Montez Press

An Evening with Adele Bertei: No Wave Women & Born in Flames
16 April 2026 7.00-10.30pm
FormaHQ, 140 Great Dover Street, London, SE1 4GW

Adele Bertei didn't just witness the No Wave explosion; she helped ignite it. As organist for the Contortions and Brian Eno's assistant, she stood at the epicenter of a seismic cultural collision: punk fracturing into post-punk, Lydia Lunch screaming her first songs of rage, Kathy Acker rewriting the rules of fiction, Vivienne Dick pointing her camera at the edge of everything.

Her memoir, No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene(Faber&), finally tells the story that history forgot, of the boundary-breaking women who made No Wave possible. Nan Goldin's flash-lit portraits of gender fluidity. Kiki Smith excavating the mysteries of the body. Lizzie Borden tearing up cinema's rule book. Lizzy Mercier reinventing electric guitar rhythms. While mainstream culture wallowed in sexism and homophobia, these artists forged something fluid, fierce, and utterly uncompromising.

Join us for a night crackling with that same energy.

The evening opens with a reading by Adele, followed by a short musical tribute to Honey, her co-star in Born in Flames. A panel discussion on women in the No Wave movement follows, with Amelia Abraham, and Adele in conversation, moderated by Emily Pope. The night closes with a screening of Lizzie Borden's landmark feminist film, Born in Flames, and a reception to carry the conversation forward.

Adele Bertei is a musician and author. Her most recent book is No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene (2026). Adele played a lead role in Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames, and was lead singer of the first out lesbian band, the Bloods. Her books include Peter and the Wolves (2020), Why Labelle Matters (2022), Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood (2024) and Sinéad O'Connor's Universal Mother (2025).

Amelia Abraham is a journalist and author from London. Her books include Queer Intentions: A (Personal) Journey Through LGBTQ+ Culture and her first edited photography book, Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualizing Queer Nightlife will be published in Spring 2026 by MACK Books.

Emily Pope is a London-based artist working across film, sound, printmaking and writing. Her practice often takes the form of ongoing series, including The Sitcom Show (2016–), a “failed sitcom” documenting life under UK austerity. Drawing on experimental broadcast media, humour and satire, her work explores queer intersectional feminism, political rhetoric and class politics. Recent exhibitions include Ginny on Frederick; Quench Gallery; Karst; SARA’s; and Southwark Park Galleries. Her writing has appeared recently in Buffalo Zine, Elephant Magazine, Bittersweet Review, Sticky Fingers Publishing. She was an awardee of the LOEWE FOUNDATION / Studio Voltaire Award (2023–2025).

Montez Press Radio is an experimental broadcasting and performance platform founded in 2018 with the goal of fostering greater experimentation and conversation between artists, writers, and thinkers through the medium of radio. This platform invites different corners of the art world to interact with each other in person and on air—a place where media finally meets flesh. We’re drawn to art that exists in the unexpected, the authenticity of sharing without a script, the sounds of ideas in the making, conversation that forgets there’s an audience.