Performances
July 14, 2016, 7pm
Topical Cream presents live performances by Black Quantum Futurism, Quay Dash, MSHR and LAFAWNDAH (in collaboration with Amy Zimmer), set to a soundscape by DOSS. Topical Cream is a New York City-based nonprofit providing a platform for women working in fashion, art and technology.
Hostesses
Avena Gallagher
DeSe Escobar
Seashell Coker
Lisa Cooley
M/L Artspace
Rózsa Farkas
Safety Corp
Tauba Auerbach
Whitney Mallett
With special thanks to Jan Kath Design
*100% of proceeds will go to The Center, Orlando’s principal LGBTQ organization assisting victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting and their families with financial and emotional support.
Black Quantum Futurism collective is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Camae Defstar and Rasheedah Phillips exploring the intersections of futurism, creative media, DIY aesthetics, and activism in marginalized communities through an alternative temporal lens. BQF collective is inspired by afrofuturism, quantum physics, and african traditions of spatial-temporal consciousness. They weave science fiction realities with african concepts of time, ritual, and sound to present innovative works that offer practical ways to escape time loops, oppression vortexes, and the digital matrix. BQF collective has created a number of community-based events, experimental music projects, zines, and an anthology of experimental essays on space-time consciousness titled Black Quantum Futurism: Theory & Practice Vol. 1 (featured in the Unveiling Visions exhibition at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). BQF collective is a 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellow, a 2015 artist-in-residence at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange, and had their experimental short, Black Bodies as Conductors of Gravity, premiere at the 2015 Afrofuturism Now! Festival in Rotterdam. BQF has presented, exhibited, or performed at Stony Island Arts Bank, WORM! Rotterdam, Live Worms Gallery, Temple Contemporary, and more.
Neither a formally trained singer nor producer, LAFAWNDAH is a musician and performance artist whose work expands the scope of contemporary pop music, drawing on Middle Eastern and Caribbean rhythms, as well as the club music she has discovered since her recent move to New York. Her latest EP Tan (Warp Records) resides in the tension between militant beats and organic melodies.
DOSS is an NYC-based musician and producer whose ethereal self-titled EP (2014) crystallized the artist as a post-trance prophète. DOSS’s dynamic live sets seamlessly combine her own material with house classics, thumping techno, and sounds reminiscent of their 8-bit origins.
MSHR is an art collective comprised of Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo builds and explores systems to reveal pathways toward ecstatic sensory experience. They work at the intersection of digital sculpture, analog circuitry, and ceremonial performance. MSHR emerged from the 5-person collective Oregon Painting Society in Portland, Oregon in 2011. They are currently artists in residence at Pioneer Works.
Quay Dash is a Bronx-based lyricist and rapper known for her Boom-bap style of rap. She is associated with House of LaDosha. Taking cues from a heavy nostalgia rooted in ‘90s female R&B, Quay was known for freestyling before her single “Ain’t Gon’ Stop It” was released in 2014 to critical acclaim.
