Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Image: Derek Schultz
“We don't need to talk about music,” Genesis Breyer P-Orridge said seated on stage below swirling vivid projections of thee pyschick cross before a reverently hushed audience. S/he continued, “Transexuality is the key to the destruction of democracy.” It was the final hour of Between 0 and 1: Remixing Gender, Technology, and Music presented over three consecutive Sundays in February at MoMA PS1. In addition to the grand m-other of industrial music, weekly headliners were house music legend Honey Dijon, and DJ and interdisciplinary experimenter Terre Thaemlitz aka K-S.H.E. aka DJ Sprinkles.
This was a year ago- I wrote this to be published somewhere and it fell through, you know how that happens. So here it is now!!
My major takeaways are:
1. House music originated by and for predominately queer folks and people of color and it is currently colonized by white European cis-men (something they are wont to do.) And this sucks, of course, but the global rise of DJ culture has elevated a lot of people to fame who truly deserve it, like Honey. The thing to do now is to never forget from where this music came. It is those in power who determine how history is remembered, and it is the responsibility of these white house-colonizers to know and uphold the truth of their legacy.
2. Pessimism is the only answer to a question of capitalism, religion, gender, and the music industry. And, pessimism can only ever be a shitty answer because it inadvertently reproduces the question being asked by being any kind of answer at all.
3. Men are the cause of, and their elimination may be the solution to, all of life's problems. It is the culture of toxic masculinity that causes and reproduces our oppressive patriarchal capitalist situation that we in the U.S. are experiencing in a newly fucked way. We are on some kind of edge, and we've been here before. This moment is either going to teeter our culture into a radical new social and political revolution or plummet us back in time destroying in a rush all the liberties fought for by the civil rights movement.
In short, I had a great time. Following is a run-down of the program.
This was a year ago- I wrote this to be published somewhere and it fell through, you know how that happens. So here it is now!!
My major takeaways are:
1. House music originated by and for predominately queer folks and people of color and it is currently colonized by white European cis-men (something they are wont to do.) And this sucks, of course, but the global rise of DJ culture has elevated a lot of people to fame who truly deserve it, like Honey. The thing to do now is to never forget from where this music came. It is those in power who determine how history is remembered, and it is the responsibility of these white house-colonizers to know and uphold the truth of their legacy.
2. Pessimism is the only answer to a question of capitalism, religion, gender, and the music industry. And, pessimism can only ever be a shitty answer because it inadvertently reproduces the question being asked by being any kind of answer at all.
3. Men are the cause of, and their elimination may be the solution to, all of life's problems. It is the culture of toxic masculinity that causes and reproduces our oppressive patriarchal capitalist situation that we in the U.S. are experiencing in a newly fucked way. We are on some kind of edge, and we've been here before. This moment is either going to teeter our culture into a radical new social and political revolution or plummet us back in time destroying in a rush all the liberties fought for by the civil rights movement.
In short, I had a great time. Following is a run-down of the program.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
The series was kicked off with a workshop and hackathon by Code Liberation, a 501c3 non-profit organization founded in 2013 dedicated to educating “women, nonbinary, femme, and girl-identifying people to program using creativity as a pedagogical approach.” Despite shifting numbers and constant expansion of the field, the computer science industry continues to be highly male-dominated. The workshop introduced the coding language P5, a JavaScript library designed for beginner coders, particularly artists and designers. Workshop participants used P5 to build digital synths, sequence music, and turn speakers into microphones. The workshop also featured some games created by members of the organization. Games are one of Code Liberations multiple tactics for opening coding to new audiences in engaging and accessible ways.
The series was kicked off with a workshop and hackathon by Code Liberation, a 501c3 non-profit organization founded in 2013 dedicated to educating “women, nonbinary, femme, and girl-identifying people to program using creativity as a pedagogical approach.” Despite shifting numbers and constant expansion of the field, the computer science industry continues to be highly male-dominated. The workshop introduced the coding language P5, a JavaScript library designed for beginner coders, particularly artists and designers. Workshop participants used P5 to build digital synths, sequence music, and turn speakers into microphones. The workshop also featured some games created by members of the organization. Games are one of Code Liberations multiple tactics for opening coding to new audiences in engaging and accessible ways.
