0
- 0
0
4 - 6pm (GMT) / 11am - 1pm (EST)
FREE
Join us for this experimental and collaborative workshop, where we will consider sonic connection, embodiment through music, and playlist flow.
Playlists as Portals will act as a virtual jam session composed of music journals and sonic remembrances concerned with the futurity and living histories of Black and brown diasporic people. We'll be inspired by DJing as an archival practice (in the form of sampling, curation, and storytelling) and the non-linear temporality that defines music. Although we may be physically separate, there is an experience of motion through teleportation that the playlist brings to us; these songs exist in no time and all time.
This workshop will be facilitated by kam + pita, friends whose pandemic survival work led them to produce digital love letters in the form of collaborative playlists — sonic portals that bring us gifts of memory, breath, and connection. Join this virtual 'Sunday space', to share your sonic love languages, and to collectively map our stories with music. The workshop will seek to amplify the voices and experiences of Black and brown cultural collaborators, particularly those who are also trans and queer. Together, through speculative musings and tunings, we will find the resonances between our listening practices. The workshop will culminate in a collaborative playlist and a graphic score of our conversation, that can be revisited beyond the event itself.
"music is also the anticipation of the performance and the noises of appreciation it generates and the speaking that happens through and around it, making it and loving it, being in it while listening…we refuse order as the distinction between noise and music, chatter and knowledge, pain and truth."
— Jack Halberstam
The Wild Beyond: With and for the Undercommons
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 (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.
Ahead of the workshop, please take some time to listen to the PORTALS playlist below 🎶
We'll ask every participant to bring a song to the workshop that has personal significance and which connects to another song in the playlist or the playlist theme more generally.
This workshop is free and will take place online. To enable a more personal and participatory session, we have limited the number of places available to 20 people. Want to join us?
Register to join us here. If you have any accessibility needs you would like us to be aware of, you can tell us on the form.
Have any questions, or want to register in a way that is more accessible for you? We're here to help
Can participants outside of the UK apply to join this event?
Yes! Everyone is welcome to join, from any location. The primary language used will be English.
Will I be visible on screen?
Yes, since this is a participatory event, attendees will need to have both their video and audio enabled in order to take part.
Will the event be recorded?
After the workshop, we will be sharing a visual response to the conversation. To help create this, the event will be recorded, however this recording will NOT be made available to the public. The visual response we publish won't include any personal identifying information.
Can you spare a few moments? Autograph is carrying out a survey to better understand who our digital audiences are. The survey should take no longer than five minutes to complete. Anything you tell us will be kept confidential, is anonymous and will only be used for research purposes.
The information you provide will be held by Autograph and The Audience Agency, who are running the survey on our behalf. In compliance with GDPR, your data will be stored securely and will only be used for the purposes it was given.
You can take the survey here. Thank you!
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.
Banner image: © and courtesy kam + pita
Quote from Jack Halberstam, The Wild Beyond: With and for the Undercommons, in S Harney and F Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study
Images on page: 1) arpita s. courtesy of the artist. 2) kamara dyer simms, courtesy of the artist
Autograph is a place to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
Donate
Join our mailing list
