Artist in Residence has Public Performance for Beloit College

Vanessa Skildum, Staff Writer

On Thursday night, the Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. Endowed Artists-in-Residence JJJJJerome Ellis held a public performance in Eaton Chapel at 7:30 p.m. and was joined by Beloit College’s group MULTI. 

The Victor E. Ferrall, Jr. Endowed Artists-in-Residence Program was established in 1989 to honor Victor E. Ferrall, the ninth president of Beloit College. The program allows for the college to bring in distinguished artists either visual or performing to campus during which they perform, direct workshops, and more. 

“Incredible, unique, individual, genreless, loving, inviting, empowering, revealing, patient, euphoric, time altering, mind-blowing, and life-changing,” are all words Cullyn Murphy, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music and Director of MULTI, has heard students use about Ellis’ work. “A house for themselves and others. A comfort. An ongoing song for an ongoing album. Clothes they wear. A pillow and blanket for their brother. A gift to give,” and more were all things Murphy had observed Ellis using to describe their work. 

Ellis “is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American animal, artist, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice,” according to their website, jjjjjerome.com. Their album The Clearing was described as, “an astonishing, must-listen project” by The Guardian. They have two books out. One is the book for the album mentioned earlier and the other is titled Aster of Ceremonies: Poems.

One of the songs they performed was in Aster of Ceremonies: Poems specifically from part of the book called Benediction, Movement 2 (Octave). One of the core roots of the book “is an archive of newspaper notices that concern enslaved black people who have escaped from the people who were enslaving them,” said Ellis, “These documents are written by the people of power and carry a tremendous amount of violence. When I first encountered them I felt, especially when I would read the advertisements for enslaved folks who stuttered. I felt a desire to reach out and to form some kind of connection with these ancestors, these Black ancestors who stuttered.” The song was composed of words they saw in those advertisements. 

Ellis was joined by MULTI to perform a song they made together. MULTI is a “multi-arts ensemble that presents exploratory performance and installation projects. Students who identify with any creative practice (such as vocalists, instrumentalists, sound artists, poets, visual artists, multimedia artists, choreographers, programmers, etc.) share a collaborative environment in which they perform installations and pieces created together.” The group is made up of 8 students. The piece they performed was made with the idea of improvisation in mind, something Ellis admitted to finding scary.  

While Ellis was performing there was a screen set up on the side to showcase pages from his book. During the MULTI performance, some of the students took over the projector to showcase a painting and origami cranes that were being made at the same time as the song was being played. Ellis said, “It has truly been one of the highlights of my artistic life,” in reference to working with MULTI.