DJ Spooky remixes history

To understand Paul D. Miller's interest in a controversial 90-year-old film, one needs to look back to a controversial election in 2000.

Or, as Miller prefers to call the bruising presidential campaign between then Texas governor George W. Bush and Senator Al Gore, ''the sort-of election, or whatever." During the tense weeks between Election Day 2000 and the US Supreme Court decision that ultimately determined the outcome, the news blared reports about recounts, pregnant chads, and disenfranchised voters.

Then it was all over. Bush was president, and all the hoopla and all the talk about revolution deflated quicker than a convention balloon. Yet the whole protracted ordeal got Miller, also known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, thinking about how easy it is to hoodwink the people.

''It really blew my mind in terms of how media and propaganda were at the core of the whole situation, and I was stunned that the population didn't have the psychological tools to decode the propaganda," says Miller during a telephone interview from his New York apartment. ''People assumed if they saw it on the news, it was real, and it was correct. But what we've seen over the past few years is a whole swaying of media, news, and information for all sorts of purposes -- the war, weapons of mass destruction, and so on."

This move toward a ''propaganda mentality" left Miller ''stunned and fascinated," he says. It also recalled for Miller what he considers a pioneering work of media manipulation -- director D.W. Griffith's seminal ''The Birth of a Nation."

Now Miller has reimagined the film, equally revered as a masterpiece and reviled as racist, in his own multimedia work ''Rebirth of a Nation," which has its local premiere Friday at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre.

Combining footage from the original film with his own beats and rhythms mixed live during the performance, Miller says his ''digital exorcism" offers another way of viewing history, while ''telling multiple stories."

''This is the remix," Miller jokes. ''As an artist, I'm fascinated when people cease to look for new information and accept what they see as the real thing. Art is about getting people to think another way is possible."

Miller's 75-minute production, sponsored by the office for the arts at Harvard, will be followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Henry Louis Gates, chair of Harvard's department of African and African American Studies.

In the early 1990s, Miller first saw ''Birth of a Nation," based on the Thomas Dixon novel ''The Clansman," when he was a student at Bowdoin College. For all its technical finesse, the film so vilified blacks and glorified the Ku Klux Klan that enrollment in the terrorist organization increased after its initial run.

''I knew it was a legendary piece of work, but I couldn't believe it had been taken seriously as a statement," says Miller, who earned degrees in philosophy and French literature. ''The characters seemed really flat and stock, and I couldn't believe this was what they viewed as African-American behavior and culture."

Harvard senior Tina Rivers had never seen the Griffith film. But, as a DJ Spooky fan, she was attracted by his name on a flier she saw in New York last summer for a performance of ''Rebirth of a Nation" at Lincoln Center. By the end, she was so compelled by what she witnessed, she immediately knew she wanted this production brought to her university.

''This isn't just about how effective it may or may not be at critiquing the racism in the film," she said. ''The point is that these objects which are very controversial need to be considered and treated and revisited. The appropriate response to a film like this is not to not watch it, or to censor it, but rather to deal with it as imaginatively and as creatively as possible to make it your own."

Still, if some believe a racist film deconstructed by a young African-American associated with hip-hop culture might amount to little more than a shrill rant, Rivers says, that's not the case.

''It's not a diatribe, and that probably has a lot to do with his methodology," says Rivers, who is also co-coordinator of Harvard Friends of Amnesty International, the event's cosponsor.

''He's on the stage, right below the images, but he doesn't speak or enter into it. The performance isn't about him spouting his own ideology; his ideology comes through images and sound. It's more of a subjective experience that's fluid and open to interpretation."

For some, making a sociological and intellectual link between Griffith's silent film and the cultural-political machinations of present-day America might seem too extreme. But Miller, 34, sees the unholy marriage of these different eras through similar campaigns of media manipulation.

''This is more a matter of connecting the dots between various issues of mismanaged information, and how that becomes a defining condition for how people think," he says. ''When people watch 'Rebirth,' they are seeing cliched visions, things that later became advertising, later became subtle psychological metaphors for what people thought about African-American behavior, and also how people thought women or powerful figures acted."

Not surprisingly, Miller does not endorse occasional efforts to ban screenings of ''The Birth of a Nation."

''Personally, I think when you repress history, it becomes far more powerful," he says. ''What I've done with this project is much more in the form of how much we need to explore history so it doesn't repeat itself. I know that sounds straight-ahead, but you'd be stunned by what can be pulled off if people don't have a context. It's better to see the film, understand it, and be able to say, 'That was then, this is now, let's move on.' "