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In response to the ‘her noise archive’, I have created a website and a platform for documenting FLINTA+ musicians working in contemporary experimental electronic music, developed from the ‘her noise map’. FLINTA, referring to the acronym used in feminist and queer spaces for Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, and Agender people. Recognising that no archive is unflawed, I will discuss the presumptions and discrepancies I do not agree with in the ‘her noise archive’ and how recognising them generates ideas for better future work. Although the artists on this website will initially be biased towards my own knowledge as a white British person living in London, it will be open collaboratively to users, creating a constantly changing shared approach to listening.
The ‘her noise archive’ is a heavily documented collection based at the London College of Communications, developed around ‘her noise’, an exhibition that brought together female sound artists at the South London gallery in 2005, curated by Lina Džuverović and Anne Hilde Neset. The ‘her noise map’ (1) is one of the very first pieces I encountered in the archive, and immediately the most striking to me. It is a non-hierarchical, non-linear plot of names, bunched and handwritten. It remains one of the original ideas of what the her noise archive might look like, women coming together and figuring out how many other female names they could think of within sound and art.
Although I do not deny the importance of this archive, it is also important to question its flaws. My critique of her noise is that although it is an archive of women pursuing sound, it is not explicitly a feminist collection; when researching the archive, I noticed the publicity surrounding the work does not mention feminism, and therefore, cannot benefit from the discussions of where feminism can take us. Although feminism is embedded into the methodology, production and is also often brought up in the interviews, the exhibition almost appears afraid of the word.
In the essay ‘Twice erased: the silencing of feminisms in 'Her Noise'.’ Co-curator Lina Džuverović re-analyses her position in the ‘her noise archive’ with 15 years of extra experience. Despite her original position as documented in the early her noise interviews: “I think the feminist politics are so at the core of it, that we almost felt we had to go beyond talking about that”(2), she later recognised the effects of the post-feminist wave as an aftermath of the riot grrrl movement, she states: “the term “feminist” was not at all used, not in the exhibition catalogue, press release, events guide, marketing, or advertising copy”(3). Holly Ingleton argues, “One only needs to consider the title, Her Noise, to appreciate that there are gender politics involved.”(4) However, without mentioning feminism, we cannot take into account the benefits of intersectional feminism, and how overall this exhibition would have only benefited from queer and BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of colour) perspective. Further, the ‘her noise’ exhibition was situated in Peckham in 2007, with a 50.4% majority black/ African/Caribbean community reported in 2011 (5). Not one of the exhibiting ‘her noise’ artists in the exhibition were of colour, making it immediately explicit how the exhibition is not situated in its own environment.
By combining my research at the ‘her noise archive’ with my own personal interest in early internet culture as a tool for self-expression and political activism, I have created a website (6) that develops the ‘her noise map’, creating accessible routes and taking users directly to ways of listening to new musicians. Inspired by the work of net artists such as Olia Lialina, I emphasise the importance of creating a website rather than a book as a mode of activation. To make the site more contemporary, any artist must have performed or released music within the last 5 years.
The website operates by allowing the user to navigate names and images and engage with the content by clicking it. When you first enter the website, you press through the title page into the main landing that displays the names and faces/album covers of 200 FLINTA+ contemporary electronic, experimental musicians, 200 as a reference to the number of names on the original her noise map. Each of these are hyperlinked to the artist's self-uploaded page, whether that be Bandcamp, an individual website or Nina Protocol.
An element of the ‘her noise map’ I used was the system of organisation: artists are not ordered by popularity; they are simply together. Kim Gordon argues that “women exchange musical information and build on it, whereas men take turns in making statements”(7). By producing the work in an (almost) alphabetical order, the website encourages the viewer to scroll through rather than focus on any specific artist, emphasising the effect of collective power.
What I wanted to improve on from the original map was making it less from a singular perspective. Rather than just using my own existing knowledge, there is an upload page and a chat forum.(8) Both of these allow any user to contribute to the site by adding their own knowledge to the list, so the site grows and becomes richer. The chat forum promotes the site and allows discussion, helping it reach a wider audience.
Alongside the website, I have collaborated with La Monocle (9), a South London-based FLINTA+ bar that is fundraising for a permanent site. For their one-year anniversary, I will be helping them curate a lineup of female and queer led bands, hosting an evening event on the 7th March 2025. Information is available through the events tab on the banner. Aside from a grasping page on the LCC archives page that draws out some of “potential LGBTQIA+ resources”(10) in the zines and external inspiration, ‘her noise’ generally excludes queer discussion from its content, even if this is unintentional. However, an undisplayed VHS slipped into the collected items, full of interviews of queercore bands in the 90s, “she's real, she’s worse than queer”(11). From this, I decided the final step would be to create an event that could highlight some of the names on the list, making spaces for queer communities inside feminist practice. Similarly, the fonts used are from the independent, open-source feminist and queer typography website, typotheque.
It was important to use the word 'feminist' to emphasise the value of feminist spaces on the internet. To further this, I made a resource page that also highlights sources and ways to keep finding new music.
To improve this site in the future, I would like to add descriptions and artist-identified categories as it grows, making it easier to navigate with recommendations. Please let me know if you have any other names for my list.
Eliza
https://cloudedwaters.cargo.site/
Bibliography:
- https://hernoise.org/archive-content/her-noise-map/
- (Transcribed from the Lina Dzuverovic Her Noise Interview 2006)
https://vimeo.com/390031167?fl=pl&fe=vl
- Dzuverovic, L. (2016) Twice erased: the silencing of feminisms in 'Her Noise'. Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 20 (1). pp. 88-95. ISSN 1090-7505 doi: 10.1353/wam.2016.0005 Available at https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/57271/
- Ingleton, H. (2015) Composing Paradoxes Feminist Process in Sound Arts and Experimental Musics
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peckham
- https://cloudedwaters.cargo.site/
- Martin Herbert for Time Out Time Out London No.1842, HN/2/4/2/2
- https://www.reddit.com/r/flinta_music/comments/1qcpo5b/welcome_to_rflinta_music_introduce_yourself_and/
- https://www.instagram.com/lamonocle/?hl=en
- https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/library-services/special-collections-and-archives/stories/her-noise-archive-showcasing-a-potential-lgbtq-resource
- https://typotheque.genderfluid.space/fr