This track entitled "None of the Two Things" is by visual artist, experimental musician, and poet Félicia Atkinson. Félicia’s work deals with topics of deep listening, cut ups, silence, noise, and language and is a combination of improvisation and superimposed composition, as an abstract woven material, where the voice meets electronics, acoustic instruments, and electric distortions.

Rant #3: Félicia Atkinson

The fifth audio track is by Astrit Ismaili, an Amsterdam-based performance artist born in Pristina, Kosovo. Their work proposes bodies that consist of both imaginary and material realities, using alter egos, body extensions and wearable musical instruments to embody different possibilities for becoming. In Astrit’s practice the act of singing is used to explore the role of voice in pop culture and identity politics. Witnessing the Kosovo war, being a child pop star and identifying as a queer person are experiences that influence their practice.

Rant #5: Astrit Ismaili

The seventh audio track is by experimental club music producer Fauna who currently works and lives in Vienna. Oscillating between notions of technological self, political involvement, and impressions of daily life Fauna is phrasing dystopic-futuristic, movement-based tracks, whilst always highly depending on mood to respond to the individual context as well as to surrounding events and occurrences.

Rant #7: Fauna

The first audio track of the 'Minneapolis Edition' is by Andrea Jenkins, a politician, community leader, artist, and activist. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, Jenkins participated in the city’s emerging Black Arts Movement and discovered her voice as a poet. Once having moved to Minneapolis she served as a Council policy aide and oral historian for nearly two decades before becoming a city councilwoman. She is known for being the first African American openly transgender woman elected to public office in the U.S.

Rant #1 Mpls Edition: Andrea Jenkins

The second audio track of the 'Minneapolis Edition' is by Maria Isa, a singer, songwriter, actress, rapper, activist, youth worker and recording artist born in Minnesota and raised on St. Paul’s West Side barrio. Isa grew up surrounded and influenced by many different rhythms of Afro-Latino-Indigenous culture and channeled it into performing arts and activism at a very early age. She studied with master musicians of Afro-Boricua music of Bomba and Plena of Puerto Rico, all of whom inspired Isa to create an Afro-LatinX and Hip-hop lyricism performance style.

Rant #2 Mpls Edition: Maria Isa

The third audio track of the Minneapolis Edition entitled "And what if I took back all my praise?" is by Cameron Downey, an anti-disciplinary artist and environmental scientist. As a current senior at Columbia University, she explores concepts of world-building and liminal space by way of Black, fantastical and precarious bodies. Downey uses sculpture, film, photography, the written and the performed to engage and engulf a language of epics out of the minutiae.

Rant #3 Mpls Edition: Cameron Downey

The fourth audio track of the Minneapolis Edition is by Berlin-based artist Madeline Stillwell who grew up in and around Minneapolis and later studied Studio Art, Dance, Music & Theater south of the Twin Cities. Her live performances and videos combine material, body, and voice, often incorporating found or existing urban space. Stillwell is one of two Berlin-based participants of the QuaRANTine Choir Minneapolis Edition who tie the series back to Berlin opening up a dialogue between the two cities.

Rant #4 Mpls Edition: Madeline Stillwell

The fifth audio track of the Minneapolis Edition is by Ifrah Mansour, Somali, refugee, Muslim, multimedia artist, and educator. In her work, she interweaves poetry, oral stories, puppetry, video, and installation to explore trauma through the eyes of children as well as to uncover the resiliencies of Blacks, Muslims, and refugees, to confront violent history with humor, and to provide a voice for the global refugee stories.

Rant#5 Minneapolis Edition: Ifrah Mansour

The sixth audio track of the Minneapolis Edition is by Sarah Petersen, an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and organizer, born and raised in Minneapolis. Petersen creates performative, structural, material, sonic and textual interventions, producing signs and signals for others to reconsider social space and interrupt social systems.

Rant #6 Minneapolis Edition: Sarah Petersen

The seventh audio track of the Minneapolis Edition is by Sarah White, a soulful songstress, DJ, photographer and hands-on healing artist whose work is examining how to liberate Black and Brown bodies during times of unveiling and upheaval. White’s deep melodic musical expression invades and haunts the sacred and spiritual space of her listeners while working deeply on the exploration of different ways of getting into the nervous and spirit body systems to unveil and heal trauma.

Rant #7 Minneapolis Edition: Sarah White

The eighth audio track of the Minneapolis Edition is by Kimberly Bradley, a culture writer and editor since the 1990s. When Bradley writes, it’s often – but not always – about art or the art world. She was born in a California desert town and raised in northern Minnesota. After several years in Hamburg and a decade in New York, she moved to Berlin in the early 2000s where she still lives and works. Bradley is one of two Berlin-based participants of the QuaRANTine Choir Minneapolis Edition who tie the series back to Berlin opening up a dialogue between the two cities.

Rant #8 Minneapolis Edition: Kimberly Bradley

The ninth audio track of the Minneapolis Edition is by Sci-Fi, a rapper, DJ, and producer proudly hailing from the East Side of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Their work aims to utilize the power of nostalgia and its ability to guide our lives and heal our wounds. The feelings that drive Sci-Fi’s music can range from the sweet memories of teenage romance to reflecting on the pitfalls of life and how they make you appreciate how far you have come.

Minneapolis Edition Rant #9: Sci-Fi

The tenth and final audio performance of the Minneapolis Edition is by Deka, a Somali American vocalist, DJ, artist, and fashion designer from Minneapolis. Most of her tracks and mixes are inspired by the music of artists like NAAFI, a Mexico City-based artist collective and record label that is driving a new wave of Mexican electronic music, and NUXXE, a London-based label and collective producing cutting edge club sounds.

Mpls Edition Rant #10: Deka

QuaRANTine Choir is a growing compilation of commissioned audio works by an international group of artists from various backgrounds. It is dedicated to the rant as an artistic format, motivated by feminist and queer perspectives. The first edition that ran from June 2nd, 2020, to August 4th, 2020, functioned as a scattered yet collective choir, that was delayed only by time and distance. 
For the Minneapolis Edition, an assorted group of artists, musicians, activists, and poets is invited to individually reflect on current events in and outside of Minneapolis/St. Paul. 
The ten participating artists are asked to play around with whatever ranting and queer/feminist noise means to them and to create a short audio work. Cell phones or other mobile devices serve as recording as well as listening devices. Since each rant departs from the previous rant, the whole series also works as a slowed-down artistic chain reaction.

Starting Tuesday, September 1st, 2020, one new episode of the series will be published weekly on Soundcloud.

Artists Minneapolis Edition: Andrea Jenkins, Maria Isa, Cameron Downey, Madeline Stillwell, Ifrah Mansour, Sarah Petersen, Sarah White, Kimberly Bradley,  and others

Curation & Production: Sandra Teitge with the Goethe-Institut Chicago
Concept: Line Spellenberg & Sandra Teitge

Additional Music: Kolbeinn Hugi
Visuals: Wiley Hoard

Thanks to: Sarah Petersen

***

Artists of the first edition: Nora Turato, Moriah Evans, Félicia Atkinson, Rosaceae, Astrit Ismaili, Hanne Lippard, Fauna, keyon gaskin, Georgia Sagri, and Nguyễn + Transitory

Concept & Production: Line Spellenberg & Sandra Teitge

Supported by: Goethe Institut Chicago & District * School without Center, Berlin
Thanks to: Marcel Bisevic, Manuel Chittka

QuaRANTine Choir

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