Mixed Taste: New Venue with the same unlikely pairings
By MCA Denver

The underside of a frog that reads Mixed Taste
Two headless mannequins posed on a sidewalk
A garbage can with something on fire inside
A baseball tossed into the air with a blue sky behind
A cowboy riding a horse in shadow in a canyon
A hazy blue sky with the outline of a deer in the distance
Postcards fanned out on a white background

Mixed Taste, your favorite off-beat lecture series is back this summer! Presented as a collaboration between MCA Denver and DCPA Off-Center, this year’s Mixed Taste will take place at MCA Denver’s new performance and programming space, the Holiday Theater, each Wednesday at 7pm from July 13 through August 17, 2022.

Mixed Taste was conceived of by Adam Lerner in 2014 for The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar – a contemporary art space located in the suburbs of Lakewood. At the time, Belmar had lots of vacant storefronts and wanted to create some opportunities for people to visit the new mixed-use development. As the story goes, the marketing team for the shopping area invited Lerner to their brainstorming and proposed that they host evening events like “a Taste of Cheese” or “a Taste of Rioja,” where experts would talk about food and wine. Lerner immediately offered a counter proposal — “Mixed Taste” in which two speakers would be invited to present on two unrelated topics, and then there would be question and answer on both topics together at the same time. The first week there were ten people in the au,dience but the audiences continued to grow week over week, and here we are over a dozen years later, and events continue to sell out!

Every part of Mixed Taste is an adventure, from the speakers whose expertise on even the most obscure topics never cease to amaze us, to the poets who beautifully and hysterically tie the subject matters together on the fly, to the wild and thoughtful audience questions. Even the most mismatched subjects find unexpected common ground and each program can and will go pretty much anywhere.

The best part of Mixed Taste is you don’t have to know anything about the topics to have fun. Never heard of machine theology? No problem. Can’t think of why monoliths matter? Don’t sweat it. All you have to bring is yourself. If you love to learn new things, and you don’t mind if things get weird, this is probably the program series for you.

Each evening will conclude with an original poem inspired by the topics performed by some of Denver’s best poets, including Suzi Q. Smith, Mahogany, Bianca Mikahn, Franklin Cruz, and Brenton Zola, who is also this year’s guest curator.

The 2022 lineup includes:

July 13: Dream Technology & Boreal Toads with Laurie Polisky and Stefan Ekernas
July 20: Roswell & Georgian Polyphonic Singing with Laura Krantz and Gio Barabadze
July 27: Teacher Burnout & Trash Art with Alejandro Fuentes & Benjamin Wong
August 3: Jackie Robinson & La Belle Epoque with Raymond Doswell & Giulia Bernardini
August 10: Cowboys & the Overview Effect with Nora Abrams & Rachel Lyons
August 17: Free Will & Zombie Deer with Robert Bridge & Sam Brasch

In-person tickets to each event are $20. Also, each Mixed Taste will also be live streamed. A livestream season pass is $30.

Visit www.mcadenver.org to reserve tickets.