Sound Portraits Radio {EP19} Terre Thaemlitz

Terre Thaemlitz

EPISODE 19

Terre Thaemlitz is an award winning multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label. Her work combines a critical look at identity politics – including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race – with an ongoing analysis of the socio-economics of commercial media production. He has released over 15 solo albums, as well as numerous 12-inch singles and video works. Her writings on music and culture have been published internationally in a number of books, academic journals and magazines. As a speaker and educator on issues of non-essentialist Transgenderism and Queerness, Thaemlitz has lectured and participated in panel discussions throughout Europe and Japan. This episode of Sound Portraits Radio is hosted by Doron Sadja and Arian Bozorg.

“The contexts from which the deep house sound emerged are forgotten: sexual and gender crises, transgendered sex work, black market hormones, drug and alcohol addiction, loneliness, racism, HIV, ACT-UP, Thompkins Sq. Park, police brutality, queer-bashing, underpayment, unemployment and censorship… all at 120 beats per minute.”
Terre Thaemlitz
“I like to include text and things with my CDs because I feel music is really like poetry. And I mean that in a kind of negative sense; it falls prey to vagary really easily. So if you want to actually have your music have a message — and I do believe messages go beyond simply just the lyrics, it goes into the types of sounds selected, the historical references of those sounds etc. — sometimes you need a little aid to go with that. I like to have text and images and things with my big book lists and stuff with my releases.”
Terre Thaemlitz
“After my two last sets in London, I had different people come up and ask, “Did you enjoy it?” To which I responded, “Does it matter?” They were super upset. I mean, really upset and not letting it go. Why do people quickly overreact like this? Let’s unpack this shit… There’s something cultural happening in that moment of discomfort. It’s not about me being an asshole, or them being an asshole. It’s about how we are conditioned to think about entertainment under capitalism, and having that conditioning challenged. As I told them both, they are simply asking the wrong questions.”
Terre Thaemlitz
“Non-essentialist” (or sometimes I say “anti-essentialist”) means that I reject the notion of my gender identity stemming from something natural, such as an “inner essence.” (“Essentialist” refers to people who believe their gender is innate or biological, such as a belief in “being born this way.”) Particularly in relation to social organizing and political issues, the downside of any essentialist argument – asking for rights because “I can’t help it, I was born this way” – is that it removes all self-agency and capacity for choice around the issue at hand. It is a point of eternal frustration for me that the legislation of most rights related to the body (gender, race, sexuality, etc.) are justified through completely non-democratic arguments of biological predisposition. For me, this is inseparable from the language of feudalism, by which the ruling aristocracy argued their privileges were based on birthright and bloodright… in other words, justified based on their DNA. This habit of legislating rights around bodies is completely different from a real democratic process of a people choosing to outlaw forms of violence and discrimination based on their cultural capacity to accept diversity (a capacity which, clearly, we do not have). “
Terre Thaemlitz

Listen to more on her Comatonse Records Bandcamp

Explore Terre Thaemlitz’s incredibly comprehensive website

Sound Portraits is a series of lectures/listening sessions, curated by Doron Sadja, focusing on the work of iconic composers who have paved the way for contemporary electronic music. Started in 2015 as a live event at Spektrum in Berlin, the series quickly grew and exists now as both a live lecture series and a radio show on Cashmere Radio. After an introduction of each artist’s life and work, we listen to a selection of excerpts and complete works from the artist’s repertoire. Besides providing an opportunity to introduce these seminal artists to a new audience, the Sound Portraits series also offers an open forum to engage in group listening in a quiet atmosphere.

Doron Sadja is an American artist, composer, and curator whose work explores modes of perception and the experience of sound, light, and space. Find out more at www.doron.sadja.com

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