SCHERBEN BRINGEN GLUECK

Scherben bringen Glueck

Yes my darling darlings the year of 2017 is almost at a close and for the past two weeks I have been singing over and over again the Tin Pan Alley song “Meloncholy Baby”.

Its grey and bleaker then usual in Berlina as I have been in rehearsal with the new CHEAP Kollektiv project Original Sin that premieres Dec 8th at silent green Kulturquartier in Wedding.

I like to dwell only on positivity like famed cult star The Goddess Bunny, who never lets anything get her down. Its been difficult though with one of my dear friends the sweet and talented Ms. Lauren Pine in the hospital after getting run over by a trash truck on her bicycle in Manhattan. Lauren is the ultimate perenial teen angel and such a giving and lovely lady. After years working in the fashion industry as a model, muse and stylist with the likesis of Thierry Mugler, and being the right hand gal of Patricia Field. She gave up the world of glamour and went back to school in the 1990s and became a dedicated registered nurse. Her pals kidded her with the moniker Nurse Pain. I feel so fortunate to having known this beautiful lady since the mid 1980s. During my recent pit stop in New York I had a fab time with Miss Lauren, Glenn Belverio and The Lobster Lady, Rebecca Goyette hanging out for hours at the East Village diner Remedy on Houston Street. I want to send Miss Lauren all my love and kissyz and I know she will make a speedy recovery returning to care for all her patients, plus New York and international familia of devoted friends.

I still can’t get over the recent passing of David Pendleton. David was a much beloved film scholar and film programmer who worked for ten years at the Harvard Film Archive. Before that he was with UCLA’s Melnitz Film and Television Archive. He also performed internationally in the two singing sensations created by actor, director, impressario-- and bon vivante Mark Simon --The Boyfriend and Leave it to Jane that performed regularly at my performance space in Hollywood Bricktops at the Parlour Club. David was such a sweetie pie and when he performed on stage he really cleaned up nicely. The other evening CHEAP kollektive did a salute to David called CHEAP Mourning on our regular radio program CHEAP Funk on Reboot FM out of the Haus de Kulturen des Welt.

Grab a listen with this link:

http://reboot.fm/2017/11/18/cheap-funk-14/

Another death that happened recently that has brought a tear to my eye was that of icon Mother Flawless Sabrina of the 1968 documentary The Queen. Mother Flawless had worked on many projects with my daughter ZacKary Drucker and she was an inspiration to millions as a true freakazoid and bonafide kooky personality. Flawless starred along with Holly Woodlawn and myself in ZacKary’s award winning film She Gone Rogue. Flawless was born the same year as my late oldest sister Gracie Lee Taylor and reminded me a lot of my nutty sister, who in the 1960s and 1970s was a major fag hag and worked as the PBX operator for Rock Hudson. She even attended his infamous Beauty Parties at his home that featured some of the most handsome, well endowed men in Hollywood of the early 1970s. The only women at these parties being Nancy Walker, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day and Rock’s black housekeeper and cook.

So many deaths in 2017 and the year still has a month to go. Here is just a partial list:

Della Reece the singer and actress who starred on the TV series Chico and the Man and the long running TV drama Touched By An Angel. Whenever I was in a hotel in the States I would watch Angel and it never failed to move me even if it was a little corny with Della and Roma Downey Jr. as spirit creatures sent to earth to make supernatural intervention. The third angel was a man, but I didn’t find him very interesting. Ms. Reece is quite the natural acting talent. Her abilities also stem from being a fantastic interpreter of songs in the American canon. I got to see her once when my Afro Sister Clitoris Turner(Mark Maxwell) treated me for my birthday to her show at the Cinegrill at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. She was backed by a fine jazz trio. And I thought I sweated on stage. Ms. Reece was perspiring rivers and streams and had a cute system that I have tried to copy. She would place on the piano about 30 hankerchiefs to help her wipe the sweat away.

One little known tidbit about Della Reece is that she is the first African American woman to host her own TV show. I will always regret giving away my album of hers from the 1950s as a gift to Johnny Noxema and Rex Boy of Bimbox Magazine.

Other 2017 passings: Adam West of TV’s Batman, age 88, Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers, age 69, Roger Moore 89 the cheesiest of the actors who played James Bond. I much preferred him in TV’s The Saint. Michael Parks of Then Came Bronson, Chuck Berry, John Hurt who played Quentin Crisp in the Naked Civil Servant and also in the movie Alien, Harry Dean Stanton, 91 of Alien and Paris Texas, film director Jonathan Demme, 73 who came on to me at the premiere of his Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense, comedian Don Rickles, 90, Churck Barris of The Gong Show, Mary Tyler Moore who I adored in her long running TV sitcom named after her. Mary Tyler Moore was very much like my sister Gloria Jean. Miguel Ferrer who was the actor son of Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney. Too bad he didn’t get his mothers looks. Country singer Mel Tillis the Coca Cola Cowboy, David Cassidy of The Partridge Family. When I was young I never liked The Partridge Family being more of a fan of The Brady Bunch and Nanny and the Professor but Love Camel gifted me a box set of the series and I rediscovered it and I adore the show and the songs. I didn’t remember that the show tackled some issues in that 70s liberal way, but one episode set in the hood was really good that featured Richard Pryor and I had completely forgotten about it though I am sure I watched it when it first aired as Friday in Los Angeles in the 1970s on ABC was devoted to Brady Bunch, Patridge Family, Nanny, Odd Couple, Room 222 and Love American Style. I’d better stop now as I am completely dating myself. Tom Petty, 66, Monty Hall 96 of Let’s Make a Deal TV Game Show, Grant Hart of the band Husker Du who I met a long time ago in LA in the 1980s when the band played at that Sunset Starlight Ballroom and Rollerink at Sunset and Western. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audio Slave who came to my Club Sucker at the Garage a few times in the 90s and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park who came to Bricktops at the Parlour Club. Linkin Park’s touring company was Bill Silva Productions during the same time when they worked with Margaret Cho and I was her opening act in the early Aughts. Both Cornell and Bennington committed suicide.

George Romero of Night of the Living Dead fame and my fav his vampire film Martin, sexy Nelson Ellis of the vampire TV show True Blood who was the best thing on that program, him and that cute little muscle puppyAustralian actor whose name escapes me now. Walter Becker of Steely Dan. I liked Steely Dan though the two leaders of the band I found insufferable. Glen Campbell, June Foray 99 the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel one of my fav cartoons as a child and Jerry Lewis 91 whose films I hated when I young, but now I have complete respect and appreciation for. Though I still think Dean Martin was the bigger talent of the two.

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Had a nice reunion with my two lovely children of high art Wu Tsang and Boychild at the Schwartzer Cafe on Kant Str in Wilmersdorf. Wu will be the artist in residency at the Martin Gropius Bau Museum for a year which should be really exciting as she has some great ideals to shake that place up a bit now that they are under new leadership. Wu and I are both featured in the big group exhibition Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon at the New Museum.

Thank you so much my precious Wu for treating your mama to a fab breakfast and it was lovely catching up.

KOMM HOL DAS LASSO RAUS

Komm hol das Lasso raus

So sorry my darling readendrums I beg your forgiveness that I have been so utterly remiss in writing, but ever since my recent New York City triumphs, my schedule has multiplied quadrakupliky with projects that have my head spinning Charlotte’s Web freaky stylus.

Not only do I have so many commitments that were signed, sealed and delivered over a year ago, but I have to fullfill all the new things on the porkyline litmus test. My neurosis has my poor therapist running on empty in Jackson Brownville.

Blick und Begehren(Gaze and Desire) the performance I did as part of the wonderful feministiche festival Making Waves at the beauteous deconsecreated St. Elizabeth Kirche in Mitte was messy and sloppy. So very much in keeping with the tenats of performance art.

Melissa Perales the founder of the festival had seen me do the piece at the New Museum in NYC, and thought it would compliment her event. I rarely accept a last minute gig, especially when I was already booked a year in advance teaching my Framing the Freakazoid performance art workshop through the Institut fuer Medien, Theater and Populaere Kultur Stiftung Universitaet Hildesheim. Melissa’s festival I felt was so important that I had to try and make it work so I rushed back to Berlin just in time to make soundcheck, which went well, but I was so exhausted from teaching that I felt completely excrement for brains on stage. Thank god for Melissa’s wonderful rocksteady crew that consisted of assistants Danielle, Melissa II, top notch coordinator suprema Bade Kaya, the fab Dugga, Nemo of Kenya, Vey and tech staff: Alpha male Vladimir, Frederic, Arne and Luka who handled the lighting. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast time at the hotel in Hildesheim. After soundcheck I could have had dinner at the hospitality canteen in the church rectory, but I didn’t want to have that bloated feeling on stage or as the fantastik theremin performer and singer Dorit Chrysler bluntly put it, “Have to take a shit”

Make Waves Festival started on Thursday Nov 9 till Saturday Nov 11 the day of my performance with such a diverse array of artists like Stella Chiweshe the Mbira Queen of Zimbabwe, Chicks on Speed, Meredith Graves, Juliana Barwick, Isabel Lewis, Kos_MicQAndi, Edna Martinez and so many others plus panels, discussions, workshops and roundtables.

