MAKE: Usse
MODEL: Capitalist Brain Party no. 3
MANUFACTURER: SappyFest 15
CAT. NO.: EXF-014

PLEASE READ ENTIRE LABEL BEFORE ASSEMBLY AND OPERATION OF THIS DEVICE.

DOWNLOAD DEVICE COMPONENTS AND LOG ABOVE.

COMPONENTS: Ten 31-minute sound recordings.
2x Field recording [I-II. Castalia Marsh Retreat, Grand Manan, NB]
2x Saxophone, various wind [I. Jud Crandall, II. Andrew MacKelvie]
2x Drum [I. Jud Crandall, II. Emily Saab]
2x Bass [I. Sebastian Fleet, II. Pierre Cormier]
2x Piano [I. Jennifer Nason, II. Colleen Collins]

DIRECTIONS FOR USE:
1. Download all / selected audio files to your home computer.
2. Remix, reinterpret, reimagine, recreate, reconstruct, repurpose, replace, reduce, remove, revoke.
3. Repeat as desired.
4. Return new work(s) by e-mail via link to MP3 download, to submissions@sappyfest.com, with the subject line "Capitalist Brain Party MIX".

DEADLINE TO RETURN NEW WORK(S) IS JULY 28, 2020.
PLEASE DO NOT SEND FILES AS E-MAIL ATTACHMENTS.

Returned work(s) will be exhibited as part of SappyFest 15, July 29-August 2, 2020. Check festival listings for details.

CONTAINS PREVIOUSLY RELEASED MATERIAL: usse.bandcamp.com/album/capitalist-brain-party-no-2



DEVICE LOG

CONTENT WARNING: Contains references to racialized violence.

PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENT: This is not a Choose Your Own Adventure. This is a Time Machine.

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In APRIL 2020, pandemic capitalism is moving among vulnerable communities, renters, homeowners, and workers in so-called North America, ignoring basic universal income as a real, credible support for a future facing indeterminate crisis.

A multidimensional device is being assembled in isolation, among seven musicians in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Setting out to synthesize the temporal and spatial spontenaities of collective play, sheets of improvisation are layered quickly and sequentially, upon a field recording of pummeling rain taken from inside an enclosed structure.

On MAY 1, Capitalist Brain Party no. 2 is released as a response to lost and precarious employment, uncertain social supports, persistent negotiation against public health and safety, disproportionate loss of vulnerable life, and an overall mounting death toll.

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In JUNE 2020, two police homicides of Indigenous people occur in New Brunswick.

On JUNE 4, Chantel Moore is killed in her home, by Edmundston Police Force performing a wellness check.

On JUNE 12, Rodney Levi is killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, while an invited guest in his Pastor's home.

Also on JUNE 12, in the State of Georgia, Rayshard Brooks is killed fleeing arrest by the Atlanta Police Department, after having fallen asleep in his vehicle.

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On MARCH 20, 1989, I am 10 years old. At some nearby point in time, I read Time Machine 22: The Last Of The Dinosaurs, purchased through a book fair at Westfield Elementary. I relish this book, and routinely binge upon similar Choose Your Own Adventure style novels.

MacKay Indian Residential School, Inuvik Indian Residential School, Akaitcho Hall at Sir John Franklin High School, Cowesses Indian Residential School, St. Michael's Indian Residential School, and Gordon Indian Residential School, are all in operation in 1989.

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In MAY 2020, Capitalist Brain Party no. 2 is being disassembled for installation at SappyFest 15. A field recording, accompanied by seven isolated improvisations, will be available for download as raw materials, to be remixed and repurposed by attendees. The resulting works will be returned for exhibition during the week of SappyFest.

A satirical riposte to capitalism, the installation cleverly places the means of production in the hands of the public. The installation will be engaging, playful, and full of possibility, offering imagined enfranchisement through abstracted resistance.

Working titles are Choose Your Own Capitalist Brain Party, and Time Machine 2020: The Last Of The Capitalists. Invocation of the word Adventure continues to feel appropriate and remains in use.

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On MAY 27, 2020, Regis Korchinski-Paquet falls to her death, while alone with Toronto Police Service in her 24th floor apartment.

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In the LATE 1700's, buoyed by scientific racism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade has accumulated unprecedented wealth and prosperity for European capitalists throughout the Americas. Colonial and Imperial interests begin rebranding.

In AUGUST 1833 slavery is abolished in British North America, as a by-product of the Slavery Abolition Act, drafted concerning colonial plantations elsewhere. In what is becoming Canada, slavery operates in tandem with indentured servitude, with abolition offering only partial and gradual emancipation.

In the LATE 1800's, slavery in the United States transitions to segregation, continuing until 1968. Under segregation, slave patrols find new purchase among burgeoning regional police departments and the Ku Klux Klan in the South, while policing in the North revolves around control of labour forces.

