Christelle Oyiri (Crystallmess) | À l'oeuvre 2020
Christelle Oyiri aka Crystallmess is a DJ, producer but also a writer and mixed media artist keen on shedding light on past and present subcultures.
Her DJ style is eclectic yet cohesive, relying more on textures, sound continuum and narrative rather than genres while still rocking the dance floor. Tackling the subjects of club culture, colonial alienation and alternative temporalities, she created “Collective Amnesia” in 2018.
Inspired by Cybernetic Club Research Unit’s Kodwo Eshun work on Afrofuturism and music, this multidisciplinary performance mixing film and DJing, and traditional vocal performance of griology celebrates the forgotten history of logobi, an urban Afro-French dance from the mid-00s merging hardcore techno and coupé décalé.
In 2023, she participated in the collective exhibition Au-delà at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris.
Transcript
My practice includes sound art, video, installation, and writing.
My project at Lafayette Anticipations is twofold: we made a four-poster bed which will be called Sleep Paralysis and which is an important part of the R.I.P APORIA performance that I am currently developing.
It is inspired by Frank Wilderson III’s book Afropessimism. This is a world view that has been in the background of my work as an artist, even as a musician, for some time now. It's a philosophy that also addresses ontological questions, those of being itself.
I’m very interested in ethnic and racial issues and R.I.P APORIA was a way for me to get into quite uncomfortable and ineffable things too, and not necessarily into everyday experiences of racism that we already know, or even systemic racism, but experiences of being, of the body, and of death too.