JJJJJerome Ellis

At The Kitchen at Westbeth, Ellis presents portions of their latest project Aster of Ceremonies (2022) in the form of a two-hour improvisational composition using spoken word, projected text, and live music. Aster of Ceremonies considers what rites we need now and how poetry, astir in the asters, can help them along. What is the relationship between fleeing and feeling? How can the voices of those who came before—and the stutters that leaven those voices—carry into our present moment, mingling with our own?

Combining piano, saxophone, electronics, and voice, Ellis performs excerpts from “Benediction,” a devotional song cycle attending to 18th and 19th century Black runaway slaves who stuttered. By weaving a chorus of voices past and present, Ellis counters the attack of “all masters of all vessels” and replaces it with a family of flowers. This lecture-performance is an ongoing attempt to, as the artist notes, in the words of critic Hortense Spillers, “hear [slavery’s] stutter more clearly.”

A double-sided poster edition will be produced with and printed by Leslie Diuguid of DuGood Press in conjunction with the program. Copies of the book will also be available for purchase. ASL interpretation, CART captioning, and Audio Description (AD) provided.

JJJJJerome Ellis: Aster of Ceremonies is organized by Angelique Rosales Salgado, Curatorial Assistant.

BIOS

JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American animal, artist, and person who stutters. Born in 1989 in Groton, Connecticut, USA the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house! Concepts that organize the artist’s practice include: unknowing, improvisation, inheritance, opacity, prayer, gap, contradiction, aporia, eternity, unpredictability, interruption, and silence. Ellis researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. The artist’s body of work includes: contemplative soundscapes using saxophone, flute, dulcimer, electronics, and vocals; scores for plays and podcasts; albums combining spoken word with ambient and jazz textures; theatrical explorations involving live music and storytelling; and music-video-poems that seek to transfigure archival documents.

Their debut album, The Clearing (2021), was called “an astonishing, must-listen project” (The Guardian). It was co-produced by NNA Tapes and The Poetry Project, and it was released with an accompanying book published by Wendy’s Subway. The artist has received a Fulbright Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Fellowship (2022), a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants to Artists Award (2022), a Creative Capital Grant (2022). The artist has received residencies at MacDowell (2019, 2022), Ucross (2021), Lincoln Center Theater (2019), ISSUE Project Room (2021), and La MaMa (2021). JJJJJerome’s solo and collaborative musical/performance work has been presented by Lincoln Center, The Poetry Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, WNYC, and ISSUE Project Room (New York); Venice Biennale 2023; Haus der Kunst (Munich); Rewire Festival (The Hague); Schauspielhaus Zürich; Chrysler Hall (Norfolk, Virginia); MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts); Arraymusic (Toronto); and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), among others. The artist’s visual work (video and photography) has been presented by Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), Juf (Madrid), Artspace New Haven (New Haven, Connecticut), and Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas). They have received commissions from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, The Shed, and REDCAT.