Fugitive Erotics

Emerging from dialogues, research, and experiments conducted during BADS_lab 2024 and subsequent Futurhythmachines workshops, Fugitive Erotics is a book that explores erotic desire as a dynamic, world-making force that resists containment and (re-)creates sensuality and intimacy in the break.

Rejecting the reduction of desire to mere individual longing, it reframes desire as àṣẹ - a force that makes things happen - arising at the crossroads of systemic violence, relational entanglement, and the in-/re-surgences of the flesh.

By tracing desire across three interconnected scales-the sub-molecular, molecular, and molar - this work shows how domination dismembers bodies and relations, while also illuminating practices that transform rupture into aperture.

The book also considers how Black electronic dance musics - drum & bass, house, techno - inherit and extend Afro-diasporic spiritual practices such as Hoodoo and Obeah. Born of urban and digital landscapes, these musics channel the break as a principle of resistance and repair, mirroring the communal and transcendent power of traditional African rhythms.

Fugitive Erotics features cover art by 2024 BADS_lab fellow Letaru Dralega, and an accompanying mix by 2024 BADS_lab fellow Jared Brown (a.k.a. girly***) that interrogates and extends the book's meditations on Black electronic dance musics.