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Monday, December 28, 2020

SICHTBARES UND UNSICHTBARES IN DER EUROPÄISCHEN LANDSCHAFT

In Los Ang in the 1980’s there were two distinct sex cults that flourished in the post punk cosmos. The first was the notorious Godz, led by a charismatic Australian cyber punk looking man named Damian of the O-men. Damian was very striking, muscular and had quite an influence on a number of Hollywood punky boys with his group that operated out of a gallery space called X=Art in West Hollywood, North of Santa Monica Blvd at San Vicente.

I attended a lot of that particular galleries events, as they were part of a circuit of independent galleries, performance and project spaces that were similar to my Hag Gallery. My home gallery Hag, with the subtitle: small, contemporary, haggard was somewhat of a first at that time, so I received a lot of party and “eventa” invites.

I even had a short fling with an artist who performed regularly at X=Art who called himself “Miracle!”. I can’t remember the exact spelling of his name, it may have had a “K” in it instead of a “C”. He was a wiry ginger haired character with a giant floppy of a penis who favoured wearing harem pants and had his hair shaved on the sides, but featured a long braided tail acted as his calling card.

In those years I lied about my age regularly getting a kick appearing to be years younger then I actually was. So if I was really 19 I would say I was 14, and an emancipated minor.
“Miracle!” was in his late twenties, and I found out later only chased after jailbait boys.Years later he wound up murdered in prison, but that’s a story for another time.

Getting back to Godz. All the boys in the Godz sex cult had the word “Godz” tattooed in the inside of their lower lip. Damian their leader was always very nice and respectful with me, and never tried his hypnotic sex majick mojo--- not that it would have worked on a black lady—we aren’t that needy, readily looking for acceptance.

Damian wound up dead of Mrs. Aids in the early 1990s but years after his passing I would occasionally run into men with the Godz tattoo. I think the handsome and extremely well endowed hairdresser Craig Pzadoris had been a member of Godz when he was young. Later Craig became involved in a strange S&M laden relationship with the artist Richard Hawkins which had some Godz overtones to it. I had nicknamed Craig "Pia Pzadorable" when he use to go out with the late milliner Richard Wanda, "The Man" and shared a Silverlake house with my former collaborator Quasi O'Shea of Amoeba Records & Filmworks. The last thing I heard about Craig was that he moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles and gave up his successful hair styling career to become a chef. Craig was such a golden child, tall, broad shouldered with dark, brooding Heathcliff good looks.

The other sex cult involved Perry Farrell of the alternative music group Jane’s Addiction and Lollapalooza Concert Festival. After Perry’s band Psi Com broke up and before he started Jane’s Addiction he lived in a big craftsman house on Wilton Place that was Hancock Park adjacent. In the house lived Perry his many girlfriends and boyfriends that included the much younger boys that would form the nuclei of Jane’s Addiction namely Stephen Perkins, Eric Avery and Dave Novarro. Perry has a dinosaur penis and a lean tight bod, and had a way of looking at a person and making them immediately feel very connected to him. I met Perry through his Orange County girlfriend Xiola Blue who was a smart and stylish teenage girl from a posh international pharmaceuticals family like or probably was The Sacklers.

It's been so long now I don't really remember.

I certainly thought that Perry was sexy, but I could never fancy a white dude sporting long and ungainly dreads. Only certain black people can get away with that look.

My art band The Afro Sisters and Jane’s Addiction performed together often at clubs like Theoretical and Silverlake/Echo Park and Downtown LA parties. I saw first hand Perry’s sexual prowess over multitudes of fans and supporters. He certainly had that guru affect. When Perry was in the band Psi Com he lived off of Melrose Avenue and Vine Street near these tiny little court apartments that looked like ramshackle huts near the famous club “The Grandia Room” where the Rhythm Lounge held court. This wasn’t far from the trendy coffee shop of Dora, an eccentric Cuban lady who was gifted a solid gold Cadillac by Elvis Presley in the 1960s.

Perry Farrell’s sex cult was less obvious then Damian’s but it was more powerful and far reaching as it encompassed both queers and straights.









Friday, December 25, 2020

DER KLEINE GRENZVERKEHR

Just heard the sad news that Hal Negro(Marty Goldberg) of The Satintones died. He was such a lovely man who was quite the fixture in the Los Angeles punk and post punk scene. It seems like I am losing a lot of people from my generation. Ron Athey also relayed to me that artist Liz Young also passed-what a talent.
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The Linda Lindas are a teenage girl band from LA featuring two LatinX sisters, a cousin and a close friend. Their music is very power poppy and punk spirited. Thank you sister of the clothe Alice Bag for turning me on to them, I haven’t DJaned since the Feminist Film Festival in Frankfurt in November, 2019 so who knows when I will get another opportunity to be behind the mighty wheels of steel but if i do I am adding the Linda Lindas to my play list.
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Am i going bonkers in my senile dottage? I’ll let you all out there be the judge of that, but I find myself really attracted to the disgraced writer James Fry. For some reason I am obsessed with smelling his armpits. He looks like he has a very strong body odour.

