@xcrswx — next phase continues an ongoing collaboration between drummer Crystabel Efemena Riley and saxophonist Seymour Wright. Riley's interest in ‘patterns on skins – human and drum’ began while touring Japan and Europe in the late 2000s with the power-noise trio Maria and the Mirrors. Since 2017, she has developed a practice with Wright combining sound, image, body, and skin, exploring what the two call ‘the LIVE and ANDROID’.
This next phase moves away from performance and recording toward an ideas-led, exploratory practice, in which questions and processes – rather than concerts or records – form the material of the work. It draws on anthropologist Camilla Power’s research into the origins of cosmetics and art in menstrual signaling and lunar cycles, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's concept of friction and contamination as collaboration, and the histories embedded in the raw materials of their instruments and the technologies used to make and share their work.
Crystabel Efemena Riley is a drummer and Seymour Wright a saxophonist; together they form the duo @xcrswx.
