The Audiofemme Grant
Since 2012, Audiofemme has consistently sought to uplift the voices of female and non-binary music writers and to approach music and culture criticism from an intersectional feminist perspective. We’ve expanded these principles with the creation of the Audiofemme Agenda Artist Grant in 2020. Through this grant, we provide seed funding of $2000 per grantee to interdisciplinary artists and creators, prioritizing BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities. Grants are awarded to emerging performing artists across disciplines who are seeking seed funding to create new work and build their platform. We take into account the originality of the concept, its impact on community, and the potential for this work to further the artist’s career.
Our first and second rounds of grantees surpassed even our wildest expectations. In 2020/2021 Kinlaw produced a series of cinematic, visually complex videos to accompany her expansive and moving solo debut The Tipping Scale; Em Boltz, one half of Philly experimental electronic duo Enchanted Forest, reconstructed the iconic Buchla Music Easel synthesizer using Eurotrack modules; Rachael Pazdan and Loni Landon of Four/Four Presents assembled a diverse cast of dancers and musicians to produce their ambitious outdoor summer series OPEN AIR; Performance art prog artist WSABI Fox is using documentary field recordings, including sounds from Red Hook Farms, plant meditations, and personal accounts from youth farmers in the form of spoken word and rap, to produce a site-specific mixtape to accompany a walking tour of Red Hook Harvest Festival. In 2021/2022, black, Jewish, and queer NYC-based multidisciplinary vocalist Shara Lunon completed “Bitter Fruits,” a multiform song cycle in response to the barbarity of what cultivated the “Freedom Summer” of 2020; Trans-nonbinary and intersex music producer and visual artist Medusa produced a short film to accompany their concept album Allegory of the G/Rave, a queer retelling of the story of Medusa; Brooklyn-based black and Ojibwe artist and composer Ikwe created a 90-minute sound poem of original music, performance art, and storytelling called MAKADEWIIYAASIKWE, an Ojibwe word for Black woman; NYC-based Venezuelan instrumentalist and composer Mafer Bandola created a “portable community house” of music, song, and dance, a multicultural meeting point of Venezuelan immigrants, musicians and the NYC community at large.
We are thrilled to be a part of these innovative, high-reaching creative endeavors, especially as artists get back to work, post-pandemic.
The 2021-2022 Recipients
Shara Lunon
MEDUSA
IKWE
Mafer Bandola
