RoboCop statue debuts in Detroit’s Eastern Market
It took 15 years for the idea of a RoboCop statue to go from a tweet to real life.
- The new performance series at the historic Scarab Club will combine film and sonic artistry.
- It is curated by Detroit filmmaker Brandon Walley and Campfire Film Collective’s Josh Mackey.
- The new series will focus on “original, boundary-pushing performances that reflect Detroit’s bold and diverse creative culture,” according to a news release.
- The first performance will be sensory project “Novel Approach, Chapters 1-4,” which its creators say explores “themes of birth, self-care, collective consciousness, illusion, chaos and destruction.”
“Don’t you wonder sometimes about sound and vision?” asked David Bowie in the lyrics of his introspective 1977 song “Sound and Vision.”
It’s a question that artists of many disciplines ask themselves, and one that is inspiring a new performance series in Detroit.
“The Ear and the Eye” will launch Friday, Feb. 27, at the historic Scarab Club in Detroit. The monthly series plans to bring together musicians, visual artists and filmmakers in ways that combine music and moving images in transformative ways.
The new series will focus on “original, boundary-pushing performances that reflect Detroit’s bold and diverse creative culture — drawing from a wide range of musical traditions, cinematic practices, experimental approaches and cultural perspectives from across the city,” according to a news release.
Detroit filmmaker and graphic designer Brandon Walley says the series came about over a need seen by him and “The Ear and the Eye” co-curator Josh Mackey of Detroit’s Campfire Film Collective.
“Detroit is huge on music and we have a lot of amazing musicians. And there is a strong film community there, too,” says Walley. “How can there be intersection between people involved with both of those to create something new?”
According to Walley, the performances in the series could be anything from visual artists and musicians working together to create something new to a musician expanding on something an artist already has done to a team of collaborators.
“We’re really trying to cross borders as far as genres and everything, all different genres of music and the moving images, too,” Walley says.
The first performance will feature the work of brothers Walley, who is based in Detroit, and Bunjumun Ahlteen, a musician and multimedia artist who works out of Columbus, Ohio. They will be presenting their sensory project “Novel Approach, Chapters 1-4.”
Combining film and music, “Novel Approach” explores what the artists describe as “themes of birth, self-care, collective consciousness, illusion, chaos and destruction” that play out as an immersive experience.
Walley has been collaborating with Ahlteen for years on the project, which started online during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have done a few live performances that he says can be described as “expanded cinema,” or making a performance out of projected images.
At the Scarab Club, Walley and Ahlteen will be offering two video selections and two new live pieces with an abstract, experimental feeling. “We’re talking about multiple projectors and improvised but also scored music that will be played live,” says Walley, who created all of the visual pieces in Detroit using a variety of techniques including found footage, graphics and light effects.
Walley has had his work screened by an array of festivals and museums, including Kunsthaus Graz in Austria, Rooftop Film in New York City, Iowa City Experimental Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival and more. In 2020, he was named as an artist fellow by Kresge Arts in Detroit.
Walley also is known for helping shepherd the RoboCop statue through its lengthy journey to a permanent home in 2025 at Eastern Market. He launched a Kickstarter campaign for the statue in February 2011 along with some fellow artists from a Detroit arts nonprofit called Imagination Station.
Tickets to the premiere “The Ear and the Eye” event range from $5 to $12 and are available now at Eventbrite and Feb. 27 at the door.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [email protected].
‘Novel Approach, Chapters 1-4’
Premiere event for “The Ear and the Eye”
6:30 p.m. Feb. 27
Scarab Club
217 Farnsworth St., Detroit
Tickets are $7 for members, $10 for non-members, $5 for students with ID at Eventbrite and $12 at the door.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.freep.com ’
