“Is it radical?” “creative placemaking” “Rhizomatic”

These are the terms that were meant to recharge a sense of meaning to “political”, “community” and “hope”. How can we bridge theory and our lived reality when there are incessant new developments demanding our attention: funding cuts in the wake of Brexit, a Trump presidency and the accession of nationalism worldwide, smart phones delivering the 24/7 news cycle like a morphine drip. In retrospect it seems silly to consider ideas as once too radical or unsustainable when we have never stopped actively defying something deep in the status quo, importa conversations bubbling up as we dig in.

OverOverOver began as a modest attempt to connec Detroit/Glasgow based-artists who already work in communal ways. The plan has always been to engage: by putting on public panels and exhibitions to explore life in each respective city. But on a deeper level, the project is abou making the necessary time for reflection and engagement with people in different locales in order to be surprised with the new. The artists switch roles as guests and hosts in order to be able to explore their ideas in another city and context and to share experiences in-person.

The artists involved have a charm of being down to earth while also brilliantly, accessibly, critical. It may be why they are considered a kind of ‘go to’ person if you really wanted to get to know a place, as was my experience. When I first made up the concept of the project, what emerged was a taxonomy of conviviality- various ways that artists help other artists and make the world a more interesting place. Instead of just touting the usual catchy fanfare (The ______ Miracle, The Creative ______ ) which obscures a hidden agenda to make citizens responsible for things once the purview of the state or larger institutions, it was a celebration of great people that fight to be able to do great things. The ______ Miracle model builds on extraordinary personal achievements, so its success is appropriated.

To lead with curiosity, the project is very much open. What do we do now with the hope of bringing in more resources, more people, trying to make more time? If the world looks like a to-do list, then we will have learned nothing. What would it take to give meaning to words that easily become a surface, a brand, something hollow? I do believe we should start with trusting our best selves, and stop a bad habit of thinking that the answers are just in the ‘successful’ places, or just in one place. For are they not somewhere over over over?

The artists who will be exhibiting Scotland (and many visiting) for the first time
include:

Corrie Baldauf ’s art practice is based in Detroit, Michigan. Her circle drawings record conversations and make time tangible. Her art practice is based out of a shared studio space in Corktown, Detroit. Baldauf prefers though, to walk her art around the city of Detroit. She doesn’t think her art seem as alive sitting in her studio as it does when it is in the hands of other people. Her Optimism Filter Project was featured in Detroit at Art X (2013) and in Lille, France at Lille 3000 (2014).Baldauf’s art has appeared in German Art Magazine, Fukt Magazine for Contemporary Drawing, Hyperallergic, Lufthansa Exclusive Magazine, and HOHE Luft Magazine.

Baldauf sees artist residencies and art events as opportunities to connect people in
places were she lives and were she visits. Urban Culture Project (Kansas City,
Missouri), and Midtown Detroit Inc. (Detroit, Michigan) are two U.S. programs
that she has worked closely with through studio residency and professional
practice support geared to offer new views of familiar places through art and
conversation. She was an International Resident artist at Griffin Gallery
International Residency (West London, United Kingdom) where she designed Gold
Zero and Day in the Life at Head Office, two interactive projects for people at
Colart’s head office and chemistry lab in partnership with White Noise in White
City, London (2016). She brought the Day in the Life project to Colart United
distribution warehouse and offices (summer 2017).

Bryce Detroit is the Afrofuturist storyteller, activist, and pioneer of Entertainment Justice. As a cultural designer, he is a national award-winning music producer, performer, and curator. Through his work as founder of Detroit Recordings Company, he demonstrates the power of using music entertainment arts and community legacies, to design cultural infrastructure for preserving, producing, and promoting new Afrikan and Indigenous narratives, cultural literacies, and cooperative music economies.

For the past 7 years, Bryce Detroit has led an intergenerational charge to “bridge the gap” between Detroit’s legendary musical pioneers and the city’s young emergent innovators. In 2012, Bryce teamed with legendary Motown arranger Paul Riser to co-direct and host the Red Bull Music Academy presents Motown to New York City: Paul Riser & Friends w/Young Guru. In 2014, he produced the ONE MILE Mothership Launch: Legacy of Funk concert with funk legend Carl ‘Butch’ Jones, bringing together four generations of Parliament-Funkadelic alumni. In 2017, Bryce Detroit was selected as music curator, representing Detroit as a UNESCO City of Design for the 10th St Etienne International Design Biennale, producing 13 shows during the event’s opening ten days, and becoming the first person to curate live music in the Biennale’s twenty-year history.

A prominent community advocate, Bryce Detroit grows intersectional self-determined communities as culture director of Center for Community Based Enterprises (C2BE), international delegate for East Michigan Environmental Action Council, co-founder of Detroit Community Wealth Fund, and board member of Oakland Avenue Artists Coalition.

