peeace. and Gawdesque are two independent black artists visiting Nairobi, Kenya on a self-organized artist residency. Here is some more info on their motivation for going and how donating would impact their mission:

peeace. :

Hi! I'm Ju Dunston. (they/them) I'm a DJ, visual artist, and cultural organizer under the pseudonym, 'peeace.' based in Richmond, Virginia. My experience as a young person growing up in Newport News, VA inspired my passion for organizing and music became the catalyst for my passions now.

I was introduced to community organizing through programs in my neighborhood that looked to give resources to an underserved and disregarded black area of town. Some of the most impactful programs were the C. Waldo Scott Center on Wickham (iykyk), Asset Based Community Development, which was my first experience in direct action around eleven, and the Wickham Avenue Alliance work program that introduced me to the Pearl Bailey Library.

Over the past few years I've been curating and establishing an underground black creative organization called Here For A Good Time.exe (HFGT.EXE). Through this org, me and a team of dedicated artists, political organizers, mutual aid organizers, and passionate black art lovers have been able to foster an environment that cares for Black people from imperfect backgrounds (like ourselves and most of the people we care about), black queer and trans people, black independent artists, and the communities we come from. We have become active in the neighborhoods we reside in and have been furthering our relationship to direct action as creative activists. I am embarking on this self-organized artist residency in Nairobi, Kenya to learn more about the intersections between club life, harm reduction, black healing through artistic expression, and community organizing. The knowledge that is built through my trip will directly impact the knowledge held within the community I come from in Richmond and Virginia. This trip will empower me and others to continue to do the work we do with more awareness and a strategic foundation for our labor. I will be exploring the arts and history of Nairobi alongside another amazing independent artist, DJ, and poet named Gawdesque. We plan to create and engage with our craft while there in a way that will develop our artistic practice and skills as independent black artists with missions that ask the world around us to engage in liberatory thought and practice.

Gawdesque:

The purpose of this trip is for me to engage in and gain more knowledge and experience of club culture that is distinctly African - and as a Nigerian, not Nigerian. What has shaped Kenyan club culture, influenced it? What defines youth culture there? How do their organisers come together? What challenges do they face? What intercontinental bonds can be formed from this experience and what embodied and emboldened knowledge can I bring back with me to Vienna for the community I am shaping?

I want to especially hear the queer perpectives of those doing the heavy lifting in the underground.

I remember, as a kid, that when I first learned how to read what particularly excited me about it was that I could finally search for and save the songs I liked to listen to. I always enjoyed singing, sang in my middle school choir and moved on to a high school focused on popular music and sound engineering.

Fast forward to three years ago when I organised my first birthday party in a while and was bent on making the best party playlist I could, considering transitions and moods. The energy I put into it made me consider DJing for the first time and the possibility to experience the world that way is thrilling.

A few months later, I had the opportunity to join a free DJ course and the rest is history in the making.

To have grown up in Vienna, Austria as a Black person means to have had little representation across the board. As someone who started going clubbing in their late teens and grew into their queerness, what was already a small space for Black creativity, joy and safety felt even smaller. I met and started to DJ at Booster Club - a collective that seeks to center QTIBIPOC people and erode the notion of inaccessibility to DJing as a skill. That was my entry point into underground organising - learning to speak a new language and speaking freely of what it means to create a liberatory party space that centers the queer global majority and it felt good.

I am not nearly where I want to be. Learning and living more in what it means to be in a collective, to be in community with the mutual goal of liberation for all oppressed people - realising that not just through our music, but through ✨our spirits.

Black TLC is the first event I organised in Vienna - ✨a unique moment that took place in June 2025. Black TLC was the celebration of Black creativity in Vienna; visual art, clothing design, poetry, music performance, DJing, activism.

In that spirit, BLK TLC is a new DJ and party collective formed that consists of a few of the people who performed at Black TLC as well as members of BPPS - Black Political Power Space (who are very dear to me ❤️). BPPS functions as a community hub for mutual aid for people who identify as Black and offers political education to aforementioned individuals. We feel it right to our community in this little Vienna to own what we deserve: a safer space that cares about us, where we vibe with likeminded folk, can impunitively shake ass and shake the trauma from our hips to energise us to step into the world we are shaping for those after us.

(Even prior to adopting this moniker, we have been very successful in this goal. Oh yeah, we create serious FOMO. ✨)

It is a practice I am new to and want to stay true to.

DJing has allowed me to travel throughout Austria, has driven me to Berlin and London in the quest to broaden my practice.

I'm Whitney. Whitney is Gawdesque. Gawdesque is god-esque is the creative spirit coursing through our veins.

To DJ is to be a vibe curator, a vibe bender, a storyteller. I love to expose the crowd I DJ for to sounds they might not have heard before, sounds that oscillate for the duration of my set in afro and afrodiasporan blends. My dancefloor welcomes the queer global majority to the forefront. To DJ is poetry lived and poetry spoken in dialogue with me and the crowd. It truly brings me joy and is one I hope to share and deepen alongside DJ, organiser, visual artist and collaborator for this ✨ self organised artist residency, peeace. :)

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If you understand the power of independent black artistry and want to help empower those who do this work please give and share!!❤️

We'll both be reporting back to our respective communities and platforms and can't wait to share what we learn.

To hear some of our collaborative work please listen below. You'll hear a DJ set by peeace. with poetry from Gawdesque. This set was inspired by feminist fight day in the Austrian context. The goal was to input a black feminist, womanist, and tran-femme perspective into the Austrian feminist canon:

peeace x Gawdesque Res Radio March 12 2025