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The students I worked with at Hildesheim really rockt out! Led by my student assistant the lovely gamine Friederike Haensel who I couldn’t have done the workshop without. Friederike worked tirelessly babysitting the Vagimule Doll who is really very much like a helpless infant. Hildesheim is a pretty campus but its big and mazelike. Because of summer flooding the location of my workshop was changed

and so I was also put in a hotel that was a considerable distance from campus and with my bad sense of direction I wouldn’t have found anything without Friederike picking me up daily from the Hotel to class, and escorting me home afterwards. We all worked so hard that after class ended I didn’t even eat dinner I just collapsed on my bed into a deep boogie slumberland—hey!hey!

My students were very eager beaver. They expertly handled performance art bootcamp like saucy tigers moms. Don’t dream it! BE It! Was the mantra chanted forming their own super post, post punk rock art bands. Not only that but a Hustler White Petite Bougeous Brechtian Chorus, and choreographing a Look Ma, I’m So Pina Bausch Variete’ Review. Along the Road to Oz, killing it with every step taken on my standard exercises like: You Stepped Out of a Dream from the 1941 MGM film Ziegfeld Girl, and creating their own mini psycho dramas with You Gotta Pull Strings.

These young artists are definitely ones to reckon with so watch out world here they come!

I also want to give shout outs to the handsome and dynamic Eike Wittrock who invited me to campus and took me to an incredible welcome dinner at this olde school German restaurant housed in a building from 1540. The food and wine was breathtaking in its comfort. Just what I was in the mood for after doing an opening lecture for the entire school population. Also kissyz to gorgeous scholar Ekaterina Trachsel and Hildesheim secretaire Anke Lehrke for making me feel so welcome and for their top notch organization.

I have several new painting exhibitions coming up with my NYC gallerists at Invisible-Exports and my Berlin Gallerist Dan Gunn both at Miami’s Nada Art Fair and an upcoming exhibit in London and a few other European cities so there is no rest for the mercurially wicked.

I collaborated with Rick Owens to make some special limited edition T-shirt designs as a fundraiser for Lia Gangitano’s Participant Inc, which is the only not for profit gallery left in New York City. Lia does magnificent work and so you should all go to Participant After Dark and support her efforts.

Here is the info:

Participant After Dark (Vol. 3)
Wednesday, November 15, 2017, 7-10pm

A winter garden party
to celebrate
PARTICIPANT INC's
15th Anniversary

And to welcome new Board Members
Derrick Adams
Justin Vivian Bond
Jeffrey Gibson
April Hunt
Rose Lord
Sheri Pasquarella
Elisabeth Sussman

And Advisory Board Members
Pati Hertling
Amanda Hunt

Plus a preview of our latest edition
Vaginal Davis x Rick Owens for PARTICIPANT INC

Visit participantafterdark.org
for more info and to purchase tickets

image: 
Baseera Khan, "Psychedelic Prayer Rug (Purple Heart}," 2017, handcrafted silk rug

Gluecksmomente

Handsome and stately Glenn Belverio the MoMa design expertin and lauded columnist with Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View on Fashion proclaimed in New York City the Vaginal Davis Autumnal WeekLaVa. 

On the last day before the diva returned to Germany, she spent quality time at Remedy Diner at 245 East Houston Street with her dear sister of the clothe Mr. Belverio and olde LA pal Nurse Lauren(Pain) Pine, who use to be the right hand gal of designer Patricia Field. Ms. Lauren who use to work with Frau Davis on Melrose Avenue at Retail Slut gave up all that high glamour to devote herself to medicine where she has ruled supreme for the last 20 years as a registered critical care nurse. Miss Lauren is wise beyond her years and is a stalwort voice on what is wrong with the US of A at the moment. 

Lobster Lady Rebecca Goyette whose day job is in MoMa’s Education Department is a fast rising leader in the new art movement of Crustacean Sensuality and is a new member to the cult of ancient black intititty that is and always will be surrounding the Whoracle et Delphi Vaginal Davis. 

At the two woman reception Chimera at Invisible-Exports featuring the BBC of the late great Louise Nevelson and the tiny make-up paintings of little Ms. Vagimule all was right in the world. Collectors and punters alike were foaming at the snarl for a chance to make off with one of the expressive make-up and perfume portraits.

La Davis’ study of unheralded notables like Ruby Dee, Tuesday Weld, Miyoshi Umeki, Tura Satana, Lupita Tovar and her daughter, the former actress Susan Kohner. Ms. Kohner is half Mexican and half Jewish and is the mother of film directors Chris and Paul Weitz. Kohner was quite effective portraying a light skinned black woman in the remake of Imitation of Lifedirected by Douglas Sirk, that featured Juanita Moore, Lana Turner and Sandra Dee in 1959.

The original Imitation of Life from 1934 starred an actual light skinned black actress Fredi Washington along with a riveting performance from Louise Beavers. In Chimera Ms. Washington is represented from her stage role of Mamba’s Daughter that also starred sweet mama stringbean Ethel Waters. 

In Chemira Louise Beavers joins Washington along with singer and actress Della Reece, the little known Diana Sands who is so incredible in the 1970 New York gentrification film The Landlord, featuring a young, hairy chested Beau Bridges getting down interracially speaking with the gorgeous Ms. Sands. 

The other actress portraits are of Brenda Sykes who in the Black community of the 1970s became notorious for needing repairs to her private parts after each sex session with dinosaur genitaled football and film star Jim Brown. Ms. Sykes was also in the TV situation comedy Ozzie’s Girls starring Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and had a tasty lovescene opposite humpy Elliot Gould in college protest drama Getting Straight (1970). Most people know Sykes from the 1975 sexploitation film Mandingo opposite Perry King and boxing champion Ken Norton, but she was also involved in a love affair with her TV co-star Leigh J. McClowsky in the primetime soap Executive Suite. 

Ms. Davis also includes early black soap star Ellen Holly from One Life to Live and Russ Meyer starlet Kitten Natividad who use to ride the same bus line on Wilshire Blvd as Ms. Davis back in the 1980s. Hard to believe, but Ms. Davis actually worked for over ten years as the assistant to the director of UCLA’s Placement and Career Planning Center Bill Locklear. Bill is the father of actress Heather Locklear. Heather and Ms. Davis were part of the same graduating class at UCLA. 

Russ Meyer and Natividad also lived together for years, and were regular attendees to many of Vaginal Davis and The Afro Sisters performances, as the couple were part of the LA orbit of Michele Lamy and then husband performance artist Richard Newton.

The wonderful Steven Michael Azo of NYU’s video art department put his dib in A$AP before the reception even started. Once the soiree on Eldridge Street began the small Lower East Side space was jammed with the likesis of mega attractive artists like: Jonathan Berger, Ian Chang, Michael Bilsborough,Alex Israel, Damien Davis, Argentina’s Lucas Michael, Jonah Groeneboer, Brad Hampton, Item Idem’s Cyril Duval with juicy juice mongerer Michael J. Bullock of Butt Magazine and Fantastic Man (no relation to JM J. Bullock of Too Close For Comfort fame) and sleek lovesexy blackamoor Telfar Clemens, the New York urban design guru who all the world seems to be wrapped up in the house of. Well why not? Mr. Clemens is not only young, gifted and black but is a bonafide studkin par excellance.

A lot of the monied fagarettes were swooning over humpy blondine actor Jonno Davies the star of off Broadways A Clockwork Orangewho only had eyes for Welsh dreamcake Taron Egerton and his older beau Milo Ventigiglia, also seen floating about I-E, Document Journal’s Justin Polera, the gorgeous power attorney and art collectress Erica Teasley-Linnick who is also the senior program officer with the Democracy Fund of the Open Society Foundations U.S. Programs, Cynthia “Social Lies” Powell President of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Dale Soules one of the stars of Orange is The New Black, Casey Spooner, Cindy Greene and Lizzy Yoder of Fischer Spooner, Angela Di Carlo who use to do the makeup for Fischerspooner but now has her own singing career and is one of the stellar DJanes at the Mattachine party at Julius, Ms. Di Carlo is a dead ringer for 50’s actress/singer Dolores Gray, poet Thomas Dooley, Doug McClemont formerly the mortician to the shtars and editor of Honcho Magazine now the head Honcho at Marlborough Gallery, power kollectors with a capital “K” Phil Aarons and Shelley Fox, Scott Rothkopf, the dapper and dreamy chief curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, everybodies downtown favorite the ravishing and super smart Lia Gangitano of Participant Inc. and her main man the debonair Mr. “T”, Angela Monaco, jewelry designer with Concrete Polish, sizzling sexpot Thor Perplies and his beautiful lover, Jason Kemper, Amy Sadao, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, multi-hyphenate beauty boy and lovegod Alex Jovanovich of Art Forum International, Historian Todd Shepard, Billy Miller of STH, Jan Wandrag, Slava Mogutin who gifted Ms. D with a signed copy of his new macho/macha fotog book Bros & Brosephines, Joe Baptista from PACE Galleries responsible for the Nevelson in the show which is up for sale, Aaron Krach who made the Vaginal Davis buttons&bows, Chris Cole, Norman Ghoulsen von Holtzendorf, Charity Hope Valentine-Coleman, the writer and Bricktops at the Parlourclub firstborne daughter with her foxy new girlfriend Stacy Szymaszek poet and director of Poetry Project at Saint Marks Church, Jared Buckhiester the brilliant artiste,hungthrob and former Givenchy model, Sean Carrillo and his wife the youngest of the Warhol stars Bibbe Hansen, teenage looking Gala Verdugo, Glenn Belverio, NYU dance scholar Barbara Browning, filmmaker and curator with feet shod in gold Adam Baran who brought along performance artist David Serotte, thespian Thom Hilton, Riley Hooker and members of the House of Ladosha, Brooks Brody of Fierce Pussy, lensman Bill Jacobson, writer and performer Mike Albo, musician Geo Wyeth, Michel Auder, Jennie Livingston of Paris is Burning, Travis Chamberlain, Rhys Ernst of Transparent fame now shooting his first feature film called Adam in New York City, avant garde muscle hunk Calder Kusmierski Singer, DJ Chicklet, Punk Rock Dave, Ms. Davis’ Berlin gallerist Dan Gunn looking very matinee idol, and I-E’s cuddly proprietors Ben & Risa.

