JAMIRE WILLIAMS: SCATTERED TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
Opening Performance: Saturday, Oct. 17 (7pm) - $10 / Free for Aurora members
Installation on view: Tuesday - Thursday, Oct. 20 – 22 (3-7pm)
Multidisciplinary artist Jamire Williams presents a new, three‑channel video installation and a live performance that activates and interacts with it. The inaugural commission in Aurora’s Ghost Notes program, Williams’ Scattered To The Ends of The Earth reassembles fragments of archival film footage into a meditative inquiry of searching, memory, and the pursuit of eternity. The premiere event features a live performance in which Williams, collaborator Tyler Swanner, and others will respond in real time to the shifting projected imagery of the piece with drums, voice, synthesizers, and samples, transforming Aurora’s space and creating an immersive experience for attendees. Following this event, the video installation will be on view at Aurora Tuesday-Thursday, Sept. 22-24 (3-7pm).
About the Work:
Scattered To The Ends of The Earth is a three‑channel video installation that reassembles fragments of archival film footage into a meditative inquiry on searching, memory, and the pursuit of a map to eternity. Through looping projections, the work creates a spatial narrative in which images drift, fracture, and recombine, echoing the dispersed nature of historical memory and spiritual longing. Each channel offers a distinct visual thread: movement and migration, reverence and interiority, and physical possibility. Together, they form an immersive environment that invites viewers to navigate the installation as active participants, piecing together meaning through proximity and intuition. By engaging in archival excavation as both method and metaphor, the work proposes that eternity exists not as a singular destination but as a constellation of scattered moments awaiting rediscovery.
About the Artist:
Jamire Williams is a multidisciplinary artist working in the realms of music performance, composition, assemblage, and conceptual art. He has collaborated with such luminaries as Herbie Hancock, Solange Knowles, Jason Moran, Blood Orange, Robert Glasper, Moses Sumney, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Kenny Garrett, Kahlil Joseph, Jamal Cyrus, Kara Walker, Christian aTunde Adjuah, Kris Bowers, and Carlos Niño. As a musician and composer, Williams has been featured on over 30 recordings across the avant-garde, jazz, and indie music genres, as well as releasing several solo albums including the critically acclaimed But Only After You Have Suffered (2021). As a visual artist, he has presented work at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Montreal Contemporary Arts Museum, Stony Island Arts Bank (Chicago), Project Row Houses (Houston), and elsewhere. He has had recent residencies at Lawndale Art & Performance Center and Ballroom Marfa.
About Ghost Notes:
Organized and created by Curator Peter Lucas, Ghost Notes is a new Aurora initiative inviting regional artists of various disciplines and backgrounds to engage with archival media and create new works through the selection and creative manipulation of found audiovisual materials. The title Ghost Notes refers both to the musical term for propulsive yet nearly imperceptible in-between rhythms and to the metaphor of archival media as sensory visions, visitations, and messages from the past. The program proposes and facilitates artists’ connections and creative conversations with these remnant “ghost” reflections across time, as it encourages an embrace of audiovisual collage across art disciplines.
Scattered To The Ends Of The Earth is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, and by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.