FEMINAE NOX and mutek Showcase Awe-Inspiring BIPOC Talent
FEMINAE NOX and mutek Showcase Awe-Inspiring BIPOC Talent
A Special Edition of Nocturne: MUTEK Festival’s main event series, with Korea Town Acid and N3ZHA
Written by Courtney Baird-Lew and Edie Guo
September 11th 2024
Written by Courtney Baird-Lew and Edie Guo
September 11th 2024
“The dome is a very special place.”
Jessica Cho, better known by her stage name Korea Town Acid, was just hours away from a MUTEK Montreal performance she’d been preparing for months. “Usually, the visuals are at the back,” she continued, seated on the tranquil, third-floor patio of the Société des arts technologiques [SAT], MUTEK’s home base, “to be able to experience the whole thing with everyone is going to be really incredible.”
The South Korean, Toronto-based multidisciplinary sensation was just one of the many avant-garde electronic artists who made an indelible impression in the immersive Satosphère dome and throughout the SAT’s multilevel spaces on night 4 of MUTEK’s long-running Nocturne series. With the sphere’s programming presented in collaboration with FEMINAE NOX, a non-profit platform that aims to elevate Black, Brown, Indigenous and other racialized women, femme, and gender non-conforming people in live music and nightlife, the evening - timed with MUTEK’s 25th anniversary - highlighted incredible (and often underrepresented) Canadian audiovisual talent.
Accompanied by dazzling visuals by the Montreal-based Isotone collective, Korea Town Acid’s 12:45 AM staggering Satosphère set featured a genre-spanning experience that moved from cinematic ambiance to glitch to breakbeat to jazz to swaggering hip-hop—all without losing momentum. “I started my journey with music nearly 15 years ago,” said Korea Town Acid. “Back in the day, there was not a lot of visibility for women and BIPOC in the music scene. In Toronto, I throw events for Nolja. We’re focused on booking Asian DJs all over the city. It’s a big representation of BIPOC, and I try to cultivate that kind of culture because that’s something I can relate to, right? As an immigrant, and as a woman of colour, you've just got to help each other out.”
At 2:00 AM, Nocturne switched gears. While the Isotone collective stayed on, a deity from Chinese folklore emerged, faceless in a fishbone mask. “I brought a bunch of bones back with me from China,” said N3ZHA, aka MIIIA, “the one I chose is actually an eel skeleton. It was originally round, so I broke it in the middle to create the half-circle shape. I chose a sea creature to represent the story of Nezha fighting an underwater army.”
Paying homage to the power of the protective deity, N3ZHA brought psychedelic, acid-tinged industrial intensity to the Satosphère. “Nezha is a misunderstood kid with lots of energy to release,” said N3ZHA about the character, “I think a lot of rave kids are like that, they have this rebellious energy in them. He was born a demon and sometimes behaves violently at first, but he eventually ends up sacrificing himself to save the world. In Taiwan, he is called San Tai Zi, and he’s believed to be able to connect to the dead. There is a big San Tai Zi temple there, and many people have him in their homes too.”
“The challenge with live electronic music in Quebec and Canada is that there is a very limited pool of live electronic music musicians/producers who are Black, Brown, Indigenous women, femme, or gender non-conforming folks that fit with the MUTEK artistic programming mandates,” said Mira Silvers, co-creator of FEMINAE NOX, “we were excited that, by happenstance, each artist represented a different community diaspora and a different part of Canada. Tati au Miel is Haitian from Quebec, Korea Acid Town is Korean from Ontario, and N3ZHA is Chinese from British Columbia. And more importantly, they each have different artistic backgrounds and each was presenting unique live shows that also complemented each other.”
Photos supplied by N3ZHA
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Tati au miel | Credit Frédérique Ménard-Aubin
The stirring Nocturne 4 showcase was the cherry on top of a long, full day of MUTEK programming for FEMINAE NOX, which included a panel, a masterclass lab, and a Shift Radio takeover, all before the live performances. “This partnership with MUTEK started when Marie-Laure Saidani (MUTEK’s Music Curator and Project Manager) and I had a conversation about the state of industry in Quebec in December 2023 or January 2024,” said Silvers. “I had pitched the idea of bringing just the workshop, and then it grew into a panel [...] and the next thing we know is we were bringing the FEMINAE NOX pipeline to MUTEK Festival.” The result was an evening roster that spanned every imaginable genre, conveyed through each artist’s distinct electro-saturated audiovisual vision.
For the artists who performed, the future is exciting. “As I was preparing for my MUTEK set, my sound has evolved,” said Korea Town Acid, telling us that she has her sights set on launching her own label, titled Hanoo Records. “I want to discover more underrated artists, or that are flying under the radar. I don’t believe in dropping a name just because they’re famous. Those kinds of people have disappointed me in the past,” she stated. “As a freelance artist, you’re always clocked in, you’re always hustling. You’ve got to pick up everything as you go.”
As for N3ZHA, who just moved back to Vancouver after spending the last 14 years in China, she wants to work on sharing VLOG-style content about music production and DJing. “I’m at a point where I want to give back to people who are learning. I remember when I started in music, I didn’t know where to go for help. I hope I can make it easier for the younger generation to learn things that might have otherwise taken them a long time to figure out.”
The stirring Nocturne 4 showcase was the cherry on top of a long, full day of MUTEK programming for FEMINAE NOX, which included a panel, a masterclass lab, and a Shift Radio takeover, all before the live performances. “This partnership with MUTEK started when Marie-Laure Saidani (MUTEK’s Music Curator and Project Manager) and I had a conversation about the state of industry in Quebec in December 2023 or January 2024,” said Silvers. “I had pitched the idea of bringing just the workshop, and then it grew into a panel [...] and the next thing we know is we were bringing the FEMINAE NOX pipeline to MUTEK Festival.” The result was an evening roster that spanned every imaginable genre, conveyed through each artist’s distinct electro-saturated audiovisual vision.
For the artists who performed, the future is exciting. “As I was preparing for my MUTEK set, my sound has evolved,” said Korea Town Acid, telling us that she has her sights set on launching her own label, titled Hanoo Records. “I want to discover more underrated artists, or that are flying under the radar. I don’t believe in dropping a name just because they’re famous. Those kinds of people have disappointed me in the past,” she stated. “As a freelance artist, you’re always clocked in, you’re always hustling. You’ve got to pick up everything as you go.”
As for N3ZHA, who just moved back to Vancouver after spending the last 14 years in China, she wants to work on sharing VLOG-style content about music production and DJing. “I’m at a point where I want to give back to people who are learning. I remember when I started in music, I didn’t know where to go for help. I hope I can make it easier for the younger generation to learn things that might have otherwise taken them a long time to figure out.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Courtney Baird-Lew is a writer and editor at Sticky Rice Magazine. Born and raised in Montréal, she believes in the power of great storytelling and a well-crafted sentence.
Edie Guo (aka Meiiyun) is a multidisciplinary artist who draws on experiences of dance performance and visual art to inspire his musical selections as a DJ. He merges electronic, percussive and folk sounds together to explore themes such as longing, stamina, subversion, gentleness and nostalgia.
Courtney Baird-Lew is a writer and editor at Sticky Rice Magazine. Born and raised in Montréal, she believes in the power of great storytelling and a well-crafted sentence.
Edie Guo (aka Meiiyun) is a multidisciplinary artist who draws on experiences of dance performance and visual art to inspire his musical selections as a DJ. He merges electronic, percussive and folk sounds together to explore themes such as longing, stamina, subversion, gentleness and nostalgia.
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