Thank you for venturing off the well-worn path of social media platforms and seeking (or stumbling upon) Seith-Communiti. This is a space for updates, links and longform elaboration on the ideas, themes and critical thought related to the music I produce, text that I publish, mixes I curate and public DJ performances. This includes not only my DJing under the name Mx. Silkman, but also updates pertaining to the autonomous queer DJ collective IN TRAINING, my “techno” and text production as Auton and the (forthcoming) work done under the production alias Funeral Parade Of Roses.
This site is a continuation in some senses of my long-running blog (on the Tumblr platform) that served as a more personal (yet impersonal) moodboard / reposted sources of inspiration / curated aesthetics. However, a great deal of the last five years or so of that blog discussed queerness and sexuality in explicit terms and images – something that the SESTA / FOSTA legislation of 2018 drove off the platform, transforming it into a far more sanitized and censored imageboard platform. Although I have little desire to explore sexuality so publicly (explicit sexuality anyhow) on this platform, my decision to create this site using the Noblogs platform will ensure a greater degree of intellectual freedom and privacy from surveillance-state than the alternatives (Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, etc). While not perfect, I feel that it’s an important step in my agency as a writer and artist to aspire to hosting my content and discussion of it on a platform that is not sustained by selling user data to algorithms, the surveillance machine or other dystopian machinations of the state. Additionally, it allows me to be able to make my writing, links to written material and recorded music available to people who care without the additional static added by platforms like twitter, facebook and instagram. This will include (for the time being) not allowing comments. I have little desire to engage in public discussion with passers-by, and prefer this resource as a transmission from myself to potentially nobody. If you are curious for greater explanation, clarification or discussion on a post (or general questions), my e-mail will be available and regularly checked at AERIN_ERCOLEA(AT)PROTONMAIL(DOT)COM.
For the time being I’ll no doubt be available on other platforms, but would greatly prefer to retain my own ramblings within my own space rather than subject them to networks that prioritize confrontation and the flattening of discourse for wider algorithmic appeal to audiences.
“Seith-Communiti” as a concept was 1) a convenient name I have used online for some time in similar contexts 2) something that I would hope to pursue in the future as a multimedia imprint of text, video and sound by myself and likeminded others and 3) a name that sounded cool as shit. The first part comes from the neo-pagan concept of “seith”, a magickal introspective practice traditionally associated with the liminal spaces of femininity / failed and deviant masculinity in society. While the concept of neo-pagan ritualism is something I’ve felt less of a connection to in the last few years – largely out of disgust with the reactionary / fascist co-optation and entryism into it – the concept of seith as a queer ritualistic way of confronting the dehumanization and alienation of capitalist / modernist reality is something that serves as a pathway into deconstructing authoritarian understandings of the modern age. These ritualisms – oracle, soothsaying, entheogenesis, alchemy, science, mathematics, dialectics – have allowed us to define the machinations of our reality and push towards its greater understanding (or subversion of it’s material existence). “Communiti” is simply a stylization (something that looks cool in print) of the idea that gatherings of people that hold an understanding of these rituals are central to our existence as social animals (for better or worse). I choose to operate on the belief that the gathering of actors into spaces – actors who un/consciously embrace seith-practice can act according to strategy and possibility within the bounds of the space understood as the real. From this, we can have an insurrectionary rupture that can create a space to alter the bounds of the real, and temper chaos into a different (hopefully strategically better) form.
Again, at its core it’s a name I think looks cool. The previous is just justification of why I think that.
I will be updating / building this space out in free moments of my time in a bid to have a healthy, creative and productive outlet that isn’t as deeply rooted in the “hot take economy” of social media participation. Links will be posted on the sidebar to DJ mixes, Bandcamp uploads to stream or buy physical and digital media, upcoming gigs and PDFs of readable and printable (front and back 11×8.5 page) zines. With regards to PDF files for the printable zines, I ask kindly that reproduction be for one’s own use / to be left in radical spaces and autonomous gatherings / distributed for free at infoshops,raves/record shops/etc. Select infoshops and record shops will receive original print runs of these works that they may sell – these will be hand numbered with color printing, higher quality paper, risograph printed etc. DIY editions printed in black and white on standard printer paper are ideal for free reproduction.
Love and solidarity,
A.E.