“A Mirror Permutation of the Nation”

Technology and the Cultural Politics of Race in DJ Spooky’s Re-birth of a Nation

Abstract

On its 100th anniversary, D.W. Griffith’s silent drama The Birth of Nation (1915) is still attracting critical attention, both as a masterpiece of cinematic technique and as an infamous racially biased account of the birth of US society. This article presents a critical reading of The Birth of Nation through its re-take performed by the African-American DJ and conceptual artist Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky between 2004 and 2008 in his audio- video practice Re-birth of Nation. Drawing from Cultural Studies and Media Theory, this article investigates the intersection between technique, practices of visual memorialization and racialization, and the politics of perception in both artworks. In the first part of the article, I present a critical analysis of The Birth of a Nation as a ‘hegemonic narration’, in which avant-garde aesthetical innovation is put at the service of a racialized account of history. In the second part of the article, I turn my attention to Re-birth of a Nation, by considering how experimental practices and the techniques of DJ culture may help transform ‘History’ (official history) into a series of (unauthorised) histories.