opensignal is a collective of artists based in Providence, Rhode Island concerned with the state of gender and race in experimental electronic-based sound and art practices. In August I spoke with opensignal about carving out space for traditionally excluded voices in a creative field dominated by homogeneity.
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Celine Katzman: Can you tell us a little bit about the conception of opensignal? How and why did you form the collective?
Bridget Feral: It was born in reaction to the failures of our academic situations to recognize women (especially women of color) in what was being taught and in opportunities given to students. We found a collective desire to work against this and to build something that we felt we could live in.
Bevin Kelley: It came out of both a positive feeling about each other as well as an impossibly difficult shared scholastic experience. We also wanted to connect to a larger community outside of academia.
Asha Tamirisa: It is ever-changing. There were many conversations. Bevin talked about having an ensemble, and Bridget talked about having a sort of study group.
Akiko Hatakeyama: I think everyone might have a slightly different view or interpretation of the mission which is important because everyone’s experience is different. This is the advantage of having people in a collective.
Caroline Park: All of the above! We were searching for a safer space, so we created it.
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CK: You all met at Brown University as students, both undergraduate and graduate, and began this project that criticized the university. What was the process like seeking out support from the university – monetary or otherwise? Can you elaborate on your reception in academia?
BF: We were able to get a lot of grants our first year — thanks to Asha and Caroline— and it seemed that the institution liked the idea, but that was because we did all of the work, and they got to look good without having to provide support or exert any real effort of their own.
AT: It was very clear that there was a big need for this, and the institution was excited about it and supportive of it. However, depending on institutional support meant our actions were highly visible to the institution, so initially we spent more time event planning rather than community building. Not that these things are mutually exclusive, but it was a bit imbalanced at first.
Lizzie Davis: The grants gave us the financial freedom and flexibility to gain a lot of momentum right off the bat. We put out a record and organized a really amazing festival within six months of formalizing the group, which was pretty cool. That would not have worked without the money.
AT: In an effort to continue supporting us, the department suggested “Let’s make opensignal permanent!” but who actually does that labor? Every not-white-man who enters the program would then be suddenly slammed with all sorts of organizational and event planning work. It also still “others” the kind of work that needs to just be a part of the essential infrastructure of the academy always and forever.
LD: Also, how can opensignal be permanent if virtually no new women are being invited into the department? Students are not permanent, you can’t rely on them to be your infrastructure. It’s a classic example of this very horrible ubiquitous phenomenon in arts administration where there is a man as the figurehead and thirty women working very hard underneath him.
LD: But on that note, another thing that was important was not being a collective for women only and the work made by women is not different than work in general.
BF: Yes, I like to think of it as a collective that is about recognizing and carving out space for the people who are not usually given that space, trying to shift the balance.
BK: In a better world, university programs, concerts, shows, etc would include many different kinds of people, but we need/require so much progress to even get close to that. It goes without saying but bears repeating: these rosters are almost always all white men.
CP: What should we do when so much of the world understands people on a distinct male female binary?
CK: Why do you think there is a gender imbalance and a lack of racial diversity in electronic music and art in academia?
LD: It exists because structural racism and sexism exist on every level in capitalism and the university is a corporation first and foremost…
AT: Academia has a prevailing aesthetic that privileges certain training, that is only available to certain people.
CP: Particularly white men with other white men. It’s a bro culture boys club. This is obvious when you look at the gendered language used to discuss history in the classroom – “the fathers of electronic music” is a common phrase.
BF: It’s always “the fathers and grandfathers” with a thirty-second second mention of Björk and then back to the men. This made for a fairly isolating classroom experience.
AH: The academy is still very Eurocentric. For example, if your discipline is not focusing on Western classical music, the discipline receives a name other than simply “music”. If you research Schumann, you are a musicologist, but if you research Balinese music, you are an ethnomusicologist. Even if you research Native American music in the U.S., it’s ethnomusicology. This is not a unique problem to musicology. It illustrates how music is defined in all disciplines in music. I have also learned that many people tend to focus on the fact that I’m from outside of the Western culture rather than focus on what I do. Once during a class critique, after listening to my piano music, people started to mention composers from Japan. It was obviously because I’m Japanese and was completely unrelated to the work I shared.
BK: Within academia there is real resistance to the idea that not taking yourself too seriously can be a good and creatively vital thing and a potential source of social change. If you have any sense of humor or playfulness about yourself and your work, you are immediately dismissed as a dabbling female who is not a “great artist” which itself is a horribly loaded racist, sexist, classist figment.
AT: The way academia treats history erases so much of how electronic music has developed – which was not a straight line from Europe to America with mostly white men as the main actors. It feels like any time a discussion race, nationality, of sexuality or gender might warranted, there is a gap. The first tape music piece is said to have been done by Halim El-Dabh in Cairo, but I learned this through personal research rather than in books I was assigned in class. Disco has its roots in queer Latino and African American underground, but these politics are often glossed over. The compositional and improvisational use of effects like reverb and echo in Dub music in Jamaica was a huge stylistic development in electronic music performance. Detroit techno innovated how drum machine and sequencers were used both improvisationally as well as in the studio. Techno and funk have conceptual ties to afrofuturism and science fiction, but this isn’t usually brought up. Sometimes texts will mention these developments, but in a way that doesn’t really weave their involvement into the main narrative. A frustrating recent attempt at repairing this history are these ‘lists of women typically forgotten in electronic music’ including artists like Daphne Oram, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel, which constructs their work as a counterpoint to the main narrative – the “other” history – rather than the history itself.
CK: Wow, that is really fascinating and frustrating. Can you talk about your reception out of the academy? How are you involved in the local experimental electronic sound and art scene in Providence?
