Biography

As an artist, writer and DJ, Jace Clayton uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate how sound, memory and public space interact, with a focus on disenfranchised and marginalised communities and the Global South. A rigorous conceptual framework grounds his artistic production as it moves across areas as diverse as interactive sound installations, composition of choral works, and music software design.

Clayton’s projects include Sufi Plug Ins (2012–present), a free suite of music software-as-art; The Great Salt (2018), a solo exhibition at Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, US; and The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner (2011), a performance piece. As DJ/Rupture, he has released several critically acclaimed albums and performed in over three dozen countries, both as a solo artist and as director of large ensemble performances.

He has written the book Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), and he also gives frequent talks and lectures at a number of cultural institutions in the US and Europe.

Clayton is a member of the Music/Sound faculty in Bard College’s MFA programme (2013–present) and served as the Duke University/University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor (2017–2018). He has also been a New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature fellow (2014), a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Art artist’s award (2014) and a Creative Capital Performing Arts grantee (2013). He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University (1997).

Born in 1975 in Framingham, US, he lives and works in New York.

SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 14

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