Sonic Acts 2019: The Otolith Group and Annie Fletcher – Eastman is the Matter at Hand - a podcast by Sonic Acts

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL 2019 – HEREAFTER
The Otolith Group and Annie Fletcher – Eastman is the Matter at Hand24 February – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

With an introduction by Emily Pethick.

From the late 1960s until his death in 1990 at the age of 49, Julius Eastman, the queer African-American avant-garde composer, pianist, vocalist and conductor, wrote and performed compositions whose ecstatic militant minimalism initiated a black radical aesthetic that revolutionised the East Coast’s new music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. No recordings of Eastman’s compositions were released during his lifetime. In January 1980, Julius Eastman was invited by the Music Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois to present his compositions Crazy Nigger (1978), Evil Nigger (1979) and Gay Guerrilla (1979).
A number of African-American students and one faculty member objected to the titles of Eastman’s compositions. The titles were redacted from the concert programme. Before the concert on 16 January 1980, Eastman delivered a public statement that responded to these objections. The speeches delivered by two speakers in The Otolith Group’s video, The Third Part of the Third Measure (2017) – on display as the installation at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam during the festival – are based on each performer’s adapted transcription of Eastman’s Northwestern statement. This talk by The Otolith Group – Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun – who will be joined by Annie Fletcher, will focus on the importance of this Afrofuturist artist and expand on ideas in making the film.
In May 2019, the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, will present the first large scale solo exhibition of The Otolith Group. The exhibition is curated by Annie Fletcher.

Founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, The Otolith Group makes films, installations, and performances that are driven by extensive research into the histories of science fiction and the legacies of transnationalism. Their works and curatorial projects explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human and the anti-human. In 2010 The Otolith Group were nominated for the Turner Prize.

Annie Fletcher is the chief curator at the Van Abbemuseum. Her projects include the solo exhibition of Qiu Zhijie, the ten-day project in collaboration with DAI called Becoming More in 2017, a collaborative research project led by Vivian Ziherl called Frontier Imaginaries: Trade Markings in 2018 and a large-scale and travelling museum retrospective of the Otolith Group in 2019. She tutors at De Appel, Amsterdam, Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem and Design Academy Eindhoven. She is part of a team that developed the Museum of Arte Útil with Tania Bruguera in 2013 and continues to develop the Association of Arte Útil today. Other projects include solo exhibitions or presentations with Ahmet Ögut, Hito Steyerl, Sheela Gowda, David Maljkovi?, Jo Baer, Jutta Koether, Deimantas Narkevi?ius, Minerva Cuevas and long-term projects Be(com)ing Dutch (2006?–?09) and Cork Caucus (2005), both with Charles Esche.

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