Tangible: Blacktronika Artifacts and Archives

Blacktronika was a discipline, an academic course and a practice before it was an exhibition. Now it is becoming one. Tangible: Blacktronika Artifacts and Archives is a multi-sensory exhibition at the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) that celebrates Black innovators in electronic music, supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

It is built around three themes: Origins and innovators, the global diaspora and sonic futures. Through drum machines, synthesizers, samplers, turntables, audio and video, it draws connections across dub, Chicago house, Detroit techno, UK drum and bass, footwork and jazz fusion.

The exhibition’s objective is to show and tell the history of Black electronic music through a lineage of the artifacts and archives that birthed it into being.

Some would prefer to rewrite the history of Black electronic music. Told secondhand, it is easily flattened or simplified, and the people who built it are too easily left out of their own story.

The surest answer is the record itself. Instruments and studio equipment, photographs, prints, manuscripts, recordings, notebooks, films and ephemera hold the evidence of who made this music. The challenge is to bring that record together in one place and let it speak in full, so the lineage can be seen and understood as continuous.

Reality Club is the project manager for exhibit production, working alongside AAMP and the exhibition’s curatorial team from early planning to opening day.

The role is to keep every part of the exhibition moving toward the same opening, so the curatorial vision arrives whole and the artifacts and archives can do the work of telling this history.

A history told by its own evidence. The instruments, recordings, photographs and documents put the people who built Black electronic music at the center of its story.

A lineage visitors can follow. From origins and innovators through the global diaspora to sonic futures, the music’s connections can be seen and heard as one continuous line.

A story that keeps sounding. Interactive workshops and performances are planned alongside the exhibition, so the music is heard and shared in person, not only shown.

When Tangible: Blacktronika Artifacts and Archives opens at the African American Museum in Philadelphia in November 2027, the artifacts and archives will do the telling, and the record of who built this music will stand on its own. Reality Club is proud to help bring the exhibition to opening day.