Everybody likes Italian dates, right? Well I got some:
First: on Wednesday May 16, I’m giving an artist talk in conversation with Simone Bertuzzi at the Triennale Museum in Milan. Right after that, Soundways Records boss Miles Cleret will spin some records, and I’ll close the night with a DJ set. This event is free, and the DJing portion of the evening takes place in the design museum’s backyard garden. It’s nice.
And on Thursday May 17, I’m heading to Venice, where I’ll be performing at the Teatro Fondamente Nuevo. Details. This will be my first time in Venezia, so come say hello!
Now this –
I just returned from Macao here in Milan — it’s a 32-story skyscraper. 10 days ago a crew squatted it, intending to transform the building (which had been shuttered for 15 years) into a ground-up contemporary art & culture center. This morning they got evicted by local police, which simply meant that everyone left building but the crowd on the street outside the Macao kept on growing… Fascinating moments over here. This Vogue Italia blog post provides background coverage and photos.
I haven’t played in NYC for awhile, so there are many things to be expressed. On the dancefloor. With Mykki Blanco (who’s in that rich moment where variousmagazines can’t decide which gendered pronoun to use), Prince Rama, & more. Coolest of all– it’s an 18+ show!
^CARLOS V + OSCAR_1992 + STRYKER^ Present: DIM 5.0: Fri., May 4. 285 Kent Ave. 10pm. $10.00. Ages 18+
LIVE EXORCISE DANCE PERFORMANCE BY *PRINCE RAMA*
BEATS: DJ RUPTURE <> PRINCE RAMA <> EVA ARIDJIS
<>STRYKER <> MESS KID <> WEIRD MAGIC <>
It’s like this: tonight, Thursday, I will read at the Best Music Writing 2011 event @ Housingworks in Manhattan. Free. Hosted by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross and Daphne Carr, who included my Frieze essay on slowness in music for the book’s 2011 edition. Flyer below.
On Friday and Saturday I’ll be shaking things up at a party I’m incredibly excited about: Tormenta Tropical’s 4 year anniversary! Going down in LA and San Francisco. Bersa Discos hosts Oro 11 and Shawn Reynaldo and I will be playing in both cities, along with Maluca. The LA edition brings in Total Freedom and Mas Exitos. Crazy, right?!
Tormenta Tropical is one of those fantastic parties where you, as a DJ, need to step up your game and play extra well. I’ll be digging deep, smuggling in secret weapons & surprises (& cumbia), so see you on the dancefloor.
Then I redeye home in time for Sunday’s Mudd Up Book Clubb: Zoo City edition back in Manhattan. I need to spend serious time in LA but never manage to be there for more than 15 hours at a stretch.
The Performa Biennial has descended upon New York, and I’m pleased to announce that I’m writing a new radio play which will debut on Saturday, Nov. 12.
After Performa approached me about the radioplay I went off on long lines of investigation which crescendoed around the incredible, and, yes, tragic life of gay black NYC composer, Julius Eastman.
As Mary Leach writes about trying to gather his scattered work:
“Thus began an almost quixotic seven-year search for the music of Julius Eastman who died in 1990 and whose final years were a life spiraled out of control to the point where he was living in Tompkins Square Park. He’d been evicted from his apartment in the East Village—the sheriff having dumped his possessions onto the street. Julius made no effort to recover any of his music. . . One of the problems of writing about Julius is that it is difficult to state anything with certainty.”
How The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner fits into all this will (trust me) be a surprise. This I can say: it takes a village to stage a radio play before a live audience, so for The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, I’ve brought aboard several pianists and voice-actors, among them Emily Manzo and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Radio was central to my musical upbringing and remains something I’m committed to, so the opportunity to create new work expressly for the medium is fantastic.
They say: “For Performa 11, Performa Radio explores the literary legacy of the first mass medium, the radio broadcast. Just as early radio and sound recording influenced the modernist literature of Edgar Allan Poe, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, Jules Verne, and Antonin Artaud, what effects will digital radio have for the forms of literature and the development of the narrative play? Leading figures in the fields of literature, art, and music will be commissioned to write short plays, to be performed live at WNYC’s Greene Space and streamed on the Performa website.”
[another night at the laundromat]
In 2005 New World Records released a 3-CD set of Eastman’s music, which was generally associated with downtown minimalism. You can download the liner notes [PDF]. Below is a recording of “Evil Nigger” (1979) here played on four pianos with Eastman himself. One Two Three Four!
Speaking of Brussels — Belgium has had no government for over a year! Everything seems fine in Brussels, arguably Europe’s most spatially dissonant city. It’s a surreal place.
Tomorrow, Wednesday August 31th, I’ll DJ at ‘une petite fête entre amis’ put on by La8. Info. The next day I’ll make an appearance on Radio Panik 105.4 FM, not sure when, watch the Twitter for that. (Radio Panik is one of a handful of open-eared European radio stations that rebroadcast my WFMU radio show.)
I’ve been relaxing these past few days. My time was vaguely starting to resemble that freelancer’s rarity: a vacation. Whatever it was, it’s over. TOUR TIME! Several European dates and some special events in Morocco. But first – Last night was a fun radio show (if I don’t play the entirety of Reich’s “Come Out” bookended by juke trax, who will?)
Today’s party in a Copenhagen park marks the start of the Denmark leg of the tour, where I’ll be playing dates with Mutamassik and giving a free “master class” with Mad Professor.
A quick post to say that on Thursday July 7, Nettle will perform at the Maxxi Museum of 21st Ct. Art in Rome, Italy. The event forms part of a summer series curated by Nero Magazine. We’ll be in town for a few days, so leave a comment if there’s anything on that we should check out!
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