Episode 23: McKENZIE WARK
McKenzie Wark is an Australian born writer, critical theory professor, and 61-year-old trans-femme techno raver currently living in NYC. Her latest book, Raving, thinks deeply about dancing, dissociation, drugs, bodies, and identity as McKenzie, recently transitioned, navigates the queer techno spaces of Bushwick, Brooklyn. On the line from Berlin, we talk about experimenting with language and writing, bodies and the beat, smart vs. stupid drugs, cultural theory, rave utopias, and McKenzie's extraordinary journey from growing up in an Australian mining town to dancing on the bleeding edge of the NYC underground.
Check out McKenzie’s Raving book here.
Follow McKenzie on Instagram.
Things discussed in this episode & extras:
- Geert Lovink. Grok the work of one of one of Amsterdam’s great thinkers about the early internet.
- Cyberpunx and on and on. Pit Schultz interviewed in 1997 about media, art, and the Net Time Network.
- NYC’s Queer Techno Scene. The Face does a pre-COVID (October 2019) take on NYC’s queer techno underground featuring some key players, some of whom are now in Berlin.
- McKenzie’s bi-weekly column for Document. More missives from the NYC underground in real time.
- A Rave for Friends. Put your thinking caps ON. McKenzie has a deep and heady conversation about philosophy and her various books (The Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory) with Kunst Kritikk.
- The Australian Bush Doof, explained. An actually very core article about 90s Australian bush doofs from VICE.
- A modern Australian bush doof. Fractals and bros everywhere you look.
- Kathy Acker remembered. Chris Kraus on the infamous 1980s cyberpunk, sexual revolutionary, and transgressive writer Kathy Acker.
- I’m Very Into You. McKenzie Wark’s book of email correspondences with Kathy Acker from the mid-1990s.
Tracks in this episode include:
S'aint Panic “Morning”
Jasmine Infiniti “Demon Hole”
TYGAPAW “Facety”
Jordana LeSesne “New York”
Octo Octa “Beam Me Up (To the Goddess Mix)”
