While Detroit has recently piqued the imagination of artists who are moving to the city, it’s long served as fertile ground for conceptual and avante grade art clique to produce work that reflects on the post-industrial nature of the Motor City. Destroy All Monsters and Ogun are two such collectives that have explored the outer reaches of social issues through their work dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. Vision in a Cornfield is a new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit that brings these perspectives together in a quirky meditation on the spiritual aspect of abandoned automobiles within a contemporary framework.

Ogun has decorated these abandoned cars – which appear to include a Ford Pinto and a Chevy Caprice — to transform them into “Urban Monumentz.” But these are no ordinary abandoned art cars. They talk to each other. Apetechnology, has installed robotic functions so that the cars are capable of interacting. The concept for the exhibition is based off of a chance encounter had by Destroy All Monsters’ Mike Kelley and Cary Loren in Fowlerville, Michigan cornfield.

Destroy All Monsters was an art punk rock band that included members Ron Asheton and Michael Davis who were best known as members of the MC5 and the Stooges. Artists Kelley, Jim Shaw and Niagara founded the group in 1973.

Activist Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts founded Ogun over 30 years ago. Several mixed media works provide context for his perspective and involvement with groups including Black Graphics International, Kcalb Gniw Spirit Band Unit #10 and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

Artists and curators M. Saffell Gardner, Lester Lashley, Pitts, Dianetta Dye, Loren, Kelley, Chip Flynn, Leith Campbell and Brad Ballard are credited as producers of the exhibition. The site specific exhibition opens Sept. 7 with a ceremony and runs through Dec. 30. The Detroit Free Press reviews the exhibit here.