This blog wants to navigate through questions of sourcing, access and representation through and in the arts; specifically music. Wrapped in the concept of the QTD (the q-teendream), I will share experiences and connections of thoughts that give a personal perspective on how music generates self-growth and community. You can call this the soundtrack to a glitchy film with music as its main protagonist and pop as a radical scene stealer.
We want to understand sound as a collective and powerful source that builds, shapes and represents community. A source that creates re-generational access and entanglement.
You will come upon posts, memes, articles, music videos. For some of them there will be more context, for some there will be less.
This Tumblr blog finds extension to the -www- through an archival collection of all referred sources on the platform ARE.NA. A respective link will be added to the related blog posts.
The stepping stone for this project was the theory class »Why am I really here? Navigating the politics of ‘representation’ in Art and Design« with Anisha Müller at Berlin Kunsthochschule weißensee.
I intend this little blog to be some kind of love letter to something that has allowed many of us to grow and find community.
You and I we grew up in a room somewhere, spending our teens on the tv, the radio, the nokias and mp3-players. Today we found another, catching up on the times we’ve missed as best friends of adolescence we didn’t have. We found love in a hopeless place bébé.
Gimme just a little bit (more), little bit of (excess)
I don't wanna hear (no, no), only want a (yes, yes)
Gimme just a little bit (XS, XS)
Japanese-British pop star Rina Sawayama »mocks capitalism in a sinking world« in her 2020 song XS of her debut album SAWAYAMA.
In a sinking world full of excess and little access Rina managed to establish herself as one of the most interesting players in the current pop music industry. She’s been constantly applauded for her genre-bending and shapeshifting music that will always bring you back to the golden 2000s mainstream music. Pop music as one of her biggest influences was also a way to escape and helped her fitting in & finding access after she moved at the age of 5 from Japan to the UK.
“A nationality clause in the Mercury Prize and the BRITs are stopping musicians from entering the race. It's turning the arts into a form of border control, the 'SAWAYAMA' musician says.”
As a queer artist of color with an academic background moving between underground and mainstream her work is always & intentionally political. When she wasn’t eligible to be nominated for various British awards she successfully made a change in the rules happen after calling out the current ones as form of border control.
Whereas a change in a positive is happening it’s still happening inside a reality where artists like Rina are constantly finding themselves in hardships fighting against and within western white supremacy. In the end this generation of artists urge to find a loud, collective voice and in order to gain further access that is engraved in our words, thus her political involvement is to be highly recognised.
“The concept of Britishness has been in the public discourse in the most negative way possible – it has become very, very narrow in these last five to six years. I think the arts are somewhere that they can reverse that and widen it up."
*** Link to Maissa’s fight within the German the academic system.
Sourcing to me is an idea and tool to expand our access. Never technically but always emotionally involved with music, it took me quite a while to get around how to dig deeper into and evolve my musical journey. An evolution of platforms since digital days have started the radio has become universal, the many sources we have are still in disguise by the mass of existing things.
I highlighted how pop / mainstream music is giving access and how access becomes political however we’re introduced to sound and frequencies the moment we’re born. The musical journey starts with the setting & surrounding we grow up in.
A instagram story of Kasimyn (1/2 of Bali’s Gabber Modus Operandi experimental sound duo) came across me the other day so I would like to share one of two of his posts that starts with his Dad introducing him and ends up with Kasimyn’s & Björk’s current collaboration.
Being able to engage with projects from all around the world is the most beautiful part of experiencing music and art in 2022 to me.
Growing up in Germany and rooted also in Indonesia I always longed to have some more of Indonesian influence in my life. The first Indonesian song I ever remembered singing is a sad love song called »Ada Apa Denganmu« by Peterpan. I sat on a little tree bench at the beach, my dad’s house in the back of me. It was my first visit ever at the age of 9 and I sat there in a daydreamy state singing the repetitive pre-chorus.
Suddenly I noticed someone near me like an alarm waking me up from dreamyland. A diver called Amin who worked with my dad smiled at me and encouraged to continue singing. At this point I had already stopped feeling super embarrassed. In Indonesia everyone always sings, in the car, on the street, on the couch and on the tv. Something I didn’t know from back »home« where I don’t think I ever was encouraged to sing unless it was some Bavarian or Christian hymn.
My exchange with Amin is one of the moments I have always kept thinking about. As a queer natural from very early age on I learned at a young age that all kinds of embodiment outside the (boy) norm will be rewarded with shame.
