Regenerative Feedback: On Listening And Its Emancipatory Potential

ISSUE is pleased to open Regenerative Feedback: On Listening And Its Emancipatory Potential, a three day symposium of talks, presentations, discourse, and performances centered around biological, social, political and cognitive negotiations in music. Experimental in form, each evening of Regenerative Feedback explores various ethical dimensions, historical circumstances, and cultural resonances of musical artifacts through a series of individual presentations, a roundtable conversation guided by a moderator, interlocuting performances, and extended Q&As.

SOURCE/CHANNEL/NOISE: the Friday event features presentations from artist and composer Colin Self (returning to ISSUE after the 2014 premiere of The Fool, co-written with 2014 Artist-In-Residence Raul de Nieves), Sukhdev Sandhu (Director of the Center for Experimental Humanities at NYU), UK producer and activist Mannie Dee, music critic and musicologist Adam Harper, Polish electronic noise artist Ewa Justka + artist and EVOL member Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, and art historian Andrew Cappetta, who also moderates the panel. In addition, the evening also features interlocuting performances from artist, composer, and former ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Jules Gimbrone and a DJ set from Mannie Dee.

NOISE/HUMAN/SIGNAL: the Saturday event features Iranian artist, writer and philosopher Reza Negarestani (returning to ISSUE after his 2012 presentation of “The Non-Trivial Goat and the Cliffs of the Universal” with Florian Hecker), as well as theorist Inigo Wilkins, returning after his presentation of “Xenopoetic Deviations” with TCF at ISSUE in 2017. Presentations also include musician and artist Brandon Covington (founder of multimedia performance project Black Hydra’s Discharge Springs Forth Errantly From Her Many Mouths), Dhanveer Brar (scholar of the aesthetics and politics of sound in black diasporic culture of the Global North), Melle Kromhout (scholar of intersections between musicology, sound studies, and media studies), and lecturer and member of techno-futurist collective ANON Alexandra Hedako Mason. The panel is moderated by Inigo Wilkins. In addition, the evening features interlocuting performances from Brandon Covington’s N-Prolenta project, and Neha Spellfish, a project of Oakland-based multidisciplinary sound artist Neha Chriss.

Taking the general heading SIGNAL/MODEL/FEEDBACK as a point of departure, the Sunday event features presentations by composer of “NIHILIST QUEER REVOLT MUSIK” Dreamcrusher, performance theorist Marielle Pelissero, Oakland-based multidisciplinary sound artist Neha Spellfish, Stockholm-based cultural theorist Jon Lindblom (with work mainly focusing on rehabilitating the grand dimensions of cultural and aesthetic modernism), and author and scholar Paul Rekret. The panel is moderated by Colin Self. In addition, the evening also features interlocuting performances from London-born producer, writer and DJ Flora Yin-Wong, as well as Colin Self presenting a talk and demonstration of Xhoir, a non-utilitarian choir focused on alternative modalities of group singing.

Regenerative Feedback is organized by Sonia de Jager, a Rotterdam-based researcher currently residing in New York, working at the intersection between philosophy of technology, philosophy of language, media studies and cultural analysis. De Jager has stated the following: “Curator is an uncomfortable word these days, and definitely not the role -- as it is most commonly enacted and perceived -- I wish to associate myself with. Having said that, I do want to state as an organizer/initiator/instigator, that despite my general conceptual framing of this project: none of the above would have been possible without the bonds and feedback loops I entered into with other people during the planning of things. From age-long inspiration from friendships and collaborations, to structural and technical suggestions, to the recommending of then-unknown people as possible speakers, to overall moral support and human enthusiasm. This is, above all, a collaborative effort.”