Rebirth of a Nation

DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation is a film project based on a remix of D.W. Griffith’s infamous 1915 film Birth of a Nation. The original film was based on a novel and theater play by Thomas Dixon entitled The Clansman – essentially what Dj Spooky is doing is applying dj technique to cinema in a way that parallels, deconstructs and remixes the original. Thus Rebirth of a Nation DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation has been touring for several years and has drawn acclaim around the world. From the Herod Atticus Theater at the base of the Acropolis in Greece, to the London IMAX – Europe’s largest movie screen – Dj Spooky has presented the remix as an engagement with film, music, and contemporary art. He likes to think of it as “film as found object” in the same sense that artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, and David Hammons, amongst many others, have fostered creative investigations into the idea of found objects, cinema, and “appropriation art.”