Mendi + Keith Obadike

Mendi + Keith Obadike are sound artists and composers. Their projects include a series of large-scale, public sound art works: »Blues Speaker (for James Baldwin)« at The New School and »Free/Phase« at the Chicago Cultural Center & Rebuild Foundation, among others. Their honors include a Rockefeller New Media Arts Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, among others. Their recent projects are »Anyanwu«, a public sound installation; »Book of Light«, a sound and light show commissioned by Carnegie Mellon University; »Lift«, a music/video meditation on the song »Lift Every Voice and Sing« known as the Black National Anthem; the overnight musical work, »Lull, a Sleep Temple«; and a music/video work entitled, »The Sun«. Keith received a B.A. in Art from North Carolina Central University and an M.F.A. in Sound Design from Yale University. He is a professor and Chair of The Department of Communication at William Paterson University. Mendi received a B.A. in English from Spelman College, Atlanta and a PhD in English from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute in New York. They are currently serving as the David Tudor Composers in Residence at Mills College in Oakland, California.