The next lecture in this year’s Chautauqua Lecture Series is a special event in conjunction with the EKU First-Year Writing Program. Manhattan-based hip-hop musician, artist and writer Jace Clayton will present “Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Digital Culture” on Thursday, Oct. 17 at 7:30 p.m. The presentation will take place in O’Donnell Hall of the Whitlock Building, and is free and open to the public.
The lecture, based on his book of the same name, will examine an interdisciplinary approach to focus on how sound, memory, and public space interact, with an emphasis on low-income communities and the global South.
Clayton enjoys an impressive and varied creative career. He has released several critically-acclaimed albums under the stage name DJ/rupture and has hosted a weekly radio show on WFMU for five years. He has collaborated with such accomplished artists as filmmakers Jem Cohen and Joshua Oppenheimer, poet Elizabeth Alexander, singer Norah Jones and guitarist Andy Moor (The Ex). His most recent projects include Sufi Plug-Ins, a free suite of music software-as-art, based on non-western conceptions of sound and alternative interfaces; Room 21, an evening-length composition for 20 musicians staged at the Barnes Foundation; and The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, a touring performance piece for grand pianos, electronics, and voice.
Clayton has also been an artist-in-residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Eyebeam Art + Technology Atelier, and a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism fellow. He has performed in over 30 countries and given artist talks at institutions such as universities and museums.
That impressive artistic career has led to an extraordinary academic career. In 2013, Clayton joined the Music/Sound faculty of Bard College’s MFA program. Since then, he has been named a 2013 Creative Capital Performing Arts grantee; a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature fellow; a Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill and Duke; and a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Art artists award.
This lecture is sponsored by the Office of Student Life, the First-Year Writing Program and the Honors Program.
For more information about the Chautauqua lecture series, visit www.chautauqua.eku.edu, or contact Chautauqua Lecture Coordinator Erik Liddellat erik.liddell@eku.edu.