Overview
Could our genes affect our romantic choices? Does love inhabit a particular region of the brain? If this song makes us too sad to drive straight, why are we playing it on repeat?
Rapper and essayist Dessa returns with the next event in this series – a collision of art, music and scientific research on love, sex and human adventures in pair-bonding.
Dessa had a baaaad break-up. So she assembled a team of researchers, neuroscientists and a clinician to try to remove the lingering love from her brain.
Featuring music by Dessa and vocalist Aby Wolf, and neural frequency engineer Penijean Gracefire, who designs therapeutic interventions using cutting edge 3D brain imaging technology.
Bring a date. Find a date. (But please don’t leave your date with us—we’re taking some me time right now.)
→ Video Webcast
Missed out on tickets? Watch our live video stream here.
About Dessa
Dessa is a rapper, singer and essayist whom the Utne Reader calls, “A one-woman powerhouse…with a literary sensibility and an aversion to genre clichés.” As a musician she tours as a solo artist and as a member of Doomtree, the innovative Minneapolis-based hip-hop collective. On stage she’s funny and ferocious, but also tender—her live show includes rapid-fire rap songs, heartbreak ballads, catchy choruses, and some charismatic banter fueled by wit and whiskey. Dessa has published two literary collections, contributed a track to the Hamilton Mixtape (which reached #1 on the Billboard charts) and is currently at work on her first book-length collection of personal essays. She splits her time between Minneapolis and New York. For pictures, performances schedules, tour stories and other assorted nonsense, follow her at @dessadarling.
About the Guests
Aby Wolf has attained broad recognition as the midwest region’s premier vocal talent through stirring solo performances and collaborations too numerous to mention. Wolf continues to turn heads with her unique brand of spacious electro pop (produced by Grant Cutler) both at home in the Twin Cities, and more recently, in cafes and clubs across Eastern Europe.
Penijean Gracefire is a neural frequency engineer who rides motorcycles, drinks tea, and designs therapeutic interventions using cutting edge 3D brain imaging technology. As a licensed mental health clinician, she specializes in integrating subjective experiential narrative with measurable electrophysiology to create new feedback loops which alter EEG patterns. She speaks regularly at conferences and seminars on her groundbreaking work in the clinical applications of real-time neural dynamics. Penijean currently collaborates with StressTherapy Solutions and the BCIA regulatory board to create programs which educate and certify providers of neurotherapy. Her passions include spectral analysis, donuts, and taking things apart to see how they work.