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On MAY 25, 2020, George Floyd is killed over the course of almost nine minutes, in broad daylight with multiple onlookers, by the Minneapolis Police Department.

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On JULY 1, 2020, I am struggling to responsibly discuss in writing, these ideas of play-based cleverness and confrontation. Usse is a fluid, collaborative vehicle, primarily driven by a cisgendered heterosexual white settler male. In my mouth, the word Adventure is leaden, quaint, fraught, insufficient, indulgent, suspect. What am I writing about?

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On August 3, 1492, all future efforts on this land initiated by people like me, living some kind of life more like than unlike mine, will share a heritage of for-profit genocide.

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In APRIL 2020, three police homicides of Black and Indigenous people occur in three days.

On APRIL 7, D'Andre Campbell is killed in his home, by Peel Regional Police responding to his own 911 call.

On APRIL 8, Eishia Hudson is killed by the Winnipeg Police Service, following a vehicle pursuit.

On APRIL 9, Jason Collins is killed in front of his home, also by the Winnipeg Police Service, responding to a domestic call.

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In MAY 1873, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald establishes the paramilitary North-West Mounted Rifles, rebranded Police, to protect property purchased in 1870 from the Hudson's Bay Company, vastly expanding the real estate holdings of the Dominion of Canada. Indigenous populations in the Prairies are displaced to reserves, allowing for construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, while bison populations are culled as a means to facilitate this removal.

Rebranded a second time in 1920 as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a bison's head remains displayed on their badge today.

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In JUNE 2020, White people love Adventure. White people love self-determination. White people love with qualified immunity. White people love operating the mechanisms and vocabularies of racism, capitalism, and genocide together. White people celebrate a curated heritage. White people are falling over ourselves to display evidence of our not-racism. White Adventure is opaque vanity.

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On MARCH 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor is killed in her bed by the Louisville Metro Police Department, on a no-knock search warrant. Over 20 shots are fired, and she is struck 8 times.

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In FEBRUARY 2020, Indigenous people occupying unceded lands are removed on two related occasions, by police serving industrial interests.

On FEBRUARY 6, Wet'suwet'en land defenders are assaulted by the RCMP, for the benefit of Coastal GasLink (a repeat offense, the previous being JANUARY 7, 2019).

On FEBRUARY 25, a Mohawk camp in solidarity with Wet'suwet'en sovereignty, is raided by the Ontario Provincial Police, following an injunction by CN Rail.

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On FEBRUARY 21, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is commending the state on not having used force against the Mohawk solidarity camp sooner, while solemnly intoning that the subsequent rail stoppage must end. Trudeau has chosen to ignore requests that he meet with Wet'suwet'en hereditary leadership. He is preoccupied with a Boys Adventure of his own, in what will ultimately be a failed bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

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On FEBRUARY 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery is pursued and killed while jogging, by a former Glynn County Police Department officer and his son.

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In JUNE 2020, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and Alberta RCMP Deputy Commissioner Curtis Zablocki are obstinate in multiple public statements concerning the systemic racism of the RCMP.

On JUNE 6, Prime Minister Trudeau is taking a knee at a Black Lives Matter protest in Ottawa. He holds a BLM t-shirt, but has not pulled it over his dress shirt.

On JUNE 17, BQ MP Alain Therrien is voting against a motion brought by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, calling for declassification and a review of the RCMP. Therrien is the sole dissenting vote, dismissively waving Singh off. When he calls this act racist, Singh is removed from the House.

What kind of historical knowledge do these White Administrators possess of their offices?

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On JULY 9, 2020, the Time Machine is released under the title Capitalist Brain Party no. 3.

It is 10 tracks of improvised performance and field recording, amounting to over 5 hours of isolated, intersecting audio, rendered by seven musicians in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It is released free as an unfinished record, for the public to do with as they please. It will continue to exist in this incomplete form as raw materials, divested of ownership or leadership, subject to scrutiny and discorporation. The title reflects the fact of its historically multiplicitous iteration.

From JULY 29 through AUGUST 2, 2020, public recreations of this work to date, will be exhibited as part of SappyFest 15. Check festival listings.

Capitalist Brain Party no. 3 does nothing to correct any law, policy, interest, occupation, consequence, dream, or extermination, implemented by people like me who have lived a life more alike to my own, here on this land. It is not a resolving sum, only moving parts. It is a process, a method for observation, investigation, alteration, disintegration. It is an unfinished task in situ. It is solid and see through. It demands attentiveness in operation.

Time as a Machine has only ever been a whole of moving parts. The past surrounds us completely, a vast, ready mechanism for material use in the present, forever constructing the future. Operators need only look plainly to see the heritage of White Adventure working the levers of capitalism, racism, and genocide, in pursuit of the destruction of Black and Indigenous Futures.

This much is incontestable in use of any Time Machine.