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation (2013) Image: Derek Schultz
After a break was a screening of the film To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation (2013) by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and scholar Tavia Nyong'o. The film is based on the 1970 score of the same name by the late Pauline Oliveros; Oliveros developed the score after reading Solanas' infamous SCUM Manifesto. Published in 1968, the year Solanas shot Andy Warhol, SCUM Manifesto calls for the total eradication of the male sex as the only possible solution to oppression under capitalism. While extreme, she makes some good points. Though an unlikely pairing on their own, Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe are united in their relationship to gender and power by way of Warhol. Oliveros' minimal response refers to these themes overtly in the title of the score, and more subtly through the interaction of the musicians performing the work that involves five pitches and long tones, striving for the balance of matched intensity among instruments. In turn, Boudry and Lorenz take their own nuanced approach to questions surrounding community and gender by pulling from their own queer artist circles in Berlin to cast the film, shot in one take. The filmmakers chose to remove the conductor to emphasize the dynamics among the performers, as a metaphor for attentiveness to the needs of others, especially within marginalized communities.
Honey Dijon, Image: Derek Schultz
Next up was a talk by Honey Dijon on her DJ career and experience growing up in Chicago around the origins of house music, and the New York club scene of the 1990s. She was then joined for a discussion with DJ, producer, and manager Bill Coleman along with DJ Venus X best known for the influential New York GHE20GOTH1K parties.
Dijon said when she started going to clubs as a teen in Chicago there were no genre micro-distinctions like there often are now, all that mattered was whether a track was good to dance to. After all, the term “house music” came about because the DJ would play the club's house record collection. After moving to New York, Dijon got involved in the drag scene through big events such as Wigstock, an annual festival in the East Village. Her career took off, DJing elite fashion after parties in Paris and London, at the same time that she began her gender transition. She talked about the difficulty of having to make very private decisions publicly as her celebrity increased, at a time that doesn't seem so long ago, but the public conversation around transgender issues was either non-existent or very different than the increased openness we have begun to witness today. She said, “you need muscle to be okay with making decisions.” She had to figure out a way to “share [her] truth” without having a pre-made language, without a reflection of herself in the world, so she carved a path for herself as a trans-female African American woman.
Dijon moved to New York “to discover herself,” and laments that the city has become so expensive and gentrified that it is no longer a place to create but now a place to consume. I just moved to Brooklyn myself, and really can't say that I fully agree with her on that, but I don't doubt that the city she moved to is massively different than it used to be. Furthermore, DJ culture itself has changed radically, there was no international DJ culture like today. Dijon emphasized that primarily European white male producers and DJ's have overtaken a sonic language that was once the voice of queer and minoritarian communities. Because the history that is remembered is really the history of those in power, it is vital that the straight, white mega DJ's get the facts right about the origin of house. But perhaps the tide is changing, and events like GHE20GOTH1K were certainly indicative of a new era. Check out this article on Resident Advisor for a fuller account of the queer past, "An alternate history of sexuality in club culture."
Dijon said when she started going to clubs as a teen in Chicago there were no genre micro-distinctions like there often are now, all that mattered was whether a track was good to dance to. After all, the term “house music” came about because the DJ would play the club's house record collection. After moving to New York, Dijon got involved in the drag scene through big events such as Wigstock, an annual festival in the East Village. Her career took off, DJing elite fashion after parties in Paris and London, at the same time that she began her gender transition. She talked about the difficulty of having to make very private decisions publicly as her celebrity increased, at a time that doesn't seem so long ago, but the public conversation around transgender issues was either non-existent or very different than the increased openness we have begun to witness today. She said, “you need muscle to be okay with making decisions.” She had to figure out a way to “share [her] truth” without having a pre-made language, without a reflection of herself in the world, so she carved a path for herself as a trans-female African American woman.
