REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) by chillidxddy

REST-LESS

SYNOPSIS REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) seeks to harness the transformative potential of restlessness – defined as the inability to remain at rest resulting in perpetual agitation – through rave. Set against the backdrop of a contemporary resurgence in global protest movements brought about by relentless sociopolitical conflict, this work urgently asks what it means to show up for each other and rest less. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) is a durational installation with a definite beginning and an indefinite end – the installation concludes only after the last person chooses to leave. Part endurance performance, part protest, part rave, REST-LESS is a durational exercise in radical solidarity, kinetic resistance and care. REST-LESS

Carl Phillips describes restlessness as a ‘form of ambition’: Unsatisfied with the given - the usual explanations, the usual goals for and trappings of a life – there are those who push past the given, are willing to enter into uncertainty – to take a risk – in order to get to something presumably superior and/or preferable to "the old life”.2 Unlike sudden feelings of anger or rage, restlessness does not culminate in purgation or cathartic release. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) is a durational work with an uncertain end – like any party, the installation concludes only after the last person leaves. Yet, it is precisely this ongoingness that lends restlessness the radical potential to be harnessed and sustained over a prolonged duration – ‘uncertainty can be a catalyst for restlessness: in our not being able to know something absolutely, we somewhere have to acknowledge a vulnerability in ourselves’. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) conceives of restlessness as a catalyst for transformation – a stubborn defiance against how

Phillips, C. (2009). On Restlessness. New England Review, 30(1), 131-140.

Ngai, S. (2007). Ugly feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press

Restlessness is defined as the inability to remain at rest resulting in perpetual agitation; it is an ‘ugly feeling’ – a term used by writer Sianne Ngai to describe feelings that are ‘explicitly amoral and non-cathartic, offering no satisfactions of virtue, however oblique, nor any therapeutic or purifying release.’1 There is a tendency to pathologise restlessness and diagnose it as a symptom of disorder – it is often spoken of as something

negative that needs to be sedated, treated and kept under control. But how if restlessness was something to be harnessed rather than overcome?

things are and a way of thinking about how things could be. THE RISE OF PROTEST One avenue for understanding the transformative potential of restlessness is protest. We live in restless times heightened by a global pandemic, sociological collapse, environmental crisis and an uncertain future. Since 2017, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Global Protest Tracker3 has recorded over 230 significant anti-government protests in more than 110 countries. From Black Lives Matter to the Umbrella movement, we have witnessed increased outbreaks of civil unrest in recent years due in part to a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo. Each protest is triggered by a different set of factors in response to a local socio-political context. Yet, what the data shows is that an increasing number of people around the world are taking to the streets in public displays of discontent.4 WHY PROTEST? Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they'd had enough. They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/30/mapping-major-protests-around-the-world

https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/protest-tracker

a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change. And although it was understood differently in different places, the idea of democracy was present in every gathering. The root of the word democracy is demos, "the people," and the meaning of democracy is "the people rule." And they did, if not at the ballot box, then in the streets.5

Associate Professor Zeynep Tufekci argues that ‘much of the power of protests is in their long-term effects, on both the protesters themselves and the rest of society.’ She explains that protests work because they undermine political legitimacy – ‘a society without legitimate governance will not function well; people can be coerced to comply, but it’s harder to coerce enthusiasm, competence, and creativity out of a discouraged, beaten-down people’.6

In 2011, Time Magazine chose “The Protester” as its person of the year. The year before, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi had set himself on fire at the gate of a provincial capital building in frustration after being repeatedly harassed by the police. Bouazizi’s death set off a chain reaction of spontaneous antigovernment protests and uprisings across the Middle East that would come to be known as the Arab Spring.

Unlike other forms of activism which might take place on the internet or behind closed doors, the mass mobilisation of physical bodies in public space makes it difficult for governments to ignore the voice of the people. Furthermore, protests force a conversation about a topic they’re highlighting by putting problems in the public spotlight which can inspire others to join in and take collective action to bring about change.

Of course not all protests are spontaneous eruptions, in fact many social movements are meticulously choreographed performances of political expression. Arguably, it is an ongoing feeling of restlessness which fuels the relentless pursuit for change and sustains activist motivation over a prolonged duration.