Thursday Sept 28^th kicked off the public program of the New Museum with the Vaginal Davis performance piece – Blick und Begehren(Gaze & Desire) at the ground floor Museum Theater. It was SRO sold out with sight lines around the block and around the corner to see the zany miniscule black lady from Los Angeles via Berlin, Germany. 

Ms. Davis was wearing a blouse and skirt by designer Rick Owens that gave the illusion she was on the Liza Minnelli diet when in fact she was on the verge of breaking every scale created. 

Caught up in the crazed antics, Trigger exhibit director and curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum Johanna Burton with her curatorial backup singers Sara O’Keeffe and Natalie Bell, also on hand the stylish Mr. Billy Miller of the Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts who looks like a fresh 21 year old thanks to his new sex regiment with a very young lover, delightful public programs coordinator Andrea Caldarise kept things orderly while Bibbe Hansen& Sean Carrillo, award winning writer Bruce Benderson and his 22 year old protege Ben Shields, Rebecca Goyette The Lobster Lady, male bombshell Dusty’s Treehouse Childers, Chris Cole, Glenn Belverio, Mark Morgan Perez, Bradford Nordeen the IV, Ethan & Grayson Dolan, basketball puppy Kristaps Porzingis, Jonathan Van Dyke, Patrick Staff, journalista Jessica Bennett, Sarah Johnson, Jessie Michael Nova, Sarah Johnson, Laurel Sparx, Jamie Shearn Coan,Ben & Risa of Invisible Exports, Dan Gunn of Berlin’s Dan Gunn Gallery, The Magic Flute an Opera in Six Steps Spoken Chorus, Amy Adams of the West Coast gallery that represents Vaginal Davis Adams & Ollman, Gala Verdugo, Ellen Lesperance, Jackie Elempay,Wu Tsang, Holy Young Father Daniel Flores Estrella, the junior Catholica priest& Columbia University Phd student Juan Fernandez(who picked Ms. Davis up from La Guardia Airport stuffing her face with fish tacos, beauty products and toiletries), Mike Feswick of Phile Magazine, legends legends Ela Troyano & Carmelita Tropicana, and New School’s Ricardo Montez providing the WoW factor.

Special thanks to Derek Wright the big peniled tech wizard for making things appear effortless.

Mr. Montez earlier in the week treated the sisters Troyano, Ms.D and Hector Martinez to an enchanting Mexican feast at a new East Village cantina called Rosie’s at 29 East 2^ndStreet. Rosie’s features inventive post modern Mexy dishes and the best pitchers of Margaritas in all of Christendom. 

The after party for Ms. Davis took place at Julius, the oldest gay bar in New York City which operated that evening as Club Mattachine hosted and DJ’d by film director John Cameron Mitchell, and vivacious cabaret stars Amber Martin and Angela DiCarlo. 

Mattachine dance parties began occurring monthly ten years ago. It was the brainchild of Cameron Mitchell and hunky PJ DeBoy who collaborated together on the cult film Shortbus. So happy that a bar like Julius located in historic Greenwich Village has been revived to honor urban queer pioneers. 

Was thrilled to hear a lovely mix of songs including Davis requests like Little Eva and Laura Nyro. Besides the wonderful cocktails and olde school atmosphere at Julius the bar has a kitchen and serves the best cheese burgers and fries. Ms. Davis was given lots of gifts at the shindig including a colorful Tahrir Scarf from entrepreneur Johnathan Morpurgo and a luscious pendant by artist Damien Davis the grandson of Sammy Davis Jr. and Altovise. 

Go to: JoMo@TahrirScarf.com or check out the website at TahrirScarf.com.

On Ms. Davis’ first day in New York Ben of Invisible-Exports treated the lady and Dan Gunn to a vegan Mexicali brunch at Plantas JaJaJa on the Lower East Side. The place has only been around a short time, but has an eccletic vibe and loveable staff who fawned all over the shtarina. 

The youthquakers at the Standard Hotel East Village also gave the lady lots of celebutante attentions and one particular bellboy from Brooklyn’s avantgarde theater scene set her heart a flutter with his hypermasculine donkey dicked charms. The staff at the Standard Hotel in New York are way cuter then the kids at the Standard in Downtown LA. Ms. Davis’ hotel room on the 19^th Floor featured a panorama view of Downtown fit for a dowager empress.

Hector Martinez aka Hector San Martine flew from LA to assist his diva prinzessin and add just a bit of poker face to the colorful proceedings in NewYorika. Poor Hector having to deal with a frazzled neurotic and super demanding shtar, after being at Burning Man and then returning home from vacation in Tokyo with his activist husband Erikla Fierce. 

Hector, and Ms. Davis had a lovely reunion brunch at Veselka with Mark Morgan Perez. Mr. Morgan Perez never ages, and looks exactly the same as he did when he was in Ms. Davis’ installation Topping From the Bottom at the endurance art festival she curated with Ron Athey Platinum Oasis at the Corral Sands way back in 2001. The Lady D and MMP got to spend quality time with each other at Madison Square Park oogling tightbodied businessmen and devouring corn muffins on their fav bench across from the Flat Iron Building.

New Museum opening of Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon was explosive. So many artists and art stars in this giant group show. New York needs events like this and what made it so special is that you hardly see anything in the whitey white art world where people of color are celebrated and applauded. The energy at the opening reception was seismicgorrigle sistah! with a sea of hot steamy bodies in motion as the New York weather was beyond humid and drippy. 

The art collective really rules in Trigger with The House of Ladosha reigning supreme over the festivities. I talked to so many people and made lots of new friends thankx to the great Viva Ruiz who is the house mother to all the new generation of artists of color on the scene. 

Was thrilled to chittle chat with Sur Rodney and the serene majesty of Lorraine O’Grady who is in her 80s but doesn’t look a day over 40. I wasn’t familiar with the work of Ms. O’Grady but now I have to research her and get acquainted with every aspect of this artistic femme duval. Here is a list of the artist in the Trigger show:

Morgan Bassichis (b. 1983)
Sadie Benning (b. 1973)
Nayland Blake (b. 1960)
Justin Vivian Bond (b. 1963)
Gregg Bordowitz (b. 1964)
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz (working together since 2007)
Nancy Brooks Brody (b. 1962)
A.K. Burns (b. 1975) and A.L. Steiner (b. 1967)
Leidy Churchman (b. 1979)
Liz Collins (b. 1968)
Harry Dodge (b. 1966)
The Dyke Division of the Two-Headed Calf (founded in 2008)
Josh Faught (b. 1979)
ektor garcia (b. 1985)
Mariah Garnett (b. 1980)
Reina Gossett (b. 1983) and Sasha Wortzel (b. 1983)
Sharon Hayes (b. 1970)
House of Ladosha (founded in 2007)
Stanya Kahn (b. 1968)
Carolyn Lazard (b. 1987)
Simone Leigh (b. 1967)
Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971)
Candice Lin (b. 1979)
Troy Michie (b. 1985)
Ulrike Müller (b. 1971)
Willa Nasatir (b. 1990)
Sondra Perry (b. 1986)
Christina Quarles (b. 1985)
Connie Samaras (b. 1950)
Curtis Talwst Santiago (b. 1979)
Tschabalala Self (b. 1990)
Paul Mpagi Sepuya (b. 1982)
Tuesday Smillie (b. 1981)
Sable Elyse Smith (b. 1986)
Patrick Staff (b. 1987)
Diamond Stingily (b. 1990)
Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)
Wu Tsang (b. 1982)
Chris E. Vargas (b. 1978)
Geo Wyeth (b. 1984)
Anicka Yi (b. 1971)

Trigger runs until the end of January 2018 so if you are in the Tri-State area its an imperative to see it.

