01.09.2022

Rhiz

DeForrest Brown Jr. “Assembling A Black Counter-Culture” Talk, Speaker Music, Blaq Hammer, Marie Vermont, Sami Nagasaki (Struma+Iodine X Unsafe+Sounds)

DEFORREST BROWN JR. Talk

“Assembling A Black Counter-Culture”

Assembling a Black Counter Culture is a history of techno and critical reconsideration of the extended thinking and techniques behind electronic music created from a Black theoretical perspective. A brief lecture and performance by Brown, Jr. encourages a reimagining of techno beyond the dancefloor as a timeline for technologies of Black exodus and a myth-scientific world system, spanning 1582 to 2100. DeForrest Brown, Jr. will end the night with music.

SPEAKER MUSIC live

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, and representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of generational trauma. On Juneteenth of 2020, he released the album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry on Planet Mu. His written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music, and has appeared in Artforum, Triple Canopy, NPR, CTM Festival, Mixmag, among many others. He has performed or presented work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Camden Arts Centre, UK; Unsound Festival, Krakow; Sónar, Barcelona; Issue Project Room, New York; and elsewhere. Assembling a Black Counter Culture is Brown’s debut book.

BLAQ HAMMER live

Blaq Hammer is an experimental electronic sound and video project formed in 2020 by American artist Seth Sutton. “I grew up in the suburbs of Memphis. There is a lot of blood in the soil, and somber entities that hang above you. This is the essence of the blues and I have never been able to shake those. I’ve lived in Berlin for some time and have been able to gather more pieces to the puzzle that some folks call oppression. This project is simply a reactionary attack on the colonial minded police state, wherever it may exist on this planet.”  Drawing from punk, techno, rap, and industrial styles, Blaq Hammer aims to create momentum in order to break up the algorithmic feedback loops and break down the false narratives that work in favor of the destruction of the so called “lower classes” and “marginalized people”. The project’s first full length “AMERIKKKAN HAMMER” is being released this autumn on Quality Music from Vienna.

MARIE VERMONT live

Marie Vermont was abducted by aliens in 1999 and lives as experiencer since then, nowadays in Vienna. Her sounds are based on fragments of allmende and other spaces aswell as analog and electronic hemispheres and cablework. Irregular aspects such as wind and weather play a role. UFOs too. Intergalactic commons for all.

SAMI NAGASAKI dj-set

Artist and Musician Sami Nagasaki moved to Vienna from Virginia in 2009. For 10 years he booked shows under the name LIFETIME in which the DIY ethos of his hometown informed the strategies he set for engaging a local audience to new sounds. With acts such as Lorenzo Senni, Kelela, Total Freedom, Mykki Blanco, Sissy Spacek (to name a few), Sami contributed to a widening of the sonic landscape in the city. Under his THUNDERDRONE alias, he performed abrasive r’n’b basslines at Donaufestival and supported Cold Cave at Arena. Sami is hosting a night at the new Praterstrasse Club with his crew TSU ツ or DJ on boats with his FUNTAXX siblings and prepares his sculptures to mixtapes that include Dolly Parton and Lil Ugly Mane.