Internationally renowned conceptual artist Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid brings his much acclaimed performance, Rebirth of a Nation, to its own birthing place, Sanders Theatre, today at 8 p.m.

Invited by Harvard Friends of Amnesty International (HFAI), and spearheaded by the efforts of Tina H. Rivers ’05 and the Office For the Arts at Harvard (OFA), Miller will perform this self-described “digital exorcism” in its Boston premiere for HFAI’s first annual “Jamnesty,” an event to raise awareness for the organization.

Miller’s performance presents an alternative perspective on D.W. Griffith’s controversial, Ku Klux Klan-praising 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. Projecting spliced images of digitally enhanced footage from Griffith’s film with new clips onto three big screens and mixing it live with blues and hip-hop music, Miller remixes, revisits, and condenses the silent three-hour epic into a 75-minute multimedia experience, in a process that subverts traditional musical accompaniment to silent films.

From the polemical 2000 election that sparked the idea of the remix to the subsequent national tour, Rebirth has taken a long journey to return to Harvard, since much of the initial research for the film was done at the on-campus Harvard Film Archive. That it’s appearing here at all is a testament to the allure of Miller’s endeavor, equal parts academic critique and sonic psychedelia, and to the energetic response it’s earning from critics and audiences throughout the country.

THE BIRTH OF ‘REBIRTH’

While The Birth of a Nation is truly a groundbreaking movie for its cinematographic technique (especially in its revolutionary use of parallel editing and dramatic pacing), the film is better known for its overt glorification of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its degrading portrayal of blacks. Its re-interpretive historical plot paints the fall of antebellum Southern culture as a disgraceful tragedy perpetuated by lazy blacks’ conniving and power-hungry “mulattos” and their misguided or equally opportunistic Northern sympathizers.

A typical scene intercuts blacks fermenting restless mob violence against a frontier family, a biracial servant trying to rape his former mistress, and the Klu Klux Klan heroically riding to the rescue, clearly indicating the necessity of white racial supremacy.

In short, Griffith’s blacks are ruthless, uncouth, and almost certainly deserving of a good lynching. The Birth of a Nation praises the actions of the KKK and casts Klan members as heroes who are not only justified in their horrific deeds, but morally obligated to forcibly “defend” the white elite from the blacks.

Given the red-in-the-face visceral fury that the original film has incited since its release (see sidebar), Miller’s first reaction upon viewing The Birth of a Nation was surprising. At the time, he was a philosophy/French literature major studying at Bowdoin College, a D.C. expat fed on hardcore punk groups like Bad Brains and a style of ’70s horn-funk called “go-go.”

With a musical and artistic background distinctive for its sincerity, it’s easy to imagine Miller’s misgivings about the extravagant hysterics of Griffith’s film. Indeed, his initial response was “a wide sense of amusement. It was very difficult to take seriously. It was kind of overblown.”

Miller was first inspired to remix The Birth of a Nation several years later, after the controversial 2000 presidential election. He noticed that the red and blue states were split along lines, much in the way the Union and Confederate states divided during the Civil War.

The hotly contested outcome of the 2000 election (or in his words, “nonelection”) rested on the results of the Florida vote, but the validity of that state’s election was questioned, partly due to the alleged disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Miller is less unsure of the alleged fraud, describing it as “widely documented” and drawing a connection between the current underhanded tactics of party politics and the events in The Birth of a Nation.

“Griffith’s film also shows a deeply flawed election,” says Miller. “I just think of the film as a metaphor about these issues.”

But the election parallels are just one of many links from the present to the past that Miller plays up during each of his performances. Miller focuses on and exposes Griffith’s wildly inaccurate and offensive portrayal of blacks and women in The Birth of a Nation. As each show is remixed live, each performance is unique, and on any given night, he might emphasize one of several themes: the stereotyping of women and African-Americans, the disenfranchisement of black voters, or the film’s graphic violence.

“The film was something to set a tone, about how to portray all sorts of behavior in America,” Miller expounds. “What I’m thinking, you are confronted with people who still hold cliché ideas of women and people of color. The remix foregrounds these kinds of issues.”