Dijon moved to New York “to discover herself,” and laments that the city has become so expensive and gentrified that it is no longer a place to create but now a place to consume. I just moved to Brooklyn myself, and really can't say that I fully agree with her on that, but I don't doubt that the city she moved to is massively different than it used to be. Furthermore, DJ culture itself has changed radically, there was no international DJ culture like today. Dijon emphasized that primarily European white male producers and DJ's have overtaken a sonic language that was once the voice of queer and minoritarian communities. Because the history that is remembered is really the history of those in power, it is vital that the straight, white mega DJ's get the facts right about the origin of house. But perhaps the tide is changing, and events like GHE20GOTH1K were certainly indicative of a new era. Check out this article on Resident Advisor for a fuller account of the queer past, "An alternate history of sexuality in club culture."
Terre Thaemlitz, Soulnessless Image: Derek Schultz
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Between 0 and 1 was part of MoMA PS1's winter programming called Sunday Sessions that takes place in a large geodesic dome constructed in partnership with Volkswagen. For the first week of Between 0 and 1, the Dome was set up in a formal presentation-style with rows of folding chairs. On the second Sunday, the dome was full of piles of red rectangular cushions that invited lounging. I took a front-row spot and lay awkwardly next to a stranger.
This second day of Between 0 and 1 was a screening of Cantos I-IV of Soulnessless by Terre Thaemlitz, four of five video segments of a much (much) larger multi-media work, followed by a discussion with Thaemlitz and Honey Dijon, moderated by interdisciplinary artist and DJ and badass Juliana Huxtable.
Thaemlitz talks plainly about resenting doing live shows, or lectures, but does them out of financial necessity. It is surprising and refreshing to hear. Thaemlitz is also straightforward about resisting demands to be entertaining. She introduced the multi-media work with an informative and purposefully dry spoken contextualization. Thaemlitz also resents all religion. (Are you picking up on a theme here?) He says belief is a social burden, and extends this stance in live performance by attempting to disrupt the quasi-spiritual dynamic of live music and its function as a potential site of communion between audience and performer as well as the hierarchical positions this reinforces. Gesturing to the short platform on which she stood, Thaemlitz said she'd rather perform on the floor but this is the stage height at which she and PS1 had come to a compromise.
As a transgendered person, Thaemlitz uses both he and she pronouns, which is of course why I'm doing the same, and "transgendered" is a term that she uses, despite, or maybe because, many people take offense to the -ed on the end. Her pessimism extends to and stems in part from her transness. For Thaemlitz, optimism is a symptom of a capitalist agenda, and she criticizes the medical industry's complicity in pathologizing transgenderism while simultaneously capitalizing on expensive medical treatments. The first section of Soulessness drew on Thaemlitz' Catholic upbringing to present a trans re-interpretation of the Virgin Mary. A woman miraculously gives birth alone to a male version of herself.
Soulessness was produced between 2008 and 2012, marketed as the longest album of all time with over thirty-two hours of audio materials. “A meditation on wage labor and the death of the album," (a description of the work as a whole and the title of the fifth canto,) the length was determined by the storage capacity of a 16GB MicroSDHC card. The release includes texts translated in ten languages, remixes, and videos.
A snarky and critical sense of humor underlies Soulessness' exhaustiveness. The video is dense with written text, veering from personal and confessional to broader social and political commentary. As a viewer, it is impossible to keep up, which is not a criticism but a fact. One section has two parallel running narratives and the sense of lost information is as much a formal quality as reflective of his determined pessimism.
I recommend taking a look at Thaemlitz's own writing!
Between 0 and 1 was part of MoMA PS1's winter programming called Sunday Sessions that takes place in a large geodesic dome constructed in partnership with Volkswagen. For the first week of Between 0 and 1, the Dome was set up in a formal presentation-style with rows of folding chairs. On the second Sunday, the dome was full of piles of red rectangular cushions that invited lounging. I took a front-row spot and lay awkwardly next to a stranger.
