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
Symbols of Life: A Review of Theaster Gates at the New Museum in New York City Gates unites his artistic beginnings as a ceramics sculptor with the impressive amount of objects that he has acquired as an archivist. Titled “Young Lords and Their Traces” it follows the lineage of his artistic and archival practice through multiple times and histories.
Sounding the City: How Experimental Sound Studio Reaches New Audiences Newcity spoke with Olivia Junell, development and outreach director of ESS, about accessibility of sound art, plans for future iterations of the festival and how the main mission of ESS has shifted to accommodate the needs of artists today.
