Embodying Japan: Cultures of Sport, Beauty, and Medicine 2017

Auditory Deconstruction of Normative Sexuality

As systems of power work to sanction and define our sexual practice, we must find new outlets through which to morph and play with the boundaries of experience. On this page, I've compiled a sampling of artists who work to sonically deconstruct the constraints of heteronormative binary sexuality and reimagine it as an expansive experiential plane. I've showcased queer musicians who primarily use experimental electronic production to challenge the rigid coherence of imposed dynamics. This form of art pushes both artist and listener beyond their limits of accessibility in hopes of evoking beauty from discomfort. In this way, the listening experience mirrors the lived reality of those who occupy a liminal area between normative constructs, and encourages us to expand our understandings of ourselves into this space. 

"My music is a genderless being. It's about resisting labels and integrating different sides of ourselves. The complicating of one and the other is very fertile, emotionally and creatively. I've been thinking a lot about Native American tribes who saw homosexuals within their tribes as those who could see things in two different ways. Their sexuality could have a practical use spiritually. Maybe the real truth is drawing strength from the gray." -- Arca 


"When you put us on the outside, then we have no choice. If you can't get into the normal clubs then you'll just create something else in your basement and do whatever you want. That's the general ethos of being queer or a person of colour in the West, you're always on the outside looking in. It's better to not bother looking in; it's better to look for the people that look like you and do something with them, create something new - the mainstream isn't that special anyways." -- Lotic 


"Everyday is a killing of what I think the self is. It's easier to believe I'm ugly and nobody wants me or I'm too brilliant or I'm too smart or too complex or too simple... What I intentionally do try to express is how urgently I feel I need to figure this shit out. The songs become like a life rope to help me." -- serpentwithfeet

"In music, you make a dimensional space where certain identities and certain ideas can be born and perhaps thrive. Music has always been that for me. When it plays, you can feel your chemistry changing. If it's something you really like, it's like gene methylation - you can feel a genetic change." -- Elysia Crampton 



sources
https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2015/12/12/heavenly-bodies-how-electronic-music-transgressed-gender-and-genre-in-2015/
http://thequietus.com/articles/17367-lotic-interview
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/31/arca-bjork-kanye-west
https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/the-elegant-panic-of-serpentwithfeet

This page has paths:

This page has tags:

This page references: