Ekene Ijeoma
Deconstructed Anthems is a performance and installation by the artist Ekene Ijeoma. At Day for Night 2017 a jazz trio performed inside a cube of two-way mirror, visible to the audience and half-reflected back on themselves, playing a version of The Star-Spangled Banner from which notes are removed by an algorithm. The rate of removal follows the rise of Black mass incarceration in the United States: as the data climbs, the anthem is hollowed out until its melody can no longer be held.
The work is described here as its maker frames it, as a piece about the relation between a national song and the people the nation has imprisoned, and no further interpretation is added. It is documented through NYLON's coverage of the edition and the surviving curatorial record; the archive holds no photograph or recording of the Houston performance.
