Standpoint (Rhy)pistemology: DeForrest Brown, Jr. Michael J. Love

Standpoint (Rhy)pistemology features rhythmanalyst DeForrest Brown, Jr. and interdisciplinary tap dance artist Michael J. Love in an evening of performances which together map the foundational Black histories of techno and house music onto improvisational and choreographed tap dance. Drawing from Michael J. Love’s idea of (RHY)PISTEMOLOGY! (OR, TO KNOW THROUGH THE RHYTHM), this event evokes the sociopolitical theory of “standpoint epistemology,” providing a framework through which marginalized people may generate new ideas and outcomes from their own specific cultural experience of electronic music and the future. This program channels DeForrest’s research on African American modernist traditions of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression.

Standpoint (Rhy)pistemology is held in celebration of Domain’s launch of this simulation sux, a collection of speculative essays and personal observations that recount the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, framing the epoch as the last chapter in a longer tale of financial and social collapse, written by DeForrest with analyst and designer Ting Ding 丁汀.

DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, and curator. He has released three albums on Planet Mu; Of Desire, Longing (2019), Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry (2020), and Techxodus (2023). His written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music. Brown’s debut book, Assembling a Black Counter Culture was released on Primary Information in 2022. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy.

Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist, scholar, and educator. His embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theories and aesthetics with a rigorous practice that critically engages the Black cultural past as it imagines Black futurity. Michael is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ursinus College. Prior to joining the Dance faculty at Ursinus, he was a 2021-23 Princeton University Arts Fellow and Lecturer in the Program in Dance at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Michael’s current project, The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection (Part I, Part II, and Part III), is a triptych of performance installations that sample and loop various media and sounds to “rhythm dream” sites of liberation. His other ongoing projects, such as #SampledMixedandRemixed, explore Black performance histories and theorize queer presence in unexpected locations in cultural and institutional archives.

Ting Ding 丁汀 is a Chinese-Canadian statistical analyst, visual designer, and vintage dealer with thirteen-plus years of experience as a SEM specialist across various B2CSaaS startups; Ding 丁 collects and interprets numerical data into usable business drivers. Ding 丁 was a co-founder of the sustainable gender-flexible label, HECHA/做 and runs QTarchives, a vintage shop/garment archive. As of 2024, Ding T performs analysis and development work for BC Greens on the unceded traditional First Nations territory of the so-called nation of “Canada.”

Domain (f. 2017) is a queer-led, design-forward publisher of original and archival work spanning a wide range of subjects. The press emphasizes the unique character of the book form and the empathy and communion of publishing.

Photo of Michael J. Love's (RHY)PISTEMOLOGY! (OR, TO KNOW THROUGH THE RHYTHM). Photo by Shakiru Bola Okoya, courtesy of Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. Featured in photo, DeForrest Brown Jr.