The Detroit-based art-activist collective Complex Movements: Wesley Taylor, Waajeed, Invincible/ill, and Carlos Garcia (L05).

The Detroit-based art-activist collective Complex Movements: Wesley Taylor, Waajeed, Invincible/ill, and Carlos Garcia (L05). DOUG COOMBE

Last month, while working on a preview of Beware of the Dandelions, a show by Detroit-based collective Complex Movements at On the Boards, I kept running into a stubborn problem: Nobody seemed able to describe what it actually was.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....