Presented By: Penny W Stamps School of Art & Design
Performance: Masimba Hwati, “Jit Cipher Circle”
Performance: Masimba Hwati, “Jit Cipher Circle”
April 10, 5:30-6:30 pm
Duderstadt Center Atrium Space (near elevator shaft)
Masimba Hwati and Haleem “Stringz” Rasul with Hardcore Detroit & DJ Space Drifter
Jit Cipher circle is a dance intervention made up short of Detroit Jit , Hip-Hop battles and expressions. This will take place in and around a 6.5 feet radius circle drawn on the floor of the library. Detroit Jit is an under-documented dance style invented in the 70’s in Detroit by the McGhee brothers. This dance form is one of the most unique aspects of cultural heritage to come from the Motor City. It is however little known outside Detroit and is not as elaborately documented and archived as other parts of the history that center on the negative. The living bodies of current Jit dancers are among the few archives we have of this dance form. The dance is a fast-paced lower body movement and is an original Detroit dance style developed around the same time with B-Boying and break dancing from New York and also the Chicago dance style. Detroit Jit however did not spread much outside the city of Detroit. Today it remains a unique aspect of Detroit resistance culture and its slowly growing in recognition. It is one of the many ways that reveal the human body(in this particular case the African American) as repository and a dynamic living archive of stories and histories that exist in less glorious ways in text-bound confines. Presenting Jit in real time is a specific way to interrogate the texto-centric complex on which most Western libraries construct a hierarchy of knowledge(s). Most current Institutions of knowledge still struggle with a colonial ethnographic, script centered library model .This model is in danger of slowly fading into museum like insignificance. Using a particular type of a performing body to complement and challenge text is one way to ignite dialogue concerning the future of information presentation and the place of the somatic medium.”
This performance is presented as part of the exhibition Bookmarks: Speculating the Futures of the Book and Library.
April 10, 5:30-6:30 pm
Duderstadt Center Atrium Space (near elevator shaft)
Masimba Hwati and Haleem “Stringz” Rasul with Hardcore Detroit & DJ Space Drifter
Jit Cipher circle is a dance intervention made up short of Detroit Jit , Hip-Hop battles and expressions. This will take place in and around a 6.5 feet radius circle drawn on the floor of the library. Detroit Jit is an under-documented dance style invented in the 70’s in Detroit by the McGhee brothers. This dance form is one of the most unique aspects of cultural heritage to come from the Motor City. It is however little known outside Detroit and is not as elaborately documented and archived as other parts of the history that center on the negative. The living bodies of current Jit dancers are among the few archives we have of this dance form. The dance is a fast-paced lower body movement and is an original Detroit dance style developed around the same time with B-Boying and break dancing from New York and also the Chicago dance style. Detroit Jit however did not spread much outside the city of Detroit. Today it remains a unique aspect of Detroit resistance culture and its slowly growing in recognition. It is one of the many ways that reveal the human body(in this particular case the African American) as repository and a dynamic living archive of stories and histories that exist in less glorious ways in text-bound confines. Presenting Jit in real time is a specific way to interrogate the texto-centric complex on which most Western libraries construct a hierarchy of knowledge(s). Most current Institutions of knowledge still struggle with a colonial ethnographic, script centered library model .This model is in danger of slowly fading into museum like insignificance. Using a particular type of a performing body to complement and challenge text is one way to ignite dialogue concerning the future of information presentation and the place of the somatic medium.”
This performance is presented as part of the exhibition Bookmarks: Speculating the Futures of the Book and Library.
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