Terre Thaemlitz is an award winning multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ, and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label.
Thaemlitz was born in Minnesota in 1968, and her family eventually relocated to Springfield, Missouri, which he considers her home town. Throughout his youth Thaemlitz was drawn toward electronic music as an antithesis to the oppressive rock and country culture around her. Thaemlitz moved to New York in 1986 to study at the Cooper Union School of Art, from which he received a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts (BFA) in 1990. During her studies he became disillusioned with the exclusionary politics of the visual arts industry, and began focussing on issues of cultural theory and identity politics. Surrounded by the musical subcultures of Manhattan's Lower East Side, Thaemlitz' longstanding interest in electronic music quickly led her to DJ-ing at activist benefits under the name "DJ Sprinkles. "In 1991 he became a resident DJ at the infamous mid-town transexual club Sally's II, where she performed three nights per week with transgendered legend Dorian Corey and others.
Currently based in Kawasaki, Japan, her work combines a critical look at identity politics – including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race – with an on-going analysis of the socio-economics of commercial media production. He has released over 15 solo albums, as well as numerous 12-inch singles and video works. Her writings on music and culture have been published internationally in a number of books, academic journals, and magazines. As a speaker and educator on issues of non-essentialist Transgenderism and Queerness, Thaemlitz has lectured and participated in panel discussions throughout Europe and Japan.
An endless sprawl of information regarding Thaemlitz' various releases and activities is catalogued online at his award winning, self-produced website, which includes a large selection of her own writings, as well as press interviews, articles, and reviews. Terre Thaemlitz‘ deep house DJ persona is DJ Sprinkles.