WER DER HERDE FOLGT SIEHT NUR ARSCHE

Wer der Herde Folgt Sieht Nur Arsche


Ruth Schoenegge the lovely lesbian film editor who has worked with Laurie Anderson and other greats had me over for a wonderous dindin celebrating the birthdate of one of her dearest friends Brad Hampton. Lovesexy Brad is an artist from NYC(one of his beautiful pantings graces Ruth’s drawing room in her spacious Akzienstrasse Kiez compound) Brad and Ruth met when he was Laurie Anderson’s studio manager. Now luscious Brad manages the studio of visual artist Jim Hodges. The menu of Ruth’s feast fit for a magi was as follows:

- Turkish Flatbread with Hummus and Ayurvedic Cashew Parsley Chutney
- Mutton Korma with Basmati Rice and Seasonal Salad
- Lemon Layer Birthday Cake

White wine: Güner Veltliner
Red wine: Coffee Pinotage and Merlot Shottesbrooke
Cocktails: Negroni and Gin Tonic

The other guests at the gathering: Florian Japp, the brother of Ruth’s lover the actress and director Miriam Japp. Florian is a Berlin based artist(sculptures and photography) and also works as a cinematographer, Constantine Achmed Berger who I have known for many years from his days with Susanne Sachsse as a member of the Berliner Ensemble. Achmed brought his friend Britt Beyer who is a film director (Ruth did some work on her documentary about a young man leaving his Jewish orthodox community). And then there was Manou Jacob, a makeup artist from Berlin who is one of the hottest most stylish grandmothers I have ever met.
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So sad to announce the sudden deaths of LA scenesters Sean De Lear and J. Lyons. Sean I have known for way over 30 years. Sean had sold his Echo Park house and was living in Vienna Austria. Both Sean D and I had worked with the Austrian art kollective Gelitin. Very sad learning about her death as she was a good natured messy presence on the LA scene and someone I expected to live forever.

J. Lyons use to perform regularly at my Club Sucker at the Garage in Silverlake (1994-1999). I named his band Extinguish Linda after the 20th Century Fox Film siren Linda Darnell. J. was also in The Johnny Depp Clones with porn priestess Chi-Chi LaRue, and performed in my film The White To Be Angry along with Warhol’s youngest superstar Bibbe Hansen.

DAS ENDE DER ARMUT

Das Ende Der Armut

The power art couple of experimental film legend Wilhelm Hein and art fotog extroidinaire Annette Frick are back with a new installment of their successful salon Casabaubou in Berlin-Wedding. If you are in Berlin you must go and see what they are up to. You will be surprised and amazed for sure:

LIEBE FREUNDINNEN UND FREUNDE
DEAR FRIENDS !!!
ES IST GESCHAFFT!!!!!!
JENSEITS DER TRAMPELPFADE HEFT 17A+17B+17C SIND FERTIG!!!!!!
AM 16.9.2017 - AB 18 UHR IM CASABAUBOU
WIR FREUEN UNS AUF EUREN BESUCH!!!!!
HERZLICHST ANNETTE FRICK UND WILHELM HEIN

CASABAUBOU - BERLIN
SEESTR.107 - U6-SEESTASSE

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Jewish Muzlim Daniel Hendrickson had a little late ladies who luncheon for Adham Hafez the spiritedly lovely Egyptian dancer and choreographer. Everything was major Ms. Gorgeous at the Neu Kolln CHEAP Kollektiv compound. Here is more on the divine Miss Adham:

Since its establishment in 2003, the Adham Hafez Company has produced and toured performances in the Arab World, Europe and the US. Awarded first prize for choreography by the Cairo Opera House for its first performance “High Voltage”, the company creates work that combines choreography, installation, live visuals, music and text. With a strong focus on research, the company created its outreach platform “HaRaKa” that documents, researches and investigates dance and performance history in the Arabic speaking world, with leading projects such as “TransDance Festival”, “Cairography” publication for performance theory and criticism, and the ARC.HIVE of Contemporary Arab Performing arts; a joint project between HaRaKa (Cairo), Lincoln Center’s Performing Arts Library (New York), and The German Dance Archives (Cologne).

The productions centralize around physical chronicles and performative heritage from the region and beyond, with rituals often emerging as material, and a close relation to the ever-changing political context. Over the past years it presented work in reputable venues including Damascus Opera House (Syria), Hebbel Am Ufer (Germany), Impulstanz Festival (Austria), and MoMA PS1 (US).

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If you are in New York City, go by Invisible-Exports Gallery on the lower east side to see the two woman show Chemira that features my make-up paintings and the sculpture of the great Louise Nevelson. The reception for the exhibit won’t be till Sept 29th but the show runs from Sept 8th – Oct 22. So go check out the work now, and then party and socialize on Sept 29th. Yowza.

My New Museum opening for the public is Sept 27th. The name of the exhibit is Trigger: Gender Used as a Tool and a Weapon. This show will run for several months and I will do a performance on Sept 28th at 7pm at the New Museum Theater.

AUCH DU BIST EIN SCHAMANE

Auch du bist ein Schamane

Vision, Seelenkraft, Heilung

Such a delight to see a special performance by the beautiful and great starina of starinas Miss Bibbe Hansen at silent green Kulturquartier. The special one night only event was part of Goldsmiths, University of London Berlin Summer School program. Bibbe was in top form sharing lots of juicy kibbles and bits about growing up in New York City in the late 50s and early 60s. Bibbe was a natural born troublemaker running the wet&wild streets with Janet Kerouac the daughter of beat writer Jack Kerouac. Bibbe also collaborated with her father the Fluxus pioneer Al Hansen. Bibbe spent a lot of time in Warhol's first factory, as one of his youngest superstars at age 13. She starred in the film Prison with Edie Sedgewick.

Bibbe showed some rare photos of her with Warhol and other greats of the period. She shared some footage of a Fluxus recreation of her fathers piano drop with her famous sons pop star Beck and artist Channing.

Bibbe and her father crisscrossed so many different scenes including early punk rock in Los Angeles and the Chicano art collective ASCO. Bibbe’s younger husb Sean Carrillo was helping her with this presentation. Sean was part of the second wave of ASCO, which is how they met when she literally stole him from his teenage cradle back in the early 1980s. As an added extra treat Harry Gamboa Jr. one of the founding members of ASCO was in the audience and later at the bar he was buying multiple rounds of drinks for all present so we all got really wasted, and that included Susanne Sachsse & Katya Sander, Vegard Vinge & Ida Mueller, Egyptian choreographer Adham Hafez of the Dancing on the Edge Company, Goldsmiths assistant Richard Gabriel, Marcuse Siegelstein and artist Lukas Reiner the son of 95 year old film director and legendary comedy genius Carl Reiner and brother of film director and actor Rob Reiner.

The Vaginal Davis doll was even shocked and surprised out of her unholy mind when Bibbe screened never before seen footage from the very first gig of their punk rock art band black fag. Bibbe played rhythm guitar in male drag in black fag. The band was formed as a joke on her rock star son Beck.

A Black Flag cover band led by Chris of Pansy Division stole the black fag name years later. The original black fag featured songs written by Bibbe, Ms. Davis and Ruebencito of the Chicano groove outfit Boca De Sandia that featured the cousin of Mazzy Star lead singer Hope Sandoval.

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Rising Stars, Falling Stars-Sweet 16mm,Never Been Kissed was way beyond packed as everyone in Berlina seemed to converge on the kupulla of the silent green Kulturquartier to celebrate the birth of fearless leader of CHEAP kollektiv and renown multi talented beauty Susanne Sachsse. Some people confessed to having never been to silent green which is understandable as its Berlin’s newest art institution. This special edition of RSFS not only paid tribute to the great La Sachsse, but was in cooperation with Goldsmiths, University of London Berlin Summer School that was facilitated by Frau Sachsse and artist/filmmaker Katya Sander.

The theme of Goldsmiths’ Berlin Summer School was Stealing Together and no one pilfers better then Ms. Vaginal Davis and her partner in grime Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muzlim for baby Christ Jesus.

The film they stole from the Arsenal Institute fur film und Videokunst’s archive
was a ruddy faded 16mm collector’s copy of openly closeted director George Cukor’s 1960 musical comedy film Let’s Make Love. Color Me Red, abounded with Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan with cameos by Milton Berle, Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly. The reels got mixed up and this mainstream movie turned a bit experimental for a New York secunda. Was that by accident or designed? You’ll never know, and I'll never tell.

Caught giving testimonials by radiant Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus:

Nanna Heidenreich, Marc Siegel, journalista Manuel Schubert aka Vicki Baum of Die Taz and Berlin trans legend and Tatort star Zazie De Paris who was mistaken for Romy Haag by writer Phillip Meinert. Maybe Romy was in attendance, there were so many people floating about.

A calvalcade of British visitors flocked the proceedings headed by fashion designers Martine Rose & J.W. Anderson with teutonic young actor Jannis Niewoehner, Oscar nominated black cinematographer Bradford Young, English artist David Birkin who is related to Jane Birkin, actors Ben Hardy, Ben Indra, Tulip Fever actress Holiday Grainger with musician Jake Bugg. The London contingent included Alice Lebow documentary film theorist in Berlin for a few months, charming scholar Nicole Wolf who moved back to Berlin from London town who is now living in Moabit. Film archivist Mojisola Adebayo, performance and theater artist Wanda and her lovely Irene, Macho man artiste extroidinaire Del LaGrace Volcano of Londre via Californication and Sweden who once collaborated with Mojisola on a project in the Artic circle.

Nanoochka Heidenreich reported she ran into filmmaker Shelly Silver, Kerstin Honeit the beautiful young Berlin artist whose work on the German dub movement has been universally acclaimed,Senol Senturk who was also part of the Goldsmiths behind the scenes crew, Brit/Israeli lighting designer Jackie Shemesh, Tito of HAU and his girlfriend. Sweetiepie Tito is one of the few left at HAU from the Mattias Lienthal regime. Also seen by Nanoochka Miss Kallia, the cineaste, projectionista and costume designer originally from Greece.