Michaela Mosher is a multi-disciplinary video artist. Originally from Flint, MI, she currently lives and works in Detroit. She holds a bachelors in Fine Art from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit (class of 2012). She had a solo show at CAVE (Detroit) in 2014 and her work has been exhibited at numerous venues such as Public Pool (Hamtramck), Re:View Contemporary Gallery (Detroit), MOCAD (Detroit) and others. In 2017, Mosher was invited to curate an exhibition featuring local artists and performers as part of Dlectricity, Detroit's light art festival. Michaela Mosher is the Exhibitions and Gallery Manager at The N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit, where she has worked since 2011.

Graem Whyte is an artist born and raised in metro Detroit, now based in Hamtramck, MI. His work utilizes a wide array of materials and fuses sculpture, architecture, installation and relational art. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has received several awards for his work. Currently, Whyte is working on Squash House, the conversion of a house into a squash court and community garden, and Popps Emporium, an experimental community resource space with a barter based storefront. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of the arts venue Popps Packing, and teaches at the College for Creative
Studies in Detroit.

Andrew Thompson is a sculptor and installation artist, educator, curator, musician, and gardener. Thompson grew up in Kansas City, MO and received his BFA in Sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute. Thompson moved from Cowtown to Motown to receive his MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has been exhibiting his sculptures and installations throughout Southeast Michigan for over a decade and helps to curate and coordinate shows as an Exhibition Committee member with Detroit Artists Market (DAM) and Ann Arbor Art Center (AAAC) and as a board member of Hatch Art in Hamtramck.
Recently curated exhibitions have included “Matter Out of Place” (2018 at DAM), “Millennial Pink” (2017 at AAAC), and “The Scent of Rain on Dry Earth” (2016 at DAM). Thompson currently teaches part-time at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Stamps School of Art & Design and at College for Creative Studies.
In addition to art-making, curating, and teaching, Thompson is a founding member of the rock band The He Bops. The He Bops began as an all-male 3-piece Cyndi Lauper/Clash mash-up cover band. 10 years later they're working on their 5th album of original material featuring short, post-punk inspired songs of love, loss, and criticism of contemporary culture. Thompson also loves to garden, specifically digging.

Olayami Dabls has worked as a visual story teller using a wide range of materials for more than 45 years.
His work uses references from African material culture to tell stories about the human condition. Using iron, rock, wood and mirrors, Dabls found that these four materials are primary building blocks that speak universally to all cultures.

In the years between 1975-1985, Dabls joined the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
as a curator and artist-in-residence. There, he learned how challenging it was to talk about the civil rights movement, because in talking about emotionally charged history, there is no fixed perspective, only the memories and experiences of millions of individuals. This inspired him to create the African Bead Museum as a space for communal understanding through his own sculptures and his collection of African material culture.

Photo credits: Charlie Bennet, Nick Hagen, Marc Brown, Jeff Cancelosi

CONTACTS

Cedric Tai was born in Detroit in 1985. He graduated from Michigan State University in art education and studio art with a concentration in painting and ceramics. He has won numerous awards including the 2009 Kresge Artist Fellowship awarded by Kresge Arts in Detroit, a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and a Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Award.

He is represented by Simone DeSousa Gallery and is married to artist Rachel Yezbick. He currently works and volunteers between Los Angeles, Detroit and Glasgow. Collaborative projects have included Bar-Fund, Best Friends Learning Gang, and theDetroiter.com

Selected exhibitions and publications include Concept Structure Torture Survival Title, New City Space, Glasgow (2011), Quantified Self, Gallery Projects, Ann Arbor, MI (2012), Indirectly Yours, Intermedia, CCA, Glasgow (2013), We Need More ________!, Re:View Contemporary (2014), and Amateur Strategies, Kerckhoff Gallery, UCLA (2015)

Anna Tudos is a freelance curator from Budapest, Hungary based in Glasgow, Scotland. She is particularly interested in exploring hidden histories and underrepresented issues often through unconventional ways of mediating art.

Anna is completing her Education Master of Letters in Curatorial Practic through the Glasgow School of Art. Recent projects include BRUT Europe organised with Marija Nemcenko and the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, Resident Curator for the Kinning Park Complex creating interventions heralding the First Co-operative Women’s Guild in Scotland, and research for the Neon Muzeum in Warsaw, Poland.

She has been awarded a Membership at the Studio of Young Artists Association Hungary and recently completed an internship with Platform at the Bridge, (Easterhouse, Glasgow) working with the 'Community Engagement Programme - Visual Arts' programme team, developing and executing strategies regarding audience engagement, art mediation and communication, working with residence artists Mitch Miller and Pester and Rossi.