Assembling a Black Counter Culture is a general history of techno and adjacent electronic music with a focus on Black experiences in industrialized labor systems, and explores the development of on-the-ground culture in relation to a unique American art form. Revisiting Detroit’s techno roots through the 1980s, writer and musician DeForrest Brown, Jr. follows the extended thinking and techniques behind key early players and places them in conversation with the African American working class in the historically emblematic Motor City. From The Belleville Three to today’s international club floor, Assembling a Black Counter Culture illuminates the mechanics of American mainstream cultural ...

In echo of their respective programs, Kadist Art Foundation and Bétonsalon – Centre for Art and Research are launching the joint publication Qalqalah, a “reader” gathering contributions from artists and researchers on a variety of interlinked issues. The name Qalqalah is taken from a text by Cairo-based curator Sarah Rifky. In the text, the eponymous heroine, living in the near future, gradually loses her memory in a world where notions of language, art and economy have quietly collapsed. In this world of reconstituted, fluid knowledge, which inspires a mixture of hope and fear, the meaning of the Arabic name Qalqalah ...