Moderator: Daisuke Ishida

This talk will draw on examples from the artist's own collaborative practice to explore the potential of interdisciplinary research and practice-led methodologies as applied to electronic music in creative industries contexts, and how to facilitate artistic interaction, engagement, empowerment exchange through such means.

The Neighbourhood Character / Ari Robey-Lawrence, (she/they) is an electronic music producer / composer, vocalist, DJ, educator & researcher, and creative industries freelancer.

They are a co-curator of DICE Conference & Festival, and the founder of wood // work collective, an intersectional platform communicating through diverse forms of creative expression conceived with the purpose to create alternative avenues for socio-cultural mobility, professional self-empowerment, and transnational interchange in creative industries.

Ari’s doctoral research (Goldsmiths Media and Comms) traces interventions in the politics and praxes of reciprocal and self- empowerment by Black electronic and dance music producers. As a public speaker, they engage with issues of race, politics and community through the lens of the dance music, and over the last three years has curated and organised a range of panel events and workshops, with topics ranging from strategies for mental health & preservation, legacies of DIY resistance, identity politics, and intergenerationality in the dance music scene featuring a range of Berlin & EU- based qtibpoc artists, cultural and community workers.

From 2014 - 2021, Ari was a core curatorial member in one of Berlin’s few remaining intersectional & non-profit DIY spaces; Raumerweiterungshalle, and co- organised and facilitated a range of events aimed towards promoting the engagement of Black and intersectional artists over the years; most recently including a 3- day vinyl DJ workshop as part of the 2018-19 SWITCH Music Workshops, which provided free and accessible electronic music education to intersectional qtibpoc in Berlin.

As The Neighbourhood Character, Ari has released a number of collaborative and solo projects both digitally and on vinyl, played at a range of local and EU nightlife events and venues since 2015, hosted radio programming on Berlin Community Radio, THF Radio, with appearances on NTS, Radio80k, Nightshade FM and more. They have designed sound for a wide array of productions for independent artists and directors, and collaborated with established companies such as the Maxim-Gorki Theatre. Most recently they have worked behind the scenes as part of the staff at Berlin’s Hard Wax, and currently leads an undergraduate module on Creative Collaboration as a Lead Lecturer at BIMM Institute Berlin. 

In the winter semester 2021/22, Sound Studies and Sonic Arts presents a lecture series exploring sound in artistic research. The genome of the master program implies an understanding that theory and practice mutually inform each other and represent two sides of the same coin. We’d like to invite you to join this lecture series and explore the different perspectives on the topic of artistic research as an encouragement to reflect on your own positioning.

Artistic research, aesthetic research, and practice-based research have gained a lot of momentum at art schools and universities in the past few decades. Focusing on alternatives to established methodologies and paradigms based on evidence, historical and political analysis, musicology, critical thinking, and cultural studies, this lecture series addresses how artistic research has been established in sound studies and in the sonic arts.

Primarily for the current MA Sound Studies and Sonic Arts students at the UdK, these talks are also open to the general public and students from all other institutions and departments.

Wedensdays | 18:00 – 20:00 p.m. | online