Ms Davis was too busy holding court to mingle but personally spoke with

Christian Weber of Edition Salzgeber and Sissy Magazine with his psychoanalytic BFF Jan, prima ballerina and one of Berlin’s most stylish and coolest womenTrixie Schoenherr alias Beatrice Cordua, pretty lesbian film editor Ruth Schoenegge, woman of divine mystery Dorothee Wenner resplendid in a red pantsuit, Adham Hafez with his American beau Adam,lovesexy Yusuf Etiman the guru of the most missed Basso Salon, Melissa Dulliux the brilliant Brazilian filmmaker and fashion plate whose new film is Distruktur. Go to www.Distruktur for more info on it. Lady Ms. D also shot the shit with her Creole nephew Kjohnny Blue and his knockout wife the Italian goddess Amelia, Stephen Ahrens the young German queer film programmer at Zueghauskino who just spirited an Opera Films Program, Tavia Nyong’o & Elahe Haschemi and 20 plus of their most talented sexiest students, from Greifswald Queer Summer School German Academic Foundation. These young artists presented me with their Queer Archive,Queer Entanglements zine, high cheekboned Michael Scaturro formerly of Deutche Welle now with Bloomberg, studkin super talent Vegard Vinge and his stage partner designer Ida Mueller plus their gorgeous tech juicemonger Til of the big feetsis and Andy Kaufmanesque actor and director Mad Max Brauer dancing like there is no day after tomorrow to the music of Djane Nancy. Lady D also got to gossip with Bibbe Hansen and her husband Sean Carrillo, Clarisse Mehring, Christophe Derohan Chabot, Acme Singt, The lovelor Goldsmiths London Berlin Summer School tyro artists, Olivier Novitsky and his companion Miso Soup.

Special thankx to Paris makeup and hair designer Akira Kurasawa Knightly who made Ms. Davis look like a true vision wearing her Rick Owens hemoglobulin gown.






Film historian Marcuse Siegelstein who was really circulating during the post screening after party engaged with Yael Bartana, Pola Sieverding, painter Michael Dute’ the King of Wilmerdorf with boyfriend Brian and San Francisco pal Little Mark, the divine Antje Ehmann of the Harun Farocki Institute, hottie Hannah Hurtzig of Mobile Academy, Michael Halves the producer of the Ruth Fischer art band and Super 700 indie rock group, enchanting artist Kerstin Honeit with Pro QM’s Fiona McGovern, art scholar Tom Holert & Claudia Honegger, Salome Gersch, Piero Bellomo, German queer literary academe Bea Michelis, Amy Taubin’s cousin the young writer Isaiah Lorado Wilner winner of Yale’s 57th annual Allan Nevins Prize. (Wilner has become Ms. Davis’ new object of affection replacing Jonathan Safran Foer as the man she wants the most to sit on her open raw face),artist Maha Mahmoun, former Einar Schleef actors Ralf Grawe(who dubs one of the terrorist voices in The Raspberry Reich) and Bettina Scheuritzel, Susanane Sachsse’s glam agent Anke Balzer, Noam Gorbat, Julian Scherer Ms.Davis former assistant when she taught at The Goethe Universitaet now a professor on his own merits, FU queer student union heads Charlotte and stylette Alex, silent green owners Jörg & Tina, and Goldsmiths Head of curatorial studies the famed scholarideon Simon Sheik.

Liebesspiele

UNKEUSCH

UNKEUSCH
Had a delightful time conversing with the great Mr. Plattenspieler-Thomas Meinecke the other night. He was with his gorgeous wife Michaela Melia’n and lovely daughter Julia who is a student at the DFFB. 

This all took place at the 39th birthday celebration of famed art photog Wolfgang Tillmans.
If you’re not familiar with Herr Meinecke he is a noted DJ, musician and author. We were both part of Hannah Hurtzig’s last Mobile Academy installation at the Kampnagel, Hamburg in the Spring. I simply adored hearing Thomas talk about his many projects, as he is quite prolific. He is also a super fan of my best girlfriend Glen Meadmore. Soon Thomas will have his first book translated into English through an Amazon imprint. 

The atmosphere was sumpteous at the Tillmans shindig. You can’t go wrong with a penthouse roofgarden studio in the very heart of Kreuzberg. Goldenen tinsel decorations matched the sultry summer evening. Panorama views engulfed the guests as the alcohol flowed non stop erotic cabaret style. Lots of cute young trendy boys smoking lethal smelling cigerettes. One doesn’t expect any righteous flirting or sexing at these artsy Teutonic affairs. That would be a major naynay Papa.

I hardly ever go to gatherings as I am such a loner, but when i do I come around starting time so i can see the place fill up, and leave early. Another first arrival I chittle chatted with was a sweet Lesbian artist who is represented by a New York gallery, and she told me she liked my Come on Daughter Save Me make-up and clay sculpture exhibition at Invisible-Exports Gallery in 2015.

Speaking of skulptresses the great German artiste Isa Genzken was at the party looking quite 

handsome and stately. There were many celebs afoot as well, but with Ms. Genzken in the haus all others paled in comparison.

DAS HAUPTWERK

DAS HAUPTWERK
Thank Jehovah of Armies for my new Berlin gallerist Dan Gunn of the Dan Gunn Gallery. Dan has been such a devilishly sweet and sexy exterminating angel in helping me get all my paintings packed and ready for shipment to New York for my two woman show Chemira. Yes Chemira opens Sept 8th at Invisible-Exports Gallery with the late great Louise Nevelson sculptures and my make-up paintings. Dan also arranged a buttery promotional photo shoot with Brit art photog Nicky of Monumental Strasse where I am in Louise doo rag drag.

The CHEAP kollektiv did a special taped version of their popular CHEAP Funk radio show for Reboot FM 88.4. For this edition of ReBooty FM the playful CHEAPies called the evening CHEAP Norway and Queer International Camels. The show includes Ms. Davis reciting the 15 Commandments according to Love Camel aka: Andrea Novarin and a camel Penelope Pitstop Top 5 of summer music listening, plus lots of other oddities and attrocities from DJ Nancy, Fearless Leader and Marcuse Siegelstein.

The Vagimule Doll, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Muzlim Daniel Hendrickson got together last week for some long range planning and have decided that after 10 fabulous years Rising Stars, Falling Stars will come to an end at the close of 2017.  Its sad, but hey, all good things must end. 

For the last year, the latest itteration of Rising Stars, Falling Stars has been under the subtitle: Sweet 16mm-Never Been Kissed. Our next screening will take place Sungay, Sept 3rd 8pm at silent green Kulturquartier in Berlin Wedding. The film shown will be the musical comedy Lets Make Love 1960, starring Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall and Frankie Vaughan directed by the all time great faggot film director George Cukor. This version of Rising Stars will also celebrate the 22nd birthday of Susanne Sachsse the Fearless Leader of CHEAP Kollektiv, and will be presented in association with Arsenal Institut fur Film und VideoKunst and Goldsmith University London as part of their Summer School.

The last Rising Stars will be around Christmas time but don’t despair as from the ashes of Rising Stars will emerge a new concept that will premiere in the Spring of 2018 called Contemporary Vinegar Syndrome. Be on the lookout for CVS as everyones mothers brothers auntie's cousin will be talking about it the world over.

HEKTIK IST BEIM AKTIENKAUF EIN SCHLECHTER BERATER

Hektik ist beim Aktienkauf ein schlechter Berater
I always listen to the divine advice of Glenn Belverio. When Glenn issues forth an utterance entire mountain ranges are moved in one swell swoop. Glenn or Glennda from his sister of the clothe days in Man!hattan, is one of my dearest friends from the last century.
That is why CHEAP Kollektiv had to be at the Berlin premiera screening of Rebecca Goyette’s Lobsta Porn Party at Spektrum in KruezKolln. What a delightful scene it was with the vivacious Ms. Goyette and her delectable crew (Marie Beckmann & Julie Gaspard curators of EVBG)introducing Berliners to the new vocabulary of hot buttery Crustacean sexuality.

What Berlin and the world needs more of is working class feminist sex perspectives, and with Ms. Goyette this includes a rich history that goes back to the Salem Witch Trials and beyond. I loved the audacious low tech revelry of it all.

I am officially all wrapped up in the House of Rebecca Goyette. Her work knocks the block off Ryan Trecartin. New England whimsy, shanty humour, and sea faring radical queering elements all mesh spectacularly. I was gagging on the lovely extravaganza of our frisky Lobster heroine giving birth Fertile La Toyah Jackson style with the help of an incestous mother/daughter doula pair.

More is more, and then some with double dicking, spicy beef curtains, pussy galore, and close encounters of the Octophallus eighth kind. Just because its all a loopy messticle doesn’t mean there is no room for serious reflection. Ms. Goyette handles that with devastating bengenueffect.

