I went back to Video Acts. This time I concentrated on Bill Viola and Bruce Nauman mostly. Just one Bill Viola piece, the Reflecting Pool and many Nauman pieces. They seemed Proustian to me. Nauman had an amazing presence at this point in his life and he is very balletic, graceful. When he videos himself doing some actions he is able to imbue the immediate image of those actions with the possibility that they mean a lot more � that they refer beyond themselves. Then the form and setting of the actions push you on to explore the possible layers of meaning. This is like (some) poetry or indeed some songs.

I have found out more about the DVD art installation at the Modern Art Museum in Oxford. The artist has taken Karen Carpenter amd Olivia Newton John video performances and just clipped out certain key words � �I� �you� and I think perhaps �love� . These elements are reconfigured and presented with an additional spatial dimension. I find this all very tempting and I really should find a way of giving this project half a day.

The Wire this month has a review of the new John Cale CD Hobosapiens which starts by reminding the reader of Cale�s early success of his contributions to Bryter Later (during the time when Nauman was making his early videos.) . Normally Cale features in that mag because of his involvement of with the New York avant garde and the point of bringing up BL is to prepare that readership for the reviewer�s praise for other features of the Cale talent-spectrum. A lot of this album was done in New York using Pro Tools which Cale has only recently discovered - he is very taken by the additional creative opportunities that this kind of mixing/remixing technology offers.

BL was done when Cale was in transit from New York to LA via London. While in on this transition London just before BL Cale made a film in Chelsea which was part of the Fluxus movement. He isn't sure whether to be a producer or performer or something else altogether. I don't know whether his BL era film is on the collection of Fluxus fragments which I spotted in the shop at the ICA where Video Acts is on � but I haven�t stumped up for it yet as it costs over �20.

The best collection of Fluxus artefacts that I have come across hitherto is in the Detroit Institute of Art. Prior to his involvement with BL, Cale produced the Detroit band, The Stooges, first album and I read this week that the Stooges and MC5 influenced the first Kraftwerk album. The Kraftwerk influence fed back into the evolution of Detroit techno a few years later. The other influence which Derek May famously refers to is George Clinton. I am gradually piecing together the extent to which Clinton, MC5 and the Stooges were involved in the same aesthetic/political endeavour especially around the White Panthers movement. Clinton has a strong political agenda mixed with humour eg Chocolate City.

Members of the Stooges and MC5 came together in the 70s in the band Destroy All Monsters which had been started by Mike Kelley around 1973. Kelley�s transgressive aesthetic also came out of the White Panthers who made am immense impression on him when he was 15. I think I mentioned that the first thing that impressed me in Video Acts was the Mike Kelley piece, Futurist Ballet, taken in the early 1970s which is chaotic and transgressive and has freely blown sax. This piece is not balletic like Nauman is or calm like Bill Viola.

So I am gradually getting to the point where I ran out of steam on my history of musical and artistic flux in Detroit from bebop to techno. I heard a fragment on radio 4 on Saturday morning about the political import of Dancing In The Street which made me think I could be on the right track. Summer�s here and the time is ripe for fighting in the street.

Another major resource for this projectcame to light in the last few days � the release of the complete Jack Johnson sessions. These Miles Davis sessions in 69, 70 , 71 bring together the Detroit bass player, Michael Henderson who had been playing with Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder and John MacLaughlin from Yorkshire.

There is a major article in the Wire about the history of this music and significantly it includes new material by the producer Teo Macero who was mentored by Varese. Teo had been alienated by many of Miles� later comments on how this music was made and had not been saying much.

The bebop based harmonic rhythmic and harmonic genius of James Jamerson is inherited by the young Michael Henderson within a soul and gospel framework and Miles pulls him back into what is at last being recognised as some of his greatest ever recording sessions at the leading edge of jazz. This is jazz-rock which is violent and radical in a way anticipated by MC5 and the White Panthers. Pushing the envelope a bit you could say that the fact that they are now offered in a format which democratises part of the creative act � the mix � is a further testimony to the creative power of Detroit and its ability to bring together politics, blues, jazz, technology and empowerment.

(Well Detroit and South Michigan - The White Panthers were based in Ann Arbor home of the ONCE Festival and I see from the Wire that recordings of these seminal concerts from the early 60s have just been released.)

Meanwhile in another part of the forest:

"CoCA presents a sensational exhibition and rare public performance by the extraordinary art collective "Destroy All Monsters." Active in the Detroit area in the early to mid '70s, Destroy All Monsters' original line up included two of the most compelling contemporary artists working today. Their musical performances and art happenings have become legendary, and their influence on today's popular culture is immeasurable. Produced by CoCA's former Program Director Larry Reid, the exhibition opens with a monstrous party and musical performance on Friday, July 14 at 8:00 PM, and continues through August 30.

Destroy All Monsters founding members Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, and Cary Loren have agreed to reunite for a multimedia presentation at CoCA to commemorate the organization's 20th anniversary.

The opening night gala on Friday, July 14 from 8:00 PM to midnight will feature a rare musical performance by Destroy All Monsters. Their music is conceptual in nature, featuring found instruments, sampled sounds, and dissonant rhythms by Kelley, Shaw and Loren. The artists will be on hand throughout the evening, videos will be continuously screened, and a Detroit music soundtrack will provide the backdrop to an entertaining and enlightening evening.

On Sunday, July 16 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM, Kelley, Shaw and Loren will discuss their work at CoCA. This panel, titled "The Monsters' Mash: Rust Belt Noise, Thrift Store Aesthetics, and the Globalization of Detroit Pop Culture" will be introduced and moderated by Professor Paul Remley of the University of Washington English Department. Remley has a long association with these artists dating to his days as a Detroit counterculture habitue in the '70s. This discussion is sure to shed light on the early influences of these important international art figures."