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Hannukah came early this year and so was the Jewish Muzlim’s yearly soiree one of the highlights of Berlin’s winter society. Lots of singing, laughing and frivolity on hand with glamour girls Fearless Leader of CHEAP Kollektiv Susanne Sachsse, Her Royal Highness Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus of the Arsenal Institüt für Film und Videokunst, and everyone’s favourite sexy scholar Nanna Heidenreich. Of course one can’t have a Jewish celebration with only one Jewish Muzlim in attendance so Marcuse Siegelstein aka: Marc Siegel and Noam Gorbat were the resident delici Dreidel spinners. The food was resplendid and likewise the company that included kJohnny Blue and his Gina Lollabridgida doppelganger wife Amelia, Piero Bellomo, and Senol Senturk. Pass the Halla bread please!
The European book launch of Spector Books Film Culture 80: The Legend of Barbara Rubin at silent green Kultur Quartier was majestic. Included was an encore screening of Rubin’s subversive feministiche classic 16mm double penetration projection Christmas on Earth, with live radio score performed by La Susanne Sachsse, and a reading of Rubin’s letters by Ale Bachlechner of Cologne.
Ms. Vaginal Davis got to sit next to the charming Spector Books publisher Anne Konig during the fabu dinner before the event in the Mars boite. Afterwards at the Mars bar there was a sizzling reception with more food and alcoholica galore. Ms. D. was in quite a festive mood and got to meet lots of juicy young people including the sweet and adoreable Ms. Sarai Meyron who did copyediting and proofreading of the Rubin book. One of the books NYC based editors was Charity Coleman who use to be married to Audre Beardsley aka: Andrew Gould the manager of Bricktops at the Parlour Club in Hollywood. Miss Charity Hope Valentine as she was christened at the time was one of the regulars of the performance space and speakeasy known as a Bricktop Voluptuous Panic Girl.
Of course Ms. Lady Davis had to leave Berlin soon after the book launch to return to Geneva to teach at Work Master HEAD. She had some lovely studio visits or as they call them in the French part of Switzerland --Rendevous with Louise Bonpaix, who showed the diva a video document of her drag king performance as The Great Luigi, sex champion and former boyband lead singer now going solo.
No nonsence young artiste Constance Brosse gave Ms. Davis a preview of her new film Un Velo Sol which may be finished by summer 2019. The film promises to be a visual treasure of French feminist bicycle kitchen realness and the reclaiming of the streets by bicyclists ala America’s Critical Mass movement. One of my students who hails from Iran, I won´t post her real name but will give her the nomme de plume of Sativa Colaswara as she could be in grave danger next time she goes home for a visit. She has already been put in prison once because of her controversial art work.
Sativa’s latest project revolves around a lampshade moj. Any western film shown in Iran with a woman, she gets replaced with a lampshade if what she is wearing is deemed inappropriate or risqué. Sativa also introduced Ms. Davis to the Persian feminist poet Frough Farrokhzad and the white hijab movement that is taking hold in Iran.
Of course Ms. Davis always enjoys her conversations with the stylish and glam Juliet Lakhdan, and marvels at the creative mind inherant of Jacopo Belloni and his one man disco affair that he calls Little Tragedy Party. All these students do very beautiful work.
With the rest of her labzone Ms. Davis continued with the work she started last month utilizing the Robert Z. Leonard 1941 MGM film Ziegfeld Girl which is ripe for emulation and deconstruction.
Returning back to Berlin Ms. Davis didn’t have much time to get back in the Contemporary Vinegar Syndrome mode for the big spectacular collaboration with the Gropius Bau and that gorgeous talent that is Wu Tsang.
The audience who came to this edition of CVS was literally transported by the Late Night Fermentation Salon. Wu and Liz Rosenfeld outdid themselves with capable assist from Boychild and a cast of thousands that included intermedia saxophonist Bendik Giske and his cute partner plus the lovely Clare Molloy Gropius Bau curatorial fellow. The ambiance, lighting, flowers, food, drink and magic that permeated the Gropius Bau restaurant kept everyone in an utter flutter.
Earlier the screening of the two White Christmas movies, Harun Farochi’s bombastic 1968 anti Vietnam War short and the highly militaryized schmaltzy musical from 1954 directed by Michael Curtiz may have baffled the audience. I wasn't so affective in explaining why I decided to screen the two films about war and the commercial laded danger capitalism consumerist holiday. I wanted to point out that war and its kissing cousin arms sales are what prop up these global economies that turn most of the world into not only indentured servants but all in out slaves. I am really not a fan of White Christmas star the hambone singer and actor Bing Crosby. From the LA punk scene I knew Crosby's troubled gay grandson Dennis Crosby and granddaughter Denise Crosby who went to Hollywood High School with my friends Alicia Plake and Wagner Vieira and was one of the stars of the first Star Trek TV franchise The Next Generation playing the character Tasha Yar.
Ganymead comic actor Danny Kaye I find almost as irritating as Mickey Rooney with his constant mugging. Donald O'Conner the original choice for this role in White Christmas would have been much better and he is actually a great dancer. In 1953 he was paired with Vera-Ellen in the Ethel Merman starrer Call Me Madam which also featured an Irving Berlin score. Also one of my main reasons for showing White Christmas is the illustrious Rosemary Clooney, a most excellent jazz stylist and the tiny waisted Vera-Ellen who I don't believe was anorexic which is the popular modern gossip about the dancer/actress who died relatively young in the early 1980s.
Also seen looking stylishly engaging: Josephine Brinkmann, Christina Demetriou, Mads Dinesen, Eirini Fountedaki, Berin Golonu who use to be a curator at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Museum and Art Center who brought Ms. Davis to the Bay Area in 2008 for The Way That We Rhyme exhibition. The sultry Ms. Golonu went back to school for her Phd working with the divine Douglas Criimp and now teaches at the University of Rochester. Berin came to Berlin on holiday with handsome artist beau Richard Barlow known for his chalk interventions at museums and galleries.
Other notables included James Grabsch, Merle Groneweg of the Xposed Queer Film Festival, costume designer Leila Hekmat, Frank Hiller, Susanne Huber, Kristina Keinemann,
Cultural producer and curator Leon Kruijswijk, Ricardo Matos, Cristina Gomez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer of discoteca flaming star, costume design student Michelle Bondulich, Anna Mohrdiek, Jan Muehlig, Marietta L. von Piekenbrock, E. Rutishauser, Petra Elisabeth Sailer, Aline Schwibbe, artist composer and choreographer Colin Self, Constance Tenvik, Anne Tilkorn, Maurice Van de Mosselaar, Emma Williams the South African architect, Willem de Roij, artist and professor at Frankfurt's Steadeschule, Sebastian Kaiser dramaturgy with Vegard Venge, Oliver Hardt the documentary filmmaker, Rachel O’Reilly the Australian fracking expert, writer and current phd student in research architecture program at Goldsmith, luscious artist Lydia Hamann, prima ballerina Trixie Schönherr aka Beatrice Cordua, Ms. Davis’ partner in grime Daniel Hendrickson the Jewish Muzlim and Michaela Wünsch of bbooks publishing kollektiv where the next Contemporary Vinegar Syndrome will be held in Spring 2019.
