‘Rebirth of a Nation’ by DJ Spooky Remixes D.W. Griffith Classic
Conceptual artist, essayist, and musician Paul D. Miller—aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid—will present the local premiere of Rebirth of a Nation, a live, multimedia remix of D. W. Griffith’s controversial Civil War epic Birth of a Nation, on Friday, March 11 at 8 pm. Following the performance, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities, will moderate a discussion with the artist.
This event is sponsored by the OFA’s Learning From Performers program in association with Harvard Friends of Amnesty International with support of the Henderson Fund for Special Projects. Additional support has been provided by the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.Described by Miller as a “digital exorcism,” the presen-tation employs digitally produced music, film samples, and new footage projected on three large screens. Mixing scenes and still images from Griffith’s 1915 film—a landmark of cinema history that has been both praised for its pioneering technique and condemned for its depiction of racism and white supremacy—Rebirth of a Nation is, according to its creator, “a counter-narrative, one where the story implodes on itself, one where new stories arise out of the ashes of that explosion.” Miller premiered the work last year in Vienna, and has subsequently performed it at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, the Spoleto USA festival in Charleston, South Carolina, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and other venues worldwide.
Tickets for Rebirth of a Nation, which will be presented in Sanders Theatre, are $20, and $10 for Harvard students
(two per ID), available through the Harvard Box Office, 617.496.2222. Miller will also participate in a discussion with Harvard students exploring the process and techniques behind Rebirth’s creation.
One of the world’s most popular DJs, Miller is best known under the moniker of his self-constructed persona DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. He has recorded a large volume of music and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and composers, including Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Butch Morris, Kool Keith aka Doctor Octagon, Pierre Boulez, Killa Priest from Wu-Tang Clan, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, among many others. His work as a media artist has appeared in venues including the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennial for Architecture, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, the Kunsthalle in Vienna, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Miller’s written work has appeared in periodicals such as The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Rap Pages, and Paper Magazine. His first collection of essays, Rhythm Science, was published by MIT Press in April 2004, and was included in several year-end lists of the best books of 2004, including The Guardian (UK) and Publishers Weekly.
March will also offer the local premiere of Hell Meets Henry Halfway, an adaptation by British playwright Adriano Shaplin of Witold Gombrowicz’s Gothic novel Possessed, performed by members of Pig Iron Theatre Company. As this year’s Peter Ivers Visiting Artists, Pig Iron will also conduct a series of workshops (for Harvard undergraduates only) during a week-long residency March 13-20.
Presented by Learning From Performers in association with the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, the play—described by Liesl Schillinger of The New York Times as “absurd, unbalancing and exhilarating…a Tilt-a-Whirl of a show that leaves you dizzy and means to”—will be performed on Friday, March 18, at 7 pm and Saturday, March 19, at 2 and 7 pm in the Loeb Drama Center’s Experimental Theatre, 64 Brattle St. Free tickets are available through the Loeb box office, 617.547.8300.
Founded in 1995, the Philadelphia-based Pig Iron Theatre Company is dedicated to the creation of new performance works that defy easy categorization. Pig Iron has created 15 original productions, including Shut Eye, a collaboration with Joseph Chaikin, and has toured throughout the U.S. and to festivals and theaters in Europe and South America. In 2002, Pig Iron co-founders and Artistic Directors Quinn Bauriedel, Dan Rothenberg, and Dito van Reigersberg were recipients of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
One of the contemporary American theater’s most celebrated playwrights, Tony Kushner will visit Harvard for an informal discussion (open to Harvard students only) on Thursday, March 31, made possible with the support of the Viertel Theatre Fund and the Office of the President, Harvard University. Kushner is perhaps best known for Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, which was produced on Broadway in 1993 and received a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, and two Drama Desk Awards, among many other citations. Last year HBO television aired a film version directed by Mike Nichols. Kushner’s recent projects include the play Henry Box Brown or the Mirror of Slavery; two musical plays, St. Cecilia or The Power of Music and Caroline, or Change (the latter, with a score by Jeanine Tesori, was produced on Broadway in 2003-04); and Homebody/Kabul, which Boston Theater Works presents through March 19 at the Boston Center for the Arts.
Pianist/composer Hank Jones, a legendary improviser and one of the first rhythm players to take on the language of bebop, will be honored this spring in a residency presented by the Office for the Arts and the Harvard Jazz Bands, supported by the Richard Scheuer, Jr. Fund and the Office of the President, Harvard University. In addition to performing in a tribute concert with the Jazz Bands and special guest artist saxophonist/composer Joe Lovano on Sunday, April 10 at 7 pm in Sanders Theatre, Jones will participate in a discussion on his career with musical examples on Friday, April 8, at 3:30 pm in the Cabot House Living Room, 66 Linnaean St. (For more information about Hank Jones’s residency, see article on page 1.)
Poet Maxine Kumin ’46 will receive the 2005 Harvard Arts Medal during a ceremony that will also include a Learning From Performers-sponsored conversation on Friday, May 6, at 4 pm (see article, page 1). Co-sponsored by the Office of Governing Boards of Harvard College and moderated by Jorie Graham, Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric in the Department of English and American Literature and Language, this event will be held in the Thompson Room of the Barker Center, 12 Quincy St. Admission is free to the public (tickets or RSVPs are not required), though seating is limited.
Learning From Performers kicked off 2005 with a master class taught by flutist James Galway in Sanders Theatre on January 3, supported by the Donald and Amanda Martocchio Fund. Over 200 members of the Harvard community and the public observed Galway coach students Cleo Leung ’08, Bradley Baillet ’05, and Arielle Hansen ’07.
Other artists who have participated in the program this term include playwright/actor Charles Busch (Psycho Beach Party, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom), who taught a scene-study workshop and also delivered a lecture on his career on February 8, made possible with the support of the Viertel Theatre Fund and the Office of the President, Harvard University; Tony Award-winning actor/vocalist Faith Prince, Kayden Visiting Artist, who conducted a master class for student singers on March 1; and maestro Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, who conducted an open rehearsal with the undergraduate-led Bach Society Orchestra on March 2, made possible with the support of of the Donald and Amanda Martocchio Fund and the Office of the President, Harvard University.
Additional artists participating in this year’s Learning From Performers program are in the process of being confirmed as this issue of Arts Spectrum goes to press. For up-to-date information, visit www.fas.harvard.edu/ofa/programs/artists/ or contact Program Manager Thomas Lee, lee16@fas.harvard.edu, 617.495.8676.
