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