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Audience advisory: this performance uses strobe lights and water-based haze.
Vancouver New Music’s annual festival returns this year with PROPULSION, October 17-19, 2024, at VIVO Media Arts Centre. We have invited three local guest curators to each program a night of the festival that centers emerging artists with visionary sonic and musical expressions. The festival will explore themes of futurism: how do we build our future and propel ourselves as an artistic community and a general society to build something new? Curators are composer, multi instrumentalist, sound and media artist, Anju Singh; artist, writer and curator, Kendra Place; and audio-visual artist, DJ and radio host, Reylinn. The festival will feature a mix of local and visiting artists.
a DJ performance of Southeast Asian electronic music incorporated with dancers
DJ Zygote aka Simon Grefiel is an artist whose work engages with ancient and pre-colonial histories and practices from Southeast Asia and around the Pacific. Working with sculpture, found objects, drawings, and plant life, his explorations of language, dreams, spirits, familial stories, and speculative narratives proposes new ways of experiencing the supernatural realm, and the material universe.
Josh is a Dubai born, Queer, Filipinx artist that is currently a settler on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. Josh emerged in dance through the streetdance community when he battled in the first Vancouver street dance festival 2011. From there he steeped himself in street dance culture as a means for empowerment and self realization. These styles included Locking, Popping, House, Hip hop, Krump, Vogue, and Whacking from local and international teachers: Jerry Chien, Koffi Noumedor, Nubian NeNe, Leah McFly, Natasha Gorie, Rina Palerina, Anna Martynova, and Sekou Heru, Raoul Wilke, Kozi Eze, Latasha Barnes, and Ejoe Wilson.
Rae is a “Vancouver” based DJ and performer. Working against what society expects of her as a queer Asian woman, she represents the guilt free pursuit of self acceptance and pleasure. Rae’s goal when on stage is to fully release herself to the music and leave feeling lighter, in hopes that those around her feel inclined to do the same.
ADAM
FITNESSS emerges as a composite of wires and veins
coursing with the distilled rage and sorrow of a decimated Los Angeles
prosthetic electronics trigger angelic pulsations
flowing through nervous pathways to communicate
the primordial choreography of our Holy Ancestors
Purchase VNM festival pass here.
FITNESSS emerges as a composite of wires and veins
coursing with the distilled rage and sorrow of a decimated Los Angeles
prosthetic electronics trigger angelic pulsations
flowing through nervous pathways to communicate
the primordial choreography of our Holy Ancestors
DJ Zygote aka Simon Grefiel (he/him) is an artist whose work engages with ancient and pre-colonial histories and practices from Southeast Asia and around the Pacific. Working with sculpture, found objects, drawings, and plant life, his explorations of language, dreams, spirits, familial stories, and speculative narratives proposes new ways of experiencing the supernatural realm, and the material universe.
Grefiel is currently exploring "Budots," an electronic music genre and dance style originating from Davao City, Philippines and heavily influence by the indigenous Sama-Bajau. He DJs as a way to explore electronic music in Southeast Asia and the Global South. He is also producing music with collaborator Reylinn McGrath under the moniker "Gulod Tanawin."
Grefiel was born and raised in Tacloban City, Philippines, and currently lives on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx ̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His work has been exhibited and screened at Vancouver Art Gallery, Gallery Gachet, WAAP, and Libby Leshgold Gallery in Vancouver and Gallery TPW in Toronto, ON.
Josh is a Dubai born, Queer, Filipinx artist that is currently a settler on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. Josh emerged in dance through the streetdance community when he battled in the first Vancouver street dance festival 2011. From there he steeped himself in street dance culture as a means for empowerment and self realization. These styles included Locking, Popping, House, Hip hop, Krump, Vogue, and Whacking from local and international teachers: Jerry Chien, Koffi Noumedor, Nubian NeNe, Leah McFly, Natasha Gorie, Rina Palerina, Anna Martynova, and Sekou Heru, Raoul Wilke, Kozi Eze, Latasha Barnes, and Ejoe Wilson. While he was involved in the streetdance community he continued to explore contemporary dance from Tiffany Tegarthen, David Raymond, 605 collective, Su-Feh Lee, Kevin Fraser, Peter Bingham, Justine Chambers, Delia Brett and Deanna Peters through the pre-professional dance training program Modus Operandi and informal ways of exchanging in the local and international dance community.
Rae is a “Vancouver” based DJ and performer. Working against what society expects of her as a queer Asian woman, she represents the guilt free pursuit of self acceptance and pleasure. Rae’s goal when on stage is to fully release herself to the music and leave feeling lighter, in hopes that those around her feel inclined to do the same.
Reylinn is a Vancouver based audio/visual artist, DJ, and radio host. They’re a founding member of Acceleration Radio, an open format FM radio, live stream and events collective with a focus on audio/visual experimentation. Attracted to the contrasting aesthetics of the natural and synthetic, their live performances recontextualize audio and video recordings captured in daily life for spaces of catharsis.