PROTEST AS PERFORMANCE Protest is an operation of democratic power which can be performative; it is both an act and an enactment. […] The democratic public performs its existence through resistance: it demands recognition, embodies visibility, articulates a political voice, and communicates ideas/demands. In doing so, protest constitutes ‘the people’,

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/why-protests-work/613420/

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_2102139_2102380,00.html

and through the aesthetics of protest, rupture conventions of doing politics. […] Protest is not only concerned with seeking recognition; protest seeks to disrupt the existing political order, transcend or abandon its ideological trappings, and create new possibilities.7 It is useful to understand protest as performance through the lens of performative utterances as proposed by philosopher J. L. Austin. As opposed to constative utterances which describe things in the world, performative utterances enact the activity the speech signifies. Likewise, protests are simultaneously symbolic acts that seek to communicate a concern by a group of individuals as well as performative acts that disrupt structures of power. In Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Peggy Phelan relates Austin’s speech acts to performance theory and writes that ‘a performative speech act shares with the ontology of performance the inability to be reproduced or repeated […] performance honours the idea that a limited number of people in a specific time/space frame can have an experience of value which leaves no visible trace afterward’.8

The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication [Introduction]. (2020). In A. McGarry, I. Erhart, H. Eslen-Ziya, O. Jenzen, & U. Korkut (Authors), The aesthetics of global protest: Visual culture and communication (pp. 15-35). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. 7

Phelan, P. (2017). Unmarked: the politics of performance. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Yet, it is not entirely true to suggest that that no visible trace is left afterwards. The effects of protest live on tangibly in the form of material remains such as protest signs and documented images shared on social media – the symbolic power of these visual images sustain a political charge in their continued circulation after the event. Additionally, the transformative feeling of participating in a protest resonates across society long after it is over, potentially turning casual protestors into lifelong activists. Understanding protest through the lens of performance also allows us to identify the aesthetics of protest while interrogating how democracy is constituted through ‘a complex interplay of performance, images, acoustics and all the various technologies engaged in those productions’. Protests are theatrical events that rely on a combination of aesthetic forms – chanted slogans, coordinated costumes and the graphic design of protest signs – to communicate ideas. For example, the umbrellas used during the Hong Kong protests were both a functional tool to shield against pepper spray used by the police as well as a prop which served as a symbolic visual shorthand to communicate a message of pro-democracy to audiences across the world. 9

PERFORMANCE AS PROTEST Performance art has always been connected to and inspired by legacies of activism, politics and protest. Similar to activists, artists ‘rely heavily on symbolic elements and uses of the body to communicate claims across borders and languages’.9 For example, American artist Dread Scott attempted to walk forward while being repeatedly battered and occasionally knocked down by a water jet from a fire hose in his performance On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide (2014). The work references the 1963 Civil Rights struggle in Birmingham Alabama in which the government used high-pressure water jets from fire hoses against non-violent protesters and bystanders in an effort to maintain segregation and legalized discrimination. Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008) by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera sees two mounted policemen on horseback patrolling the gallery and controlling the audience using a series of crowd control techniques. The work reflects on the complex relationship between agents of authority and the people they aim to control.1011

https://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/wips/performance-politics-and-protest

https://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/files/tatlin___s_whisper_tech_spec_1.pdf

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bruguera-tatlins-whisper-5-t12989

In both examples, artists have re-contextualised crowd control tactics used by state forces as staged works housed within the context of an art gallery. Conversely, Singaporean performance artist Seelan Palay’s 32 Years: The Interrogation of a Mirror (2017) blurs the boundaries between protest and art by situating artistic gesture within public space. Inspired by the political detention of Dr Chia Thye Poh for 32 years under the Internal Security Act, Palay was interrupted and subsequently arrested by the police during his performance for staging an illegal public procession, resulting in a two-week jail sentence.12 By performing in public space, Palay sought to critique the lack of free speech in Singapore which was ironically reinforced by his arrest – literally holding a mirror up to law enforcement officials and revealing the absurdity of how power is wielded by the state. PROTEST IN SINGAPORE Singapore has a particular relationship with protest – even a solo protest can be considered a crime in the third-most densely populated country in the world. Human Rights Watch considers Singapore’s political environment to be ‘overwhelmingly repressive’ and draconian laws regularly prevent free speech and the ability to publicly assemble.13 https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/illegal-procession-activist-refuses-to-pay-fine-getsjail 12

