Episode description

Team Human celebrates its 100th episode with this special “double feature,” recorded live before an audience at Civic Hall in Manhattan. 

Joining Douglas on the stage is writer, artist, and journalist Molly Crabapple. With just “compressed ash and wood pulp,” Molly brings to life images of injustice and makes visible that which is too often rendered invisible. Her paintings from Guantanamo, Istanbul, Syria, Puerto Rico, and recently immigration detention centers in Texas bear witness to the struggle of humans suffering under the oppression of empire. Molly explains how being an artist has afforded her unique access to these places otherwise closed off to cameras and reporters. “The best thing about being an artist who is a reporter is that you are constantly underestimated,” Molly explains. Molly and Douglas discuss both the subversive and connecting power of art in this thought-provoking Team Human conversation. 

Molly’s latest book is Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War

a collaboration with Marwan Hisham. Molly also is the author of Drawing Blood.

In part two of today’s show, Douglas welcomes Jace Clayton, aka DJ /rupture to the stage. Like Molly, Jace’s art has taken him across the globe, giving him a unique perspective on the powerful contribution of musicians to the living archive of history. Clayton looks at both the affordances of digital technology to spread music far and wide, while also critiquing those colonizing forces of globalized music that serve to flatten creative expression. In a chapter (excerpt) of his recent book, Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture, Jace offers a twisting narrative on the use of the ubiquitous pitch correction software Auto-Tune. It’s a story that not only reveals the embedded biases in technology, but poses both a media metaphor and question that Team Human must face in a digital society; “What is an individual voice nowadays when we are amplified and scattered digitally? We are obliterated. We too are products being traded.”

Learn more about Jace and Molly’s work at their websites. 

http://www.jaceclayton.com/  

https://mollycrabapple.com/

This show features music from Jace Clayton DJ /rupture. You can stream or download over 8 hours of his music here: http://www.negrophonic.com/dj-rupture-mixes-free-download//

His Sufi plugins are available here: http://www.beyond-digital.org/sufiplugins/

Our live audience enjoyed the following video media:

 On Money Bail: https://mollycrabapple.com/animation/

Molly’s Sketches from the trial of Jumaane Williams: https://mollycrabapple.com/drawings-from-the-trial-of-jumaane-williams/

Vanity Fair Feature Inside Aleppo: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/07/inside-aleppo-syria

This episode of Team Human was produced in collaboration with Civic Hall thanks to Micah Sifry (featured guest on TH Episode 36) and Savanna Badalich. 

Thanks to Luke Robert Mason for recording the show, Josh Chapdelaine for coordinating the event. You can support this show by becoming a subscriber via Drip and/or Patreon. Visit teamhuman.fm/support to sign up. 

Thanks as always to Dischord Records for allowing us the use of a sample of Fugazi’s Foreman’s Dog in the intro and to Mike Watt and R.U.Sirius.

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