An event I curated with frieds to begin a new collective, Roca. Our beginning aims aims are to create spaces of collective listening, care, joy, and folky aesthetics as an alternative to a masculine, serious and technical experimental music community.
Also as a release party for my new album, Eco-Grief-Joy.
https://rocahaha.bandcamp.com/album/eco-grief-joy
We shared hot chocolate, practiced group meditations and listening to performances in my bedroom. This is an ongoing project of exploring different spaces for music and art performances, outside of commercial venues. We have previously installed surround sound systems in parks using radio transmission, and organised raves in large warehouse spaces. I think we can experience deeper intimacy together outside of the formalities and restrictions found in commercial venues. It can be a mark of our own territory. I felt that the event was successful as people described it as “healing” and “warm.” It is a reminder to myself at the need we have for these kind of spaces, and that defining our own spaces is essential to well-being and healing in our communities.
Leading meditations and running the evening was an opportunity for my collaborators and I to practice fascilitation and public speaking. For the first time, I discussed my ideas behind my music, before performing. People told me it helped them to connect to the music in a new way.
Roca is all about practice and experimenting. We will continue to look for alternative spaces for listening and sharing art, and expand the platform to different media such as food, literature and visual arts.
We want Roca to be actively feminist and queer in it’s organising, which leads me to further research on feminist curation and experiences of female, non-binary and queer artists in the experimental music community in London.
I feel that Roca connects to my research on spatialisation practices, and imagining the values of space in sound is not only in the auditory field of sound works, but also in the social spaces of listening.