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Mike Kelley fronts Sonic Youth, 1986
12.17.2014
10:36 am
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The first time I visited New York’s SoHo district in 1992 I remember seeing a large print of the cover art for Sonic Youth’s Dirty hanging in a loft window. Earlier that year, my art teacher had complained about Sonic Youth’s use of Mike Kelley’s “Ahh. . . Youth!” on the Dirty sleeve, so I probably wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Kelley had fronted the band during a 1986 performance.

In the mid-‘80s, Kelley worked on a project called Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile. It consisted of a series of paintings, a cave-like installation called The Trajectory of Light in Plato’s Cave, and a poetic text. The project culminated a December 1986 performance of the text by Kelley and an actress named Molly Cleator, backed by Sonic Youth.
 

 
Alec Foege’s old Sonic Youth bio Confusion Is Next gives some background on the collaboration:

In December 1986 Kelly invited the band to provide sound effects and incidental music for three performances of his piece Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile at Artists Space in New York. Kelley recited an hour-and-a-half poem he had written and dramatized with the help of actress Molly Cleator while the band droned on.

Plato’s Cave had begun “as a project about the possessive,” Kelley said in one interview, “about how ascribing a quality of possession to something would equalize everything. Like, if I said that this was an exhibition of everything from Lincoln’s house, it links all this random stuff together that has no link except as a possible way to psychoanalyze Lincoln. Everybody asked me why I picked those three people. I made a whole list of possessives that were in common usage and I just picked the three that sounded best together. . . . Then I wove a set of associations between them.”

The band got together with Kelley a couple days before the performance. Kelley went through the script and told the band what he wanted at certain cues—a chunky rock sound, a bang, a spooky noise.

“I wanted to play with rock staging,” Kelley says. “For a lot of the performance, they were behind a curtain, so you didn’t even see them. I was trying to play against this rock-star thing, where there’s a shift of focus to somebody who in normal kind of rock-theatric terms would be the singer.” Kelley’s actions made him the center of focus—the singer, as it were—even though Sonic Youth’s accompaniment accentuated his actions and words with kabuki-like synergy, rather than in the traditional way in which a rock band interacts with a vocalist.

 

 
Kelley and Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo discussed the show in a 2009 interview:

Then, to connect your and Mike’s practices—I understand that Sonic Youth provided the soundtrack for Mike’s piece Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile at Artists Space in 1986. How did that collaboration come about?

LR: I think Mike and Kim [Gordon] had been friends in LA. Mike was coming to New York to do this piece at Artist Space and asked us if we would work with him. Steve [Shelley] had just come aboard as our permanent drummer, and we were at the point where we were past just trying things, and had really formed a language that we were all comfortable working with.

MK: That’s right—I knew Kim in LA before she moved to New York. At that time she was not yet a musician; she was a visual artist.  I watched the development of Sonic Youth, and I liked the music and I liked them as people. In that particular performance I wanted to have a live sound element modeled after kabuki theater, where there are musical sections that play off the language in a quite disjointed way.  I also wanted to play with the idea of rock staging. A lot of the audience was there to see Sonic Youth specifically, because at that point they were a known band, so I had some parts where the band was really foregrounded and others where they were completely hidden—behind a curtain, for instance—so you couldn’t see them. And it was great, because they sometimes were doing music not at all typical for Sonic Youth—at one point, for example, I asked them to repeat a riff from “Train Kept A-Rollin’” over and over.

Kim Gordon reminisces about her relationship with Kelley in the video clip below, produced as part of this year’s Mike Kelley retrospective at MOCA. (Kelly committed suicide in 2012.) She says a few words about the performance:

Plato’s Cave, I felt like we were some kind of a Greek chorus to it, and I always thought of Mike as a performance artist more than a visual artist. And at some point, I realized the work was the performance.

 

 
You can listen to the 38-minute (not hour-and-a-half, pace Foege) Plato’s Cave performance in its entirety here. A CD is available from Kelley’s label Compound Annex.

 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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12.17.2014
10:36 am
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Throbbing Gristle’s Chris & Cosey announce first American shows since 1991
12.05.2013
10:39 am
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Exciting news—well, if you happen to be in the right two cities—this just in from Carter-Tutti‘s manager Paul Smith…

In addition to PS1/MoMA‘s invitation to have them to take part in the museum’s celebrations for the first ever Mike Kelley retrospective exhibition, where they will exclusively perform live an enhanced remix, of the X-TG Desertshore album tracks at the VW Dome venue at PS1 on Sunday 5th January 2014. The event is dedicated to the memory of both Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson & Mike Kelley.

Chris & Cosey will also appear live on WFMU for Dan Bodah’s Airborne Event show on January 6th at 9pm and in Chicago at the Metro Club on January 9th where they will revisit their 1980’s “techno-noir” material as “Carter Tutti plays Chris & Cosey”

They return to New York on the 11th for “Carter Tutti plays Chris & Cosey” at Santos Party House

To be clear, the two NYC gigs will be very different. At the Mike Kelley exhibit, they’ll be performing and remixing the X-TG tribute to Nico’s Desertshore album, while at the show on the 11th at Santos House Party, they’ll be playing their own material.

Tickets are on sale now and are only $20 each. There will also be an exclusive limited tour CD available at the shows.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.05.2013
10:39 am
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A Wake for Mike Kelley
02.26.2012
02:45 pm
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The Hammer Museum is hosting a 24-hour retrospective of the video work of the late Mike Kelley, the influential Los Angeles-based artist who took his own life three weeks ago.

This video “wake” for Kelley started last night at 9pm and will continue until 9pm tonight at the Farley Building, 1669 Colorado Blvd., in Eagle Rock. A spontaneous tribute to Kelley has appeared on Tipton Way in Highland Park featuring a Kelley-esque assemblage of stuffed animals and quilts.

Below, a “commercial” for Kelly’s limited edition “Little Friend” multiple. I have one of these. It’s got a “talk box” that says odd things when you squeeze it, managing to make this piece both ridiculous and slightly sinister at the same time, like a lot of Mike Kelley’s work.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.26.2012
02:45 pm
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Artist Mike Kelley dead at 57
02.01.2012
05:27 pm
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Production still from “Extracurricular Projective Reconstruction #35,” 2010

Sad news comes in twos today for the art world as the body of prominent LA-based artist Mike Kelley is found in his home by police. Details are scant, but some outlets are reporting the death as a likely suicide. Kelley was 57.

From the AP report:

Kelley was found at his home Tuesday and it appeared he had committed suicide, South Pasadena Police Sgt. Robert Bartl said, without providing further information on the artist’s death. An autopsy was pending.

“Kelley’s work in the 1980s was part of how one defined the Los Angeles arts scene. He had a remarkable ability to fuse distinction between fine and popular art in ways that managed to perturb our sense of decorum,” said Stephanie Barron, senior curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

A family friend who was concerned about Kelley went to his home and called 911, Bartl said.

The friend told investigators that Kelley had been depressed because he had recently broken up with his girlfriend, but no note was found, Bartl said.

Mike Kelley is best-known for his punk rock-informed work which included large-scale installations and sculptures made from sewing ratty stuffed animals together. One of Kelley’s most famous images is on the cover of Sonic Youth’s Dirty album. He was also a founding member of influential Detroit avant garde rock group Destroy All Monsters in the 1970s.

Before his death, Kelley was in the process of putting together a show for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Mike Kelley’s work will be included in the upcoming 2012 Whitney Biennial out of New York.
 
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.01.2012
05:27 pm
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