The hot new teen sensations The Linda Lindas from Los Angeles




James Fry pubic hair braganza





In doing my winter solstice cleaning found some photos that the legendary artist Don Bachardy sent of a few portraits he did of me back in the early aughts at his Aunt Monica compound. Mr. Bachardy is such a delightful man, and still quite sexy with a sly almost teenage like fashion sense. I first met Don Bachardy and his late lover Christopher Isherwood through Michael Reynolds and his older lover Walter who were neighbors of the famous couple. This was back in the early 1980s. Michael and Walter were big fans of The Afro Sisters and would come to all of our shows. Michael had been involved with Walter since he was 15 years old. The last time i saw Don Bachardy in Berlin about ten years ago he said that Michael has now passed away. 

And the latest event from Participant After Dark in New York City. Donate, Donate and then after that Donate. Its an easy rule for kids to follow.

JOE IS JOE

a reading performance from Joe Westmoreland’s 2001 classic novel

Tramps Like Us

Sunday, December 27, 2020 at 6pm EST

participantafterdark.art

Hosted by Eileen Myles and Tom Cole

With special guests:

Brontez Purnell

Erin Kimmel

Samuel Delaney

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Tony Stinkmetal

Lori E. Seid

Ryan McGinley

Johanna Fateman

Roberta Colindrez

and with music by Anohni

Tramps Like Us tells a virtually unknown saga of Joe and his buddies and girlfriends on a queer journey through 70s and 80s United States. Tramps lifts the lid on that increasingly utopian analog and mystic searching party time (sweet punk psychedelia) fueled by a flight from repressive family violence dropping us off at the traumatic edge of the early AIDS crisis. Joe banishes the cliché of the 70s and 80s by telling a really deep and felt account of sex and friendship before anyone or anything told us to stop.

PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK is a virtual performance, screening, and event space launched by PARTICIPANT INC in October 2020. The site hosts artist projects commissioned specifically for the AFTER DARK web platform and remote viewing. PARTICIPANT invited artist Glen Fogel to design and develop AFTER DARK. Artists will work with Fogel through the Fall/Spring 2020-21 season, inhabiting the site and fully modifying it for their projects' specific needs. AFTER DARK is conceived of as a blank slate, removing as much institutional framework as possible. The site will only present current projects, and will often go ’dark’ in between events.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

TOTE HOSE

Berlin is in the midst of the second Pandora Pandemic lockdown where they actually cancelled Christmas. Smart move. No one needs those icky Christmas markets or that nasty warm gluhwein or mulled wine. Germany is a secular country anyway and just pays lip service to the Catholics and Evangelisches who still hold sway over the country because of tradition. The religiousity is stronger in Southern Germany. 

You know things were getting deep when Chancellor Angela "with a hard G'" Merkel got all emotional on national television. I don't have any attachment to the adopted Pagan holiday of Christmas. I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas, Easter or any holidays for that matter, and I don't celebrate birthdays either as my mother became taken with the Jehovah's Witness sect back in the mid 1950s though as a natural born rebel she wasn't consistent in following the Witnesses dogma. I've only had a birthday cake twice in my life.  The first was given to me by Robert Lopez aka: El Vez, the Mexican Elvis in the mid 1990's and the second by my gorgeous Berlin gallerist Isabella Bortolozzi early this year. 

I am so glad I never got taken in by the Christmas consumerism scam. I didn't see the Merkel broadcast as I don't have a TV set, but i certainly heard about it. 

Mother Nature has finally spoken and she says that the next serious pandemic will be an extraterrestrial virus emanating from the extremely dry and rank pussy of one offensive elderly lady known as Vaginal Davis Jr.

Which reminds me of Dirk Jager the Titan Media German porn studlet with the penis head shaped like the tip of a Concord Jet. The Belgian artist Christophe Chemin use to be buds with Mr. Jager who is very tiny but extremely muscular in that way that all blue movie kingpins adopt via steroid rage. Herr Jager is a classically handsome man, and I believe is most likely retired from the video screen, as he is a middle aged man now.  I'll always remember back in 2007 at the premiere party at the WAU Cafe for  CHEAP Blacky at HAU 2 that Dirk Jager made a beeline for Assaf Hochman the humpy dark haired Israeli dancer whose very voluptuous tight tuche was displayed quite provocatively on the stage. The two dimunitive men made a date, but discovered they were both Greek active and Assaf wouldn't even let poor Dirk  get a whiff of lest allow him the privilege of devouring his tasty treat garden salad.

Dirk Jager and the might famed Concord shaped appendage.



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My incredibly talented ex-student Maria Norrman is the rococo voice of her generation. Maria was one of my top students from my 2010 seminar at Lund University's Malmö Art Academy in Sweden.  Her thrilling drag persona Millennium Star  has been popping up all over Scandia.  The delightfully soft spoken Ms. Norrman is as beautiful on the inside as she is outside and super seven hundred prolific. You will be hearing a lot about her in the coming months. Mark my Jack Smithian flaming verbiage.

