Photo series: Crystallmess' curation at LGW24 by Melanie Marsman

Crystallmess' curation at LGW24 by Melanie Marsman

Thursday Dec 19th 2024

After an unforgettable closing set at Le Guess Who? last year, Paris-based artist and producer/DJ Crystallmess returned to the festival both as a performer and as a curator, presenting her very own program.

Crystallmess combines elements of film, music, performance and visual art in her radically interdisciplinary work. In doing so, she addresses themes of alienation and the deliberate erasure of narratives outside the dominant canon of African diaspora youth cultures.

Our resident photographer, Melanie Marsman, tagged along with the artists curated by Crystallmess to capture a series of portraits.

"I want to instill the notion that electronic music is Black. That defines all the music I make and play." - Crystallmess

Curated by Crystallmess Photo

Each year, Le Guess Who? invites trailblazing creatives to curate their own dedicated programs, highlighting their inspirations, emerging acts and fellow like-minded artists, with an emphasis on discovery and exploration.

In addition to her own live set, Crystallmess curated a.o. performances by British artist and DJ Cõvco, who is one of London's most original and exciting club freethinkers, and Brooklyn curator of chaos LustSickPuppy.

These are two portraits. In the first picture, you see Cõvco. She is standing in a spotlight and looking straight into the camera. The second photo shows LustSickPuppy. She is standing on a staircase and shining the flashlight of her phone on her face. Meanwhile, she is looking straight into the camera.

"HiTech goad the crowd into whooping chaos in Pandora, one of TivoliVredenburg’s smallest spaces, MCing, dancing and flitting between ghettotech hybrids at breakneck speed." - Crack Magazine

Furthermore, performing as part of the curation were HiTech, the Detroit-bred collaboration between rappers King Milo, Milf Melly, DJ/producer 47Chops; footwork originator RP Boo; and singer, songwriter, producer, and director of Egyptian and Iranian descent, Yasmine Dubois, aka KUKII.

These are two portraits. In the first picture, you see KUKII. She is wearing a large fur hat and a white t-shirt. She is looking straight into the camera. In the second picture, you see three men, HiTech. The middle one has his arms wrapped around the other two.