Speaking From the Diaphragm: 07/15/2012

GENEROUS CLITORIS

Tavia Nyongo the NYU Performance Studies professor who is here in La Berlina on a fellowship through the Humboldt Universite took me to the C/O Berlin Gallery for the Larry Clark Retrospective. I hardly ever go to Mitte the trendy section of Berlin, but had a nice time looking at the Clark show which is actually more revealing then one can imagine. The second floor collages featured a few made especially for this retrospectacle. You have to love the fact that Larry Clark wears his JoanJett Blackheart on his knotted veinsleeve. Seeing Corey Haim, Kristy McNicol, Matt Dillon and a young Terry Richardson interspersed with a Brad Renfro Memorial Room was a hoot and a half.
Jonathan Velasquez the nubile Latino skater boi is beyond beautiful and well worth the obsessive documentation. What I didn´t realize until seeing this exhibit is that Mr. Clark has literally known young Mr. Velasquez since he was a toddler. It seems as if its one of those classic Silverlake relationships where an older white dude lays title to an entire Latin familia ----taking care of parents, children and extended relations. Mr. Larry Clark is certainly one consistent everlasting secret horneliad. How has he managed to get away with it all? He must hold some major dirt on someone high up in the captals of industry or even the State Department. Lord Love a Duck!

After the exhibit Tavia and I scarfed down some hate cake and coffee at the Cinema Café where we oogled a bunch of lovely French tourista boys and later ran into Uli Ziemons of Arsenal Institüt für film und Video Kunst who was out jeans shopping with his BFF Canadian artist Marc Pennock. Last night Uli was my date at the Arsenal´s Blaxploitation program which was packed beyond the rafters. It was wonderous seeing Cleopatra Jones and Coffy starring Tamara Dobsen and Pam Grier. Tonight I think I will return for the screening of Shaft and Shaft in Afrika. Earlier Friday Muslim warrior Daniel Hendrickson and I spent the entire daytime hours burrowing through the Arsenal Archives and discovered some rare gems that I can´t wait to present as part of Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music.

Last week I saw a behavioural piece by the gifted young French boy beauty Christophe DeRohan Chabot, that wasn´t a traditional performance at all but a warm and carefull trek through Oranienplatz making situational discovery.

I very much loved how Christophe gently nudged his audience into a participatory role without being dogmatic and shrill and got them to break down their Berlin distance barriers----even my own. Christophe is becoming the male Lucia Joyce of the 21st Century moment and I am very proud of him as one of my former art students from Weissensee Art Akademy.

Received this cute note from Ernie Larsen:

In Berlin each morning we woke to the improvisations of little Domingo in his cage ringing changes from the basic canary songbook. Was Danny’s pet canary a genius? We couldn’t pretend to know why this caged bird sings so well but we could see this banner from Danny’s balcony in Neukoln.

Downstairs, a neighborly woman saw me taking this photo and would have narrated the history of the last decade of local resistance to landlord depredations if I understood much more German than widerstand and verboten, which I don’t. As it was she tried. She pointed to the balcony of her own apartment, four floors up. It was overflowing with well-tended plants and flowers. Despite the language barrier she made it clear that she was resisting her landlord’s campaign to eliminate her garden, which he inexplicably regarded as dangerous. Later Danny said that this landlord’s fear of nature run amok on balconies was becoming a phobia endemic among landlords in Neukoln. Since there is concerted resistance and spontaneous song even in Germany, could it be that conditions are less dire than we’ve begun to think? A rhetorical question.

***
This cute CHEAP note from Marc Siegel:

Dear CHEAP Friends,

it's not everyday that one gets a chance to see a Judy and Mickey musical, and one directed by Busby Berkeley no less (with Judy's numbers directed by her gay hubbie Vincente Minnelli)! And it's an even rarer treat to get to see such a musical not merely in the presence of but presented by Miss Vaginal Davis! So don't miss a great event this Sunday, July 22 at 9pm….
Vaginal Davis's Rising Stars, Falling Stars: We Must Have Music!
with BABES ON BROADWAY (Busby Berkeley, 1941)
starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney
…and featuring one of those greatly disturbing Blackface sequences that mark a number of Hollywood's musicals!
It must be seen to be believed!
And it must be seen with Vaginal Davis
on July 22 at 9pm
at the
Arsenal
Potsdamerstr. 2
http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/
http://www.vaginaldavis.com/
To prepare for the special event listen to Vaginal Davis's radio interview with Manuel Schubert at: http://i.mixcloud.com/CB9vnu

…and if you're not sick of Miss Davis by now, then go to the Meltdown festival in London on Aug. 10 for a special concert of Miss Davis's new band TENDERLOIN (which premiered at Camp/Anti-Camp) on a double bill with THE VOLUPTUOUS HORROR OF KAREN BLACK (who you loved or missed at Camp/Anti-Camp)
http://meltdown.southbankcentre.co.uk/
warmly,
Marc

Speaking From the Diaphragm

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Monday, July 16, 2012