Check out her upcoming events here:

PORTALS
An online event of performance art to camera.
24 December 2020 – 1 January 2021

Eleanor Lawler (IRL) Rae Goodwin (USA), Maria Norrman (SWE), Quilla Constance (UK), Franics Fay (IRL), Katherine Nolan (IRL) John Freeman (USA)

To be viewed on the social media pages of:
Livestock Live Art and MART Gallery and Studios, Dublin, Ireland
https://www.facebook.com/Mart.Gallery.Studios
http://livestock-art.com/

Livestock invites you to pass through Portals, an on-line event of performance art to camera.

It seems like we are existing betwixt and between a past that is clearly gone and a future that is still uncertain.The current crisis is likely to prolong this undecided state for many of us. While frustrating at times, this inbetweenness also has potential as a moment in which we can imagine change. As Bill Bridges has written in Transitions, “We need not feel defensive about this apparently unproductive time-out at turning points in our lives … In the apparently aimless activity of our time alone, we are doing important inner business.”

This event presents responses from Irish and International artists that seek to reimagine the covid moment as a portal to something new. They will be screened online to lead us out of 2020 and into the new year that awaits.

Maria Norrmans drag persona Millennium Star embodies the current state of in-between, manifesting as a three headed triple deity figure. Millennium Star looks into the camera, with an ambiguous gaze. Their facial expressions and eye movements deal with the current state of our time, numbness, content, bored, forward gazing all at the same time.

Maria Norrman (b. 1987 in Sweden, lives and works in Malmö, Sweden) is an artist, curator and drag performer (Millennium Star.) Norrmans work explores our fantasies and images regarding history, gender and sexuality. Her main mediums are video and photography in combination with costume making and clothing, performance and installation.

www.marianorrman.net
Instagram: c.maria.norrman

Upcoming in 2021:

April
Jane Avril
Gallery Ping-Pong, Malmö, Sweden

A project 17 years in the making will be exhibited for the first time at Gallery Ping-Pong in April. Jane Avril is a project about my relation to French dance performer Jane Avril (1868-1943) who was a friend of the artist Toulouse-Lautrec. From the very first time I saw images and photos of her in 2003, I’ve felt connected to her personality and artistic expression.
The exhibition will include photographs, video, text and installations.

TBA
Drag Queen Story Hour

Millennium Star has been invited by the grand dames of Malmöian storytelling, Lady Busty and Miss Shameless, to read norm creative stories for children with them. Miss Rona, the virus on everyone's lips, will decide when this can be possible.

TBA
Residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris

Miss Rona (the covid-19 virus) strikes yet again - who knows when I can make this residency happen, but at least it's decided and there to grab once one can travel and move safely again.

Maria Norrman is Millennium Star



Thom of Elfland

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

DAS LICHT FLUTET DEM GIEBELFELD ÜBER DER TÜR

Billy Miller of Straight to Hell Magazine, also known as the Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts, is one of the most fascinating people in the known world. Billy and I go way back and I absolutely adore him. He is 63 years old now and is still a major hotnik and boychild of the promised land. In his radiant youth he was a prized possession of the older men lucky enough to drink from his goldenen cupeth. He was heralded as one of the most coveted teenage concubines of the upper mid west during the 1970s. No one makes me howl louder and longer then Mr. Billy Miller. Billy is a guaranteed laugh riot who will leave you in veratible stitches bended in half. He's also a walking Encyclopedia Brown of arcane facts and figures. Only recently have we been shooting the proverbial breeze regularly on the telephone. Not many people like to chit chat on the phone these days. Those I gab with frequently are my longtime sister girlfriend Glen Meadmore aka: Penny Feathers of the Hot Horny and Born Again Kuntry Band, Karen Maria Jose Hector Martinez the Azteca Warrior top supporter of the Malibu Colony Surfer Community and Daniel Hendrickson, the Jewish Muzlim of Kollektiv CHEAP who also lives in Berlin. My infrequent klatch pals are my ex student Atte Pentinen the Finish young artist who was in my performance art seminar at the Kunst Universität Linz and Michele "Meesh" Mills the three time Emmy Award winning reality TV producer with RuPaul's Drag Strip. Meesh has such a busy insanely crazed schedule its rare that we get to talk, but when we do its very juicy and completely epic. Meesh use to be one of my rotating guardians of the gate at my performance art speakeasy Brickstops at the Parlour Club 2002-05 in the Russian Quartier of Hollywood. Meesh also was in Cholita, the Female Menudo and designed costumes, did makeup and helped edit a lot of my many video film projects from the last century. Now that Michele has broken into the industrial entertainment complex a lot of people try to hit her up for contacts and schmoozing. Of course its people who would have never given her the time of day in her pre TV success days. Well thats the very nature of the showbiz hactory eh?