https://www.hrw.org/asia/singapore

In the book Air-conditioned Nation Revisited, Professor Cherian George writes about Singapore’s politics of comfort and control. He describes the ‘air-conditioned nation’ – a society where the individualistic majority is systemically rewarded while the socially conscious minority is discouraged and in some cases, actively suppressed. Likewise, Professor Chua Beng Huat observes how Singaporeans willingly give up their civil and political liberties in exchange for social and economic stability. In a speech by Law Minister K. Shanmugam last year, he used the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong as

an example to justify the ‘zero-tolerance approach to illegal demonstrations and protests’ in Singapore: …people want to protest, say, at iconic places, Orchard Road […] Primarily because of the disturbance it will cause to everyone else, therefore their cause will get noticed. So, on the one side is the desire of the protesters to get themselves noticed, on the other side is the disamenity to the rest of the community. Why should one be favoured and why should the rest of the community just accept it?16 Thus, protest is framed as an inconvenient disruption rather than a legitimate act of democratic participation. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) challenges the tyranny of airconditioned individualism by re-appropriating the concept of kettling: a controversial control tactic used by anti-riot police to encircle and contain unruly crowds with the aim of making it unbearably ‘hot’ – like when steam escapes from a kettle. The installation subverts this tactic by literally using heat as a material to activate restlessness in the

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/world/asia/singapore-smiley-face-protest-charges.html

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/moe-transphobia-protest-3-arrested-student-hormonetherapy-14045320 15

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/why-good-governance-is-key-to-maintaining-public-order

Rare instances of public assembly have often been met with swift action by the police. Civil rights activist Jolovan Wham has faced criminal charges on multiple occasions for organising peaceful events without a police permit in Singapore. In an example of peak absurdity, Wham was investigated by the police for holding up a cardboard sign with a smiley face drawn on it near a police station.14 More recently in January 2021, three protesters were arrested outside the Ministry of Education building for ‘protesting without a permit’ against transphobia.15

body, prompting audiences to lean into, confront and embrace restlessness. (RAVE MORE) To apply utopianism to clubbing in an active way would be to acknowledge this utopic feeling, and ask, "Why can it not be like this all the time"? This question opens up the clubbing experience to larger questions about identity, community and boundaries we create between self and other.17 Nightlife enacts what Jill Dolan refers to as the utopian performative – “small but profound moments in which performance [...] lifts everyone slightly above the present, into a hopeful feeling of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking, and intersubjectively intense”.18 For minoritized communities, nightclubs have often functioned as spaces of refuge, offering the freedom to participate in activities that were disapproved of – or even criminalised – on the outside. Ball culture in New York City during the 70s and 80s allowed queer Black and Latino communities to gather under the cloak of darkness to critique heteronormativity and social class through Rose, Angel. “Exploring the Utopia of London's Club Land with Angel Rose.” i-D, 2016. https://i-d.vice.com/ en_uk/article/wjdwyx/exploring-the-utopia-of-londons-club-land-with-angel-rose. 17

Dolan, Jill. Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

fashion, dance and music long before homosexuality was decriminalised in America. Similarly, daytime raves in the late 80s and 90s allowed young British Asians the freedom to take over clubs and dance to bhangra before returning home to their conservative Asian parents for dinner by six. Inside the club, they carved out space to imagine – and perform – a progressive future that was not yet permitted on the outside. Dancing at a rave was not merely an act of escapism, it was also a gesture of active resistance. In the essay Nightlife as Form, Madison Moore writes about how nightlife sits as a staged experience at the intersection of multiple aesthetics forms, giving us the permission to experiment with identities and imagine alternate social contexts. Under the cover of darkness, nightclubs become ‘crucial sites for the production of selves, as well as a primary incubator and source of popular culture.’ 19 Similar to protest, nightlife is constituted through the interplay of aesthetic forms such as performance, fashion, music, design – and more recently, technology. From the graphic design of rave flyers to the outrageous costumes of the club kids, each aesthetic element is carefully curated to produce a seamless (and potentially transformative) experience for the party goer. This 19

enables nightlife to function as a heterotopia with the ability to foster an alternate sociability – in ‘Queer Kinaesthesia: Performativity on the Dance Floor’, Jonathan Bollen writes: A dance floor is a space in which the presence of others is crucial. In other words, a dance floor really only happens, as a dance floor, when there are other people dancing on it […] one of the defining features of the dance floor experience is an involving engagement in relations with others. Understanding how relations with others are negotiated is central to understanding the possibilities and limitations of the dance floor as social context.20 At its visceral core the dance floor functions as space to navigate – and rehearse – how to be with others. In the essay ‘Erotic Love as Sociability: An Alternative Reality’, Roslyn Bologh writes: We learn from what is between us, who we are: how we are similar, how we differ. What is between us brings us together, sifts us, mingles us, but also stays between us revealing our essential separateness and difference. If each party is capable of responding to the other, and

