This month a recording of a live performance of Black Atlantis, The End of Eating Everything, an audio-visual essay produced by Ayesha Hameed in collaboration with Tom Hirst.
Recorded live at the Empire Remains shop in London in November 2016, Black Atlantis looks at possible afterlives of the Black Atlantic: in illegal migration at sea, in oceanic environments, through Afrofuturistic dancefloors and soundsystems, and in outer space – taking as its point of departure the group Drexciya’s sonic fictional world, it brings together ideas around afrofuturism and ecological crises and the related concept of the anthropocene.
Black Atlantis combines two conversations - afrofuturism and the anthropocene. It takes as point of departure Drexciya, the late 20th century electronic music duo from Detroit, and their creation of a sonic, fictional world. Through liner notes and track titles, Drexciya take the Black Atlantic below the water with their imaginary of an Atlantis comprised of former slaves who have adapted to living underwater. This wetness brings to the table a sense of the haptic, the sensory, the bodily, and the epidermal. What below-the-water, and Atlantis brings back is the bottom of the sea, the volume of the water, the materiality of the space of the ocean, and other protagonists that inhabit the sea.
This third instalment ‘The End of Eating Everything’// Black Atlantis III follows Bodies and Storms// Black Atlantis I; and Agitations and Adaptations// Black Atlantis II. It takes its title from a work by Wangechi Mutu which shows a monstrous form of consumption underwater. ‘The End of Eating Everything’ considers what Drexciyans might consume underwater, what things are consuming each other around them and what boundaries might be eroded between the what’s and the who’s of what is being eaten.
With contributions from: Rachel Baker, Sam Dolbear, Lizzie Homersham, Marie Louise Krogh, Bijan Moosavi, Christian Nyampeta, Theodor Ringborg, Nikhil Vettukattil, Marina Vishmidt.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Part 1 Stars and Clocks
Drexciya The Quest (Submerge,
1997).
Sean M. Kelley. The Voyage of the
Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina
University North Carolina Press: 2016. Pp.53, 55
Wikipedia Entry “Marine
Chronometer” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer
Emily Lindsay Brown “The
longitude problem: how we figured out where we are” July 18, 2013 http://theconversation.com/the-longitude-problem-how-we-figured-out-where-we-are-16151
Simon Schaffer “Chronometers,
Charts, Charisma: On Histories of Longitude” http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/browse/issue-02/chronometers-charts-charisma/chronometers-charts-charisma-onhistories-of-longitude/
Mark Richardson “Grava 4 review” http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2456-grava-4/
“Astronomical Guidepost” Drexciya
Grava 4 (Clone ,2002)
“Sound of the Sun” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZQcLJjpdrI
“Raw Video: US Ship Under Pirate
Attack” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y36D17uALA
“Skeleton Clock with Chronometer
Escapement – Herschel” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvopnjDI6E
“13965 - Bliss chronometer” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWOuWShc-t4
“NASA Voyager Space Sounds –
Jupiter” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImuLz1Oo9c8&list=PLKzoKueiKNwtP6wJF0Qa5Pn8EAtReMtcQ
Draining of the Tanks Drexciya
Neptune’s Lair CD (Tresor, 1999)
Astronomical Guideposts: Drexciya
Grava 4 (Clone Records, 2002)
Part 2 Cities under the sea
Mark Richardson “Grava 4 review” http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2456-grava-4/2
Andrew Duke “Drexciya” in
Cognition Audioworks http://cognitionaudioworks.com/drexciya.html
Drexciya Neptune’s Lair (Tresor,
1999)
Blue Planet “Episode 2: The Deep”
David Attenbrough. BBC Natural History Unit/ Discovery Channel 2001.
“Solar Wind” Shifted Phases The
Cosmic Memoirs Of The Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthrope (Tresor, 2002)
“Bubble Metropolis” Drexciya
Drexciya 2 - Bubble Metropolis (Underground Resistance, 1993)
“Intro: Temple Of Dos De Aqua”
Drexciya Neptune's Lair (Tresor,1999)
Crone, et al (2006). "The
Sound Generated by Mid-Ocean Ridge Black Smoker Hydrothermal Vents". PLoS
One 1 (1): e133. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0000133.
“Factory Sounds” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ih0JJLoMIg
“Sound Effect -- Factory
Machinery” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT4xyUAiy30&list=PLpYsyhOXjEO5qg8xQjITqsNoCxuR-_aZ_&index=2
Part 3 Monsters
H.P. Lovecraft. 'The Call of
Cthulhu' in The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the
Macabre. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982, p.76.
Anaïs Duplan “A Body that is
Ultra-Body: In Conversation with Fred Moten and Elysia Crampton” http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/a-body-that-is-ultra-body-in-conversation-with-fred-moten-and-elysia-crampton/
Charles Kingsley Water Babies: A
Fairy Tale for a Land Baby. London: Macmillian & co.,1886.
Omar Berrada “Defend the Dead:
Omar Berrada on M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!” Chumurenga/ Pan African Space
Station (Radio Broadcast) 2015 https://www.mixcloud.com/chimurenga/defend-the-dead-omar-berrada-zong/
Space is the Place d. John Coney
1974.
“Species of the Pod” Drexciya
Neptune's Lair (Tresor,1999)
“Fish recorded singing dawn
chorus on reefs just like birds” https://www.newscientist.com/article/2106331-fish-recorded-singing-dawn-chorus-on-reefs-just-like-birds/
“Amazing monstrous whirlpool /
Чудовищный водоворот / Dvietes atvars / Torbellino / Tourbillon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqROBTVgL6A
“killer whale sounds - bruit
orque - schwertwal geräusch - odgłos orki” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qeUBGMN-hg
“The Bloop: A Mysterious Sound
from the Deep Ocean | NOAA SOSUS” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBN56wL35IQ
“Underwater Whale Sounds - Full
60 Minute Ambient Soundscape” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savCAd6RyPI
“Walt Disney: Water Babies Silly
Symphonies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imOL1gImZb8
“Wangechi Mutu + Santigold - The
End of Eating Everything - Nasher Museum at Duke” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMZSCfqOxVs
Part 4 Coasts
Drexciya Grava IV (Clone Records
2002).
Stephen Helmreich, Alien Ocean:
Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 2009, p.64.
“Mediterranean smuggler arrested
for 'throwing dead body to sharks'“
Nick Squires, The Telegraph 14
Apr http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11535830/Mediterraneansmuggler-arrested-for-throwing-dead-body-to-sharks.html
“Seventeen migrants die of
asphyxiation in Mediterranean smuggling boat”
Nick Squires, The Telegraph, 22
July 2016 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/22/seventeen-migrants-die-of-asphyxiation-in-mediterranean-smugglin/
“Italy is killing refugees with
kindness” Nicholas Farrell The Spectator, 6 September 2014 http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/09/italys-decriminalising-of-illegal-immigration-has-acted-as-a-green-light-to-boat-people/
'New era of climate change
reality' as emissions hit symbolic threshold” Press Association The Guardian
Monday 24 October
“Winter Wind 1 Hour / Relaxing
Snowstorm Sound, Winds Blowing Snow Across Forest Meadow” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZYSMkLSolc
“Wind Sounds - Full 60 Minute
Soundscape” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=113BMnYOaeM
Lamin Fofana “Another World” 2015
Jean Michel Jarre Oxygene
(Polydor 1976)
“Cascading Celestial Giants”
Drexciya Grava 4 (Clone Records, 2002)
“L'Atlantide - Georg Wilhelm
Pabst (espejismo)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sgmvlSfqeM
Drexciya d. Simon Rittmeier 2012