I think I must’ve been in my Sailor Moon era when I noticed it’s not okay to collect the parts for life sized Sailor Mars & Sailor Venus Poster and I better put that Barbie and little Ponys in disguise to later refuse to confess that I had one.
In my (pre)-teens I wanted to embody Britney and Rihanna. Thank god by then I already knew better to embody behind a locked door by myself only. So it felt like this time around I put my voice and body in disguise & refused to confess that I had one.
Influence and experiences are so important in order to sharpen our sense of sourcing. I shared Kasimyn’s story because parenting plays obviously a big role on how we gain sources, experiences and thus trust as well as access. Parenting also means to take care - care of yourself, your surroundings and all its happenings that do good to you.
I am convinced that music plays a big part
The other reason I shared Kasimyn’s story is because as a child of an Indonesian immigrant it becomes somewhat emotional to see someone who’s connected to your home visible and represented in the western part of the world through one of the west’s biggest icons, Björk.
Sound is a universal language that exists in countless slangs, accents and frequencies. A practice that has united and shaped communities ever since.
In the pandemic we’ve learned that in isolation music is one of the very few mediums that creates a collective, joyful experience. Music may has progressed faster than anything else within this time as one of the easiest forms to create a collective experience (radio, music platforms as well as dance floors, concerts, ..). Countless projects were born in this time with the intention to create a new togetherness. I want to give two examples from Berlin that are close to me.
NIA Records was founded in 2020 by Defliné, Collo Awata and Loftgarten. Their first compilation Intentions Vol. 1 was released in June 2020 - the EP is melting ambient dreamscapes into a light club sphere catching waves of poetry. The label is moving within its local surrounding Berlin whilst sourcing new uprising talents from around the globe via the internet, providing a new meta platform. The label is exchanging through guest mixes and collaborations with Oroko Radio (Accra, Ghana), Ola Radio (Marseille, France) or Radio Kapital (Warsaw, Poland) among others.
NIA IRL events are a safe(r) space for Berlins queer and BIPOC community, bringing together performance, poetry and music in small venues around the city with artists like Isu Mignonne Mignon, mobilegirl or ariesfallenangel.
Aiming to build bridges to places where little to no refuge for queer folks is given or parts of the world music is often appropriated from and not adequately acknowledged, NIA introduces a way of community building and showcasing through the form of a record label.
Opened in the late summer of 2021 kwia invites into a soft living lounge that will make you feel like you are home on a cloudy planet far from reality. The practice of taking off the shoes when entering the bar – a practice that is at the heart of kwia – is strongly linked to the respect of the home, and the mindfulness in intimate spaces across Asia where part of owners and staff are rooted.
kwia is the place where I developed a deeper understanding of the concept of sourcing through community. Filling a gap in the rapid, intense Berlin club scene by creating a space for slow and deep listening, the bar is providing an experience that doesn’t take a lot of effort or VR glasses to immerse in. The bar’s curated programme is filled with changing events, creating a platform for different labels or collectives (3xl, Scrub, Refuge Worldwide, Tabloid Press, Liquidtime, Umgebung, Weeirdos, Weich and many more).
The immersion with sound and space allowed me and other listeners to put the meaning of music into a new perspective - to strengthen, deepen and intotroducing a new kind of relationship to and with sound.
NIA records and kwia both give an example for the importance of platforms and creation of space - physically, digitally as well as emotionally. In order to build sustainable communities we need to be particular about implementation of infrastructure that is rooted in our believes (spiritual, ancestral, artistic) and intentions. While being particular in its essence, places like kwia are also a room for experimentation and slow flourishment. In a familiar, intimate that is rich in its own dynamic, everyone connected to a platform will become their own seed within the space. The organic thrive of collaborations and relationships then turns into a kind of mushroom lab, where micro-cosmoses grow together and expand with a shared barn that stores collective matters of survival.
Representation . Visibility
In the late 90s and the 2000s talent shows like »Popstars«, »DSDS« (German Idol), Germany’s next Topmodel but also music channels like MTV or VIVA introduced a generation of talents with divers migration backgrounds as well as queer identities on the tv screen.
In 2000 the first ever winner of Popstars, the No Angels, released their first single Daylight in your Eyes and until today they’re the most successful girlband of central Europe. Similar to the concept of the Spice Girls, all members of the No Angels represented an element and provided a huge identification surface for teenagers at that time.
