DJ Spooky installation
at Design Indaba 2008

Design Indaba is pleased to announce the presentation of the New York Is Now music-visual installation by Paul D Miller (DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid) at Michaelis School of Fine Art. Forming part of Design Indaba’s South African Design Week, this free event offers unique entry into the world of DJ Spooky.

Selected for the African Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale, New York is Now is a response to the conditions that art engages with in the 21st-century’s fast-paced and networked global culture. Using archival footage and early avant-garde cinema mixed with his own music, New York Is Now is an exploration of memory through a multimedia digital opera about a city made of improvisations, disjunctions, overlapping histories and multiple rhythms.

“It kind of reverse-engineers some of the issues that started Surrealism – mainly how Europe appropriated many of the themes of what was going on in Africa, Asia and Latin America. I wanted to create a portrait of New York as a series of fictions and video poems, but crafted with Africa in mind,” DJ Spooky told James Webb in the latest Design Indaba magazine.

Miller has long been at home in the global digital culture scene – as an artist, musician, and writer. His work has focused on urban culture as a globally interconnected platform of digital media. Most recently, Miller released Creation Rebel (2007), which is a follow-up remix of the previous year’s critically acclaimed double disk archive of Jamaican music from Trojan Records – In Fine Style: DJ Spooky presents 50 000 Volts of Trojan Records. Linking contemporary music production with traditional techniques forged by musicians such as King Tubby and U-Roy, the album has been lauded for showing that hip-hop was originally born in Jamaica, not New York.

Miller agreed: “I’m looking forward to presenting my work at the foot of Africa. Cape Town has a hotbed of creatives that I’m sure will appreciate my work.”

Exhibition from February 24 to March 10, 2008
Gallery opening times: 10 to 6pm Monday to Saturday

Michaelis School of Fine Art
University of Cape Town
32 to 37 Orange Street
Gardens, Cape Town

Notes to Editor

For more info contact Ammo at Design Indaba on
Tel: 021 465 9969 or 078 904 1182

Websites:
www.michaelis.uct.ac.za
www.designindaba.com

For more info on DJ Spooky:
www.myspace.com/djspooky
www.djspooky.com

Paul D Miller &ndash best known by his stage name DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid &ndash is a conceptual artist, writer and musician working in New York. A formative progenitor of the DJ-as-artist concept, he uses digitally created music and multimedia to create a form of post-modern sculpture in the tradition of composers such as John Cage and Afrika Bambaata. He has collaborated with a wide variety of pre-eminent musicians and composers ranging from Iannis Xenakis, Lee Perry, Saul Williams and Killa Priest of Wu-Tang Clan to Yoko Ono, Public Enemy and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth.

His written work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Source, Artforum, Raygun, Rap Pages, Paper Magazine, and a host of other periodicals. Miller’s first collection of essays, Rhythm Science, was published by MIT Press in April 2004, and was included in several year-end lists of the best books of 2004, including the Guardian (UK) and Publishers Weekly. In 2005 he released Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on sound art and multimedia by contemporary cultural theorists.

Miller’s work as a media artist has appeared in a wide variety of contexts such as the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennial for Architecture, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne in Germany, Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and many other museums and galleries. His 2004 solo show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, Path Is Prologue, echoed his live music/theater/film performance DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation, which ran simultaneously at the Lincoln Centre Festival after premieres in Vienna and at Spoleto USA in Charleston, SC, and continues to tour globally.

DESIGN INDABA 2008
Design Indaba will fortify as the South African Design Week in 2008, with the expo and conference programme running over a week from Saturday 23 February to Friday 29 February 2008.

DESIGN INDABA EXPO
For the fifth time, the Design Indaba Expo will offer a curated commercial platform for South African designers to showcase local goods and services to the global market. Based on the success of the 2007 event, which played host to more than 20 000 visitors, the 2008 event has been extended for an extra day, running from Saturday 23 to Tuesday 26 February, 2008. The Expo will also be even bigger than before with more floor space, a host of new exhibitors and a brand-new dedicated fashion arena with day-long shows and movie festivals.

DESIGN INDABA CONFERENCE
The Design Indaba Conference will run from Wednesday 27 February to Friday 29 February, 2008. Judged the best conference in the world by EIBTM in Barcelona, the conference has played host to luminaries from all over the world since 1995 and been sold out for the past three years.

SPECIALIST INDABAS
Due to demand from delegates and the public to attend the Specialist Indabas, these will run parallel to the Expo on Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 February 2008. These two-hour architecture, fashion and jewellery events feature local and international designers debating the contribution of these creative sectors to the South African economy. Bookings for Specialist Indabas open at Computicket on 14 January 2008.

YOUNG DESIGNERS SIMULCAST
As part of Design Indaba’s ongoing commitment to design education, Design Indaba 2008 will again offer a Young Designers Simulcast, catering to young designers and students under the age of 25. This is a live broadcast from the main plenary session to a second auditorium. Students and young designers will be able to access speakers in short, informal chat sessions during and at the end of the day.

DESIGN INDABA JOURNALISM WORKSHOP
For the first time, Design Indaba is presenting the Design Indaba Journalism Workshop in conjunction with the Design Indaba Expo taking place from February 23 to 26, 2008. New York design critic and assistant professor at Parsons, Susan Yelavich will lead the workshop with the assistance of an international team of acclaimed editors, journalists and writers. The cost is R1500 per person. To apply for participation, please contact Deborah Weber.

For more detailed information about the above activities taking place, and for related high-resolution images, please contact:

Deborah Weber
E-mail: deborah@interactiveafrica.com

Nadine Botha
E-mail: nadine@interactiveafrica.com

Tel: (021) 465 9966
Website: www.designindabaexpo.com