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Royal Hospital Kilmainham
Dublin 8, D08 FW31, Ireland
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From the birth of dance music in Black, Latinx and queer communities in American cities in the 1980s, Black women have been crucial players – vocalists, producers, DJs, promoters and dancers. Dance music was associated with the future, but experiences of barriers and exploitation were rooted in the past. Decades later, there has been a proliferation of women and non-binary people participating as DJs and producers, but unacceptable barriers remain. It’s time for reclamation.

FOR WHAT YOU DREAM OF is a uniquely curated evening of talks, film, music and performances featuring award winning international guests, that includes film director of BLACK TO TECHNO Jenn Nkiru, multi-disciplinary artist, producer and performer, Nkisi, alongside DJs Fehdah, Mona Lxsa, Renn. This one-off event celebrates the historical contribution of Black women and queer people to the origins of dance music, the contemporary surge of Afro-diaspora female and non-binary producers and DJs, and the grassroots dance community in Ireland. Our guests will share creative imaginaries for dance music and club nights, advocating for impactful processes of collaboration that can educate, develop and empower wider access and diversity across music, art, culture and society. Join us for an energetic exploration of the sounds, rhythms and manifestos of dance music and intersections with time, memory, bodies and space.

This event is co-programmed with IMMA by Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe (The GalPal Collective) and Kate Butler (ddr) and presented in association with the exhibition The Otolith Group: Xenogenesis, which looks at a Black feminist imagination as a critical framework to reappraise the work of science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Similar to this exhibition, FOR WHAT YOU DREAM OF, brings together artists whose work has an ongoing commitment to creating a type of ‘science fiction of the present’, through activist voices, sonic images, sounds, music, performance and film related to dance, electronic music and diverse club spaces.


Programme

Screening: BLACK TO TECHNO, 2019
5.30pm – 8pm, Garden Galleries.
BLACK TO TECHNO is a music documentary, directed by Jenn Nkiru, charting the anthropological, socio-economical, geopolitical roots of techno from Detroit and how it travelled and translated into becoming the soundtrack to fall of the wall in Berlin. BLACK TO TECHNO is not a simple origin story of Techno but rather as Nkiru calls, a cosmic archaeology which deeply explores and excavates the layers bound within this unique sound. Featuring cameos from the worlds of Techno, Hip-Hop, Funk, Soul, Detroit and Berlin, including an appearance by Kodwo Eshun of The Otolith Group and many other music pioneers. Film duration: 20.25mins.

Talk: A Cosmic Archaeology with Director Jenn Nkiru and Dr Zélie Asava
6pm – 6.45pm, The People’s Pavilion.
Meet the award winning film director of BLACK TO TECHNO Jenn Nkiru, who discusses BLACK TO TECHNO and ‘cosmic archaeology’ as the founding genesis of their practice that is grounded in the history of black music, afro-surrealism, and the aesthetics of experimental film. Moderated by Dr Zélie Asava.

Talk: Artists’ Conversation, For What You Dream of.
6.45pm – 7.30pm, The People’s Pavilion.
Celebrating Black Women & Non-binary People in Dance Music. Meet some of the artists and musicians to be performing live DJ sets and improvised music performance who discuss their work and processes of reclaiming the space for black women artists. Speakers include Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe with guests Nkisi (Melika Ngombe Kolongo), Renn (Karen Miano) and others.

Live Dj Sets + Performance.
7.15pm – 9.20pm, Courtyard.

Line up
7.15pm – 7.45pm: Mona Lxsa Live DJ Set
7.45pm – 8.30pm: Fehdah Live DJ Set
8.30pm – 9.20pm: Live Performance featuring Nkisi


More Details

Film Synopsis: BLACK TO TECHNO, 2019, by by Jenn Nkiru
Described by Nkiru as what “a relic finding of a Detroiter’s public access TV watching patterns which make up the constellation of Techno might be”, BLACK TO TECHNO, through a visually rich and diverse collage of intersecting narratives, conceptual frameworks, archival references and original imagery, asserts Techno not just as a musical gesture but as a philosophical, sonic and anthropological one; a model for the overcoming of alienation, the undoing of oppositions: between the individual and the means of production, body and tool, soul and machine. BLACK TO TECHNO is not a simple origin story of Techno but rather as Nkiru calls, a cosmic archaeology which deeply explores and excavates the layers bound within this unique sound; the particularity of a people, energy, industrialism, geography, politics; black accelerationism and afrofuturist imaginings of a certain time; all coming together, making an othered sound created by groups of othered people.

