Jace Clayton

Assistant Professor of Studio Arts; Director of Graduate Studies, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts

Academic Program Affiliation(s): Studio Arts

Biography: Jace Clayton is an artist and writer who is also known for his work as DJ /rupture. He is the author of Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2016) and is at work on his second book, for which he was awarded the Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant. He writes regularly on contemporary culture for ARTFORUM, and his essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, n+1, and Bidoun. His work has been exhibited at MassArt Art Museum; Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (as a commissioned artist); Lightbox Gallery, Harvard Art Museums; Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center; Queens Museum; Andy Warhol Museum; and internationally in Germany, United Arab Emirates, and Italy. He has performed in more than 40 countries, both solo and as director of performances such as The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner. Recent performances and compositions include the soundtrack for Riotsville, USA, director Sierra Pettengill (2022); composition, sound design, and performance for Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come, Baryshnikov Arts Center (2022); composer for Adam Pendleton’s Who Is Queen exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (2021), and collaborative concerns with Amazigh musician Hassan Wargui in Tunisia and Morocco (2019).

Professor Clayton, who previously taught or served as visiting critic at Columbia University, Yale School of Art, Bard’s MFA program, and Harvard University, among others, has also been music director or curator for projects including the 2020 Venice Biennale, Museum of Modern Art PS1’s summer series Warm Up, American Museum of Natural History, and Sonic Acts XI Festival Amsterdam. He also served as host and producer of Mudd Up!, a weekly radio show on the independent FM station WFMU. Selected discography includes the forthcoming Randall’s Island (Room40, CD); The Julius Eastman Memory Depot (New Amsterdam, CD); and as DJ/rupture, the CDs Uproot, Special Gunpowder, Minesweeper Suite, and Gold Teeth Thief. In addition to the Warhol grant, honors include an Art Writers Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature Fellowship, Creative Capital Performing Arts Grant; and University of Southern California Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship, among others.

BA, Harvard University. At Bard since 2023.
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