CLASS DESCRIPTION
This lecture explores how marginalized artists are reshaping electronic music through defiant vulnerability and embodied politics. It begins with Charli XCX’s Brat and the Sweat Tour as a lens for understanding the tensions within the genre. Electronic music has long been framed as cool, distant, and technologically driven, associated with male production culture and a refusal of softness. In contrast, Brat weaponizes confession, sweat, and hyper-femme aesthetics, asserting that mess and emotion belong on the dance floor. Charli’s “pop star in a club” stance becomes a feminist disruption: proof that feeling deeply can be a radical act in a space that prefers armor.
The lecture then situates this contemporary moment within a longer history. Techno and house originated in queer Black and Brown communities, where dance floors offered refuge from policing and erasure. Yet as the genre globalized, its mechanical edge became rebranded as masculine mastery, sidelining the very cultures that built it.
Returning to the present, the talk highlights artists reclaiming electronic sound from the margins. Arca turns glitch into a gender-fluid metamorphosis. Yaeji merges club beats with soft bilingual vocals, queering voice and visibility. Sama’ Abdulhadi transforms parties into political gatherings, insisting on joy under occupation. Each figure reframes electronic music not as cold circuitry but as a site of intimacy, friction, and resistance.
Ultimately, this lecture argues that the most vital electronic music today comes from queer, Brown, and femme disobedience. The future of the beat is not dispassionate technology, but bodies insisting they belong.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Parumveer Walia (b. Chandigarh, India) is a writer and artist working on the unceded and stolen territories of so-called Vancouver, Canada. Walia’s curatorial practice is interested in the representative capacities of the image – what it can and cannot do. With a special interest in expanded media, visual culture, and queer disobedience, his practice centers stories exploring the social margin.
He holds a BFA with a minor in Curatorial Studies from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and was a finalist for the Philip B. Lind Prize, Canada’s largest award for emerging artists. He was the Executive Director and Curator of Unit 302, an artist-run space in Vancouver for 2024-2025. His work has been presented at The Polygon Gallery (Canada), TRAPP Projects (Canada), Capture Photography Festival (Canada), BINNAR Arts Festival (Portugal), and the Paxos Biennale (Greece), among others. In 2024, he was Writer-in-residence at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and his forthcoming photobook, At the Edge of Water, is set to be released in 2025. Currently, he is working on a public art commission with the City of Vancouver and is a shortlisted artist for the 2025 Kirloskar Art Award. Walia has extensive teaching and educational experience and has been a visiting lecturer with the Feminist Lecture Program since 2022.
INSTAGRAM: @parumveerwalia @parumveer.art
WEBSITE: https://www.parumveerwalia.com/
__
FAQs
ACCESSING THE LIVE LINK
If you booked to join us live, you’ll be able to find the link to the Zoom webinar via your ticket on the ticketing platform. We do not email out the live link - this means we do not risk the email bouncing and not reaching our students!
DONATE TO FLP
Love what you’re seeing? Help The Feminist Lecture Program to keep our Pay What You Can ticket model, and to continue scheduling an incredible line-up of lectures by donating a little extra.
You can send us a ‘tip’ via our PayPal link here: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/my/profile
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add hello@feministlectureprogram.com to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of £20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
MORE FLP…
Can’t get enough? The Feminist Lecture Program has our very own digital archive, where you can find some of the best past lectures from our back catalogue to rent and watch ON DEMAND. Check out our ever growing collection here: https://thefeministlectureprogram.vhx.tv/
Follow us on Instagram @thefeministlectureprogram
And check out our sustainable merch from FLP Studio at https://feministlectureprogram.com/shop & @flp__studio
And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us x