Featuring cameos from the worlds of Techno, Hip-Hop, Funk, Soul, Detroit and Berlin, this is a uniquely artistic impressionistic take on High Tech Soul: Techno — a futuristic sound falling into the legacy of black music not often celebrated as such.

BLACK TO TECHNO Credits
Director: Jenn Nkiru
Screenwriter: Jenn Nkiru
Director of Photography: Bradford Young
Editor: Kit Wells
Colourist: Tim Smith
Sound design: Eric Lau
Researchers: Aya Kaido, Elijah Maja, Hudda Khaireh, Rianna Jade Paker
Creative music supervisor: Errol Anderson
Producer: Emory Ruegg
Executive Producer: Anna Smith Tenser, Carine Harris, Emily Rudge
Series Producer: Jacqueline Edenbrow

Director’s Talk: A Cosmic Archaeology featuring Jenn Nkiru and Dr Zélie Asava
On screening BLACK TO TECHNO at IMMA, an award-winning visionary artist and director from London, Jenn Nkiru introduces this film, and reflects on wider connections to her work that expands on the possibilities of film language. BLACK TO TECHNO is not a simple origin story of Techno but rather as Nkiru calls, a cosmic archaeology which deeply explores and excavates the layers bound within this unique sound; the particularity of a people, energy, industrialism, geography, politics; black accelerationism and Afrofuturist imaginings of a certain time. This talk offer insights into Nkiru’s work that is grounded in the history of black music, afro-surrealism, and the aesthetics of experimental film, and offers reflection on the key role Black women and non-binary people have played in the radical force of dance music. Moderated by Dr Zélie Asave. Duration: 40mins.

Artist Panel Conversation: For What You Dream of
Entertainment journalist and activist Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe hosts a artists’ panel conversation that explores the barriers and de-colonising possibilities of being a Black woman and non-binary person in dance music, offering perspectives from Ireland and beyond. Guests include London-based musician and visual artist Nkisi, one of the co-founders of NON-Worldwide, a collective of experimental artists from across the African diaspora. Transcending the limited of genres – Nkisi produces intense, powerful club tracks equally influenced by African polyrhythms, hardcore techno, and ’70s Italian horror films. Other panel guests include Renn (Karen Miano) one of the founders of DIAxDEM, a record label and collective, and of Origins Eile (OE), a platform for the Black Queer community, and others.

The discussion explores how each individual artist got into making music, their creative process and influences, and black feminists’ tools and strategies for accessing the music industry, that includes peer supports and grass roots activism for young female and non-binary creatives and minorities across music, art and cultural spheres. Duration: 40mins.


Contributor details

Co-Programmed by:
Kate Butler
A writer and DJ in Dublin since the 1990s, Kate has a monthly show on Dublin Digital Radio (ddr), inspired by rave culture, community clubbing and the disorientating futurism of contemporary dance music. Kate is currently writing This is a Story about Control: Music, Technology and Gendered Roles of Creativity, a book and documentary about women and non-binary people using technology to make music. For more details see here

Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe
Named one of The Irish Independent’s “Activists to watch” 2022, Ashley Chadamoyo Makombe is a journalist, student and activist from Tallaght, Dublin. One of the Co-Founders of The GALPAL Collective, Ashley has always had a passion for mobilising and uplifting underrepresented communities across media, arts and culture. As a collective “GALPAL” is dedicated to the celebration, and creation of art by young women, people of colour and queer folk. In her career, Ashley has worked for organisations such as Tallaght Community Arts and Eurobug International and has featured bylines in Totally Dublin and Rogue Collective. She is currently studying Journalism at The Technological University Dublin.

