DeForrest Brown, Jr. in Residence

Writer, musician, theorist, and curator DeForrest Brown, Jr. joins the Somerset House Studios community for a one-month international residency in March 2024.

With access to studio space, internal community programme, technical and curatorial support across the month, DeForrest will use the residency period to focus on the research and development of a forthcoming book, album, lecture series, and audiovisual performance - the new live work to be premiered at Assembly, Somerset House Studios’ biannual experimental sound, music, and performance series, in March 2026.

Explorations taking form under the title Rhythmanalytics, DeForrest’s multi-faceted project explores the intersections of written and musical practice, drawing on concepts from French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s book Rhythmanalysis and creatively reimagining American analytic and pragmatic philosophy. Building on DeForrest’s collaboration with Juan Atkins and Tresor on the Cybotron project -a sonic fiction that delves into the military science of the near future and the possibilities of other worlds

Recorded audio and its data visualizations from a previous residency at EMPAC in Troy, New York will be revisited and recomposed throughout his time at Somerset House Studios, contributing to the writing and creation of new infographic artworks. Rhythmanalytics sees DeForrest reimagine the role of music writing from the perspective of a working musician after the decline of music journalism, defining the project as ‘a work-in-progress, diagnostic exploration of electronic music at the end of the music industry through applied metaphilosophy and “techno-vernacular expression.”’

About DeForrest Brown, Jr.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer and was the representative of the 'Make Techno Black Again' campaign. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. He has released three albums on Planet Mu; 'Of Desire, Longing' (2019), 'Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry' (2020), and 'Techxodus' (2023).

With a background writing for a decade in the music press, his written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music, and has appeared in Artforum, Triple Canopy, NPR, CTM Festival, Mixmag, among many others. He has performed and presented work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Paris+ par Art Basel, Paris; Camden Arts Centre, London; Unsound Festival, Krakow; Sónar, Barcelona; Roulette Intermedium, New York; and elsewhere. He has also taught courses on the history and new media uses of Afrofuturism in music at Parsons School of Design at New School and Princeton University. Brown's debut book 'Assembling a Black Counter Culture' was released on Primary Information in 2022.

Residency supported by SPACE