The Mini Cinema

DAY IS DONE: EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY PROJECTIVE RECONSTRUCTIONS #2–#32

Stockholm

The collection

Free Admission

In “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction” (2000–2011), American artist Mike Kelley draws on popular culture’s fascination with high school as a site of teenage angst and trauma, and recreates scenes from extracurricular activities as shown in American high school yearbooks.

Day Is Done: Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #2–#32

169 min, 2000–2011
by Mike Kelley

Opening hours

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Place

Floor 2

Price

Free admission

In “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction” (2000–2011), Mike Kelley used high school yearbooks as a point of departure to explore memory, repression, and taboo. Drawing on popular culture’s fascination with high school as a site of teenage angst and trauma, he recreated scenes from extracurricular activities as shown in American high school yearbooks, such as theatre, music, and band performances, secular relics of religious rituals, and carnivalesque activities.

Using actors, he staged fictional reenactments based on the yearbook imagery, shot as video works – some playful, others exploring violence and trauma. Mike Kelley wrote the screenplay and lyrics, composed music with Scott Benzel, developed choreographed interludes, and directed the productions. Some of the films (and the accompanying installations) are also on view in the exhibition “Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit”, forming part of Mike Kelley’s broader project to challenge the boundaries between personal memory, popular media, and collective cultural rituals.

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Los Angeles