Notes for Paul D. Miller’s “Rebirth of a Nation” – remix of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.”
By Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Travel. Big picture small frame, so what’s the name of the game? Symbol and synecdoche, sign and signification, all at once, the digital codes become a reflection, a mirror permutation of the nation…. Where to go? What to do to get there?
Paul D. Miller is Executive Editor of Origin Magazine, a progressive Artist owned and operated periodical that comes out every two months.
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An unprecedented Metropolitan Museum artist residency, The Met Reframed is a year-long multilayered artistic partnership. It launches in the 2012-13 season with Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, a composer, multimedia artist, writer, and DJ. His recorded output includes remixes of music ranging from Wu-Tang Clan, Metallica, and Bob Marley to classical/new music legends Steve Reich and the Kronos Quartet, and he has DJ’ed major festivals including Bonnaroo and Power to the Peaceful. His work as a media artist has been featured at the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennial, and Miami/Art Basel; and his first collection of essays, Rhythm Science, was released by MIT Press in 2004, followed by Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media (MIT Press, 2008).
“For me, it’s such an honor to work with the Met from the viewpoint of sampling,” says Paul D. Miller. “I want to make a vibrant reflection of this incredible collection of materials from all over the world. My residency will be a fun festival of ideas. From the South Pacific to Asia, from the Civil War to 3D photography, from Antarctica to environmental activism, I want to show that music and art are always in dialogue.”
By Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky
NY 2013
”Lift up your hearts, you good dancers, high! higher! And do not forget the good laughter!”
— Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra
This exhibition isn’t about Afrofuturism. If it was, my artwork would be in it. Instead, what it presents is an essay on objects that dip in and out of the conceptual realm that the obliquely referential term “future” is all about – with an askance towards the perpetual possibility of what Afrofuturism could be. So it’s a bit of a contradiction, but that’s kind of the point. When the curators asked me to interview Samuel R. Delany aka Chip, I said “sure!” and called him up. He was in. No problem. And that’s where this dialog and the exhibition overlap. In our era of 140 character tweets and infinite updates on Facebook, Youtube, Vine, Instagram, and Google+, getting a chance to catch up with Chip is to be treasured and absorbed slowly.
Artist Statement:
JG Ballard once said “history is a stage that needs to be swept clean.” I agree. When I first heard Grand Master Flash’s “Adventures on the Wheels of Steel” from 1981, I was blown away. Afrika Bambaata’s “Death Mix” was cool, but Flash took things in a whole different direction.
I made this mix with my iPhone app as a demo to show how you can beat match, sequence, and save mixes. All the sound effects come from customized sounds I sampled, edited, and created for the app.
By Paul D. Miller
”When we separate music from life, we get art.”
— John Cage
2012 marked the Centennial of John Cage, undoubtedly one of the most important composers of the 20th century.
I caught up with the John Cage Trust to do an article about the new App they commissioned to commemorate the situation.
DOWNLOAD THE ARTICLEBy DJ Spooky in The Nation
Antonino D’Ambrosio guest edited the January 28, 2013 issue of The Nation and asked me to write about my Antarctica Terra Nova project. The theme of the issue was “creative-response,” which is the focus of his documentary film “Let Fury Have the Hour.”
Other writers and artists included in the issue were Billy Bragg, Edwidge Danticat, Hari Kunzru, Eugene Hutz, Staceyann Chin and others from his film.
Artist Shepard Fairey created the cover art inspired by Antonino’s cover story “We Own the Future: How Creative-Response Transforms Our World.”
November/December 2012 issue
Art Papers asked Sarah Workneh, Director of Skowhegan Art Foundation to guest edit the magazine. She asked me, and a host of other contemporary African American and diverse artists to come up with some article ideas about post Afro-Futurism.
I wrote about my Antarctic Terra Nova project.
“Reality is not always probable, or likely…” Jorge Luis Borges
In a time when most people think about the sky as the limit, and of progress as a timeline pointing further and further towards the heavens, it’s a bit difficult to get people to look down beneath their feet to see what, perhaps, might be a different future. NY has one of the most iconic skylines in the world, and in an area as densely populated as Manhattan, finding open spaces is really about finding the hidden, invisible terrains that make up the fabric of the metropolis. Think of the idea as a kind of exercise in reverse deductive logic about the dimensions of the city that are removed from plain sight, and the rest falls into place. Continued…
