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Hydra Decapita

2010

Video Installation by the Otolith Group

Original Music inspired by Drexciya and Sound Mix
Song of Ruskin in collaboration with Anjalika Sagar


Hydra Decapita is centred on the work of Detroit-based techno music duo Drexciya.  Drexciya, which was active from 1992-2002, consisted of James Stinson and Gerald Donald.  In opposition to mainstream musicians of the time, Drexciya rejected the cult of personality and excess that surrounded the techno scene and instead focused on the conceptual and political.  Afro-futurist theories were central to their practice and most notably in their album The Quest (1997), where it was revealed that Drexciya was a submerged underwater country that was populated by the unborn children of pregnant women who were thrown overboard during the middle passage of slave ships across the Atlantic.

Commissioned by Manifesta 8

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