. Probing the banal to the absurd to the disheartened, each work included in the exhibition employs some form or manifestation of a circle, loop, spiral, cycle, spin, circuit or hole. The exhibition reflects on a broader, collective feeling of the times, that of moving without getting anywhere, ending at the beginning, of literally going round and “round in circles”.
On the one hand, the circular can be read as a transcription of our current malaise that seemingly permeates each earthly rotation or more presciently every news cycle; of frustration and unease, of escape into fabricated nostalgias and worn repetitions, where the new is just yesterday’s old. On the other, the form provides the potential for respite, a do over if you will; as we return to where we began, we are afforded another opportunity, a chance for a new beginning. Perhaps this time we will get it right. And yet within the circular is the promise of stasis, that balance state where entropy becomes tamed into pattern and harmony, where new days are around every horizon, where the cycle of motion intermingle with time and space and the ouroboros makes peace within itself. Yes, going round in circles is dizzying, at once nauseating and exciting, impoverished and plentiful, the form that implies nothing also embraces the possibilities of being everything.
Artists: ‘jide Aje, Danielle Aubert, Corrie Baldauf, Davin Brainard, Tyanna J. Buie, Alexander Buzzalini, Shane Darwent, Clara DeGalan, Simone DeSousa, Erin Imena Falker, Jessica Frelinghuysen, Ani Garabedian, Richard Haley, Asia Hamilton, Megan Heeres, Eli Kabir, Osman Khan, Austin Kinstler, Nicola Kuperus, Timothy van Laar, Anthony Marcellini, Adam Lee Miller, Shanna Merola, Eleanor Oakes, Ato Ribeiro, Robert Platt, Marianetta Porter, Dylan Spaysky, Todd Stovall, Gregory Tom, Graem Whyte, Elizabeth Youngblood, Alivia Zivich
Curated by Jennifer Junkermeier
On display at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art through August 26, 2017