Adrian Piper, Kelela, and the necessity of rhythm work

Abstract

This article traces the uses of rhythm and sound across select works from two practitioners: performance artist Adrian Piper and contemporary R&B artist Kelela. Enacting an analysis through the sonicality of both artists, the article uses rhythm to connect the visual plane to that of sound, affect, and vibration—and the vibrations that ultimately coalesce into rhythms. In the article, I theorize a notion of rhythm work, or the use of musical and other kinds of rhythms by the two artists to both amplify their personal experiences as Black women and accentuate the white patriarchal heteronormative rhythms against which they move. Building on work from sound, performance, and Black studies, I explore how both artists’ rhythm work interweaves the bodily and the technological, channelling individual rhythms (such as what Piper calls “the rhythms of sex”) into new collective rhythmic possibilities grounded in Black femaleness and/or femmeness. In the process, this article invites readers to think and feel together with performance art and popular music, two genres that are sometimes (but still not often) written about concurrently in performance studies, by highlighting the extent to which rhythm works as a connector across various genres and disciplinary fields.