"Passing By"

Curated by Julia Primes Mata, featuring Samo, BLKBX, Mal Devisa, g h o u l s & PRECOLUMBIAN

Artist Website

Every song I write tells a story that humanity needs to know about. In my music I speak about unknown things, impossible things, ancient things, potential things.

-Sun Ra  

 

For the Illuminus Festival, Sweety's collaborated with/and showcased BLKBX, g h o u l s, Mal Devisa, and PRECOLUMBIAN. These four musicians performed their distinctive sonic realities while also taking part in a larger sensory narrative, while using Sam Okerstrom-Lang's piece Glitche as a stage. The narrative is triggered by Afrofuturism, a substance through which these artists devise futures for themselves by engaging with their surroundings. At the same time this is a narrative that discusses the corporeal realities of the performers while also giving themselves license to express something larger than their bodies.

 

About the Artists

 

Sweety’s is a curatorial platform run by artists Julia Pimes Mata, Bryan Rodriguez, Ximena Izquierdo Ugaz and Eduardo Restrepo Castaño. We seek to participate in the Boston art scene by promoting and prioritizing makers of color. Our goal is to make a home for creatives that would otherwise be negated a space due to a practice of confrontation, anger, tongue release, use of codes, subject specificity, personal narratives, backgrounds, not catering to whiteness, non-diplomacy, self-centering, telling the truth, color, trolling, context, placement, displacement, shaming, overabundance, calling-out, etc. Sweety’s is not only activated through flexible programing that speaks from a space between formality and informality but can also be framed as a performative gesture.

 

BLKBX:  The music I create enables my body to speak the complexities of resistance, of protest, liberation, and of prayer. Each song is an incantation and a means of spatial activation, both internally and externally. Using the themes of contemporary pop music/culture in conjunction with more esoteric means, BLKBX subverts the politics that have defined who I am while simultaneously redefining myself and my role in society.

 

g h o u l s is a Brooklyn based Miami grown music maker and DJ. Bringing himself to the north to work primarily out of his room g h o u l s has developed a sonic aesthetic that brings a type of Miami experience to dancefloors of the North East filtered through the sounds of trap music. His early DJ career in the Boston underground scene has grown and taken g h o u l s into venues such as The Good Life, Middle-Sex lounge, pa lounge, Tribeca Grand Hotel, and The Boiler Room.

 

PRECOLUMBIAN is a Philadelphia based genderqueer DJ, musician, and media activist. She has been transforming dance floors from Brooklyn to Mexico City, sharing the stage with Big Freedia, Kid Sister, Niña Dioz, Mykki Blanco, and Zuzuka Poderosa. She is one half of popular Philly queer dance party Cutn Paste and resident DJ of Brooklyn's underground global music party, Azucar. Most recently, Precolumbian was honored with the 2013 Leeway Transformation Award for her innovative work... in the club.

 

Mal Devisa: With driving bass melodies, hypnotizing harmonies, and a variety of genres Mal Devisa conjures up a live show one would have to see in order to truly hear. Emerging out of the West Mass and Metro Boston underground music scenes Mal Devisa has developed a sonic and performative aesthetic that floods the spaces and audiences with feeling. After graduating from Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School in May 2014, Mal Devisa went on a fan-funded West Coast tour consisting of over 50 shows from Northampton, MA to New Orleans LA.