But getting back to little Billy Miller, the other evening he calls me out of the blue and I start boring him with details about all my doctor appointments with rheuma specialists and orthopaedics and what not when Billy goes on about some gay bars in Detroit. One place in particular was a pub that was staffed by elderly women that was both terribly formal and downright sleezy if there could be such a mix. Half of the male clientele were middle aged men, the rest randy cornfed teenage boys. I can't go into specifics as its enough to make a jaded Madam blush suppositories, and I don't want to be accused of corrupting anyone's morals. Billy and his doctor husband are moving from New York to a small college town in Pennsylvania, but something tells me that Billy will find some scandalous adventures in his new hamlet home.
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Karen Maria Jose Hector Martinez the Azteca Warrior and great lover of Pepperdine Water Polo Team


Judy LaBruce of Toronto Canada

The genius genius of Kembra

Daytime Glamour






This note I just received from Judy LaBruce the Canadian auteur and Supreme Southern Death Cultist:

Hey Kids!! Tis the Season!!! My new "Death Book" from Baron Books makes the perfect holiday gift! Because nothing says Christmas like death!! Or just add it to your book collection! Destined to become a collector's item! Now shipping!!! Click below and order today!!! xxx BLAB

DEATH BOOK | baron-magazine
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Oh and this from the beauteous Lia Gangitano and her art gang at Participant Inc. in New York City

Untitled (Unintelligible ██████ ██████)
Organized by Serubiri Moses
Performed by Raymond Pinto

Friday, December 18, 2020, 7pm EST
participantafterdark.art
This performance will include open captioning

Untitled (Unintelligible ██████ ██████) combines research and performance—specifically drawing from archives and movement study—to enact processes of memory and commemoration around Black and sexually dissident experiences, past and present. The project takes two major figures, Assotto Saint (born Les Cayes, Haiti, 1957—died, New York, US, 1994) and Rotimi Fani-Kayode (born Nigeria 1955—died London, UK, 1989) as a starting point, and seeks to present an alternative art, literature, and performance history. The project is organized by Serubiri Moses and performed by Raymond Pinto, and includes research by both.

Assotto Saint and Rotimi Fani-Kayode were friends. They met in New York in the early 1980s. They exchanged letters, which have been archived at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. We know that Fani-Kayode photographed Saint, and that Saint went to London to perform an experimental theater work. Their friendship conjures meanings of solidarity across the Atlantic. The emphasis on Haitian Vodou, and Ifa Divination in each of their practices alerts us to their quotidian practice and wish for survival.

Research for this project, which started in 2019, primarily took place in New York, through the archives at the Schomburg Center, and through various libraries in the city such as the Library for the Performing Arts. It also included consultation with primary texts such as Saint's collection of poems Stations (1989) and Fani-Kayode's book of photographs Black Male/White Male (1988). The movement study was based on consultations with primary sources such as Dances of Haiti by Katherine Dunham, among others. Research on diasporic religion and sexuality included: Roberto Strongman's Queering Black Atlantic Religions (2019).

Specific figures of the 1980s gay and lesbian movement in New York have been elided by various historiographies of the time period. This alerts us to the necessity of commemoration in the present. However, a major question that is asked by South African art historian Ashraf Jamal is, "But, how to commemorate?" Avoiding a general commemoration of the ‘80s gay and lesbian movement with its official histories, the project pursues an artistic reflection rooted in contemporary art practices, establishing a space for memory. It aims at highlighting Saint and Fani-Kayode’s distinct approaches to notions of Black diasporic spirituality as well as African spirituality in relation to sexual dissidence. It also aims at enacting the illegible and the non-linear.

Untitled (Unintelligible ██████ ██████) follows the online event, Shrine: DJ Set, Poetry Reading, and Public Discussion, held in July 2020, which brought together curators and artists to celebrate Saint and Fani-Kayode. The speakers included: Raymond Pinto, Pamela Sneed, Jaime Shearn Coan, and Kojo Abudu, and the event was moderated by Serubiri Moses.

PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK is a virtual performance, screening, and event space launched by PARTICIPANT INC in October 2020. The site hosts artist projects commissioned specifically for the AFTER DARK web platform and remote viewing. PARTICIPANT invited artist Glen Fogel to design and develop AFTER DARK. Artists will work with Fogel through the Fall/Spring 2020-21 season, inhabiting the site and fully modifying it for their projects' specific needs. AFTER DARK is conceived of as a blank slate, removing as much institutional framework as possible. The site will only present current projects, and will often go ’dark’ in between events.

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That other woman of New York actresstocracy Kembra Pfahler is in the midst of some magnificent rumblings with her London Gallery Emalin. Kembra and I met awhile back online via some weirdo brainwaves that resulted in an unhinged Bitchcraft conversation.

https://emalin.co.uk/stories/story/kembra-pfahler-the-show-must-not-go-on










Sunday, December 13, 2020

MILKING TAG BERLIN GEILEN TYPEN DAS SPERMA RAUSG




Received a delicious packet from New York based writer and bon vivant Max Steele. Mr. Steele is a young, lean sex machine of a radiant youthquaker who I first met when he appeared on my talkshow/installation Vaginal Davis is Speaking From the Diaphragm back in 2010 at PS122 in Manhattan. Max and I were able to hang out a few times when he was visiting Berlin and he is mega charming and an utter delight. So excited to receive his latest chapbook of poetry called Epsilon on one side and Valence on the other. Max has a very unique way of expressing himself and I expect big things from him.

