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Listen: Playlists as Portals

POSTED: 09 March 2022

A music journal composed of sonic remembrances concerned with the futurity and living histories of Black and brown diasporic people 🎶













In December we teamed up with kam + pita, who led Playlists as Portals, an experimental and collaborative workshop considering sonic connection, embodiment through music, and playlist flow. Taking the form of a virtual jam session, collaborators were invited to bring sonic remembrances concerned with the futurity and living histories of Black and brown diasporic people; songs that exist in no time and all time.

Through speculative musings and tunings, collaborators sought to find the resonances between their listening practices, and to experience connection via the motion of teleportation that the playlist form can provide. Below you can listen to kam + pita's Portals playlist which provided the initial inspiration for the workshop, alongside the collaborative playlist borne out of the workshop:













Playlists as portals was led by kam + pita

kam + pita are friends and creative collaborators whose pandemic survival work led them to produce digital love letters in the form of collaborative playlists — sonic portals that gifted them both with memory, breath, and connection.

arpita s.

arpita (pita, they/none/she) is a Thamizh diaspora kid living in the northeast of the so-called USA. No stranger to distance, pita likes to think of playlist making and sharing as digital love letters to self and to community in times of separation. Ultimately, they see music as a threshold between themselves and their trans and queer kin + ancestors. Follow pita on Instagram.

kamara dyer simms

kamara (kam, she/they) is a writer and facilitator-producer from London, UK. Nourished by Caribbean poetics, sound alchemy, Black lesbian feminism, she meditates with metaphor and sound to theorise about marronage and nonlinear time. kamara considers music curation as curative for somatic, emotional, and spiritual wellness. Follow kamara on Instagram.

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PART OF AUTOGRAPH'S 2021 OPEN CALL

Each year, Autograph has an Open Call for event proposals from emerging cultural producers who are working on a new or early stage project. For successful applicants, Autograph provides a budget, curatorial fee, and support to help make the event happen. We're proud that Playlists as Portals is a result of our 2021 Open Call.


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Images on page: courtesy of kam + pita.

Discover more images: 1) courtesy of kam + pita. 2) Heather McDonough, Cliff's Mother [detail], from the series RePose. 01. 3) Maxine Walker, Cleansing. From the series Black Beauty, 1991. © and courtesy of the artist and Autograph, London.