DLECTRICITY 2017 | Rashaad Newsome

De Buck Gallery is pleased to announce Rashaad Newsome is named Artist-in-Residence for the 2017 DLECTRICITY festival to be held in Detroit September 22-23, 2017.

Throughout the summer Newsome will be working in Detroit casting local performers and staging rehearsals for ‘Shade Compositions’, the artist’s critically acclaimed performance artwork which concludes the DLECTRICITY festival at 8 p.m. on September 23rd at the Detroit Film Theater located within the Detroit Institute of Arts. In this signature performance, the artist is both conductor and vocal choreographer leading an ensemble of locally cast self-identifying Black female performers whose individual voices and gestures are synthesized to form improvisatory orchestral music collaged with live video and audio mixed using hacked video game controllers. Costumes for the performers will be designed by Rick Owens.

In addition to ‘Shade Compositions’, his ‘King of Arms’ procession will enliven the streets of Midtown in the tradition of a second line brass band. Acknowledging Detroit’s integral connection to music, the parade will be led by the storied Cass Technical High School Marching Band and the Gabriel Brass Band. The procession will feature the Miami Bike Life motorcycle crew; members of the Detroit Vogue scene; Newsome’s NYC troop the Vogue Knights; Philadelphia LGBTQ rapper Kevin JZ Prodigy; and a King of Arms float, a customized Ford F150 truck wrapped in the artist’s imagery. Drawn to the city’s history and exciting future the artist remarked, “Detroit is a place that I find incredibly inspiring, it is a privilege to be invited to work in the city and partner with its community. Over time, the city has both prospered and suffered making it a poignant and challenging place to conduct the King of Arms mass processional performance and Shade Composition. At the core of these projects is my interest in highlighting performance practices and communities that I feel connected to personally while giving those who often feel silenced, a voice.”

DLECTRICITY, inspired by Nuit Blanche arts festivals from around the world, presents a major light-based art + technology festival along Detroit’s Midtown. Attendees will be immersed in a landscape of light through groundbreaking installations of video art, 3D video mapping, lasers, interactive design and engineering, and captivating performance.

DLECTRICITY was inspired by Detroit’s very own Electric Park, formerly located on the site of what is now Gabriel Richard Park. From 1906 until 1928, Detroit Electric Park served as a major attraction, beginning as a trolley park and later expanding into an dazzling amusement park with the development of electrification.

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