Moore, M. (2016). Nightlife as Form. Theater, 46(1), 49-63. doi:10.1215/01610775-3322730

Jonathan Bollen (2001) Queer Kinesthesia: Performativity on the Dance Floor, in Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On & Off the Stage, Jane Desmond, Ed. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, pp 285-314.

if the other’s terms of one’s must care about that each must own actions on the action will

response makes a difference in own pleasure or pain, then one the other’s response. This means care about the effects of their the other, the kind of response evoke.21

REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) conceives of the nightclub as a radical arena to incubate an alternate sociability. The installation itself merely functions as a frame for the constant (re-)negotiation of social relations which take place within. Inside, audiences have the autonomy to determine their level of engagement with the work and others around them. They are free to cruise, dance, watch or be watched – and just like any other party, the work concludes only when the last person decides to leave. Nightlife acts not as a venue, but as a functioning network of complex social relationships and theatricalized constructs that work together in the formation of an environment. Therein, nightlife communities

create alternative possibilities.22

progressive

contexts

and

The cultural origins of rave link to a particular time in the 1980s which saw the rise of Acid House music in the UK and the MDMA fuelled explosion of youth culture and illegal parties. However, RESTLESS (RAVE MORE) references rave more broadly as an attitude that is both counter-cultural and politically engaged. We imagine rave as the creation of a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) – a term borrowed from anarchist writer Hakim Bey who refers directly to the nightclub as an already ‘liberated zone’. 23 Raves are pertinent sites for building knowledges of assembly because they function as transgressive liminal spaces for joyful dissent. Yet, the irony of attempting to create a TAZ within the strict confines of Singapore is not lost on us. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) functions as a pre-enactment – a concept borrowed from Public Movement which describes the socio-political potential and responsibility of the arts and artists to facilitate arenas where people

Bologh, R. W. (2010). Erotic love as sociability: An alternative reality. In Love or greatness: Max Weber and masculine thinking: A feminist inquiry. London: Routledge. 21

Yuzna, Jake. The Fun: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC. Brooklyn, NY: Museum of Arts and Design/ powerHouse Books, 2013. 22

Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (United States of America: Autonomedia, 1985), p. 121-163. (p. 123)

can rehearse the corporal and behavioral knowledge assembly requires.24 Under the pretext of ‘art’ – the installation seeks to carve out subversive space for people to gather in ecstatic communion despite being in a country where any form of public assembly is suppressed. DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION Under conditions of immense social stress the collective body reacts, especially if it has no lines of escape or contact with effective power. If there are no governmental mechanisms in place to relieve suffering or at least listen to its complaint, then the collective body convulses and reacts in ways to confound all meaning in a hyper-sensational combination and 'wastage' of corporeal forces, the magic of ritual, and flamboyant 'mass' political expression. Dance has an intrinsic relationship with restlessness. Between the 14th and 17th centuries an outbreak of the dancing plague in mainland Europe caused thousands of people to gather and dance erratically for days, weeks and even months at a time for no apparent reason. They would tear off their clothing, convulse and spasm on the streets. Musicians would join in, believing that they could treat this choreomania but the music only served to encourage more people to join in. Raves are contemporary reincarnations of choreomania –

https://art-of-assembly.net/2021/01/15/dana-yahalomi-body-next-to-body-the-act-of-being-present/

‘freeform dancing, the process of trusting an innate, rhythmic impulse that shirks a set of codified behaviors [functions as] a powerful gesture of resistance.’25 Sometimes what begins in the dark rooms of a nightclub can extend onto the streets, such as when thousands of young people danced on the steps of the Georgian parliament for a “Rave-o-lution” in response to the attempted government crackdown on suspected drug-use in Tbilisi’s clubs with riot police in 2018. This set the stage for a cultural shift that would see clubbers uniting with larger activist movements in calling for drug policy reform. Thus, activists have likewise recognised the political potency of the rave format, revealing the ability of nightlife to operate at the intersections of artistic innovation, socio-political critique and advocacy. SAMPLING THE SOUNDS OF GLOBAL PROTEST REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) is a sonic onslaught that combines the aesthetics of nightlife and protest into a anthropophonic soundscape. The soundscape samples audio taken from a variety of internet sources including news reports, amateur videos and field recordings posted on social media, creating a sonic collage that seeks to index the restless sounds of protest.

