The Third Part of the Third Measure, 2017
Two-screen video installation, 43 minutes, colour, sound, stereo, 16:9 × 2
The Third Part of the Third Measure is an audiovisual composition that creates an encounter with the militant minimalism of African American composer, pianist and vocalist Julius Eastman (1940–1990). Conceived as “an experience of watching in the key of listening,” the work invokes political feelings of defiance and the collective practice of movement-building that participates in global struggles against neoreactionary authoritarianism.
The work takes its title from Eastman’s description of his compositional principle of organic music: “The third part of any part, so the third measure or the third section, the third part, has to contain all of the information of the first two parts and then go on from there.”
At Northwestern University in January 1980, Eastman introduced a programme that included Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger and Gay Guerrilla. His address as a thoughtform moves through the analytical, provocative and uncompromising modes of thinking, elaborating the terms through which he understood these compositions and the conditions of their naming. “Either I glorify them or they glorify me.”
The Third Part of the Third Measure returns to this encounter through speech, performance and the accumulating intensities of Eastman’s music. Across two screens, the work invites an attention to what Eastman described as “full of honor, integrity, and boundless courage.”
Commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and Sharjah Biennial 13.