Going Home: Mike Kelley, Mobile Rhetoric, and Detroit

Abstract

Examining the institutional narratives produced in response to the late artist Mike Kelley’s 'Mobile Homestead 'reveals an acute tension between the process of 'going public' and the production of meaning in this autobiographical, site-specific performance. Kelley’s career-defining works were built upon a foundation of 'expected misunderstanding 'from the public, in which Kelley manipulated public response by actively anticipating and absorbing misperception. 'Mobile Homestead', Kelley’s final, unfinished work, represents a departure from this pattern, to the extent that he refused to absorb misperception within his master narrative about the project. Kelley, as 'master provocateur', adept at playing multiple roles over the course of his career, frequently masking a complex set of meanings behind a translucent veil of black humor, with 'Mobile Homestead 'positioned himself as transparently antagonistic to 'the institutions of the art world and community services', claiming that the failure of the project as public art constituted success as a model of his own belief that 'public art is always doomed to failure'. 'Mobile Homestead 'was, Kelley claimed, an exercise in 'bad faith' and, accordingly, represents the darkest version of Kelley’s 'negative aesthetic'.