BF: Though opensignal was born within/as a result of academia, we found that branching out into local music cultures was a mutually beneficial direction to move in. When booking the festival, we included many local artists, which felt good particularly because Brown can be a drain of Providence resources. It was nice to actively reallocate the institution’s resources to people outside of that system.
BK: I had a really strong connection to the Oakland / SF bay area local non-academic music scene when I started making, performing, etc in 1997. I also feel connected to the Providence community, where I’ll probably stay based for a long time.
AH: We try to share resources and knowledge with local communities. One of the organizations we volunteer with is Girls Rock! RI. Asha and I taught workshops and Caroline has plans to teach there too. Being involved in the local community is important. In terms of socioeconomic diversity, the university is not a reflection of the local community, and often is a drain on its resources. We want to be able to give back.
CP: I have thoughts on academic and local DIY scenes interwoven with the model-minority construct and perception. There is this feeling of minorities having to “prove” to white society that they’re not dumb or uncivilized. Academia is a way to have a voice when the white majority drowns out the voices of people of color. I am feeling more comfortable in local scenes now, but at first I felt like an outsider at any noise show because I was one of very few non-white people and classified as an academic.
AH: I’ve felt the same about “proving.” This is a global phenomenon. When I go back to Japan, I notice people are very vocal about their accomplishments in practices like ballet dancing or acting in a Hollywood movie. We are taught to measure our success by a Western metric. It is hard to conceptualize of this as a problem because it is all we have ever been taught or known, but really it would be better for different cultures to determine their own terms of success.
AT: The community is mostly really great but can definitely feel homogenous. I’ve witnessed some pretty appropriative and offensive things, like band names, the names of festivals, and performance art pieces, where it feels like the assumption is that there would be no people of that culture in the audience.
CP: Unfortunately, opensignal is sometimes identified as a purely academic group. This article Asha recently sent me is definitely important.
BF: Yes, though it is better than the university, there’s definitely still a ton of bro culture in the local music scene.
LD: “What do you mean we are racist – look a person of color came to our event clearly there is no problem” is a persistent attitude inside and outside academia. opensignal feels equally necessary for academia and the greater world of music.
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CK: Maybe a few of you who have experiences in other cities can talk about scenes there.
LD: Bridget and I recently toured in the south, mostly in Georgia. It was really nice that most of the shows we played there were actually diverse, in terms of gender and race. Coming from the noise scene in the northeast, this was surprising and refreshing, which it shouldn’t be. There is a phenomenon in harsh noise where many of the projects are called things like “baby rape” or “bitch mom” Many men in the scene perceive these naming choices as ironic because they conceive of themselves as totally separate from actual violence because they participate in an “alternative” community.
BF: I spent the past two summers in Iceland working in the music industry. Many people perceive Iceland to be very progressive, but actually the whole Icelandic music scene is so white that no one is talking about race. There’s productive conversation about gender and sexuality and sexual violence brought to a wider audience through music, but feminism there is very focused on white issues and often doesn’t extend beyond that. It is evident there’s a real problem when you examine Iceland’s treatment of immigrants.
LD: I’m currently based in Berlin. A lot of people here fetishize American blackness because of Detroit and Chicago techno and house music in a way I take issue with, but I don’t feel it’s really my place to go in on it. On the other hand, there are a lot of people booking consistently diverse lineups in terms of genre, gender, and race, and working hard to keep their events from being re-marginalized in how they are promoted. Diversity should not be a marketing tactic.
CP: Diversity itself is even a strange word, like diverse to whom?
CK: Right. People in power love to boast about diversity in their institution, but do not often take accountability and do labor to actually support it. The term itself in these contexts is inherently centered on the experience of white people…
On a more positive note, I was wondering if you all could share the names of some artists, institutions, or organizations that you admire and feel are doing important work in your field.
Beast Nest – https://beastnest.bandcamp.com/
Maria Chavez – http://mariachavez.org/
TECHNE (Bonnie Jones and Suzanne Thorpe) – https://technesound.org/
Browntourage – https://browntourage.com
Sara Ahmed – https://feministkilljoys.com/
Fatima Al Qadiri – http://fatimaalqadiri.com/
Venus X – http://www.ghe20g0th1k.com/
Dyke Night – http://www.auroraprovidence.com/events/dyke-night/
Evolv-tech – http://www.evlvtech.com/
Tara Rodgers – http://www.analogtara.net/wp/
Girls Rock! – http://girlsrockri.org/
Future Brown – https://soundcloud.com/future-brown
Dromfakultäten – https://www.facebook.com/dromfakulteten4ever
Baba Vanga tapes – http://babavanga.bandcamp.com/
NON Worldwide – http://non.com.co/
Kyoka – http://www.ufunfunfufu.com/
Doreen St Felix – https://twitter.com/dstfelix
Ayah Bdeir – http://littlebits.cc/
Substructure – https://www.facebook.com/substructurebos/
BATHAUS – https://soundcloud.com/bathaus
Isabella Koen – https://soundcloud.com/networkerror
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Bridget Feral is a musician and sound engineer based in Providence RI
soundcloud.com/fferal
Akiko Hatakeyama is a composer/performer of electroacoustic music and intermedia art based in Eugene, Oregon.
akikohatakeyama.com
Caroline Park lives in Providence where she makes music, teaches, and hermits away in her spare time.
Asha Tamirisa is a sound and video artist based in Providence RI.
www.ashatamirisa.net
Lizzie Davis is a musician and engineer living in Berlin, Germany.
https://wiltedwoman.bandcamp.com
Bevin Kelley (known also as Blevin Blectum) is a sound designer, composer/producer, and electronic musician based in Providence, RI.
*Claire Kwong and Lucy Lewis, who were not featured in this interview, were involved in the first year of opensignal