By deliberately employing a spatial sound design, the multiplicity of sounds are re-contextualised and placed in conversation (and solidarity) with each other. This approach places sonic repertoires of protest in relation to each other while encapsulating the magnitude of protest movements happening around the world. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) also integrates and subverts methods of sonic warfare often used against protesters by state forces as a mechanism for affective mobilization. Steve Goodman defines sonic warfare as ‘the use of force, both seductive and violent, abstract and physical, via a range of acoustic machines to modulate the physical, affective, and libidinal dynamics of populations, of bodies, of crowds’.26 Infrasound (below 20hz) and ultrasound (above 20khz) – both beyond the range of human hearing – are deployed in a deliberate mirror of the use of sonic technologies as a method of control, such as The Mosquito, an infrasound emitter frequently deployed to prevent young adults loitering in the UK. REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) subverts the conventional song structure of dance music by utilising a kick at the core of the soundscape that constantly increases in tempo over the duration of the installation:

Goodman, S. (2012). Sonic warfare: Sound, affect, and the ecology of fear. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

https://www.electronicbeats.net/electronic-music-is-black-protest-music/

…the beat is [dance music’s] most insistent disciplinary force: “the beat brooks no denial, but moves us, controls us, deprives us of our will,” such that “dancing becomes a form of submission to this overmastering beat.” […] the beat may register its disciplinary effects not through direct infliction, but through the way in which others dancing to the beat rhythmically textures the choreographic ensemble in which you dance. The synchronicity of the dance floor, the dancing together in time, is secured through a system of reciprocal indistinction: dancing to the beat of the music is dancing to the beat of the other.27 Combined with the constantly increasing environmental temperature, the beat serves as a disciplinary force to synchronise the bodies in restless communitas, provoking collective action. The beat is side-chained to a constant, nonvariating 35Hz tone - on the edge of human audibility. Side-chaining is a production technique common throughout dance music, and taken to almost parodic extreme in American ‘EDM’. Here, the kick is the only thing that can abate the constant pressure of the drone - mirroring the conflict between enforcement and joy.

CONCLUSION

REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) is the first part of a much larger investigation into navigating and finding hope in a world that seems to be getting progressively hotter, angrier and more restless. The installation is doomsday preparation, it seeks to be a training ground to practice kinetic resistance, radical solidarity and mutual care while embracing restlessness as a source of potentiality rather than affliction; urgently dancing in the face of an uncertain future.

FURTHER READING Crowds & Public Assembly • Gerbaudo, P. (2012). ‘Friendly’ Reunions: Social Media and the Choreography of Assembly. In Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. London: Pluto Press. • Gotman, K. (n.d.). Choreomania: Dance and disorder. New York (N.Y.): Oxford University press. • Muecke, S. (2003). Choreomanias. Performance Research, 8(4), 6-10. doi:10.1080/13528165.2003.10871960 • Canetti, E. (1962). Crowds and power. New York: The Viking Press. • Yahalomi, D. (2021). Body next to Body. The practice of being together. Retrieved February 03, 2021, from https://art-of-assembly.net/2021/01/15/ dana-yahalomi-body-next-to-body-the-act-of-beingpresent/ Politics, Protest & Activism

• George, C. (2020). Air-conditioned nation revisited: Essays on Singapore politics. Singapore: Ethos Books. • Teo, Y. & Kwok, K. (2019). This is what inequality looks like. Singapore: Ethos Books. • The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication [Introduction]. (2020). In A. McGarry, I. Erhart, H. Eslen-Ziya, O. Jenzen, & U. Korkut (Authors), The aesthetics of global protest:

