During MozFest House Amsterdam, Toshi Reagon will join us with a provocation: to explore the humanness of technology through the intelligence of voice and volition. If we consider the analogue predecessors to current calls for ethical and responsible technologies, could we come to understand technology as having always been a companion to people and planet? How might doing so help us innovate beyond languages of domination, captivity, and extraction? Are there indeed other, larger, models from which we can build?

Led by Toshi Reagon, we invite you to immerse yourself in freedom songs, liberation technologies, and African American sonic traditions while exploring ethical dilemmas of AI & technology today.

Toshi Reagon is a singer, composer, musical director, librettist and multi-instrumentalist rooted in Black American and African diasporic musical traditions. The child of Freedom Singers, Toshi co-authored the libretto and score of Octavia E Butler’s Parable of the Sower the Opera with her mother Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon. A workshop of the opera was presented at the 2018 Holland Festival. Toshi has developed Songs Of The Living as an invitation to extend the power of song and artistic expression as a way to form and stand as a community. This is your invitation to stand with us.

Throughout MozFest House, Toshi and members of her band will be holding “sonic practices” to teach us songs and how to raise our voices. Anyone who joins one or all of the sonic spaces will be invited to sing in the closing circle if they desire. Every voice is welcome. No experience assumed or necessary!

MozFest House Amsterdam in June (19-21) will be the first step in the journey to co-create a Songs of the Living experience at AI Week in Amsterdam in October 2023.

Schedule during MozFest House:

Monday June 19

5pm – Garden Opening Circle

• Opening remarks with J. Bob Alotta and Sarah Allen
• Acoustic sounds with Toshi Reagon

Tuesday June 20

9am - 6pm – Explore Parables VR Experience in the Lounge

2pm – Dialogues & Debates in Zonzji Room

• Technology of the Living: The Intelligence of Voice & Volition | Toshi Reagon in conversation with Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Ethel Tawe and J. Bob Alotta

5pm – Sonic practice in the Zonzji Room

Wednesday June 21

9am - 6pm – Explore Parables VR Experience in the Lounge

4pm – Sonic practice in the Zonzji Room

5:30pm – Closing event in Zonzji Room

• Closing remarks with Mark Surman and J. Bob Alotta
• Followed by musical performance by Toshi Reagon & friends