THE HINTERLANDS
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THE HINTERLANDS
 

Recipe Box, Memory Box

2021

Hello. How have you been?
We’ve really missed you.
Have you eaten?

.

“Recipe Box, Memory Box” is a three-part remote and live place-based performance project using contemporary food traditions and ancient songs to unearth cultural memory, forgotten ancestry, and not-yet-emerged futures in the Midwest

With: Liza Bielby, Livia Chelsey, Jenna Kirk, Richard Newman, Renee Willoughby

Commissioned by John Michael Kohler Arts Center with funding support from ArtsMidwest

…from cherished family recipes to desperate empty cabinet miracles to tasty combinations swiped from restaurants of yore to the best snacks ever concocted,

we are what we eat.

 
 

Part I: Recipe Box, MemoryBox

“Recipe Box, Memory Box” began in March/April 2021 with a postcard recipe exchange, one-on-one phone call cooking sessions, and a two-week long telephone hotline where callers could take a recipe and leave a recipe.

Fresh fennel, shallot, spinach, cilantro laid out with olive oil, red pepper, nuts and feta cheese.
A person in an apron lifting thin phyla dough and laying it on a pan
An open oven with the light on and a pan of fresh baked cream puffs

Part II: Sports Edition

The project continued in August 2021 with an in-person series of Tailgates for Everyday Moments held to celebrate the garbage pickup with Sheboygan Public Works, a lunch break/shift change at a local factory warehouse, and the Sheboygan County Finance Committee (go Ziggy!), as well as a Sheboygan edition of the Take Out Take Down with restaurants Las Brisas and El Camino.

brats grilling on a grill outside and a pair of tongs picking one up.
A woman in sunglasses, t-shirt, and apron offering a small food basket while wearing a giant cardboard brat that fits over her face
5 people in lawn chairs outside at a park holding up white and blue cards that spell lunch. beside them, also in a chair, is a little girl in pink.
On a sidewalk. three people in lawn chairs and one woman standing, hold cards spelling out finance. In front of them are 3 men's heads printed on paper, attached to sticks, and staked in grass. Two others carry pig shaped umbrellas.
A man with their arms raised, a woman holding a baby and waving a ribbon pompom and another person beside her smiling.
A person in a hat smiling, hold up a yellow flag with a multicolor palm tree on it that says, "Las Brisas" while someone else takes a photo of them.
A woman wearing a long grey mustache and bald cap sits in front of a computer and a mic. Around her are people at tables and chairs watching her and smiling.
a tray of Mexican food, rice and beans and a blue sign beside it that says, "Tacos: barbacoa, fish, chicken, chorizo, tripe"
A crowd of people outside in a courtyard watching large screens. An elderly couple stands with their back to the photo. One holds up a pink flag and wears a JMC shirt and the other is in a floral shirt.

Part III: Homecoming - Remote Edition

Recipe Box, Memory Box culminated in November 2021 with a remote DIY dinner performance and community cookbook. Experience the final performance HERE and get your cookbook from the JMKAC SHOP HERE.

2 copies of a spiral bound recipe book titled, "Recipe Box, Memory Box". One copy is open to the recipes, "A tasty campfire treat" and "Grandma Hock Cake" and the other copy is the front cover.
A person in a blue checkered jacket and full bird helmet, inspects a basked with oranges and a green thermos
Two smiling people out side, one pours a red drink for the other from a clear glass pitcher. they both are wearing dried flower boutonnière.
 

Border Blast!

2018, 2019

Building off the research begun in our 2015 Porous Borders Festival, The Hinterlands and friends take a gander again at the borders running through our community. In a celebration nicknamed the Border Blast! 1 we held puppet dispatches from across the Hamtramck/Detroit border to answer our deepest and shallowest questions about what goes on along this bizarre border, brought viewers through a live-streamed two-bike bike ride along the entire border, crowd-sourced trophies for our favorite border businesses, and held the Take Out Take Down, a timed race between Aladdin and Reshmi, two of our favorite Bengali restaurants on either side of the border.

For Border Blast 2, we explored how the neighborhood connected in across the world, in a series of digitally connected experiments high and low brow, including: a binational psycho-geographic stroll connecting Hamtramck’s resident wanderer Walter Wasacz to Moscow philosophers Oleg Aronson and Helene Petrovsky; a bedtime story linking Discount Mattress on Conant Street to a Beijing architecture studio; a workshop to crowd-source historical markers with Bangla typography research Maisha Qurashi; a disembodied two-part lecture with visual artist Zahra Moein in Mälmo, Sweden; and round two of the Take Out Take Down with two more favorite Bengali joints on the border, Zamzam and Modhuban Sweets.

Border Blast! 1: with Richard Newman, Liza Bielby, Shoshanna Utchenik, Norma Jean Haynes, Scott Crandall, Maddy Rager, Maddie Etzcorn, Dave Sanders and guests at Aladdin, Reshmi, Hello Shwarma!, Hamtramck Historical Museum, and more. With funds from the NEA Artworks Program and the Peck Foundation.

Border Blast 2: with Richard Newman, Liza Bielby, Renee Willoughby, Walter Wasacz, Jonathan Flatley/Agnes/Cricket, Oleg Aronson, Helena Petrovsky, Maisha Quraishi, Billy Mark, Shen Bolun, TGIS, Zahra Moein, Dave Sanders, Maddy Rager, Scott Crandall, the excellent staff of Zamzam and Modhuban Sweets, and more. With funds from AXD Festival, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Border-business Bishr won Best Fried Chicken on the border. Was there ever any question?

Border-business Bishr won Best Fried Chicken on the border. Was there ever any question?