Visual culture and communication (pp. 15-35). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. • Alwakeel, R. (2010). The Aesthetics of Protest in UK Rave. Dancecult, 1(2), 50-62. doi:10.12801/1947-5403.2010.01.02.03 • Bey, H. (2011). TAZ: The temporary autonomous zone. Seattle, WA: Pacific Publishing Studio. • Ford, M. (2014). A Dictator's Guide to Urban Design • [Editorial]. The Atlantic. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/ international/archive/2014/02/a-dictators-guide-tourban-design/283953/ • Poh, Y. (2020). A Short History Of The Smiley Face As Dissent [Editorial]. Rice Media. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://www.ricemedia.co/ current-affairs-features-short-history-smiley-facejolovan-wham-dissent/ • Wheeler, S. (2021). DJ Pierre has narrated a film about the 50-year history of the smiley [Editorial]. Mixmag Asia. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://mixmag.asia/read/smiley-logocartoon-history-story-dj-pierre-documentaryinternational • Lula, C. (2020). WIXAPOLONIA and Poland’s Hardcore Rave for Human Rights [Editorial]. Electronic Beats. Retrieved January 27, 2021, from https:// www.electronicbeats.net/wixapolonia-poland-protestrave-warsaw/

• Bologh, R. W. (2010). Erotic love as sociability: An alternative reality. In Love or greatness: Max Weber and masculine thinking: A feminist inquiry. London: Routledge. • Chatzidakis, A., Hakim, J., Littler, J., Rottenberg, C., & Segal, L. (2020). The care manifesto: The politics of interdependence. London: Verso Books. • Kostera, M. (2020). After the apocalypse: Finding hope in organizing. Winchester, UK: Zero Books. • Dolan, J. (2008). Utopia in performance: Finding hope at the theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. • Federici, S. (2017). In Praise of the Dancing Body. • Fokianaki, iL. (2021). A Bureau for Self-Care: Interdependence versus Individualism. e-flux. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/119/402021/a-bureaufor-self-care-interdependence-versusindividualism/. • YouTube. (2019). Long Flow Dramaturgies in Heterotopic Space----Isabel Lewis. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=iSH8JkbCddk&list=WL&index=47.

• Goodman, S. (2012). Sonic warfare: Sound, affect, and the ecology of fear. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. • English, L. (2017, January). The Sound of Fear [Editorial]. CTM Berlin - Festival for Adventurous Music and Art. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://www.ctm-festival.de/magazine/the-sound-offear#58 • Kun, J. (2019, January). On Loop and in the Crossfade: Music in the Age of Mass Persistence [Editorial]. CTM Berlin - Festival for Adventurous Music and Art. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://www.ctm-festival.de/magazine/on-loop-andin-the-crossfade#53 • Cardew, B. (2020, December 10). What Does 'Hard' Mean, Anyway? Unpicking Dance Music's Extremity Fetish [Editorial]. The Quietus. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://thequietus.com/articles/ 29346-loudness-dance-music-hardcore-marc-acardipane • Jenkins, D. (2018, April 27). An Introduction to Extratone: The World’s Fastest Music Genre [Editorial]. Bandcamp. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/anintroduction-to-extratone-the-worlds-fastest-musicgenre • Fermont, C., & Faille, D. D. (2016). Not your world music: Noise in South East Asia: Art, politics, identity, gender and global capitalism. Ottawa, Ontario: ditions Syrphe Hushush.

Care, Hope & Sociability

É

Noise, Music & Sound

Nightlife, Rave & Club Culture • Moore, M. (2016). Nightlife as Form. Theater, 46(1), 49-63. doi:10.1215/01610775-3322730 • Collin, M. (2019). Rave On: Global adventures in electronic dance music.

• Yuzna, J. (2013). The fun: The social practice of nightlife in NYC. Brooklyn, NY: Museum of Arts and Design/powerHouse Books. • Moore, M. (2013). Looks: Studio 54 and the Production of Fabulous Nightlife. Dancecult, 5(1), 61-74. doi:10.12801/1947-5403.2013.05.01.04 • Goulding, C., & Shankar, A. (2011). Club culture, neotribalism and ritualised behaviour. Annals of Tourism Research, 38(4), 1435-1453. doi:10.1016/ j.annals.2011.03.013 • Rose, A. (2016). Utopia on the Dancefloor. Fun City: Utopia on the Dancefloor. • Rose, A. (2016). Exploring the utopia of london's club land with angel rose [Editorial]. I-D. Retrieved January 23, 2021, from https://id.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjdwyx/exploring-theutopia-of-londons-club-land-with-angel-rose • Jonathan Bollen (2001) Queer Kinesthesia: Performativity on the Dance Floor, in Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities On & Off the Stage, Jane Desmond, Ed. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, pp 285-314. Rest & Restlessness

