JJJJJerome Ellis: Impediment Is Information
Saturday, June 19th at 8pm EST, composer, poet, and performer JJJJJerome Ellis presents Impediment is Information, his second commissioned work as a 2021 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence.
In his second presentation, Impediment is Information, JJJJJerome Ellis continues to use music, poetry, and video to contemplate intersections between blackness and disability. This video work centers on an 18th century newspaper advertisement for the recapture of a fugitive slave with "an impediment in his speech." A handheld camera captures blurry conifers; a saxophone prays to a mountain. By rearranging the words of the advertisement to create lines of poetry, Ellis seeks new meanings and sites of resistance in the archive. The work will premiere on Juneteenth, a day that recognizes the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. Ellis notes: "In creating this work for the occasion of Juneteenth, I want to celebrate blk freedom practices. I think these practices divinely exceed official proclamations, emancipatory and otherwise." Captions will be provided.
JJJJJerome Ellis is a composer, poet, and performer. His current practice explores blackness, music, and disabled speech as forces of refusal and healing. JJJJJerome’s work has been heard at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Poetry Project, Sotheby’s, Soho Rep, and on This American Life. He’s a 2019 MacDowell Fellow, a writer in residence at Lincoln Center Theater, and a 2015 Fulbright Fellow. JJJJJerome collaborates with James Harrison Monaco as James & Jerome (or Jerome & James). Their recent work explores themes of border crossing and translation through music-driven narratives. They have received commissions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ars Nova.