This second day of Between 0 and 1 was a screening of Cantos I-IV of Soulnessless by Terre Thaemlitz, four of five video segments of a much (much) larger multi-media work, followed by a discussion with Thaemlitz and Honey Dijon, moderated by interdisciplinary artist and DJ and badass Juliana Huxtable.
Thaemlitz talks plainly about resenting doing live shows, or lectures, but does them out of financial necessity. It is surprising and refreshing to hear. Thaemlitz is also straightforward about resisting demands to be entertaining. She introduced the multi-media work with an informative and purposefully dry spoken contextualization. Thaemlitz also resents all religion. (Are you picking up on a theme here?) He says belief is a social burden, and extends this stance in live performance by attempting to disrupt the quasi-spiritual dynamic of live music and its function as a potential site of communion between audience and performer as well as the hierarchical positions this reinforces. Gesturing to the short platform on which she stood, Thaemlitz said she'd rather perform on the floor but this is the stage height at which she and PS1 had come to a compromise.
As a transgendered person, Thaemlitz uses both he and she pronouns, which is of course why I'm doing the same, and "transgendered" is a term that she uses, despite, or maybe because, many people take offense to the -ed on the end. Her pessimism extends to and stems in part from her transness. For Thaemlitz, optimism is a symptom of a capitalist agenda, and she criticizes the medical industry's complicity in pathologizing transgenderism while simultaneously capitalizing on expensive medical treatments. The first section of Soulessness drew on Thaemlitz' Catholic upbringing to present a trans re-interpretation of the Virgin Mary. A woman miraculously gives birth alone to a male version of herself.
Soulessness was produced between 2008 and 2012, marketed as the longest album of all time with over thirty-two hours of audio materials. “A meditation on wage labor and the death of the album," (a description of the work as a whole and the title of the fifth canto,) the length was determined by the storage capacity of a 16GB MicroSDHC card. The release includes texts translated in ten languages, remixes, and videos.
A snarky and critical sense of humor underlies Soulessness' exhaustiveness. The video is dense with written text, veering from personal and confessional to broader social and political commentary. As a viewer, it is impossible to keep up, which is not a criticism but a fact. One section has two parallel running narratives and the sense of lost information is as much a formal quality as reflective of his determined pessimism.
I recommend taking a look at Thaemlitz's own writing!
Dreamcrusher, Image: Derek Schultz
Sunday, February 26, 2017
I didn't know what it would be like to see Dreamcrusher at 3pm on a Sunday, but the floor was free of any seating so I figured the organizers knew what to expect. I've seen Dreamcrusher play a bunch of times, I even brought them to do a show in outside of DC in fall 2016. Some months before I saw them open for Wolf Eyes at Brooklyn Bazaar and I almost had to leave because it was so disorienting and overwhelming. Maybe this time around my ears were a little desensitized but maybe the sound system, or sound technician, couldn't handle it.
Dreamcrusher's crushing electronic noise appeals to the sort of volume that envelops and destroys you, you lose track of your heartbeat and the blood swishes backwards through your veins in terror. I'm a big fan. So what might have been lost in that sonic overwhelmingness that’s a key factor in their live sets was more than made up for with Luwayne Glass's interaction with the audience. Through the haze of fog machines and incense they stage-dived and ran through the audience, herding around and stirring people up, tangling bodies in microphone cable and generally causing a riotous and ecstatic sense of communal adrenaline and togetherness. They brought in Julian Cashwan Pratt of Show Me The Body for some extra screaming and violent flailing around.
Glass is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns. Near the beginning of the set they took off their shirt and wrapped tape around their chest, something like a visual performance nod to the conflicting personal desires and imposed social constructs around gendering of bodies. It seems bold to assert non-conforming gender identity while not capitulating to visual gender-fuck tropes like flamboyant drag and I commend them for their bad ass minimal approach. I heard some folks making assumptions about Glass's gender, wondering why Glass was included on the bill. Did they miss the name of this event? I should have reminded them that a person's gender never has to look the way you think it should, or shouldn't.