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This just in from Sherry Milner and Ernie Larson two of the world's most enigmatic artists:

FILM AT REDCAT PRESENT

_____Mon Dec 14 | 8:00 PM |
_____ONLINE
_____Jack H. Skirball Series
_____$10 [members $8]
_____To get tickets, visit: The Clamor of the Excluded

The Clamor of the Excluded
Seven films, six decades, seven countries
Voices and visions of peoples on the edge and over the edge

Co-curated by Sherry Millner and Ernie Larsen

Starting with a first presentation at the 2008 Oberhausen Film Festival, Sherry Millner and Ernest Larsen—artists, filmmakers, writers, educators, troublemakers—have curated and exhibited multiple programs of short films that critically and/or actively represent resistance to power all over the world. Carried out over decades as the project Disruptive Film, the duo’s groundbreaking research demonstrates not only the variety of everyday resistance strategies, but also a surprising diversity of experimental approaches to short-form nonfiction media. Their second selection for REDCAT (since their presentation in 2016) includes Crowded by Alonzo Crawford (1978), shot in a Baltimore prison, Xochimilco 1914 by Los Viumasters (2010) from Mexico, Crude Living on Oil in Syria by Rozh Ahmad (2014), and their own How Do Animals and Plants Live? (2020) shot in a destroyed migrant squat in Greece.

In person: co-curators Sherry Millner and Ernie Larsen

“Demonstrates the remarkable power of film to engage, move, provoke and contend.” - Bill Nichols

“One of the most notable aspects of the series is that it refreshingly views political documentary and experimental films as located on the same continuum.” - Chris Robé, Pop Matters

“A visual demonstration of the powers of film. Such a collection of rare and precious items from many times, places and conflict situations, not only provides a strong perspective about film history, but also transmits to us the practical energy to struggle with our present injustices.” - Nicole Brenez

“The love of cinema also means knowing what to do with images that are really missing.” - Serge Daney

Program

_____Alonzo Crawford: Crowded
_____1978, 10 min, USA

When the inmates of the grotesquely overcrowded Baltimore City Jail sued the city and state, African-American director Alonzo Crawford, on a budget of $400, documented conditions inside - and on the strength of that unyieldingly attentive visual evidence, the prisoners won.

_____Aryan Kaganof: Threnody for the Victims of Marikana
_____2014, 27 min, South Africa

On August 16, 2012 the South African Police opened fire on a crowd of striking platinum workers, killing 34 and injuring 78. This three-part film uses symphonic and other music, found footage, theoretical analysis, and irony to arrive at a new understanding, both philosophical and visceral, of how the massacre could have happened - under a government ruled by the once-revolutionary ANC.

_____Millner & Larsen: How Do Animals and Plants Live?
_____2020, 29 min, USA

While inquiring into the forcible eviction and immediate demolition of the self-organized anarchist-supported migrant squat Orfanotrofeio in Thessaloniki, Greece, in July 2016, this experimental video essay extrapolates on the proposition that “no one is illegal” in the renewed if fragile context of the common.

_____Rozh Ahmad: Crude Living on Oil in Syria
_____2014, 20 min, Syria

The journalist Rozh Ahmad - at a ramshackle roadside refinery - relentlessly portrays the terrifying despoliation of a village, a people, and a landscape all at once, caught in the pincers of an endless war.

_____Kamran Shirdel: Tehran is the Capital of Iran
_____1966, 17.40 min, Iran

This film, censored even before it was completed, sets affecting, often harrowing images of the discarded urban poor against recitations of official reports and schoolbooks. Shirdel’s searing vision was undoubtedly seasoned by study at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. At considerable cost to his career, he inaugurated an Iranian version of neo-realism - a take-no-prisoners style of direction.

_____Zelimir Zilnik: Black Film
_____1971, 14 min, Yugoslavia

In a last-ditch gamble to “solve the homeless problem” in the workers’ state of Yugoslavia, the filmmaker invites six homeless men (ignored by the “socialist” government) into his own apartment … And lives to tell the tale.

_____Los Viumasters: Xochimilco 1914
_____2010, 4.5 min, Mexico

On the morning of December 4th, 1914, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata met for the first time. An original stenographic record of their conversation, just hours before they took control of Mexico City, exists. A mere century later, this playful film animates the words of these revolutionary heroes and their historic repercussions.

The Filmmakers

Rozh Ahmad is a freelance journalist and videographer who reports on the Kurdish inhabited regions of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Based in Paris, he was educated in England and has roots in Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Based in Baltimore, Alonzo Crawford, an avid proponent of the short documentary, co-founded and designed the graduate film program at Howard University. His other films include Gila Monster(2007), Sleep to Dream (2014), and The Making of Outrage (2016). The latter explores the tumultuous impact within the black community in Baltimore of the April 2015 death of young Freddie Gray while being transported in a police van. 

