DeForrest Brown, Jr. in conversation with Vanessa Fajemisin

This conversation is presented as part of Brown, Jr.’s Research As… residency with Libby Leshgold Gallery. Throughout this residency he has shared his research into Rhythmanalytics as a work-in-progress, and diagnostic exploration of electronic music at the end of the music industry through applied metaphilosophy and “techno-vernacular expression.” Inspired by his own experiences of reasoning through synesthesia, Brown, Jr. seeks to construct a myth-scientific modal logic and studio performance music that embraces cross-disciplinary multitasking.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American, rhythmanalyst, writer, musician, and curator. Under the moniker Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. He has released three albums on Planet Mu; Of Desire, Longing (2019), Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (2020) and Techxodus (2023). Brown’s debut book Assembling a Black Counter Culture was published by Primary Information in 2022.  

Vanessa Fajemisin (she/her) is a writer, DJ, curator and cultural producer living, working and playing on the shared, unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as “Vancouver”. Writing across art, (digital) culture, and critical thinking since 2019, much of her practice explores the intersections between Blackness, visual media, music, various subcultures and sociopolitical theories. Much of her curatorial practice is focused on exploring the politics and poetics of Black digital-diasporic visuality through a variety of interdisciplinary mediums and methods. Exploring themes Blackness, girlhood, and queerness, her work centres subversive, experimental, often non-Western, visual cultures and sonic traditions to build or engage with resonant, diasporic, cross-cultural narratives. As a cultural producer, she designs experiences and programming that explore “listening” across senses, spaces and mediums. 

Research As… is a residency program that makes creative research visible. Artists, writers, curators, designers, performers, filmmakers, are invited to engage with ECU and the wider arts community in a series of public events that present their research practices.