CYPHER

An ongoing online public program featuring texts, conversations, playlists, (art)works, manifestos and stories.


We’re hyped to celebrate our one-year anniversary of being at our space in Westerdok!

When we first envisioned this space, we knew it would be more than just a physical location. It would be a critical celebration, a funeral, a cypher of beings. Over the past year, it has become all of that and more, evolving through experiments, performances, conversations, workshops, and gatherings.
Over the past year, this space has evolved into a vibrant home where we hang out, see, talk, listen, ponder, perform, laugh, gossip, giggle, learn, and create together. Through a diverse range of gathering—focusing on diasporic street culture, themes of inheritance and loss, recovery and solidarity, the power of sound, and fluid artistic creation—we have explored and celebrated the complexities of our shared experiences.
We are pleased to announce that we have recently secured funding from the Mondriaan Fund for the next four years. The fund is recognizing in us what many in our community have since our start; this support wouldn’t have been possible without the unwavering support of our audience, friends, haters, and comrades . We give heartfelt thanks to all who have breathed life into Metro54 in countless ways, supporting us and keeping us going. As we continue to start, restart, grow, and shape-shift, we look forward to many more years of coming together, creating, and evolving. Here’s to the future of Metro54 and the endless possibilities it holds.
In this cultural world where terminologies and concepts are used to side-step/window-dress the everyday struggle, life and death of racialized and marginalized people worldwide, we want to not only speak out but underline that Palestinians deserve to breathe freely. Palestinian(s) children, fathers, mothers, friends, lovers, haters, queer people, elderly, youth, activists and everyday people deserve to live full lives in peace without daily oppression, trauma, horror and death. In simple words this means Free Gaza. Stop the Genocide! We amplify and support Palestinian people in their struggle for transformative justice and liberation.

All our lives are geopolitical.
All our struggles intersect.
Read more...


Atlanta’s appropriation of Europe left a bad
taste in my mouth

I’m not interested in criticizing this season overall. I just want to express an uneasy feeling that came out after having watched the entire thing and still enjoying it. That uneasy feeling is that I feel that European Blackness doesn’t seem to be seriously considered at all. To the point that I want to argue there’s a strange sort of appropriation of Europeanness happening here.

Interview with Blackboard director Marquis
Bradshaw

The themes explored by “The Blackboard” are universal, especially as they relate to the broader context of what it means to be Black and to be counterculture. The film is a piece of a larger puzzle of global Black counterculture. It aims to strip apart the fashion of a monolithic black identity while advancing the proposition that black cultural expression is pluralistic and cannot be encapsulated.

   

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