A poet, novelist, and visual artist, as well as a prolific filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof made the first feature film shot entirely on mobile phones, SMS Sugar Man in 2007. He also founded the music research project, The African Noise Foundation.

Based in Mexico City, the animation collective Los Viumasters has produced clips and videos for rock groups, documentaries and fiction films since 2009. Xochimilco 1914 won the Best Mexican Animated Short Film Award at the 13th Guanajuato International Film Festival.

A great pioneer of Iranian cinema, Kamran Shirdel, born in 1939, is also the founder and director of the Kish International Documentary Film Festival.

Based in Novi Sad, Serbia, an innovator of hybrid cinematic forms. particularly the docudrama, Zelimir Zilnik is among the most important of the politically engaged filmmakers in Europe. He initially gained fame first within the Yugoslavian Black New Wave of the 1960s and has made dozens of films and television programs during his long career.

Note From the Curators

We have been incubating this collection of short films for decades. We saw a few of them as far back as the late 1960s. They were projected on the walls of lofts or in funky theaters on the Lower East Side of New York City. The audiences were made up of hippies, impatient radicals, artists, and troublemakers—people who, like us, believed they were going to change the world. So the collection of films we are in the process of assembling is the distillation of our lifelong engagement with the intersection between the stirring histories of struggles for freedom across the globe and the wide-ranging, often surprising, history of short-form experimental non-fiction media… an engagement both passionate and critical.

These films make propositions – or “escape routes” – from exhausted classical documentary forms. They each employ critical interventions intended to contest, resist, or imaginatively overturn repressive conditions, stale culture, the violence of the state, patriarchy, racism, the rule of global capital.

We are aiming at a gradual construction of an alternative history – a history that has at times been blocked, repressed, censored or hijacked – of short-form radical experimental non-fiction media, from 1914 up to the present. The films that we selected address radical potentiality. They ask and often answer the complex question of how political resistance can be articulated in forms that are not only appositely representative of resistance but that also embody that shape-shifting force in their own diverse historical moments and contradictions.

Today or tomorrow any and all of us are very likely to be caught up in the crossfire of our era’s global upheavals and sudden revolts. The films shown tonight offer precise and often deeply affecting visions that evoke previously underexplored potential for common understanding of these unending crises.

According to the French critic and filmmaker Jean-Louis Comolli: “Defeating or overcoming the existing order of things requires the invention of forms that are different to those serving to repress our consciousness and our movements.” The requirement to which Comolli refers should, we feel, encompass the invention of forms of life, of politics, and aesthetic forms, as an intentional project that produces the conditions through which such revolutionary change could begin to be achieved. And the invention of such forms is always experimental.

Our search for these little-known and under-valued films continues… We hope that our archeological effort, which often meant dusting off, translating, and subtitling uniquely moving films never before seen by English-speaking audiences, will prove to be as much a discovery for the spectators as they have been for us.

The Curators

Sherry Millner and Ernie Larsen collaborate on film, video, photo-text, book, curatorial and other research projects. Co-creators of the collaborative video project State of Emergency (involving 20 artists), they have also produced several situationist films, two anti-documentaries redefining criminality, and a series of semi-
autobiographical videos focusing on authoritarian structures indispensable to capital.

In 2008, at the Oberhausen Film Festival, they co-curated Border-Crossers and Trouble-Makers, ten programs that aimed to rewrite the conventional history of experimental political media. They co-curated Disruptive Film: Everyday Resistance to Power, two DVD volumes of political/experimental short-form films and videos, for Facets Media. Their photo-text projects on Vietnam and on Greece have been published in Rethinking Marxism and online in Social Textand in e-flux conversations. Their collaborative book, Capital’s Greek Cage (Autonomedia), explores the immiseration of the Greek population by the EU and the related growth of fascism.
Millner produces installations, such as The Domestic Boobytrap, which exploits U.S. army manuals to demonstrate the radical instability of domestic space, and many photomontage series, currently including No Respirator Included. Larsen writes fiction and media criticism. His most recent book The Trial Before The Trial, an account of his experiences on a Manhattan grand jury, is available from Autonomedia Press.

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My West Coast gallerist Adams & Ollman are representing a new artist that you should check out:


NOW REPRESENTING
JESSICA JACKSON HUTCHINS

Adams and Ollman is proud to announce the representation of Jessica Jackson Hutchins. Well-known for her sculptures that often situate ceramic forms and vessels on found and dissected domestic objects such as a table, piano, sofa, or cushion, Jessica Jackson Hutchins (b. 1971 in Chicago, Illinois; lives and works in Portland, Oregon) continues to explore and push materials, media, and meaning. Composed of an array of everyday objects, some found, some personal, the artist’s works are accumulations of quotidian life and mundane rituals transformed into reverential objects that are as idiosyncratic as they are familiar. The artist's ongoing engagement with materials and forms is tactile and intimate. Through touch and accretion, Hutchins celebrates the meaning and emotion of relationships, time, and language.

