Guest speaker: Helen Starr (she/her) 

With an undercurrent of friendship captured throughout the episode’s joy and laughter, Helen and Seema sit in community with one another and discuss: how caste in Trindidad came not to be, attitudes toward bodily fluids in municipal work, touch and hapticality, how we can hold each other through caste and by a Global South lens - and the ties between all of this and SEEMAWORLD. Can we get to the beat?

Content Warning: This podCASTE episode contains strong language around the 38-minute mark

Resources for the episode (as mentioned in the episode): 
 
 - Fantasy in the Hold, by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney: HAPTICALITY, OR LOVE 

 - The metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus by N. Jayaram 

 - Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur 

About Helen Starr 

Helen Starr is an Afro-Carib Trinidadian world-building curator, commissioner, cultural activist and founder of The Mechatronic Library (2010). Her innovative practice establishes a Carib epistemology for digital art focusing on immersive media and AI technologies that express Indigenous concepts such as gender fluidity, skin-thinking, simultaneous multiple realities and nature godded worlds.  

Working mainly with artists who have protected characteristics, Helen Starr has commissioned artworks from artists including Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Seema Mattu, Aliyah Hussain, Rebecca Allen, Phoebe Collings James, Kinnari Saraiya and Anna Bunting-Branch, who have gone on to exhibit in museums across the globe. 

Helen Starr has curated and produced artworks shown at many exhibitions both nationally (FACT, Liverpool, Wysing Art Centre, Cambridge, QUAD in Derby and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead) and internationally. As board member she was part of the launch of Format Festival’s Mass Isolation Project (2020-23) where image makers from around the world were invited to document the Coronavirus pandemic via Instagram. With over 40,000 submissions from 90 countries it became the largest visual archive of the pandemic. 

She has published several essays on the duality of Afro-indigeneity, was digital consultant on the Ab Rogers Design team (Wolfson Economic Prize 2021) and has served on the Jury for Ars Electronica Animation Festival in Linz Austria. Starr lives in London with her family and is devoted to the writings of the Jamaican philosopher Sylver Wynter.

Seema Mattu - podCASTE Episode 2: troublemakers in trinidad 🇹🇹

A remix of "Bermondsey Lagoon" from Ectopia's debut album "life/section". Digital version of the album is on Bandcamp here https://wysingpolyphonic.bandcamp.com/album/life-section
Vinyl version available from here http://www.wysingartscentre.org/shop/shop_item/ectopia_life_section

Ectopia Remix

Ectopia – Bermondsey Lagoon (Golden Temple Remix)

NTS LIVE SET [September 4, 2018]

This mix is part of Polyphonic mix series by Wysing Arts Center. 

https://tankmagazine.com/tank/2020/08/crystallmess-wysing-polyphonic/

INTROLUDO INFERNO, is “built around Interludes and Intros - sonic interstices that often allow musicians to be their most vulnerable and reveal the psyche behind their project”.

So far, so real - Gray 
CONSCIENTEOFTHESOUL (Good lads/Bad Lads blend) -  Covco
Over It (CRYSTALLMESS chopped and screwed edit) - Summer Walker 
Hello, it’s me - Katerina 
Side X Intro - Standing On The Corner 
10-34 Reprise - Fatima Al Qadiri 
There is only one year left - Busta Rhymes 
UWËM/CREATION - Space Afrika 
Temps Mort - Booba 
Nothing Without Intention - Solange 
Fröjd - Suutoo 
The Infamous Prelude - Mobb Deep 
Baby Girl Interlude / Intro - Missy Eliott 
Arm N Leg Intro - ???
Direct Line - Dean Blunt 
Needle Dreams - Terribilis 
Claiborne Kick - Westside Gunn ft Boldy James 
Intro Al Naafyish - DJ Feadz
Intro Star Wars - Kelis 
Unknown Interlude - Drexciya 
Yelwa Procession 
CREAM - Lee Gamble 
Black Feathers - Black Replica 
Lars Von Sen - Mr.Oizo

INTROLUDO INFERNO MIXTAPE

A soundtrack to grieve over alternative realities. 

Thank you to Brenda for actually taking me on a night ride to record the sounds and @mangovivi for the beautiful third track (at around 5min)

Interview on:
https://tankmagazine.com/tank/2020/08/mobilegirl-wysing-polyphonic/

II - for Wysing Polyphonic: The Ungoverned

Wysing Arts Centre is a thriving cultural campus of ten buildings across an 11acre rural site in south Cambridgeshire which hosts experimental 
residencies for UK and international artists, and delivers a critically acclaimed public programme of gallery exhibitions and events including conferences, symposia, workshops and music events. 

Buy the first release by music project Ectopia from our website: 7 tracks, mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux

Seema Mattu - podCASTE Episode 2: troublemakers in trinidad 🇹🇹

Wysing Arts Centre

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