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S. David

S. David is an amateur artist and editor half-hailing from the US capital metro area. He “writes against” culture and memory at the margins.

Marta Pérez García: Restos-Traces

In Restos-Traces, the Puerto Rican Washington, DC-based artist Marta Pérez García raises specters, figuratively and formally constellating creative cycles under thematic auspices of personal and political endurance, and disrupting the definition of remains or ruins (restos).

Dwight Cassin: Oronsay

Populated by past and present imaginaries, Cassin’s sculptures—all made of repurposed wood—are sites whereat idea and visual diction are not covalent; rather, they contest among each other along discrete planes of figuration and activity.

George Petrides: Hellenic Heads

Petrides’s other sculptures are ironically laconic in every sense.

No Joke: ehh hahah's Non-Generic “Kreativitet”

Even in conversation, ehh hahah—whose real name is Wojtek—is resistant to classification, preferring to define his work simply by what it is not. “I don’t like that ‘deconstructed club’ thing,” he miffs, not without reason.

Drums Talk

Every genre of music has its myths, and drum and bass is no different. Renegade Snares joins a bibliography of recent titles, not to mention reissues and repackages, taking to task a resurgent interest in junglism, its origins, and its cultural legacy. Written jointly by Ben Murphy and Carl Loben, it uneasily stakes ground between hagiography and oral history.

In Conversation

DEFORREST BROWN, JR. with S. David

The ex-American theorist and musician DeForrest Brown, Jr. has waged what feels like a worldwide one-man guerrilla campaign, challenging the nature of globalized capital in the art and music industries through protest and presence. His latest project as Speaker Music, the album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry—released in 2020 by Planet Mu—drew praise for its uncompromising sonic and social vision, while his “Make Techno Black Again” collaboration with HECHA / 做—his partner Ting Ding 丁汀 and Luz Angélica Fernández’s apparel brand—has re-centered a necessary conversation about race in contemporary music.

The 83rd, Figure of Noise

While perhaps telling, The 83rd's coded use of “culture” is just as instructive as his near-militant posture of independence. As the founder of the multi-pronged media organization Sermon 3 Recordings, through which he self-releases his music via Bandcamp, The 83rd’s sui generis trajectory seeks the kind of valanced heat that the real and art worlds seem to so rarely offer to self-styled enfants terrible.

Language Muddles Music: Sebastián Maria

The thread between structure and consciousness weighs on the mind of Sebastián Maria, the Colombian-American composer, producer, and DJ based in New York City.

Samantha Carroll’s Oeuvre

Love Liz—which premiered in September 2022 as part of the second installation of the exhibition Health Ensurance—centers around an aspiring pop star (played by Carroll) who travels to Los Angeles to meet a music producer with whom she has connected over Instagram.

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The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2023

All Issues