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Utopian Dinners

2017-2018

What if we shifted something at the smallest level of how we interact with one another - how we eat together - ? Could that result in larger cultural change? Part laboratory, part community dinner, our Utopian Dinners are all-age affairs that bring our concept of “training” and research around US cultural history and cultural values to a larger community through playful eating extravaganzas.

This project developed out of research that we began while working on The Radicalization Process. Utopian dinners have been constructed for: Play House (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts) and the MOCAD Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead (funded by the Mike Kelly Foundation) at Sidewalk Festival of the Performing Arts (Detroit) and Dixieland Flea Market (Waterford, MI)

Created by Liza Bielby and Richard Newman

Participating artists have included: Danielle Aubert, Jonathan Flatley, Pavel Mitenko, Salakastar, TGIS (Beijing), Renee Willoughby, Julia Yezbick and attendees across the Detroit Metro Area

The Radicalization Process Papers

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2017

A collection of boxes is discovered in the basement of a house on the border of Detroit and Hamtramck. In them, a rich personal archive of publication clippings, which appear to chronicle radical U.S. histories of the 60s and 70s. Using the archive as a performative platform, the artists invite audiences to engage with the materials contained in the boxes that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, real and imagined. The ephemera and memorabilia in the The Radicalization Process Papers takes audiences on a journey that navigates layers of historical accounts, art, politics, and cultural artifacts and asks audiences to examine the assumptions of freedom and democracy in popular American culture. Created and compiled by The Hinterlands (Liza Bielby, Richard Newman, Dave Sanders) in collaboration with historian and poet Casey Rocheteau and designer Ben Gaydos.

Presented as part of the group shows “The Stand” curated by Prem Krishnamurthy and Anthony Marcellini at p! (NYC) and “Vital Signs for a New America” curated by Srimoyee Mitra at Stamps Gallery (Ann Arbor, MI)

Photo by Ali Elisabeth Lapetina

Photo by Ali Elisabeth Lapetina

Flier design/ conception by extraordinaire Sean Yalda featuring A2Z Auto Repair vs. The Mechanics Shop

Flier design/ conception by extraordinaire Sean Yalda featuring A2Z Auto Repair vs. The Mechanics Shop

Photo by Sarah Sidelko

Photo by Sarah Sidelko

Porous Borders Festival

2015

The Porous Borders Festival (PBF) was a two-day public art festival that took place along the entire border between Hamtramck and Detroit in May 16-17, 2015. Curated by The Hinterlands, PBF used food, dance, pageants, installation, conversation, performance, spectacle, and sports to explore the unique municipal boundary cutting across Michigan’s most internationally diverse zip-code. Visitors and residents viscerally experienced this invisible marker between Detroit and Hamtramck through a celebration of the unique spatial and cultural interactions between these two communities.

All events were walk-able, free and family-friendly. The over 40 participating artists and organizations included: KT Andresky, Maia Asshaq, Bangla School of Music, Ryan Barrett/Lauren Hood, Border Blasters, Alexander Buzzalini, Tom Carey, Halima Cassels, Esteban Castro, James Cornish, Ana Cukovic, Cutter’s Bike Club, Detroit Folk Workshop, Detroit Homeland Security, Detroit Party Marching Band, Detroit Pleasure Society, ditto ditto/Francis Kulikowski/Power House Productions, Ludmila Ferrari/Juan Leal/Félix Zamora, Jessica Frelinghuysen, Victor Ghannam, Oren Goldenberg and Erin Giley, Hamtramck Free School, Hardcore Detroit, A Host of People, Iyengar Yoga Detroit, Emilia Javanica, Amy Kelly/Jay Jurma/Bob St. Thomas/Susan Giradeau, Felani Khatun, Greg Kowalski, Lac La Belle, Andy Malone, Mariachi Juvenil Detroit, Billy Mark, Katie Grace McGowen, Virginia Melnyk, Tess Miller/KEINHAUS, Toby Millman/Andy T, Joel Mockovciak, Marsha Music, Open Eye Theatre/Carrie Morris Arts Productions, Only a Quartet, Public Pool, Casey Rocheteau, Rosie Sharp, Ross Sinclair/Cedri Tai, Gregory Stasiak, Eitan Sussman, The Golden Horns, Upended Teacups, Shoshanna Utchenik, Walter Wasacz, WAWAD, Eleni Zaharapoulos

Organized by Richard Newman, Liza Bielby, Dave Sanders, Billy Mark, Corina Fadel, Shoshanna Utchenik, KT Andresky, Gina Reichert/Power House Productions, Faina Lerman/Popps Packing, Carrie Morris Arts Productions and numerous, numerous volunteers

Check out this beautiful review of the festival by Marsha Music in Infinite Mile.

PBF was a 2013 winner of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge (Detroit) and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts 2014 Our Town grant as well as support from the Erb Family Foundation.

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Voice of the City

2012

A contemporary Vaudeville-inspired performance/installation using local pop cultural and subculture to examining Detroit’s shifting identity in the early 21st Century. After two weeks of live pop-up performances that mixed Motown, the 1970s tv dance show The Scene, new takes on classic Detroit jit, Frank Pahl’s one-man-band, and old jokes with new faces, this gallery in a former department store in downtown Shanghai left became a dressing room for visitors to create their own performance material.

Created by Richard Newman, Liza Bielby, Eleni Zaharopoulos, Haleem “Stringz” Rasul; Featuring the work of Frank Pahl; Scenic design by Zeb Smith; serious thank you to Tian Mansha

Created for Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s entry for the 2012 Shanghai Biennale Detroit Pavilion (Curated by Rebecca Mazzei)

Named one of the Top 5 Pavilions of the 2012 Biennale by BlouinArtinfo.