Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought is proud to present Living Equipment—a series of conversations, listening sessions, and performances devoted to minor histories and radical resonances of Black electronic music with Ryan C. Clarke, in partnership with Triple Canopy. Clarke, a New Orleans-based tonal geologist, writer, as well as coeditor and curator at Dweller Electronics, will be joined by musicians, artists, DJs, and writers.
Moving between DJ sets, discussions, archival recordings, and personal histories, Clarke and his collaborators will trace the migrations and mutations of Black music, emphasizing the role of geography in forming and circulating the cultural traditions that birthed techno and house. They will address the preindustrial roots of electronic music and audibility of ecological crisis; the architecture of clubs and mathematics of sequencing; the feedback loop between dancing and DJing; and the parallels between sampling and quilting. They will treat Black music and speech as “equipment for living,” to quote the critic Albert Murray: “stylistic codes for representing the most difficult conditions, but also … a strategy for living and triumphing over those conditions with dignity, grace, and elegance.”
Triple Canopy and Rivers will present six public programs at venues across New York City in March, then continue the series in New Orleans in May and September. The events will serve as the foundation for a podcast to be released in Fall 2025.
Participants include: Rasheedah Phillips (Black Quantum Futurism), Sweater on Polo, Ephraim Asili, Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson (Dweller), Ashley Teamer, Yulan Grant (SHYBOI), Jesús Hilario-Reyes (MORENEXXX), Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Gabrielle Octavia Rucker.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Deltaic Listening, with Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts & Ryan Clarke
Sunday, March 16, 4 p.m.
Oda, RSVP for address
Free (RSVP required)
For Deltaic Listening, Clarke will present an unorthodox account of New Orleans jazz, tuning in to the sounds of the city’s distinctive shotgun houses and wetlands, which have provided Black residents with means of congregation as well as concealment. Drawing on sonic artifacts, colonial-era architectural plans, oral histories, and geological research, Clarke will connect the cultural and material conditions of life in New Orleans to the evolution and dispersion of contemporary electronic music. Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts will respond with thoughts and sounds related to her ongoing trilogy of books on African-American utopias, tracking the movement of people and music from Haiti to New Orleans and beyond.
NOTE: Please email rsvp@canopycanopycanopy.com with the subject line “Deltas” to RSVP for this event. RSVPs are required. Those who have RSVP’d and wish to attend are encouraged to arrive early to secure their spot. Doors will open at 3:30 p.m.. Should the event sell out, we will maintain a waitlist. We will notify people on the waitlist if seats become available. Attendance will be strictly limited to the venue’s capacity.
Fractal Rip, with Rasheedah Phillips & Ryan Clarke
Monday, March 17
Doors at 6:30 p.m., event at 7 p.m.
Triple Canopy, 264 Canal St 3W, New York, NY 10013
RSVP: HERE
How does math manifest in the production and mixing of electronic music, as in the practices of weavers and architects? For Fractal Rip, Clarke and the artist, author, and activist Rasheedah Phillips will connect the mathematical aspects of African and diasporic traditions to the emergence of techno in Detroit, where the techniques (and sounds) of industrial production informed those of sequencing and sampling. They’ll draw on Phillips’s book Dismantling the Master’s Clock (2025), which argues for Afrodiasporic conceptions of time meant to counter the logic of social control.
NOTE: RSVPs do not guarantee entry; please arrive early to secure a seat. Triple Canopy’s venue has a strict capacity.
The Right Address, with Sweater on Polo, Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, Ryan Clarke, & Special Guests
Thursday, March 20
8 p.m.
Bossa Nova Civic Club, 1271 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11221
Free before 11 p.m., $10 after 11 p.m. (RSVP encouraged)
RSVP: HERE
How do venues foster social and musical experimentation, whether by gathering unfamiliar sounds and bodies or incubating intimate scenes? For The Right Address, Clarke will be joined by Sweater on Polo, a musician and producer; Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, a promoter, founder of Dweller Electronics, and co-founder of Discwoman; and additional special guests to be announced. Drawing on their various roles and experiences, they’ll reflect on the conditions for musical invention as well as homogenization. After the conversation and listening session, Sweater on Polo will perform a live set, followed by DJ sets by Clarke and others.
A Common Wind, with Ashley Teamer, Gabrielle Octavia Rucker & Ryan Clarke
Wednesday, March 26
Doors at 6:30 p.m., event at 7 p.m.
Triple Canopy, 264 Canal St 3W, New York, NY 10013
Free (RSVP encouraged)
RSVP: HERE
How have Black artists used poetics and assemblage to speak in tongues that are not their own? In conversation with the artist and DJ Ashley Teamer and writer Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, Clarke will ask how collage—in techno as well as in avant-garde visual art, craft, and poetry—allows artists to think through disparate sources in a collective mode. For A Common Wind, they’ll put music in conversation with recordings by writers including Sylvia Wynter, Ed Roberson, and Wanda Coleman.
NOTE: RSVPs do not guarantee entry; please arrive early to secure a seat. Triple Canopy’s venue has a strict capacity limit.
Circulatory Systems, with Ephraim Asili & Ryan Clarke
Friday, March 28
6 p.m.
Silence Please, 132 Bowery Fl 2, New York, NY 10013
Free (RSVP encouraged)
RSVP: HERE
Through conversation and DJing, Clarke and the artist, filmmaker, and DJ Ephraim Asili will ask how selectors compose publics, and how the audience manifests in the mix. For Circulatory Systems, they’ll consider the role of DJs and record labels in connecting the sites and social bodies that animate electronic music, and how the mode of presenting, performing, and publishing music enables the movement of crowds, and/or the conversion of crowds into movements.
No Reentry, with Yulan Grant (SHYBOI), Jesús Hilario-Reyes, & Ryan Clarke
Saturday, March 29
5 p.m.
Nightmoves, 295 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Free (RSVP encouraged)
RSVP: HERE
The history of electronic music is about movement as much as listening, embodiment as much as attunement. While the dance floor serves as a testing ground for music, the expressions of dancers animate the development of new styles and the renovation of traditions. For No Reentry, Clarke, Yulan Grant, an artist who DJs as SHYBOI, and artist and artist Jesús Hilario-Reyes, who DJs as MORENEXXX, will discuss the role of dance in giving a corporeal form to electronic music—a vessel for the transmission of traditions and migrations into the present.
Living Equipment is sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant and Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color cofounded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Ryan C. Clarke is a tonal geologist from the southeastern banks of the Mississippi, and an editor and curator at Dweller Electronics. His work has been published and presented by e-flux journal, Rhizome, Burnaway, Terraforma, Harvard’s Hiphop Archive & Research Institute, and MoMA PS1. With Dweller, Clarke produces festivals and publications that center the perspectives of Black electronic musicians.
