Somewhere between the erotic power exercised by The Starr ★ Company/Jamie Starr/Prince and Audre Lorde’s popularized framing of the erotic in her seminal essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” the following presentation attempts to locate a “femme erotic” in the work of Apollonia 6. I read between the sound and visual culture of Apollonia 6’s eponymous album Apollonia 6 and “Happy Birthday Mr. Christian” video album, searching for the felt sense of this framework.

Brittnay L. Proctor is a researcher and writer of performance, popular culture, and sound/visual culture at the nexus of blackness, gender, and sexuality. She is an Assistant Professor of Race and Media in the School of Media Studies at The New School (NY, NY) and the author of Minnie Riperton’s Come to My Garden (Bloomsbury Press: 33 1/3 Series). She is currently working on two book projects; one of which soundtrack’s black Southern migration to California during the Second Great Migration and the other, which draws on LP records and Compact Discs (CDs), to trace the sonic and visual discourses of gender and sexuality in funk music.