Hutchins has recently had solo exhibitions at Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH (2016); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (2014); the Hepworth Wakefield Museum (2013); the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI (2013); and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA (2011). Significant group exhibitions include Makeshift at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, where Hutchins first premiered her performance work; the 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace (2013); and The Whitney Biennial (2010). Her work is included in the following public collections: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Margulies Collection, Miami; and the Portland Art Museum, Portland. Hutchins holds a BA in Art History from Oberlin College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Adams and Ollman will co-represent the artist with Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. An exhibition with the artist is scheduled at Adams and Ollman for Fall 2021.






The muse of CHEAP Kollektiv, the wise and beautiful Miss Hedy Lamarr








I am crazy about the late actress/singer and Disney Studios legend Annette Funicello. I am also a huge fanatic of Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk who were also part of the Disney cosmos of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Considine went on to star in the TV sitcom My Three Sons while poor Tommy Kirk who was the most gifted as a young actor faltered in Hollywood after being caught engaging in homosexuality and being blacklisted. He later became a regular Jo owning a business and was much happier because of it.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

ICH KOOMME IN DEN SAAL, WEIL MICH DIE SORGE TREIBT

Ich komme in den Saal, weil mich die Sorge treibt,


Die Unruhe, die sich bei dem Anblick des ersten gedämpft hatte, ist mit dem letzen, der hier hereinging, nun von neuem ausgerochen.

The latest from the fine people of Participant Inc. with Participant After Dark. Don't forget to donate donate and then donate some more.

Jordan Strafer in dialogue with Darla Migan
Sunday, December 13, 2020, 7pm EST
participantafterdark.art
This event includes live ASL interpretation

As part of:
Jordan Strafer, No Bag
December 2, 2020 – January 10, 2021
participantafterdark.art

Jordan Strafer occupies PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK with No Bag, an interactive multi-media web-based artwork.

For my school project I took a machete and destroyed everyone’s backpacks.

I gave an incoherent speech then gave out my phone number and promised to replace the backpacks.

After it happened, I couldn’t believe I made that promise to return the backpacks.

They must have been expensive. Some may have been sentimental and irreplaceable.

Everyone would be heading home with all their books and no bag!

A fellow student tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I’m going to bang your cake in.”

“Shit,” I said, “What a stupid way to die.”

I lay on the ground, with hands outstretched, ready for my punishment. “I love you,” I said. “You’ve misunderstood me,” they said.

Jordan Strafer (b.1990, Miami, FL) is an artist, working primarily in video, based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from The New School in 2016 and her MFA from Bard College in 2019. She has participated in group exhibitions at Red Tracy, Copenhagen, (2020-21); Housing, New York (2020); SculptureCenter, New York (2020). In 2021, she will be participating in a three-person exhibition with Maryam Hoseini and Rindon Johnson at The New Museum in New York and a group exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Her first solo exhibition will be at Participant Inc, New York in 2022.

Darla Migan is an art critic and culture worker based in New York City. She completed her Ph.D in Philosophy with a dissertation on Adrian Piper’s contributions to B/black aesthetics and will continue her research at the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2021. Darla’s essays on contemporary art and visual culture have been published in Artnet News, The Brooklyn Rail, CulturedMag, and Texte zur Kunst.

PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK is a virtual performance, screening, and event space launched by PARTICIPANT INC in October 2020. The site will host artist projects commissioned specifically for the AFTER DARK web platform and remote viewing. PARTICIPANT invited artist Glen Fogel to design and help develop AFTER DARK. Artists will work with Fogel ongoing through the Fall/Spring 2020-21 season, inhabiting the site and fully modifying it for their projects' specific needs. AFTER DARK is conceived of as a blank slate, removing as much institutional framework as possible. The site will only present current projects, and will often go ’dark’ in between events.

Access: Transcripts of audio media available in the site’s index. Strafer’s videos, sparkle and the shining include closed captioning.

*

The handsome, sexy French photog lover of rock star Michael Stipe is in a group virtual exhibition that you might want to check out:

These are virtual days and this is a virtual show, but it definitely still is a London show. And I am always here for a London moment. I'm really happy to see these portraits from a couple years back join the works of this great of artists.
Enjoy the visit through the link below, and happy holidays to you and all your loved ones.

Entre Amis Trois
3 December 2020 - 31 January 2021
FrenchRiviera1988.com/entreamistrois

with works by
Christina Cushing
Thomas Dozol
Helena Foster
Seana Gavin
Tom Gidley
Simone Kennedy Doig
Samuel Levack
Jennifer Lewandowski
Nicholas Pankhurst
Giles Round

www.thomasdozol.com

*

This announcement from the adorable Adham Hafez the Prince of Cairo:


Dear all,

I am very excited to share with you our latest production 'Cairo Critical Club'. Rehearsed and filmed between Berlin, New York and Cairo, the production takes cabaret into the digital realm, and rethinks of assemblies of pleasure and public conviviality through the history of the KitKat Club.

