Seminar explores music from techno-punk to ‘punk-hop’

The emergence of new music forms in the past 10 years will be discussed at a free seminar at The University of Queensland on June 16.

University of Queensland postdoctoral fellow Dr Graham St John, will present the seminar entitled Making a Noise—Making a Difference: From Techno-Punk to ‘Punk-Hop’ for the University’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at 2pm.

Dr St John is a cultural anthropologist with an interdisciplinary research interest in contemporary youth cultures, techno culture, counter cultures and performance. He is currently based at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies.

He said the seminar would map the ground out of which Australian ‘punk-hop’ musicians and activist collective Combat Wombat arose, exploring in the process, “how punk became implicated in the cultural politics of a settler society.”

Dr St John will chart the contours of Sydney’s early 1990s techno-punk emergence, and track the mobile and media savvy exploits of Combat Wombat (and their sound system Labrats) from the late 1990s. He will also discuss the “counter-colonial trajectory of post-punk”.

The seminar will be held in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies Seminar Room 402, 4th Floor Forgan Smith Tower, St Lucia Campus.

Members of the University community and the general public are invited to attend this free seminar with refreshments to follow.

For further information, please contact: Ms Rebecca Ralph, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies telephone Ph (07) 3346 9764 Fax (07) 3365 7184, Email: admin.cccs@uq.edu.au