JJJJJerome Ellis: Loops of Retreat

In his album The Clearing (2021), the JJJJJerome Ellis imagines his block stutter to be a point of departure for examining the relationship between music, blackness, disabled speech, and time. The artist's stutter manifests as intervals of silence in his speech. He calls these intervals “clearings,” which shift from compositional tool to metaphor to disruptor of “conventional” time as the album unfolds. For this exhibition, the opening track from the album was presented as an immersive audio and video environment in SP2. Through musical and textual references alike, Ellis expanded on Harriet Jacobs’ concept of the “loophole of retreat,” exploring practices of refusal in Black speech and music. Ellis says of The Clearing: “I hope this album offers the listener some of what my stutter offers me: an opportunity to imagine new ways of being in time.”

The installation was presented in conjunction with a live improvisation by the artist on May 25th, 2023, produced with support from Dallas Contemporary, which reflected Ellis’ research into how themes explored in The Clearing come into contact with ecology. Drawing on materials collected for his book Aster of Ceremonies (September 2023), Ellis sensitively transformed archival material of so-called “runaway slave advertisements,” into an open-ended song for Black ancestors moving through 19th century Virginia. Reimagining these figures as plants in bloom, he sang for their safety, considering the relationship between ecology and practices of freedom.