DJ Spooky to Present 'Rebirth of a Nation' at next Wooster Forum Event

DJ Spooky

WOOSTER, Ohio - DJ Spooky, a.k.a. "That Subliminal Kid," will present "Rebirth of a Nation," an audio/visual remix of D.W. Griffith's 1915 pro-segregation movie, "The Birth of a Nation," at the next Wooster Forum event on Thursday, Sept. 28, at The College of Wooster. The performance, which is free and open to the public, will be held in McGaw Chapel (340 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Born Paul Miller, DJ Spooky is an internationally acclaimed performance artist specializing in "illbient," a hybrid of hip-hop, jazz, techno, and ambient music. An offshoot of the intelligent dance music movement and similar in style but different in theme from ambient music, "illbient" uses jarring noises and dark, unsettling music samples to create controlled chaos. Performing all over the world since 1998, DJ Spooky is also a professor of music-mediated art at the European Graduate School in Switzerland and a writer in New York City.

Borrowing his stage name from a character in a William S. Burroughs novel, DJ Spooky's performance was originally commissioned for New York City's Lincoln Center Festival and has since been performed at festivals ranging from the Hellenic Festival in Athens' Acropolis to The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

D.W. Griffith was known as "the man who invented Hollywood." In a controversial vote, The American Film Institute named his 1915 silent film 44th among the Top 100 American Films. While it was a propaganda piece used to legitimize segregation and increase Ku Klux Klan recruitment, "Birth of a Nation" was also a technical masterpiece, pioneering techniques that have become standard in modern filmmaking. The use of outdoor/natural landscapes as backgrounds, moving or "panning" camera tracking shots, parallel action and editing in a sequence, and total-screen close-ups are a few of the many film techniques pioneered by Griffith in the film.

DJ Spooky will sign copies of his book at a reception immediately following the event in Freedlander Lobby. Copies of the book, Rhythm Science, as well as other CDs will be available for purchase at the reception from The College of Wooster's Florence O. Wilson Bookstore.

The Wooster Forum provides a resource for the academic and intellectual life at The College of Wooster and in the community at large by offering an opportunity for meaningful dialogue among all participants. This year's theme is "Piety and Heresy: Conforming to and Transcending One's Culture." The next Forum event will be Tuesday, Oct. 10, when Michael Ruse, The Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, addresses the question, "Can Darwinians Also Be Christians?" For additional information about the Wooster Forum, call 330-263-2132.