Review: DJ Spooky, Link City: Chicago

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DJ Spooky, “Link City: Chicago,” multimedia installation. Surrounded by six large screens depicting urban existence, a phrase in red font appears briefly and it demands my attention. It reads, “The city is visibly bursting with encoded meaning.” As my eyes travel from image to image more text intrudes, each a variation of the grand truism that emerges from Paul Miller’s “Link City: Chicago” installation. Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ
Spooky, is a busy man. He is a New York-based electronic musician, writer and conceptual artist who has collaborated with Yoko Ono and Amiri Baraka, written for ArtForum and The Source, and has exhibited in the Whitney Biennial. Miller can’t be filed easily, categorically speaking, and prefers to blur the lines, simply calling himself a “storyteller.” This story-telling ability is what prompted The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the Chicago History Museum to commission the artist to engender “Link City,” an examination of “the urban landscape as a legible text.” Miller implements the DJ’s skill of archival raiding and takes fragments of existing digital media to compose anew. In this manner the city becomes a record manipulated, cut up and reorganized. The installation consists of historical Chicago film footage collaged into a compelling video essay. We are handed pieces to a story and allowed to construct the narrative ourselves. (Karissa Lang) Through January 11 at Betty Rymer Gallery

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