A collaboration between ∄ club and Cutiecore formation called Music Diversity Platform aims at ‘cultivating gender diversity’ and introducing new artists to the local music scene. Along with this, the platform team has launched a new series on 20ft Radio featuring mixes by participants of the initiative’s first mentorship program. DTF Magazine tells more about the Music Diversity Platform and its projects.
FLINTA is a German abbreviation that stands for ‘women, lesbians, intersex, non-binary, transgender and agender people’ (Frauen, Lesben, Intergeschlechtliche, nichtbinäre, trans and agender). The project team explained that the point of the concept is to ‘center people who are not cisgender men’.
‘The term FLINTA epitomizes the opposition to the patriarchal structure present in electronic music. As it happens, (cisgender) men dominate even at queer parties and spaces. Queer women and others often can’t find a place for themselves in such spaces. The point of the FLINTA focus is to counteract this’, the team adds.
The goal of the new project by ∄ and Cutiecore is to create a platform for self-actualization and to support people from marginalized groups in the music industry ‘whose voices often go unheard’.
About the idea behind the initiative
Co-authors of the project Nastya Zamorska, who worked in ‘club on Kyrylivska’, as well as DJ, producer and founder of Cutiecore human margareeta say that they met while working on one of the projects of Standard Deviation label (label of the ∄ club. — Note from DTF Magazine), and they got the idea to organize musical events for the FLINTA community at the same time.
At first the idea evolved into the first DJ workshop, with participants recruited through an open call, and then — into a full-fledged platform.
Currently the team consists of three people: Nastya Zamorska, human margareeta and Kyiv-based DJ ecce lizard, who became the mentor of the program.
Nastya explained that the Music Diversity Platform is a counter-response to the outdated norms of the music scene.
‘Techno, house, sometimes electro and breakbeat, and it’s like nothing else exists. Other more avant-garde sounds of dance music are quite rare. For me this is directly related to the binary norms that the Ukrainian music community has not yet fully moved away from . Our scene features women and queer people, but it still feels like they have to play by the rules of the ‘boy’s club’ to be taken seriously, — Zamorska says. — I always wanted to see more people like me and my friends. I want to see more people who are uncompromising, frisky, sexy, non-serious, feminine, sensual, and people who have other qualities that contrast with snobbery. At some point, I realized I had to do something to fulfill that vision’.
She once again emphasized that Music Diversity Platform is exactly a FLINTA-centric project through which they want to strengthen this trend in Ukrainian music, as well as create a comfortable environment for the community in the industry, but they ‘welcome everyone, regardless of gender identity, who supports and understands their vision’.
About completed projects
In the fall, Music Diversity Platform held an open call for applications for a free mentorship program. The program was curated by human margareeta and ecce lizard.
As a result, among more than 100 applications, they selected eight participants ‘with diverse backgrounds’ for their first project.
‘Our goal was to bring together a diverse group of people with atypical and individual musical tastes and create a safe space where we can help them develop’, the Music Diversity Platform team says.
During three months, DJing classes were held for the project participants, in particular classes about technical basis, architecture of the set, historical influence of technology and lectures about the music industry. Guest mentors of the program were Nastya Vogan, JM Dasha and Vera Logdanidi, who shared their own experience and vision of DJing, psychological tricks while performing in public and communicating with the audience, and Kateryna Voichuk from Musicians Defend Ukraine gave a lecture on strategy.
human margareeta explained that ‘it was important to them not just to teach musicians how to push the right buttons, but to immerse them in the meanings and context of the industry’.
In addition to the music program, an open lecture program was developed for the participants: the first two meetings on gender theory were held in collaboration with the feminist organization Femsolution. In future programs, the platform plans to develop this format with a focus on queer and gender discussion directly in the music industry.
About the mixes on 20ft Radio
On Feb. 3, Music Diversity Platform held its first party at Community Cafe, where alumni of the first program played their own sets.
Mixes by six participants were presented on 20ft Radio.
kate lizzerd
‘DJ, artist, adept at experimental dance. She is an explorer of the incomprehensible. The main idea of her artistic exploration is everything that gives you a sense of uneasiness — not deliberately scary, but something that’s just slightly off. In her DJ sets she collects music that creates a feeling of distortion. Echoes, detuned sounds, and songs in forgotten languages, combined with energetic electronic music, create a familiar feeling of being on the verge of insanity when you are happy to immerse in your paranoid fantasies and distorted dreams’.
Reizor Zero
‘Kyiv-based DJ-enthusiast and prose writer. Queer and schizoid. Explores the whimsical, unusual and gloomy to then share the impressions with people through own art. Values originality and freedom of self-expression above all. Plays the sounds of void amidst the sand wastelands surrounded by power lines with their noise of electricity flowing through the wires combined with the hearing pseudohallucinations of an industrial factory. In other words, experimenting with rhythmic noise, power electronics and industrial sounds’.
N
‘Kyiv-based junior DJ and producer. Actively exploring and collecting different music. She considers electronic sound as the greatest source of inspiration and self-expression. Started her own artistic journey at Module Exchange school, continuing at Music Diversity Platform. Finds DJing and producing interconnected and fulfilling each other giving the possibility to experiment. Being a fan of EBM & IDM, purposively ricocheting between various genres to occupy the strange middle ground between solitude and dance floor communion’.
äsc3ea
‘äsc3ea (Emma Hamza Grünwald) is an audiovisual artist and live performer. Emma composes experimental music exploring different moods and rhythms, aiming to capture the emotional landscape of the world around her. Experimenting with a variety of musical styles and techniques, she might create dark ambient pieces with glitchy industrial rhythms and calming eastern soundscapes. And for a more playful mood, she might turn to breakbeats and bass sound. Emma has lived all her life in cities of contrasts where Eastern and Western culture meet and exist side by side, creating her authentic and distinctive experience’.
LittleBrightStar
‘LittleBrightStar (Arthur Vovchenko) is a multidisciplinary artist from Kyiv, who, through his creativity, raises questions of self-acceptance of inner identities through cruelty and love. As a club industry worker, Arthur has a formed personal vision of the meaning of parties — to bring joy even in the darkest times. He says: ‘I’m a very anxious person. At some point, this emotion overwhelmed the feeling of joy at parties. Now I want to play music that will make people feel like children, expanding the perception of what a party is and provoking them to enjoy it’’.
Art of Enigma
‘Art of Enigma is an up and coming Kyiv-based DJ and performer. By exploring self-love and acceptance of physical bodies in groovy and bouncy experiments, their main goal is to make any space more queer-friendly than it was before. Cultivating ballroom references in their sound, Art of Enigma delivers rhythmic journeys on the dance floor. Bass-oriented and high in percussion selection is mixed with occasional, but always unexpected pop-throwback in a unique interpretation’.
You can listen to the mixes on the platform page on the 20ft Radio website.
The Strategic Media Support Program project will implement the Lviv Media Forum with the financial support of People in Need (PIN) and Pioneer Foundation.
