From the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation website:

“ICA will bring NY-based artist Christina Long to ICA to curate a punk music festival and zine exhibition/fair consisting of women of color that will coincide with the Fierce Pussy exhibition on view at ICA from September 13, 2019 – December 22, 2019. Christina Long’s oeuvre spans printmaking, graphic design and film/video. She is currently the Senior Instructional Designer for Digital Learning at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, however she is probably best known as the founder and creative director of #Blkgrlswurld ZINE which she established in 2013 with her sister Courtney Long. #Blkgrlswurld is a press in Harlem that celebrates and documents women of color who participate in heavy music genres like Metalcore, Hardcore, Punk, and Black Metal. Fierce Pussy is a New York based queer art collective that formed in 1991 through their immersion in AIDS activism during a decade of increasing political mobilization around gay rights. They brought lesbian identity and visibility directly into the streets through low-tech and low-budget methods. Like Fierce Pussy, the zine world has adopted unconventional, readily accessible modalities to produce materials by which they share knowledge about pertinent social issues with others, while empowering women from all backgrounds in the process. This is a fascinating overlap in light of the use of technology today as a tool to mobilize marginalized groups.”

I first discovered Oceano a few years back when Webster Hall was still open  on the lower east side of Manhattan. Webster Hall was hosting the annual Summer Slaughter Tour and metal bands were performing across three floors of the building in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. I strolled into the main stage and could hardly see, fog machines and laser lights had washed out anything worth seeing into dark shadows and odd shapes. But, I could hear the band, and what I heard was as heavy as it gets.

Adam Warren is the lead vocalist of Oceano, providing some of the deepest, growling sounds in the deathcore scene. We got a chance to chat with Adam a bit during this Black History Month as we celebrate the visibility of Black Metalheads in the scene.

Thanks for chatting with us a bit a man, share with us a little about where you are from?

How did you first get into music and singing? What were your fav music styles?

There’s a lot of different types of metal out there; How did you first learn about Death metal specifically?

What’s your favorite part about making music with Oceano?

What have been some great accomplishment moments with Oceano?

Since you are a gamer, any opinion you’d like to share about Kingdom Hearts 3? My sibs and I have waited years for it to come out- now I’m wondering it was worth the hype?

A wintry adventure up north provided us a chance to geek out at one of the nations best print shops.

Listen, I don’t have a car. I live in Manhattan. It’s not unusual during the winter months to swear off any travel beyond work and the grocery store.

That’s why when the Women’s Studio Workshop (WSW) invited us to come up, I was excited at the chance to check out a print shop I’d been hearing about for years. It was too good to pass up a peek behind the curtain.

It is a lovely spot to edition work as a printmaker. We were able to spend a day with them selecting artists for next year’s artist book residency. I think the folks we chose will get the chance to make some great work with this team.

Some of our pics from the visit:

It’s mid-winter and finally snowing in NYC, I’m hauling my ass across town after work through sleet-ish snow and 6 inch black pools of drain water. It’s been a minute since we’ve hit up Lincoln Center performances, and I’m especially looking forward to hearing some classical harpsichord.

The performance is a chamber diddy with Accademia Bizantina, a group that prides itself in the use of period instruments that align with the music they perform.

I discovered this special series of chamber music was happening via Instagram, scrolling by the ‘lil ads as they came by. In the ad, there was a harpsichord – at this performance, there was NOT. And of the three pieces they had, two were Mozart! Which should further indicate that a harpsichord should be in play. Consider me bummed.

That was the situation on stage, but the audience was tripping too. I rarely see millennials my age at classical music performances, and because I’m a life long violinist, I’ve been attending such concerts alone since I was 18. Most folks sitting around me are old enough to be my grandparents. I generally don’t mind this, and it’s even fun at times to see how they differ in polite demeanor from other cliques. For example, as I was sitting in the lobby waiting for the seating into the theater to begin, a couple sat next to me on the bench. Drawing in my notebook, I didn’t pay them any mind. Still, after a couple of minutes, the man turned to me and apologized for sitting at such an angle on the bench, that his back was turned away from me and we wouldn’t be able to converse. Converse? In my mind I’m thinking. ‘I don’t even know you, why would we be conversing?’ 👀 But I’ve also experienced this apology by the same demographic at concerts in London as well.

At least they try to be nice, because it’s common for me to be the only Black woman sitting in the entire theater. If there are people of color present, its most often in service positions as employees of the theater. Sometimes the elderly attendees in my row ask me if I’m present as part of a high school scholarship program or some investment into urban youth. I attempt to take a deep breath, smile politely and reply, “Uh, no…I just like classical music.” As my head rages on thinking, ‘Bitch! Obama don’t mean shit around here do he?’

##