Thursday, June 15, 2017
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.