Opening: The Broadcast at the Broad Museum of Art MSU

Installation views exhibition The Broadcast, Art Lab, Broad Museum of Art MSU, 2019

THE BROADCAST

NOV. 10, 2019 – APRIL 5, 2020

THE ART LAB

565 E Grand River Ave., East Lansing, MI 48823

News headlines and stories dominate our daily lives. We live today in societies oversaturated with public media output, the content of which is often tailored and delivered specifically to each of us through a wide range of technological devices. But with more information also comes more questions. In this era of hypermedia production, whose stories are considered newsworthy? Whose voices are represented? And who do these stories belong to?

Employing the politics of imagination and representation The Broadcast considers how media shapes and even produces our experience of reality. To create this exhibition, Chicago-based artist Kirsten Leenaars embarked on a community-based project with a group of young participants from the greater Lansing area. Organized as a three-week summer camp, the artist and participants considered the interplay of truth and distortion within forms of public address, media, culture, and politics, looking at how these forces impact and shape public perception and opinion.

With The Broadcast Leenaars also continues her ongoing examination of storytelling, performativity, and documentary in contemporary video. Made in close collaboration with her participants, the featured works explore various vocally expressive platforms—interviews, show-and-tell, even song—that cultivate agency, creativity, and a multiplicity of viewpoints. In doing so, the artist subverts the conventional positioning of documentary as a purportedly impartial mode of representation.

Through playful yet detailed scenography, planned and impromptu actions, and the production of their own media content, the exploration by these US-born, immigrant, and refugee youth unfolds as a multimedia exhibition in the gallery of the MSU Broad Art Lab. Collectively, they relied on their own lived experiences and imaginations to represent the views of young people more broadly, who are largely absent from the stories spun by mainstream media.

Special thanks to the Lansing Public School District and the College of Communications Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University, including Karl Gude, Brian Kusch, Andrew Acciaioli, and Brooke Striker for their assistance with the project.

The Broadcast is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Steven L. Bridges, Associate Curator, with the guidance and support of the museum’s education team. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Elizabeth Halsted endowment fund.

For more information on the exhibition: https://broadmuseum.msu.edu/exhibitions/the-broadcast

Opening: Living Architecture at the Lubeznik Center

Video still "New and Definitely Improved", 2017, Kirsten Leenaars

Living Architecture October 30 - January 4, 2020 Hyndman Gallery, Brinka/Cross Gallery, Susan Block Gallery curated by Tricia Van Eck with Nathan Abhalter Smith and Lora Fosberg

The evidence of immigrant labor can be seen throughout the built environment of the region. Living Architecture invites viewers to consider the ongoing impact and influence that immigrants have on art, design, labor, innovation and contemporary thought.

Featured artists include: Alberto Aguilar, Kioto Aoki, Amanda Assaley and Qais Assali, Tizziana Baldenebro, Verónica Casado Hernández, Derek Chan, Eugenia Cheng, Julietta Cheung, Sabba Elahi, Maria Gaspar, Óscar I González Díaz, Lise Haller Baggesen, Benjamin Larose, Kirsten Leenaars, Wen Lui, Roni Packer, Moises Salazar, Orkideh Torabi, Ji Yang and others.

For more information: http://www.lubeznikcenter.org/Exhibits_Galleries/current.html

ARTSY: 6 Artists Imagine What a World without Prisons Looks Like

Kirsten Leenaars, Present Tense, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Illinois Humanities.

Over the past two years, Chicago artists and locals have turned to art to consider criminal justice reform. Through the initiative Envisioning Justice, run by the nonprofit Illinois Humanities, artists convened with individuals and organizations of seven Chicago communities that have been deeply affected by mass incarceration. Together, they discussed the harmful effects of incarceration, imagined what a just legal system would look like, and harnessed creativity to develop strategies to work towards such a healthy reality. The culmination of their work is now on view in the exhibition “Envisioning Justice” at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Here, six participating artists share their work and discuss what a world without prisons would look like, in their own words.

“The video Present Tense (2019) is collectively made with young members of the Circles & Ciphers community in which they perform individual freestyle raps about their own lived experiences. When learning all about the work of Circles & Ciphers and attending their circle meetings, I was struck by the strong sense of community and the joy present within the group. Their joy felt like a powerful act of resistance in the face of racism, police brutality, and personal experiences with the criminal justice system. The nature of these struggles requires an opposite force that enables communities and individuals to persist and resist. Creating a space for joy and expression as I witnessed at Circles & Ciphers seems fundamental for the well-being and healing of our society. While developing ideas for the video work, I imagined a place where people feel seen and heard, and where their joy and sense of belonging are imperative.”

Here is an excerpt from Miguel MV’s freestyle rap:

But hope beyond hope

Just close your eyes to sleep and

You’ll start believing the American dream and

While counting sheep then

You’ll feel like you’re free!

Freedom of speech, that’s just the freedom to bleat

When the wolves come to eat.

The American Pie has been wolfed by Wall Street

They’ll wash it all down with coke and coffee.

“But hold on mon ami, you know that freedom ain’t free,

And if you wanna eat you gotta earn your money.

It wouldn’t work feeding, clothing, and housing the lazy.

Ultimately all that matter is myself and family.”

Exactly what’s maddening. It’s branded as sanity.

The life-blood contained in our veins is vanity.

In vain I’ve sustained some hope for a remedy

What the wise prescribe is a large dose of settling.

They tell me it’s not settling,

That these never-ending cycles are just pedaling.

But what is it you’re peddling?

Who can I trust when profits dictate everything?

Politics is weaponry—

Teach me fear, then sell me peace.

Media for measuring

Medicine is luxury

Schools became a factory,

Producing patriots pledging allegiance to consumption.

Read the full article on Artsy here: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-6-artists-envision-prisons?fbclid=IwAR0NiwiPDN38qmaE94On0nacCkIcwekKiSd7tDEnUgrIyrQUFndJy3yTiH4