27.04.2014
TERRE THAEMLITZ – DJ SPRINKLES

Something special! Something great! OUTSTANDING.
In München ist Terre mit einem Künstlervortrag am 30. April, um 18:30 Uhr in der historischen Aula der Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (Akademiestraße 4, 80799 München) zu Gast. Am gleichen Abend spielt er bei unser Veranstaltungsreihe Garry Klein. Vortrag und DJ Gig sind eine Kooperationsveranstaltung des Harry Klein Club und des cx centrum für interdisziplinäre studien der Akademie der Bildenden Künste München

T e r r e T h a m e l i t z (* 1968 in Minnesota), ist ein unter anderem auch als Miss Take oder DJ Sprinkles bekannter US-amerikanischer Electronica-Musiker, Essayist und Besitzer des Plattenlabels Comatonse Recordings. Er lebt in Kawasaki, Japan.
Sein Werk bezieht oft kritisch sozialpolitische Themen wie Gender, Sexualität, Klassen, Linguistik, Ethnien und Rassen ein. Ebenso beleuchtet er oft in seiner Musik oder seinen Vorträgen und Essays sozioökonomische Aspekte der kommerziellen Musikindustrie. Diese Diversität spiegelt sich in den vielen Produktionsweisen seiner Musik wider – als elektroakustische Musik, club-orientierte Deep House-Musik, digitalen Jazz, Ambient oder Glitch sowie neo-expressionistische Pianoarbeiten, die von Computern komponiert wurden. Grafisches Design, Fotografien, Illustrationen sowie Videoarbeiten spielen ebenfalls eine wichtige Rolle in Thaemlitz’s Schaffen.

Wer mehr über Terre Theamlitz erfahren möchte, findet hier im Interview jede Menge Informationen.

Interviewer: Your music often includes themes of identity politics. Why is this aspect so important for you?
Terre: I am anti-essentialist, which means that I believe it is only constructive to speak of identities as social constructs how our identities are imposed upon us through processes of domination – and not to believe in identities on an essentialist level, such as coming from some natural or supra-social “inner essence.” Politically, essentialism boils down to the eradication of personal agency and choice. It becomes an “I can’t help it,” or “I was born this way,” methodology for organizing and attaining rights. Of course, dominant culture is incredibly essentialist, and mainstream society relies on deep internalizations of identity – gender, sexuality, race, etc. – in order to keep us in our places, and keep the social machine running smoothly. So I realize it is easier to argue for rights using essentialist arguments. That is precisely the history of rights acquisition under liberalism, which is all about appealing to the mercy of a paternal, white, christian father: women can’t help not having a penis, so they deserve rights; people of color can’t help not being white, so they deserve rights; lesbians and gays can’t help not being straight, so they deserve rights; and most recently transgenderism in relation to GID is a basis for anti-discrimination laws, etc. But in the end, these are all “birth right” claims that are ultimately not unlike the feudal birth right claims made by aristocracy. They all boil down to, “I deserve rights because of how I was born.” This is a radically un-democratic foundation for democratic rights legislation! Expanding the definition of who qualifies as “human” under humanism is radically different from true attempts of “equality for all” – but of course capitalism cannot function with true equality, which is why we stay trapped in these feudalist arguments rooted in identities. They have nothing to do with legislating based on our social capacity for learning and acceptance. Yes, it is a cheaper and quicker way to obtain rights, but it is burying us deeper into the very imbalances of the systems that oppress us. It’s a quick fix, and I believe it will have long-term negative ramifications, because it leads us to a deeper internalization of dominant LGBT agendas on an essentialist level. And that means a reduction in spaces for sexual and gender variance outside of Neo Liberal aspirations for marriage, family, property, etc. I absolutely recognize the reality of biological differences. But precisely because I do recognize them in all their multiplicities, I feel any attempt to conform to binary models of gender and sexuality is going deeper into the conditions of Modernist violence. I think at this point in social organizing, we need to stop legislating bodies, and start thinking in more practical socio-material terms of legislating spaces in which bodies are allowed to exist. Because ultimately, societal change is what we are speaking of. And that change is rooted in education and social action. We need to stop actively legitimating heteronormatively and patriarchally conceived rules about how gender and sexual binaries relate to our bodies.

Interviewer: How do you rate the current situation of LGBTQi in the world or in your environment?

Terre: Dominant LGBT movements are globalizing, imperialist, homogenizing, sold-out bullshit that utterly obliterate non-Western approaches to the body. It’s all about marketplace recognition, and an ability to self-recognize oneself within liberal humanist economies. It’s dangerous stuff.

It’s funny, they keep adding letters to symbolize how open the discourse has gotten. When I moved to Japan 13 years ago, it was just LGBT. Now it’s LGBTQ. It’s like every time I go back and visit the US, I notice how everything in the supermarket has more flavors and shit added to it. Like breakfast cereals keep adding more and more colored marshmallow flavors. It’s the whole LGBTQKPCS… thing is patently about a model of representation invested in perpetual growth and expansion, and symptomatic of the same cultural tendencies that gave rise to perpetual growth economic strategies and stock markets. But we all know in the end it’s only about those first two letters, “LG,” and even then mostly the “G.” “GWM” to be precise. The rest is lip service.

Interviewer: What is your instrument to make our society a better place?

Terre: I do not believe in betterment. That always indicates a moral value assessment. I think it makes more sense to speak of change and social mobilities. Dominant LGBT movements grant increased access to a particular brand of sexual and gender variance that is reconcilable with the Neo Liberal mainsream, and those mainstream representational strategies. As a result, the rest of us are further excluded from public discussions of sexuality and gender, simply because the terms of that dominant discussion are increasingly presumed to be reconcilable with dominant discourses obsessed with visibility and power sharing. So it becomes harder and harder to convince people that homophobia persists, transphobia persists, sexism persists, bashings and violence persist… People concerned with divestments of power will always need to pursue other venues for information sharing, in which relationships to invisibility and non-cooperation with dominant systems are a part of one’s strategies. In other words, there will always be closets. The history of closets is not about individual shame in need of being overcome. The history of closets is about safety, and a practical understanding of the violence begotten by those dominant systems that teach us shame.

Interviewer: What can we expect of your gig in Munich?

Terre: I’ll be spinning a combination of my own tracks, remixes and NY deep house classics from the ’80s and ’90s. For me, that music was the soundtrack to a lot of queer and HIV activism of the time, so notions of remembrance and mourning are far more important to me than trying to be “fresh” or “new.” Young people will always sense things are “new” simply because they haven’t been around long enough to hear the cycles of media and fashion, so I never bother with that stuff. It takes care of itself. I’m more interested in continuing sound discussions with people of those ’80s and ’90s generations, so I’m hoping for an intergenerational crowd.