Trans & Noise 1

Trans & Noise

For our #12 event, Trans & Noise, we are pleased to announce a lecture and performance by Charles Céleste Hutchins on transgender and noise music. Moderator: Looi van Kessel Panel:  Joel Ryan, Johanna Monk, Fani Konstantinidou

Sunday 25 February 2018, 15:00
Broedplaats Lely, Schipluidenlaan 12, Amsterdam


Charles Céleste Hutchins

Why noise? In English, the word ‘noise’ comes with myriad connotations which all play to the plurality of lots of things happening at the same time, it makes it hard to focus. In communication, noise can distract and distort meaning which particularly in gender expression might be a useful tool and used intentionally. Noise as a sonic and visual phenomenon is deeply complex and allows its context to become the main player. One pays attention to the frame and the space where it is being produced and presented and becomes aware of ones own body. As a transgressive phenomenon, noise embodies a catharsis. It has a purifying effect, evoking a kind of trance that lets us reach out to a different level, crossing borders within oneself. As noise is sound that is pushed to its limits, it reasons that, just like challenging ‘gender limitations’, identity boundaries may become fluid.

Charles Céleste Hutchins was born in San Jose, California in 1976. Growing up in Silicon Valley, he started programming at a young age and has continued to do so, even after leaving dot coms to persue music composition – obtaining an MA form Wesleyan University in 2005 and a PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2012. His recent work has focused on gendered labour and AI. Charles will speak about the history of noise music and relate music historical aspects to issues concerning gender identities and trans people.
www.berkeleynoise.com
charleshutchins.bandcamp.com

Joel Ryan has been performing Electro-Acoustic music since 1979 when he first hacked an Apple II for live sound processing. Convinced of the musical future for personal computers he left hacker’s paradise in Northern California to work in New York for Warner/Atari and then to Europe where he joined with George Lewis inventing and evangelize real-time digital electronic music. From IRCAM in Paris they went to Amsterdam and Michel Waisvisz’ STEIM. There and at the Institute of Sonology they seeded a tradition of performance and improvisation that is still bearing fruit.
http://jr.home.xs4all.nl/bio1.03.html

Fani Konstantinidou is a composer, sound artist, performer and music researcher based in the Netherlands.
Her music and research focuses on conceptual composition, sonic images and the perception/imagination of the listener in electroacoustic music. Currently, she is investigating how the cultural, social and individual differences of the audience affect the listening process and the educational practices of contemporary music.
www.fanikonstantinidou.com

Johanna Monk is an author, musician and performance artist. As a musical instrumentalist, composer and producer she combines the extended techniques of the avant-garde and the brutality of pure sound with a melodic sensibility that reflects (or betrays) her roots in folk music, while also continually developing non-standard ways of unifying content-based prose, poetry and storytelling with creative music.
www.soundcloud.com/vanita-joe-monk
www.monastery.nl

Moderator Looi van Kessel (Leiden University) is a PhD student at the Leiden University Center for Arts in Society, specializing in American literature and gender studies. He recently co-edited an issue of the Dutch Journal for Gender Studies on trans* studies and as a member of the university’s LGBT+ core advisory team he makes it one of his key points to improve gender dynamics in the classroom situation, including the attempt to make teachers more aware of trans and genderqueer expressions and identifications among their students.
www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/looi-van-kessel

This event was made possible with the financial support of the Creative Industries Fund (Stimuleringsfonds). Many thanks to STEIM, to Urban Resort and to Broedplaats Lely for their support.
steim.org
www.urbanresort.nl
www.facebook.com/pg/lely.amsterdam/events/