I didn't know what it would be like to see Dreamcrusher at 3pm on a Sunday, but the floor was free of any seating so I figured the organizers knew what to expect. I've seen Dreamcrusher play a bunch of times, I even brought them to do a show in outside of DC in fall 2016. Some months before I saw them open for Wolf Eyes at Brooklyn Bazaar and I almost had to leave because it was so disorienting and overwhelming. Maybe this time around my ears were a little desensitized but maybe the sound system, or sound technician, couldn't handle it.
Dreamcrusher's crushing electronic noise appeals to the sort of volume that envelops and destroys you, you lose track of your heartbeat and the blood swishes backwards through your veins in terror. I'm a big fan. So what might have been lost in that sonic overwhelmingness that’s a key factor in their live sets was more than made up for with Luwayne Glass's interaction with the audience. Through the haze of fog machines and incense they stage-dived and ran through the audience, herding around and stirring people up, tangling bodies in microphone cable and generally causing a riotous and ecstatic sense of communal adrenaline and togetherness. They brought in Julian Cashwan Pratt of Show Me The Body for some extra screaming and violent flailing around.
Glass is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns. Near the beginning of the set they took off their shirt and wrapped tape around their chest, something like a visual performance nod to the conflicting personal desires and imposed social constructs around gendering of bodies. It seems bold to assert non-conforming gender identity while not capitulating to visual gender-fuck tropes like flamboyant drag and I commend them for their bad ass minimal approach. I heard some folks making assumptions about Glass's gender, wondering why Glass was included on the bill. Did they miss the name of this event? I should have reminded them that a person's gender never has to look the way you think it should, or shouldn't.
Elysia Crampton, Image: Derek Schultz
Everyone needed a break and some air after Dreamcrusher, all a little dazed to go back into sunlight. The next set was Elysia Crampton. Her music is rhythmically complex and felt especially joyful after Dreamcrusher, and a densely layered optimistic counterpoint to Terre Thaemlitz the week before.
Crampton takes everything that interests her, anything thats useful. Chunks of samples surface or repeat into beats, tied together in spacious synth melodies. Her compositions are wild and wide reaching, traversing the americas, the urban and the organic, the ancient and the very immediate.
She was born and grew up around L.A. and Mexico, and has always been nomadic. Its easy to relate a nomadic quality to how she produces music, which merges elements from pop with the beats of Cumbia without losing the origins of any source. Her music isn't the great mythic American melting pot that blends difference into a uniform slop, but every element shines distinctly. Hers is a deeply self-aware appropriation.
While she performed, projections of digitally-rendered abstraction and manipulated Aztec imagery flashed behind her. The frenzy of the projections matched her forward-racing jams. Sweeping electronic moans collapse into thunder samples and video lightning spin into a 90s-looking DJ guy icon. Demonic laugh loops and throbbing industrial rhythm clear to crystalline keyboard atmospheres.
She ended with a shimmering piece that she introduced by saying, “my friend wrote the drums to this song.” It was a spoken-word letter to an unnamed “you,” full of sadness and radiant hope.
Crampton takes everything that interests her, anything thats useful. Chunks of samples surface or repeat into beats, tied together in spacious synth melodies. Her compositions are wild and wide reaching, traversing the americas, the urban and the organic, the ancient and the very immediate.
She was born and grew up around L.A. and Mexico, and has always been nomadic. Its easy to relate a nomadic quality to how she produces music, which merges elements from pop with the beats of Cumbia without losing the origins of any source. Her music isn't the great mythic American melting pot that blends difference into a uniform slop, but every element shines distinctly. Hers is a deeply self-aware appropriation.
While she performed, projections of digitally-rendered abstraction and manipulated Aztec imagery flashed behind her. The frenzy of the projections matched her forward-racing jams. Sweeping electronic moans collapse into thunder samples and video lightning spin into a 90s-looking DJ guy icon. Demonic laugh loops and throbbing industrial rhythm clear to crystalline keyboard atmospheres.
