Dweller V: True Polar Wander

Join us for the opening of Dweller, the New York electronic music festival inaugurating its fifth edition at MoMA PS1. The opening celebration features guitar and voice by S*an D. Henry-Smith and Tavish Timothy as well as live performances by ALSOKNOWNASROX (New York) and Actress (London). Tickets are required for this free, indoor event.

Established in 2019 by Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, co-founder of the New York-based agency Discwoman, Dweller takes place annually in the last week of February as a culmination event during Black history month. The festival amplifies Black talent, provides sonic context, and counters industry tokenism by centering Black creativity. Its international, intergenerational program establishes historical continuity within electronic music and extends the liberatory tradition of collective catharsis via communal movement. Since 2020, Dweller has published an online journal that gathers together critical thought, interviews with legendary forerunners, and writing on politics and wellness. Dweller Electronics promotes the circulation of afrological perspectives year-round.

S*an D. Henry-Smith works in poetry and photography, sound/performance, and publishing. Recent solo exhibitions include tremor low at ROZENSTRAAT, Amsterdam (2023) and in awe of geometry & mornings at White Columns, New York (2021). They are the author of Wild Peach (Futurepoem, 2020), Consider the Tongue (2019, with Imani Elizabeth Jackson), Flotsam Suite: A Strange & Precarious Life, or How We Chronicled the Little Disasters & I Won’t Leave the Dance Floor Til It’s Out of My System (Peradam, 2019), and Body Text (2016).

Tavish Timothy is an artist, musician, and writer.

ALSOKNOWNASROX is New York City-based artist, educator, curator, and practitioner Roxanne Harris. She is a software engineer at Indistinguishable from Magic, Inc., where she bridges the digital and physical realms for art and experiential installations. As an active member of the collective Livecode.NYC, she organizes shows, facilitates workshops, and performs live-coded audiovisual works using Sonic Pi and Max/MSP/Jitter as performance tools. By embracing the artistic potential of programming, she finds new ways to engage with the world, deconstructing and reconstructing existing structures as she goes.

Actress (Darrren Cunningham) has released eight solo studio albums since his debut single “No Tricks” (Werkdiscs, 2004). A preeminent voice in UK electronic music, Actress has been named “one of the great poets of club culture” by The Guardian. His most recent record, LXXXVIII (Ninja Tune, 2023), is conceptually inspired by the dynamics of chess and game theory while musically focused on piano, electronics, and voice. He has performed at The Barbican Center, Tate Modern London, Sonar Tokyo, and Berghain Berlin. Actress last played at MoMA PS1 for Warm Up 2017. “Music is chaos R.I.P Music.”