Throughout their career they intentionally stayed away from political statements and their identities linked with their success were somewhat giving an example for the normalitsation of diversity in Germany back in the day. Other participants of talent shows couldn’t latch on their success or impact - still the formats provided visibility surface for a new generation of German teens. All these shows however were made for short term profit on production side and with the years queer and BIPOC contestants were sensationalized and exoticized by a white cis gaze, which stands the huge lack of adqeuate represenation in the mainstream media.
We’re back in 1995 and hence pre talent show era - with their first release Jazzy, Lee and Ricky aka Tic Tac Toe are coming for a racist and sexist society that is anything but ready. Ich find dich scheiße (»I think you’re scheiße«) is one of the best and most provoking songs in German pop culture history.
Whilst white critics and radio stations were busy not-understanding and censoring their music, the band generated visibility for a young generation of BIPOCs in Germany. Tic Tac Toe are a unique phenomen for that time in the German music landscape. Never before three black women were commercially successful musicians, challenging the status quo of the industry for many years. However their impact has not been recognized and acknowledged enough for the longest time, only recently articles on their legacy surface on the internet and newspapers.
The press conference that ended in their first break up in 1997 has become as famous as the band themselves and is one the most mocked artefacts of German pop history.
For the summer term of 2022 two friends & I had the strong urge to break out of the given academic structure. All of us are heavily influenced by (»trash«) tv, music and pop culture. Content that doesn’t fit and isn’t supported within the academia we experience. A frustrating fact that led us to an independent semester project called »Juxa & Dollerei«. A staged retrospective exhibition about the collective JUXA who once existed but never found real recognition and is now being excavated by a white cube art space - centuries after the collectives dissolvement.
Mocking art institutions and confronting white academia, the project began flourishing with the idea of staging and reimagining the infamous Tic Tac Toe press conference in the frame of a mockumentary. The bands career gives a solid foundation for a critical analysis of many circumstances FLINTA QTBIPOCs in Germany find themselves in.
Our JUXA collective gained a short term attention/recognition with a parody of German holiday mentality - the songs Ibiza and Mallorca topped the charts and was never intended to become a thing. The commercial success led to the decay of the collective.
Even though fun was a key factor of their work it simultaneously has always been political. They knew how to make themselves space - their voices and statements on representation, access and community were largely left unheard though.
Tic Tac Toe were loud, outspoken and radical - an authentic representation of a whole generation. For the longest time they seemed to be remembered for the wrong reasons. Throughout their career in the 90s the press interfered in their private lives by releasing scandal headlines (prostituation, mental health, drugs, murder) leading to the press conference that ended in the dissolvement of the first line up and end of their commercial succcess. Tic Tac Toe are a unique example for progress and emancipation in German pop culture. Thanks Tic Tac Toe.
Archives give us truth, they tell our stories, they capture our stories. Music has been a true companion my whole life, everything I ever listened to is stored in immaterial archive.
We’re looking at the night sky. It’s the third day and last night of Whole Festival, a weekend celebrating Berlin queer culture and community. The sky is clear and the stars are countless - stardust covers the universe. Ariel Zetina and Miss Twink USA are GIVING, it’s the closing set of the festival. We’re jumping in black hoodies and reflective grey cargos, entering the stage whilst a Gimme More edit is blasting from the speakers. The set continues it’s hard and bumpy, we can’t stop won’t stop whipping. Break beats and techno fuse with pop edits - something old, something new, something hard, something soft. Let’s have some fun this beat is sick Let’s have some fun this beat is sick Let’s have some fun this beat is sick Let’s have some fun this beat is sick. Life’s makes us store a lot, most of it we don’t want to keep. It’s sets like this that allows us to fully release. Everything is embarssing by Sky Ferreira comes on, I look at my friend - our black hoodies are off, we turned sexy at this point - we look at stars in the sky again. Beamed back to our bedrooms, only now we’re not by ourselves anymore. A true peak of life.
This summer music and chosen family have enriched my life more than ever before. I learned how much essence, emotions and experiences I can process through playing music, I learned how much knowledge is passed on through sounds. Creating sets allows to reach and release an inner depth that otherwise is hard to grasp or release. A practice that escapes linearity and sums up our collective as well as personal lives.
We are dreaming under city lights and star skies. We are all around finding another. Thank you.
tangentwithtanner
stormborns