Featured Artists:
Jenn Nkiru is an award-winning visionary artist and director from London. The relationship between the spiritual, visual, sonic, somatic, music and movement, are central concerns of her work in how they intersect and work together to expand the possibilities of film language. Pushed through a surrealist lens, her works are grounded in the history of black music, afro-surrealism, the aesthetics of experimental film, international art cinema, the black arts movement and the rich and variegated tradition of cinemas of the black diaspora and their distinct experimentation with the politics of form. She has steadily created a collection of works with her distinctive visual style and powerful use of sound through her short films, commercials and music videos for the MET, the Whitney, Gucci, Frieze, as well as artists such as Beyoncé, Rage Against the Machine, Kamasi Washington and Neneh Cherry amongst others. She is the 2021 Grammy Award Winner for Best Music Video for her direction on Brown Skin Girl by Beyonce. She is, additionally the winner of a CICLOPE, Soul Train, Cannes Lion and NAACP award for the same video. Her latest piece, OUT / SIDE OF TIME, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is currently on show as part of their exhibition: Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. See more details here

DJ Nkisi is one of contemporary dance music’s most dazzling producers, with releases on UIQ, R&S and Arcola, Nkisi (Melika Ngombe Kolongo). The Congolese artist combines a spiritual and intellectual framing to futurism with a polyrhythmic underpinning to techno. More recently, she created the Axis Arkestra with artist Curtly Thomas, highlighting improvisation and transdisciplinary collaboration as a decolonial strategy. Nkisi produces intense, powerful club tracks equally influenced by African polyrhythms, hardcore techno, and ’70s Italian horror films. The London-based musician and visual artist is one of the co-founders of NON-Worldwide, a collective of experimental artists from across the African diaspora. As a fierce DJ, Nkisi channels 160+ bpm kick drums, metallic hectic percussions and hypnotizes the dance floor into a ritualistic transcendental space. Melika Ngombe Kolongo was born in Congo, raised in Belgium, and began using the moniker Nkisi after moving to London in 2012. Gravitating toward the more aggressive side of dance music yet maintaining a heavy emotional factor as well as a sense of dreaminess, she began producing music in addition to being resident at a club night called Endless. For more details see here

Ever since the release of Like No Other in 2016, DJ Fehdah (Emma Garnett) has developed a unique future-Afro soul sound, collaborating with MCs Denise Chaila and Celaviedmai on her most recent release, the remarkable Kinematics (2020). Dance music plays a huge role in Fehdah’s production work – whether on the UK Garage influenced remix of Loah’s This Heart (2018) or on the syncopated beats on the Kinematics release – and she brings this big energy to her amazing DJ sets. Growing up between Ireland, The Gambia and Sierra Leone, Fehdah also works as a lecturer in astrophysics. For more details see here

Originally from Malawi, DJ Mona-Lxsa (Mona-Lisa Das) became one of the most high profile DJs in Ireland after mixes she posted to Soundcloud went viral. In 2018, she set up Gxrlcode, a collective to support young female creatives, and she continues to be heavily involved in teaching girls and young women how to DJ. Recently featured in Forbes Africa Magazine’s 30 under 30, the positive energy she puts into helping others is properly recognised. For more details see here

Dr Zélie Asava is the author of Mixed Race Cinemas: Multiracial Dynamics in America and France (Bloomsbury, 2017) and The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television (Peter Lang, 2013). Her research attends to the intersections of race, gender and sexuality in Irish, British, French, Senegalese, Burkinabé and US screen media. She is the co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Scandinavian Cinema (2022), and a contributor to many edited collections, including Austerity and Irish Women’s Writing, 1980-2020 (Routledge, 2022) and Innovations in Black European Studies (Peter Lang, 2022). Zélie has taught extensively at University College Dublin, Dundalk Institute of Technology (where she was Programme Director of Video and Film Production and Communications in Creative Multimedia), and Dún Laoghaire’s Institute of Art, Design and Technology. She sits on the Boards of Screen Ireland, the Irish Film Institute, the Catalyst International Film Festival and the digital journal Unapologetic.

DJ Renn (Karen Miano) is one of the founders of DIAxDEM, a record label and collective, and of Origins Eile (OE), a platform for the Black Queer community. Renn is constantly striving for an artistic expression that is bigger and bolder than any one individual. OE is dedicated to creating space/s, towards impactful new ecologies & specifically artistic & holistic responses to planetary life. As a group, OE‘s community focus is ever expanding and shifting depending on the need/response asked of us all – club nights, discussions, workshops, gallery tours, fundraisers, dinners, sexual awareness, manifestos. Work/s include – Destiny: A Constellation of Queer Afrofuturist Visions, pRoPaGaTiOn, Tongues an Irish Black Queer anthology, HAWT aka How To Survive The Art World & Resist The Theatre Of Wokeness, BLA/Q- a celebration of Black pride month and House Of Origin a remarkable body of research into ballroom cultures. For more details see here


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