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
