Ultimate Outsider Genre: Metal, Diversity, Activism

Ultimate Outside Genre: Metal, Diversity, Activism

Interdisciplinary conference on extreme metal music convened by Riitta Valijarvi (UCL SSEES)

Description: In times of widening economic inequality, encroaching climate crisis, rising fascism, and the horrors of war - extreme metal music has emerged as a vital site of political engagement and resistance. Over the last decade or so, the field of extreme metal (death and black metal, doom and sludge, industrial, and noise, etc) has demonstrated a renewed sense of diversity, inclusion, and political consciousness, especially from left-wing, antifascist/antiracist/anticapitalist positions across the globe. The political anger and anti-authoritarian impulse animating metal since its beginnings (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Napalm Death, Sepultura) is now undergoing a renaissance, opening up exciting new pathways for activism and solidarity.

Ultimate Outsider Genre: Metal, Diversity, Activism is an interdisciplinary conference bringing together scholars, writers, and musicians, for a day of dialogue on how extreme metal music is meeting today’s world on fire. From a variety of perspectives (from feminist/queer theory to environmentalism, sociology to aesthetics, activism and community-building) we will discuss and strategize how extreme metal can be a vehicle for raising consciousness and creating social change, towards a politics of inclusion, care, and anticapitalist futures.

Information about panels, industry partners, and evening activities to follow.

Please contact Daniel Lukes ([email protected]) and Riitta Valijarvi ([email protected]) if you would like to be involved!!

Date: 27September 2024

Time: 1:00pm-5:00pm

Location: UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Find out more here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/events/2024/sep/ultimate-outside-genre-metal-diversity-activism.

Host or Publisher UCL European Institute