Ekene Ijeoma’s Deconstructed Anthems
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About the Program
Artist Ekene Ijeoma’s Deconstructed Anthems is an ongoing series of music performances and installations in which a self-playing piano and/or musicians deconstruct “The Star-Spangled Banner,” repeating it multiple times, removing notes at the rate of mass incarceration in The United States, and ending in silence. Deconstructed Anthems is presented as a player piano installed in The Arts Club’s gallery, performing multiple 45-minute data-driven deconstructions of a traditional arrangement of the national anthem by itself throughout the day and a live performance of a deconstruction of a jazz arrangement in collaboration with Chicago-based pianist and composer Alexis Lombre. Following Lombre’s performance, the player piano continues performing throughout Saturday.
Schedule
Friday
11 am–6 pm: Performances by the player piano in The Arts Club Gallery
6 pm: Performance by Pianist Alexis Lombre
Saturday
11 am–3 pm: Performances by the player piano in Gallery
1 pm: Conversation with Ekene Ijeoma and Alexandria Eregbu of Envisioning Justice, an initiative by Illinois Humanities.
About the Artist
Ekene Ijeoma is an artist and founder and director of the Poetic Justice group at MIT Media Lab. He creates artworks at the intersections of life experiences and data studies, poetic acts and analytic insights, and aesthetic quality and social efficacy. His artworks embody social issues and expose the systems affecting us as individuals. He engages with topics and mediums ranging from a website visualizing racial inequality in the design industry to a music performance/sound-reactive light installation sonifying mass incarceration.