As an extra added treat Goyette and Company will be filming a Berlina edition of Lobsta Porn. If you are interested in joining the movement contact them at:

www.rebogallery.com


The other day during the ultra warm humid weather I noticed that more Berlin men are adopting the who wears short shorts look. I heartily approve as the long hip hop enfluenced board shorts are beyond tired. I just wish that the young men would finally quit the god awful yoga hair buns and beards. This is a trend that benefits no one. If you are not swarthy or Arab its probably not a good idea to grow a beard and forcing the issue on a face that really isn’t very hirsute is ridiculous. I feel I need to teach a class for trendy people that just because everyone is doing something you shouldn’t feel like you have to jump on the Fred Astaire bandwagon. One must consider if a certain style compliments them, and if it doesn’t avoid it at all cost.

I really do love seeing how Muslim young girls in Berlin add variety and style to their headresses with their flawless make-up and dazzling accessories.

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So many great new elements in the Vaginal Davis art cosmos. The handsome British gallerist Dan Gunn whose Berlin gallery at Schlesische Strasse 29 will be the new European home of Ms. Davis art work. Dan will be working in close association with Ms. Davis’ west coast clan headed by Amy Adams at Adams & Ollmann and NYC gallerists Ben & Risa of Invisible-Exports. The Vagimule doll is so excited to be working with lovesexy Mr. Dan Gunn.


In the Fall Ms. Davis will be part of the Trigger show at the New Museum which opens to the public on Sept 27th and a Two Woman Exhibition called Cinema Chimera at Invisible-Exports that features Vaginal Davis and the late legendary sculptress Louise Nevelson that opens Sept 8th.

BEHAART & GEIL!

Behaart & geil!
My handsome K-pop producer pal came into town and whisked me away with his crew for a few days of pampered luxury in a villa near Wannsee. We had worked together a few months ago and I had a great time as they are a fun loving, young and very sexxxy with a capital W gang of nutty muscleheaded Korean hooligans.
Part two of working on this ill music project was an equal hoot, as they recorded me just talking nonsense in my usual Finnegan’s Wake style. The Korean rapper Beenzino was also on hand, but he preferred being petulant and moody for most of our time together. One day he got all flirty and touchyfeely, but I think he was on some kind of mood alterting psychotropic medication as that didn’t seem to be his true cauthentic hippydippy self.
Back in 2015 when I was in New York working on the first American CHEAP kollektiv production of The Magic Flute, An Opera in Six Steps with Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu doing the music I recorded a poem of Jamie’s for his new album. Well that tract has suddenly gotten me a lot of attention from people in the music world who want my speaking voice as a cameo on their records. Well its nice to be in demand, somewhat.

Coming back to Berlin for a mini stopover was glad I was able to meet with the famous Dr. Professor Joseph R. Hawkins of USC who is also the director of the One National Gay&Lesbian Institute and One Archives Foundation. Dr. Hawkins is also a distinguished professor of anthropology and gender studies and is the boss of my dear old pal and fellow Afro Sister Clitoris Turner aka: Bud Thomas.

The wonderous Dr. Hawkins was on a working holiday with his handsome young, juicy Japanese husband Toshi. The cute couple treated me to a sumpteous bruncheon at Ta’Cabron Taqueria at Skalitzer Strasse 60 in Kreuzberg.

Ta’Cabron is one of my favorite Berlin eateries, and one of the few places to get Mexican food actually made by Mexicans. We had a divine time gossiping about a myriad of subjects and people from Maurice’s Snack n Chat to Billy Dee Williams. Dr. Hawkins who has lived in Los Angeles since 1975 is one of the few people I can discuss the old days with who really gets it. Also he has seen LA through so many changes, not all for the better. 

The vivacious American scholar came baring gifts that included some fascinating and beautiful One Institute publications, and an antique bejeweled headdress that looks like it was designed by Aubrey Beardsley and Erte as they were fudgepacking each other in an art nouveau boydello during an amateur adaptation of Ronald Firbank's The Prancing Nigger. 

Thank you my darling Dr. H. You are the best!

Still waiting to see if I get my plane tickets for this art congress in Beirut, Lebanon, which will also include a function in nearby Jordan. A little scared about venturing into the Middle East, but if I get kidnapped by some big peniled Arab Jihadists, and wind up as an Isis Bride there are worse things that can happen to a girl like me.

KUNSTSCHUSS

Kunstschuss

The Vaginal Davis dollface came back to Berlin for a short spell for CHEAP Funk on Rebooty FM the regular monthly radio program hosted by the CHEAP gang on 88.4. The theme this month was loosely related to all things Fredrich Engels as our fearless leader Susanne Sachsse has been on lockdown in Manchester, England performing in a piece on Engels by the Mancunian international artist Phil Collins aka: RePhil Collins.

Ms. Davis was treated to nice brunch at the Schwartzer Cafe on Kant Strasse in Wilmersdorf by journalista Phillip Meinert who is doing a book on queer punk rock. Phillip is quite the sweet, freshly scrubbed youthful looking writer.

He is 34 years old but could easily pass for 24. Part of the reason he looks so young is he doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol, and he isn’t straight edge either.

Love it!!!!

A lot of people in Berlin could take heed in avoiding embibing and nicotine which does contribute to a large portion of the population resembling Nosferatu the Vampyre a symphony of Horror. The Max Schreck version not the Klaus Kinski one.

Just saying . . .

Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muzlim and I accompanied tiny TNT Turkish stud muffin Dr. Zuelfukar Cetin to The Gorky Theater where he was the expert facilitator of a discusion after the premiere of Studio 9 play Kunst Der Flucht by Persian author and director Pedro Kadivar. The piece was part of The Gorky Theater’s Pugs in Love Queer Weekend Festival.

I love how The Gorky has cultivated an exciting young, diverse audience that is different from any of the other theater crowds in Berlin at the moment. Are you listening HAU?

It was really exciting being in the audience and experiencing first hand the ambiance at play at The Gorky. The play also had a young migrant cast of trans and gay Persian refugees who were quite spirited and electric.

Was invited to a very sweet breakfast meeting thanx to Dr. Eike Wittrock at the Akademie Der Kunste Cafe at Hansaplatz. The personable Dr. Wittrock is bringing me to his university at Hildesheim in The Fall which I am really excited about.

Received a very adoreable note from young Black American artist and scholar Diana Arce on her upcoming activities. Please read and catch Lady Diana in action as she is engaged in some really exciting work:

Upcoming Politaoke Shows in Berlin, Germany


July 14th Fincan Neukölln
July 27th Aquarium bei Südblock
August 24th Aquarium bei Südblock
September 21st Aquarium bei Südblock

Politaoke is back with some upcoming Berlin shows just in time for the German election. We're building an entirely new program of speeches, so if there's a speech you're just dying to deliver, feel free to submit it to the program here.

We're looking for artists, collectives and NGO partners who want to bring Politaoke to their communities. We have a small grant to train 1 lucky partner anywhere in the EU this year! If you're interested, let me know!

Artists Without a Cause

On March 31st, AWAC, Transgender Europe and the Room 4 Resistance crew celebrated Transgender Day of Visibility by adding trans, queer, and PoC artists and activists and their contributions to the ever expanding online lexicon with a second Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon.

AWAC also just finished up three articles for Berlin Art Link feature series #Activism. You can read a bit about what we have been up to, check out our interview with the Berlin Chapter of WHEREISANAMENDIETA and our thoughts about best practices for community art.

White Guilt Clean Up

WGCU has been off to a busy start this year with multiple projects and consultations. Most recently, WGCU we organized 4 events for Black Lives Matter Berlin Month this June. For our final event, we partnered up with Transgender Europe and AWAC and, thanks to everyone's generosity, donated 285 dollars to Miss Major Griffin-Gracy's retirement fund! We completed out consultations with Queer Zinefest Berlin and are writing an assessment for Schwuz.

Ealier this year, I spoke on the panel "What Can a Decolonised Dancefloor Do?" at CTM festival. Be sure to give it a listen! We've got plenty in the works and are excited to share some more upcoming projects soon!

I delivered my first ever keynote speech at OER17: The Politics of Openentitled "Reaching Other Audiences: Art For Social Change. It was an amazing experience and exciting to share with such a great group of educators! Check out the video of my speech.

I will also speak at the DEL (Digitally Engaged Learning) 2017 Conference in London coming up in September. I'll be speaking about my work and AWAC!

Thanks for Reading

Diana

ZWERG MIT STRAHLKRAFT

Zwerg mit Strahlkraft

Lady Ms. Davis housing in Los Angeles was supplied by the historic Biltmore Hotel at Pershing Square, the last place where the Black Dahlia was seen before her brutal murder in 1947. The grand hotel is a little shabby these days, and in much need of a makeover, but it still stands out in the crass sea of boutique hotels with their sleek homomoderne designed to death sensibility.

The Broad gave me five nights in the hotel, then I stayed at the gorgeous guest cottage of Hector San Martine and his lover Erikla Fierce in the Silverlake Hills of Edendale.  The cottage had a beautiful spaceous garden with commanding views.  Hector & Erikla used to own a tiny house on Maltman Avenue but they sold that this year.  Their new house has two cottages located underneath the main house.

Skot Armstrong and James Tallon of the celebrated art kollektiv Science Holiday and The Museum of Fun in Buena Park hosted a High Tea Party at the Biltmore for The Doll with a select guest list that included Ron Athey Jr with Divinity Fudge, Maggie Song of The Fibonaccis, Marnie Weber of The Party Boys, David Evan Frantz of the One Archive Institute and Erikla Fierce and Hector San Martin. Skot Armstrong is one of LA’s most gifted artists and is a contributing editor and columnist with Artillery Magazine, the art periodical published by my former LA Weekly colleage in the art department, the enigmatic Tulsa Kinney.

