The Otolith Group, The Third Part of the Third Measure
The Otolith Group, The Third Part of the Third Measure (film still), 2017.
Eyebeam Assembly
The Otolith Group, The Third Part of the Third Measure (43 minutes, 2017)
Following the screening, The Otolith Group will be in conversation with Eyebeam alum Jace Clayton. In 2013, Clayton released The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, an open-ended re-interpretation of Eastman’s work. Clayton often records and performs as DJ /rupture.
Tuesday, June 5th 6:30-8:30pm
CART services will be available
In the two-part NYC premiere with e-flux, The Otolith Group will be debuting The Third Part of the Third Measure a new audiovisual composition commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and Sharjah Biennial 13, which creates an encounter with the militant minimalism of avant-garde composer, pianist, and vocalist Julius Eastman. The Third Part of the Third Measure focuses on what The Otolith Group describe as “an experience of watching in the key of listening,” invoking political feelings of defiance and the collective practice of movement-building that participates in the global struggles against neoreactionary authoritarianism. The Third Part of the Third Measure invites viewers to attend to exemplary ecstatic aesthetics of black radicalism that Eastman himself once described as “full of honor, integrity, and boundless courage.”
Following the screening The Otolith Group will be in conversation with Jace Clayton, who released an album, The Julius Eastman Memory Depot, an open-ended reinterpretation of Eastman’s work done by Clayton also known as DJ Rupture.
The Otolith Group is an award-winning collaboration whose practice spans the moving image, audio, performance, installation, and research. Founded in 2002 by the artists and theorists Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, the group engages with the cultural and political legacies and potentialities of non-aligned movements, new media, black studies, Afrofuturism, and Indofuturism while thinking speculatively with science fictions of the present. Their methodologies incorporate post-lens-based essayistic aesthetics that explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions, and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human, and the anti-human. Expanding on the work of The Otolith Group is the public platform The Otolith Collective, whose work spans programming, exhibition-making, artists’ writing, workshops, publication, and teaching aimed at developing close readings of image and sound in contemporary society. Approaching curation as an artistic practice of building intergenerational and cross-cultural platforms, the collective has been influential in critically engaging the works of Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Anand Patwardhan, Etel Adnan, Black Audio Film Collective, Sue Clayton, Mani Kaul, Peter Watkins, and Chimurenga in the UK, US, Europe, and Lebanon. The work of The Otolith Group and Collective has been presented widely, most recently at the Berlinale 13th Forum Expanded; Khiasma, Paris; The Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven; Sharjah Biennial 13; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and Haus Der Kulturen de Welt, Berlin. Their exhibition A Lost Future: The Otolith Group will be on view in New York at The Rubin Museum of Art, June 1–September 17, 2018.
Jace Clayton is an artist and writer based in Manhattan, also known for his work as DJ /rupture. Clayton uses an interdisciplinary approach to focus on how sound, memory, and public space interact, with an emphasis on low-income communities and the global South. His book Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture was published in 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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.
As DJ /rupture, he has released several critically acclaimed albums and hosted a weekly radio show on WFMU for five years. Clayton’s collaborators include filmmakers Jem Cohen, Joshua Oppenheimer, poet Elizabeth Alexander, singer Norah Jones, and guitarist Andy Moor (The Ex).
Clayton is the UNC-CH/Duke Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor. He is a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature fellow, a 2013 Creative Capital Performing Arts grantee, and recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Art artists award. He joined the Music/Sound faculty of Bard College’s MFA program in 2013. Clayton has been an artist-in-residence with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Eyebeam Art + Technology Atelier, and a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism fellow. Clayton has performed in over three dozen countries, and has given artist talks at a number of museums, universities, and other institutions.
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Accessibility: Eyebeam in an ADA accessible space. This event will also have CART translation services. Find out more about our accessibility here.