• Phillips, C. (2009). On Restlessness. New England Review, 30(1), 131-140. • Ngai, S. (2007). Ugly feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University press. • Resnick, B. (2015). The Racial Inequality of Sleep [Editorial]. The Atlantic. Retrieved January 31, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/

archive/2015/10/the-sleep-gap-and-racialinequality/412405/ • Francois, J. (2019). Rest as Reparations. BLACK POWER NAPS MGZ, (2).

SAMPLED AUDIO Sudan France Iraq Various cities around the world Niger Colombia United Kingdom Chad Germany Algeria Armenia Myanmar Haiti Brazil Russia Benin Belarus Poland Nigeria

Anti-government Protests May Day Rallies Anti-government Protests Pro-Palestine Protests University Protests Tax Proposal Protests Anti-Lockdown Protests Military Rule Protests Covid-19 Protests Elections Protests Anti-government Protests Anti-Coup Protests Presidential Term Protests Covid-19 Protests Alexei Navalny Arrest End-SARS Anti-government Protests Abortion Rights Protests End-SARS

June 2021 May 2021

Lebanon India

May 2021 United Kingdom May 2021 May 2021

Various cities around the world Bulgaria

April 2021 Thailand April 2021 Malawi April 2021 April 2021 March 2021

Ukraine Bolivia

February 2021

Spain

February 2021

Iraq

February 2021

Chile

January 2021

Hong Kong

January 2021 October 2020 October 2020

Venezuela Georgia Nicaragua

October 2020 October 2020

Spain

South Korea

Anti-government Protests Farm Bill Protests Extinction Rebellion George Floyd Protests Anti-government Protests Anti-government Protests Anti-bribery Protests Land Reform Anti-government Protests Catalan Independence Protests Anti-government Protests Subway Fare Protests Pro-Democracy Protests Anti-government Protests Rave-olution Social Security Reform Protests Catalan Referendum Candlelight Demonstrations

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ARTIST BIOS

GEORGE RAYNER-LAW

CHILLIDXDDY

George Rayner-Law is a sound worker from South London, with an art practice in Noise. Recently, he has completed collaborations with Nicholas Tee on untitled [circuit breaker] and You will not feel

CHILLIDXDDY is the artistic project of Nicholas Tee – a live artist based in Singapore who collages action, image, sound and material through body-based performance, pain and endurance; their work is often politically charged, angry and messy. Nicholas’ work has been presented internationally, notably at Haus der Kunst (DE), Manchester Art Gallery (UK) and Point Centre for Contemporary Art (CY). Most recently, their work was featured in the British Art Studies journal published by the Paul Mellon Centre.

this way forever (加油). He has an ongoing collaboration with Dominic O’Donoghue on the Bootlicker project, and is an ongoing contributor to Louis Grace’s Teaching Computers To Love program on Resonance EXTRA. He also has a recent release via Brachliegen Tapes.

www.nicholastwy.com

Beyond this, he is an experienced radio broadcast engineer, and has produced work spanning radio arts, installation, video, live performance and commercial release, as well as running DIY record labels.

STELLA CHEUNG

www.georgeraynerlaw.com

Stella Cheung is a lighting designer and freelance stage manager. She trained at The Royal Central School of Speech & Drama. Productions include: When We Dead Awaken (Intercultural Theatre Institute), Step Outta Line (Thong Pei Qin & NAFA), The Roundest Circle (TheatreWorks) and Family Secrets (The Necessary Stage).

Concept: CHILLIDXDDY Sound: George Rayner-Law Lighting: Stella Cheung Technical Managers: Myles Ziebart & Duncan Scott Documentation: Vinod Rai Sharma Special Thanks: Abel Koh, Miho Iwaki, Din, Yvonne REST-LESS (RAVE MORE) is supported by:

National Arts Council, Goethe-Institut, Nucleus, Rebel Decibel & NIN9 Studios.

CREDITS

Dance