Ms. Davis’ trip to LA was brief, but jammed pack, including an appearance with curator Bradford Nordeen IV on the Steve Pride National Public Radio Program at KPFK 90.7.

Art photographer Hector San Martine and lifepartner Erikla Fierce surprised Ms. Davis with a welcoming and good riddance soiree at their spacious Silverlake Hills compound. Because it was such a last minute affair the guest list was tiny and included Ron Athey Jr., Jeffrey Hilbert and his hot husband Henry, novelist Lisa Teasley, neophyte performance artist and celestial beauty boy Elliot Reed, Nao Bustamente and companion Marcus Keilland Nazario, Andrew Gould, Dr. Jennifer Doyle, Johnson's Johnson and fiance Marisol, Oscar Pena the 22 year old Mexican/Jewish LA assistant to Vaginal Davis, Shari Frilot of Sundance Film Festival's New Frontiers Section, Glen Meadmore and Sheik Hassen Jameel the 29 year old middle eastern potentate who is not only an avid art collector but also a collector of famous, beautiful black women like Naomi Campbell and Rihanna. No doubt the horny sheik would like to add La Diva Davis to his harem.

Ms.Davis would like to publically thank all the wonderful people who took her out for breakfast, brunch, luncheon and dinner in Los Angeles. She didn’t want to go to any of the new trendy places but preferred dining at old guard establishments like Esmeraldi’s in the Biltmore courtesy of Dr. Prof Leon Hilton, The Pacific Dining Car(Mexican film producer Cesar Vega) Frere Taix French Restaurant in Echo Park(power litigation couple Marlou DeLuna and Hal Marenus)Langer’s Deli\ Bob’s Donuts in Farmers Market(Hector San Martin), AstroFamily(Michele “Meesh” Mills producer of the popular Rupaul Drag Race TV show, The Kitchen(Papa Ron Athey).

The insanely talented Craig Roose of the glam band Billy Wisdom, and TV chat show Decoupage starring Miss Summer Caprice took Ms. D to the infamous Tallyrand Restaurant and Tavern in Burbank where she ate the Huell Howser Special. The only new places she was treated to was Mas Malo Mexican Cantina that is located in a historic downtown LA building and Gus’ Soul Food Shack in Funkytown on Pico and Crenshaw next to the old Catch One Disco. Ms. Davis’ old pal Hector Martinez’ wonderful and gorgeous mother made Ms. Davis a homecooked Mexican feast at her cute house in South Gate an area of LA that seemed totally free of gentrificaciones.

Its funny how spotty the gentrification is in Los Angeles. Where all of Downtown, The Wilshire Corridor, and most of Hollywood has been corraled by it. There were parts of Hollywood on Sunset Blvd east of Vine Street to Vermont Avenue that looked as grimy as ever.

CASCADE PERPINDICULAR

Cascade Perpindicular

After five long years the return of the Vagimule Doll hatchet face to her birth city of Los Angeles was met with joy and rapture by one and all. Well not exactly everyone, as there was some noticeable exceptions of individuals who flung themselves from the top of the 2nd tallest building in Downtown LA, The Library Tower so as not to be anywhere near the 5 feet 2 inch towering maquette seductress.

The salty philanthropist Eli Broad's vanity museo The Broad flew the lady to the spotty gentrification capital of the westboast.

So sad that LA is filled with many unsightly, new cheaply made uppity downscale apartment buildings that after a year will savagely start to fall apart.  Everywhere else the poor are relegated to tent cities.

Curator Bradford Nordeen IV, of the Rock Hannisport Nordeen's and high pitched Truman Capote gay accent, and his rock steady crew delivered Warhol Icon inspired by Nico with performances by Jenny Hval, Tiny Vipers, Geneva Jacuzzi, a temporary contemporary installation by Nao Bustamante, Ms. Davis and goddess Kembra Pfahler and her Girls of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. A parade of over 2000 visitors wafted through the museum during the evenings festivities.

Absense does make the heart grow fonder as the place was packed to the rafter grafters with a lot of the old guard underground royalty the likesis of: Papa Ron Athey, Sheree Rose, Jeffrey Hilberg, Johanna Went, Craig Roose aka: Billy Wisdom, Carol Cetrone & Debby Spinelli, Mark Simon & his The Boyfriend Barbershop Sextette, Glen Meadmore with Barbara Young, Helen Bed O’Neill of Retail Slut with fellow former Afro Sisters Mark Maxwell, Bud Thomas of the One Archive, Alice Bag and hubby Jailbait Velasquez, Dora from Ventura, Hernan Perez, LA Times scribe Steve Appleford with “It Girl” Pandora Young, Michele “Hell” Carr, Carla Bozulich of The Geraldine Fibbers and her hot young Romanian husb, Howie Pyro of Danzig, Scott Ewalt, Michele “Meesh” Mills, Jane Cantillon with husband Dick and Oscar winning film editor Billy Rich.

Tyro academic Leon Hilton of the famous hotelier clan sent this list of those spotted in the SRO audience: Ethiopian/Irish actress Ruth Negga of the film Loving and AMC romperstomper Preacher, Ivan A. Ramos queer studies dept scholar of University of Maryland,  filmmaker Eliane Lima, Karen Tongson and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson of USC, Sarah Kessler, Joshua Takano Chambers of Northwestern University, ASCO archivist/curator Ondine Chavoya of Williams College,babyface LA artists Matthew Lax and Joshua Raines,Celeste Dupuy-Spencger  of the current Whitney Biennial with Sarah Johnson, Matt Savitsky, Benjamin Boatright, John Polly of World of Wonder, Jimmy Vogel, Nacho Nava, Jess Cuevas, Maya Bookbinder,John Tain of the Getty, Sarah Williams of LA Womens Center for Creative Work, Archie Nguyen of American Idol,Ben Johnson of Los Angeles Dept of Cultural Affairs,Joey Heinen of LACMA,Seth Bogart, Abdi Taslimi, Hannah Grossman, Justine Suzanne, Sam Courmier, Malisa Humphrey, Stacey Allan of East of Borneo, basketball stars Larry Nance Jr & Lonzo Ball and his younger brother LeMelo, Dr. Amelia Jones of USC, pretty Risa Needleman of Invisible-Exports Gallery the New York City commercial gallery that reps Ms. Davis, with a slew of collectors including Pamela Robinson and her hot husband, Dynasty Handbag, Marlou De Luna & Hal Marenus, Darin Kinoshita, Andrew Gould, Dean Litner, Kimberly Kim of North Korea, Rudy Bleu, Cesar Vega, Emi Fontana of West of Rome Public Art, Jefffrey Hilbert of the new hot Flagrant Magazine, Hernan Perez, power couple Erikla Fierce and Hector San Martine and Ms. Davis’ young juicy Jewish Mexican LA assistant Oscar Pena.
***
Ms. Davis was also the guest of honor for Puce Moment Mt. Washington Hilltop Fundraiser for bi-coastal performative film event Dirty Looks. The beautiful shindig featured a musical performance by Julianna Barwick, MC-ing by Drew Droege as ex Charlie’s Angel Tanya Roberts and Michael Lucid as Latina TV presenter Damiana Garcia. The minimalist catering was provided by Andrew McKenzie and mixology by Kimberly Kim and Squeeky Blonde. Ms. Davis & Mr. Nordeen’s wardrobe was provided by the fine people at Oak Boutique on Beverly Blvd with expert styling by Jess Cuevas.

AUF IN DEN KAMPF

Auf in den Kampf!


Rising Stars,Falling Stars-Sweet 16mm Never Been Kissed was a triumph Sungay with a lovely crowd of cosmopolitans descending on Wedding to bask in the light of La Vagimule Doll in the Kuppel Halle of silent green Kulturquartier.

Ms. Davis and Jewish Muzlim Daniel Hendrickson changed their regular format a bit to chittle chat inbetween screenings of short music films including two episodes of Beat Club from the late 1960s featuring performances by Manfred Mann, PP Arnold, Cat Stevens, The BeeGees, The Who, and Jimmy Hendrix. Also on hand were short music subjects with the likesis of the late great Debbie Reynolds and a bunch of mincing chorus boy faggots, Jane Morgan and legends legende Della Reece, a woman certainly touched by an angel.

The surprise of the evening was the No Controlles music video by Cholita, the Female Menudo with 13 year old Graciela Grejalva & Co.

In the audience joining Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, actress Susanne Sachsse and film historian Marcuse Siegelstein, 18 year Canuckian muscle teen sensation Shawn Mendes with his older beau British actor/comic Jack Whitehall the star of BBC’s hilarious version of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, Yale Performance Studies Scholar Tavia N’yonga, the cousin of actress Lupita N’yonga with his gorgeous and vivacious younger sister Isis and handsome business partners Johan & Paul. Was great to see my former student Marc Arthur who is now the right hand man to RoseLee Goldberg of Performa. Marc and his lover will be leaving New York for two years to work in Ann Arbor Michigan, but Marc will still commute to Manhattan occasionally to fullfill his Performa duties.

