DJ Spooky

This was a great gig-performance, very thought provoking. The only down fall was there was a lot of reading involved for a dyslexic kid, as he used and old silent film about American racial identity which he mixed up the score in with hip hop, blues and string arraignments but i managed to keep up. I thought of instead of writing a review, Ill past the blurb about the show. another thing Dj spooky has the longest fingers I have ever seen!

Renowned New York-based musician, conceptual artist and writer, Paul D Miller is otherwise known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. He is bringing his latest full-scale, multimedia performance project Rebirth of a Nation, which has been touring to great acclaim globally, to the Festival for two exclusive performances.

At the forefront of using technology to remix art and culture, the 35-year-old has taken his talents for remixing sound and music and applied them to the medium of film. Taking D W Griffith's infamous 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, he remixes it, fusing new and found footage (for example, graceful images of dancers from the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance company which contrast beautifully with the rigid body language of G's actors), with an original soundtrack of strings, hip-hop and the blues of Robert Johnson. The remixing of audio and footage is live, Miller controls the electronic , music and video , turntable and the visual remix is projected onto three giant screens.

“The whole idea is to break the film apart … Griffith was one of the masters of editing. So I was re-editing his edit,” says DJ Spooky. “The fun part about it is, it's live. The scary part is if the computer crashes.”

Carla van Zon, the Festival's Artistic Director, says: “I met Paul in New York City last month. His multimedia show really makes you question if we ever really do learn from history or if it in fact history repeats itself.”

Griffith's film was groundbreaking in the early days of cinema. His visionary use of editing - cutting between scenes to show parallel action - use of close-ups and night cinematography earned him his place in history. Griffith is hailed as Hollywood's first great artistic director, whose pioneering filmmaking spawned a new art form.
However, the film based on the 1905 novel The Clansman is unabashedly racist. It portrayed Ku Klux Klansmen as heroes, and blacks as violent and ruthless villains in the post-Civil War South. Until the mid ‘60s, the epic film was used as a propaganda film for the KKK whose national membership peaked in 1920 to an estimated 4.5 million. The film did have a huge backlash with riots erupting outside venues screening the film, injunctions were sought and it was ultimately banned in eight states.

“The film changed American racial identity. All of a sudden, it is saying, ‘Look, this is what black people are like.' It set the whole tone,” says DJ Spooky.

In Rebirth of a Nation, Spooky uses the film as a springboard to create new social commentary, revealing how the original film's symbols and myths endure today.

“… the paradox of his [Griffith's] cultural stance versus the technical expertise that he brought to film is still mirrored in Hollywood to this day,” says DJ Spooky.
Further information on Paul D Miller
Musically, DJ Spooky has recorded eight albums (his latest is called Death of Drums) and has collaborated with a wide range of musicians and composers, including Yoko Ono, Pierre Boulez, Killa Priest from Wu-Tang Clan and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. By no means confined to the club scene, Miller has performed at music festivals globally and has even performed under the Louvre's glass pyramid and a Versace fashion show in Milan. He also composed and recorded the music score for the Cannes and Sundance Award winning film Slam, starring critically acclaimed poet Saul Williams.

As a media artist, his installations have appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture (year 2000); the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries.

DJ Spooky is also a widely published writer whose articles have appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Paper Magazine and in 2004 he released his first book, Rhythm Science, published by MIT Press, which is a collection of selected essays. He also started http://www.21cmagazine.com. He has given numerous talks at prominent universities and teaches music mediated art at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he co-teaches an Intensive Summer Seminar.

In two startling performances of Rebirth of a Nation, sponsored by Clemenger BBDO, DJ Spooky will push the boundaries of content and technique, reminding audiences that those who forget the past are doomed to reboot it.