She ended with a shimmering piece that she introduced by saying, “my friend wrote the drums to this song.” It was a spoken-word letter to an unnamed “you,” full of sadness and radiant hope.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Image: Derek Schultz
Perhaps to the disappointment of some, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was not there to play music, or talk about music, but to speak about a solution to our broken democracy. Without notes or visual aids, sitting casually like we were all in h/er living room, Genesis waxed poetic on the quagmire of patriarchy and the current socio-political condition to which we have arrived, helmed now by an incompetent president, as the result of obsessive and desperate masculinity. Genesis says we are at the brink of either a total overthrow of the outdated power structures that are experiencing a dramatic conservative revival, or this is the moment we'll remember as the beginning of the end of all civil rights liberties for which we've fought throughout this and the last century, and worst is yet to come. Those who came to power through maleness are terrified at the disintegration of the insistence that masculinity is inherited or fixed. Gen says, "Transsexuals are the storm troopers of the future!" It is inevitable, (r)evolutionary change versus the hysterical protectors of the status quo; especially the old rich white guys with way too much power (s/he takes solace that they will die soon), calling on new witch hunts (for example gendered toilets) to simply distract from their own power and fascist regimes.
From COUM Transmissions to Throbbing Gristle to Psychic TV to Pandrogyny to her increasing acclaim in the visual art world, Genesis has never ceased to evolve. Yet throughout h/er diverse legacy one thing has been consistent: the use of the cut-up. Spoken in imitation of William S. Burroughs' iconic drawl: “Let's cut it up and see what it really says.” Brion Gysin introduced the cut-up technique to Burroughs, who imparted it to Genesis. More than a tactic for generating new content, for these artists the cut-up is a method of uncovering or releasing hidden meaning embedded in language. Pandrogyny, which means “positive androgyny,” grew out of a desire by Genesis and h/er partner Lady Jaye to become one another. Genesis repeats Lady Jaye's insistence that the body is not sacred, that our bodies are ours to do what we like with them, she called it “a cheap suitcase.” In 2007 Lady Jaye passed away suddenly, “dropped her body,” as Genesis says. Now when Genesis speaks she uses “we” to refer to both h/erself and the spirit of Lady Jaye.
Genesis said, "I don't want to be a man or a woman, but if I had to choose, I certainly wouldn't want to be a man." If masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny got us into this mess of war-mongering, hypocrisy, and greed, well let's cut it up and see what it really says.
From COUM Transmissions to Throbbing Gristle to Psychic TV to Pandrogyny to her increasing acclaim in the visual art world, Genesis has never ceased to evolve. Yet throughout h/er diverse legacy one thing has been consistent: the use of the cut-up. Spoken in imitation of William S. Burroughs' iconic drawl: “Let's cut it up and see what it really says.” Brion Gysin introduced the cut-up technique to Burroughs, who imparted it to Genesis. More than a tactic for generating new content, for these artists the cut-up is a method of uncovering or releasing hidden meaning embedded in language. Pandrogyny, which means “positive androgyny,” grew out of a desire by Genesis and h/er partner Lady Jaye to become one another. Genesis repeats Lady Jaye's insistence that the body is not sacred, that our bodies are ours to do what we like with them, she called it “a cheap suitcase.” In 2007 Lady Jaye passed away suddenly, “dropped her body,” as Genesis says. Now when Genesis speaks she uses “we” to refer to both h/erself and the spirit of Lady Jaye.
Genesis said, "I don't want to be a man or a woman, but if I had to choose, I certainly wouldn't want to be a man." If masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny got us into this mess of war-mongering, hypocrisy, and greed, well let's cut it up and see what it really says.
left to right: Terre Thaemlitz, Juliana Huxtable, and Honey Dijon in conversation. Image: Derek Schultz
You never know how many programmatic outtakes lie behind an event series like this. I don't doubt that the organizers made efforts to be curatorially inclusive and intersectional, but I was disappointed to not see any transguys on stage. In all, I really enjoyed the mix of live performance and discussion and the range of genres and approaches. I'm a nerd for lectures and wish they could have continued even longer. More! More! More!
xo
Eames Armstrong spring 2017
xo
Eames Armstrong spring 2017
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