So lovely seeing Afro German entrepreneur Clarisse Mehring and gal pal, sexy power couple Ruth Schoenegge and Miriam Japp, juicy Christoph Bovermann my former Giessen student who now has a great job with the European Film Academy, my other hot, brilliant former students Lea Schneiderman and her girlfriend Arnitra, vivacious Jasmina Metwaly of the Egyptian Mosireen Film Kollektiv who is in Berlin with a DAAD Fellowship, glamorous Trixie Schonherr the famed prima ballerina who was the focus of CHEAP Funk on Reboot FM the evening before on 88.4, Piero Bellomo, journalista Phillip Meinert who is doing a book on queer punk and wants to interview the diva, projectionist Anselm, Nadine of silent green and guardian of the gate Nadja.

Along with CHEAP kollektiv Fearless leader Susanne Sachsse the Vagimule Dollface was in Hamburg for the Theater of the World Festival at Kampnagel taking part in the DropDeadGorgeous installation that was part of Hannah Hurtzig’s „Die Stillgestellten oder: Salle Des Pas Perdus” in the Mobile Academy. I had a divine time working on Mobile Academy with the lovely and smart Ms. Hurtzig and her team of Herr, Marion, Frau Sarah Lewis, Frau Eva, Frau Dinkle and Frau Zaubel. Was so excited to meet the divine Christina Sharp of Tufts University. What a beautiful and sublime lady. Want to read her book “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Didn’t get to see her on stage as I was way to occupied in my section on the day Christina did her thing, but on the last day of Mobile Academy I was able to sneak away from my installation and hear the wonderfully regal Nana Adusei-Poku and punk academe Christiane Voss. Before leaving for Hamburg I had a very busy Saturday doing NYU Berlin Global Press Conference with CHEAP Kollektiv and in the very late evening being part of Saavy Contemporary’s Congress through the German Federation. I love the wonderful people at Saavy Contemporary that includes their fabulous leader Bonaventur Ndikung and Lema Sikod, Beya Othmani, Elena Agudio, Antonia Alampi, hunky Abhihishek Nilamber and Lynhan Balabat.

Those of you on the left coast please check out the latest exhibit by my Portland Oregon gallerist Amy Adams of Adams & Ollman.


I WAS A WALL, AND MY BREASTS WERE LIKE FORTRESS TOWERS
JUNE 9–JULY 8, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, JUNE 9 FROM 6–8PM

MATH BASS
JULIE BENA
ELLEN LESPERANCE
SARAH PETERS
AMY PLEASANT
CHRISTINA RAMBERG
ANA ROLDAN
ALICE TIPPIT

Adams and Ollman is pleased to present "I Was A Wall, And My Breasts Were Like Fortress Towers," the first of our two-part summer exhibitions that features work by a range of artists that represents or references the body, in parts, as code, sign or symbol.

The exhibitions respond to the metaphors of "blason anatomique," a 16th century poetic device wherein the female body is dissected into fragments. In these anatomical love poems, eyes, breasts, lips, thighs are isolated and glorified; as various parts of a woman's body are desired, the whole is ordered, divided and subsequently, ruled.

Like the "blason anatomique," the artists included in these exhibitions often focus only on a fragment–a head, torso, or finger. However, in so doing, the artists do not objectify or catalogue, but rather construct a new monument or totem, one which reimagines the figure's erotic, surreal, contentious, and formidable potentialities. Using a combination of oppositional, defiant and hybrid forms and employing abstraction, among other devices, these artists approach the subject through the lens of history, language, design, science fiction, craft and architecture to take over the blason tradition and reclaim a space for the body, one that is contemporary, subjective and subversive.

Ich Bei Tag Und Du Bei Nacht

ICH BEI TAG UND DU BEI NACHT


This Sunday June 11th at 8pm Rising Stars, Falling Stars-Sweet 16mm Never Been Kissed returns to silent green Kulturquartier with a unique screening of Beat Club, the German music TV program from the 1960s and early 1970s. We will show two episodes featuring Cat Stevens, The BeeGee’s, The Who and Jimmy Hendrix plus some short music films in a kommentierte stylus just to give things a different bunghole whiff. Remember you smelt it you dealt it

RABAUKEN & RADAU

Rabauken & Radau
Jonathan Berger my gorgeous super smart and super talented child of high demand art has been so busy with a myriad of projects.  So happy his work  brought him to the far reaches of the known universe including pitstops in Europa.  Luckily I was in Berlin for a New York sekunda to attend a cocktail soiree in his honour given by La Susanne Sachsse at her East Berlin Compound.  The drinks were pure marvels of stiff mixology.  Thats right folks i got plastered. The foodstuff of the gathering was also divoon. The table featured Roger Moore styled Octopussy, Japanese spicy beef curtains, and a Rodan spring lentil salad-yummsis.
The "It" crowd in attendence included: Professor Christiane Voss, the great Hannah Hurtzig, lovely Nazl Klierci and her hot muscular new Serbian lover Mischa, Israeli artist Yael Bartana, Senol Senturk, Katja Sander, Marcuse Siegelstein, Daniel Hendrickson, the Jewish Muzlim, Richard Gabriel and a host of other notables too chic to mention in one undulating sitting.

Warning to Los Angeloids.  Vaginal Davis that infernal wanton creature will be returning to her birthcity soon.  Yes she is being brought back to do an intervention at the newest child on the museo block namely The Broad Museum which sits on Bunker Hill near the Disney Hall, Redcat and MOCA.
All the Camuuuu is for a summer happening that is curated by young Bradford Nordeen of Dirty Looks fame.  Other famed curatorials in the series are James Spooner of the Afro Punk Repository and our very own tattoo love god Ron Athey.
On a sad note the Ms. Vagimule dolls older sister Teresita Rayjandra doesn't seem long in this world so the two sibblings will get a chance to reunite for possibly the last time.  Sister Jehovah's Witness Teresa has lived in the same dingbat midcentury Hollywood flat since the mid 1970s.  Its located in the Armenian section of Hollywood on Ardmore near Santa Monica Blvd and Normandie.  The apartment building is the nicest on a block of ugly newish (the 90s) apartments and badly kept single family homes. The old owner of the building after his wife died turned late onset homosexual. Thats rights, as older tennants died off like Ms. Davis' mother Mary Magdelene in 2000 the owner rented only to sizzling hot young latino boys with a penchant for not wearing many clothes. Every time i would visit my mother or sister hanging around the kidney shaped pool were all these divine Bablyonian gorgons in various states of undress.  Twas pure beautiliciousness suprema.  The elderly owner eventually died and the new corporation that bought the building drained the pool and kicked out the juicy hombres as they never paid rent, being that they lived on a Cal grant of getting their golden pingas sucked in perpetuity.  Now my sisters building has gone all dullard now with new tenants paying over $2,500 for a one bedroom that my sister only pays $600 for.  She is lucky that they haven't tried to evict her as she is a hoarder with junk that fills the flat up to the ceiling.  I guess the new corporate owners are content to just wait her out until she dies.  My sister not only has lived in the apartment since the mid 70s she has also worked the same job for the County of LA's Housing Authority and Section Eight since 1975.
Other news of the Davista realm is that after Ms. Davis' sculpture pieces, acetate vinyl record texts and make-up paintings got snatched up by the Whitney Museum of Art last year after her solo show at Invisible-Exports Gallery.
In the Fall The New Museum will re-mount Come On Daughter Save Me borrowing all the pieces from the collectors for the exhibit.  Ms. Davis will at the same time be part of a two person exhibit at Invisible-Exports that has been given the working title of Cinema Chimera, and will also do a performance at the New Museum for all those not use to her just being a visual artist.
Speaking of mega visual art talents who also happend to be young gifted and black. Lets turn our attention to Mr. sexy and WoW!  Damien Davis who is no relation to Vaginal D. but is the grandson of Sammy Davis Jr and Altovise.  Here is the 514 on his proclititties:

June 16th to August 5th, 2017
METHOD GALLERY
106 3rd Ave S
Seattle, WA 98104

Public Receptions: 1st Thursdays — July 6th & August 3rd, 5pm-9pm. Panel discussion at Northwest African American Museum Saturday, June 17th, 11am-1pm
Damien Davis is a Brooklyn-based artist. His practice explores historical representations of blackness by seeking to unpack the visual language of various cultures and question how these societies code/decode representations of race through design and digital modes of production.
In White Room, Davis will create a site specific installation that questions the notion of the gallery as a neutral space. Davis will create a custom, all white “jigsaw puzzle” made out of painted CNC routed plywood. Enmeshed within this puzzle will be an assortment of patterns and motifs typical of Davis’ visual vocabulary. In doing so he opens the conversation about literal and metaphorical representations of “whiteness” and, posits that there is no neutrality when looking at art.

Davis holds a B.F.A in Studio Art and an M.A in Visual Arts Administration from New York University. He is currently an artist in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He has exhibited widely throughout the US and in Japan and Italy. www.damiendavisstudio.com

This exhibition has been presented with generous support from Chihuly Garden and Glass, the Northwest African American Museum, and is funded in part by a Neighborhood Matching Fund from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

As a cultural partner of the Seattle Art Fair, METHOD is pleased to participate in the fair’s 2017 Windermere VIP Program with an event on Sunday, August 6, 2017. Artist Damien Davis will give remarks and be on-hand to answer questions. Registration for this event will be open to Seattle Art Fair VIP cardholders in June.