To register and watch the performances online, please follow this link
Shows: 11-14 December, 5pm NYC time
Ticket: Free
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_p1EmPeacQTSMNsCcaLEh6Q


Living at a time when we are made to stay distant from one another because of a global pandemic, where intimacy means infection, and public conviviality causes contagion, this project looks back at assemblies of pleasure and politics that took place between Cairo, Berlin, and New York embodied in the history of the infamous nightclub, The KitKat. Built almost 100 years before Berlin’s KitKat Club of the 1990’s, Cairo’s KitKat was a radical cabaret by the Nile that saw constellations of artists, politicians, spies, and societal figures at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Stories at the KitKat were shaped by major world events, from the Spanish Flu pandemic, the shutting down of theatres, to WWI and WWII.

This project, screened on a projector in the front window of the Goethe-Institut New York, weaves stories from the Isherwood’s American imagination of Germany, and Hollywood's depiction of Weimar cabarets in the 1972 film Cabaret (also taking place at a ‘KitKat Club’), going all the way back to the belly dancing, microtonal singing and glamorous houseboats in Cairo. Anita Berber, Josephine Baker, Hekmat Fahmy, Adolf Hitler, Hans Eppler, Anwar Sadat, Laszlo Almasy, Samia Gamal, Cecile B. DeMille, and Amina Mohammed are some characters that stride reality and fiction in ways akin to the performances of nationhood perpetuated by governments at times of cultural wars. The project is based on research conducted in Berlin, Cairo, London and New York, with MI5 files that have been recently declassified by the British Intelligence, oral histories from the KitKat neighborhood in Cairo, and chronicles of intergenerational clubbing within Cairo, New York and Berlin’s nightlife as we continue to live through a world of no theatres, cabarets or clubs today. Filmed on site at the KitKat Club in Berlin, La Mama Theatre New York, and Cairo.

Cairo Kitkat Club is an episodic and modular project, staged in different constellations each time it is presented.

Project of HaRaKa Platform, in partnership with and supported by Goethe-Institut New York, and Co-presented by La Mama Theatre, and further supported by the Hilal Foundation, Sundance Institute, Kuchar&Co, and Yashmask. The project is developed through Cairo Critical Cabaret, a performance lab initiated by HaRaKa Platform, experimenting with the form and history of cabaret, staging multiple artistic objects, processes and interventions.

Performance, research, composition by: Mona Gamil, Lamia Gouda, Cindy Sibilsky, Adam Kucharski, Adham Hafez

Guest stars: Amie Sultan, Nicky Paraiso, Ohoude Khadr, Fadi Khoury
Urban history research: Adam Kucharski
Senior experts: Ashraf Gharib, Raph Cormack
Music compositions: Mona Gamil, Adham Hafez

Technical director and production management: Mido Sadek
DOP: Monti Bayoud, Mariam Mekiwi

Editing: Waad Taai
Visual consultant: Shayma Aziz

Initial script dramaturgy: Leyla Rabih
Berlin research: Layal Seifan, Ohoude Khadr
Initial research: Sara Soumaya Abed
Conceived and directed by: Adham Hafez

HaRaKa Platform was established in 2006 by a group of artists, theorists and specialists initially based in Cairo and working from Berlin, New York City, and Cairo since 2011. HaRaKa is the first platform dedicated to performance studies and movement research in Egypt, and through local, regional and international partnerships it has curated, produced, published, researched and set up pedagogic programs in the Arab world, Europe and the US. Its latest projects were presented at Sharjah Architecture Triennial (UAE), La Mama Theatre (US), Hebbel Am Ufer (Germany), among others. The platform focuses on colonial histories in relation to body-based practices, gender in performance, the Anthropocene and its cultural implications, as well as new planetary paradigms. It is steered by its core members, Mona Gamil, Lamia Gouda, Adam Kucharski and Adham Hafez. Over the past fifteen years HaRaKa has created collaborations with renowned artists including Cristina Caprioli (Stockholm), Constanza Macras (Berlin), Mey Seifan (Damascus/ Berlin), Yoshiko Chuma (New York), Myriam Van Imschoot (Brussels). HaRaKa stages performances, publishes and translates texts on choreography and theatre, and has curated several international festivals and exchange platforms in Egypt, the US and Germany specializing in contemporary Arab performance practices and diasporic communities.

Adham Hafez is a Berlin and New York based choreographer, sound artist, theorist and performer. Recipient of multiple awards including First Prize for Choreography by Cairo Opera House, Adham Hafez was recently described by the New Yorker as 'an intellectual magpie whose text-heavy works bristle with political ideas'. He studied science, choreography, political science and performance studies in Amsterdam, Paris and New York. Adham Hafez is the founder of HaRaKa Platform and is the principal choreographer associated with its work.

Adham Hafez
Artistic Director
HaRaKa Dance Development and Research
Adham Hafez Company

www.harakaplatform.com
www.adhamhafez.co

*

As part of the 13th Gwangju Biennale I would like to share with you a little text that lovesexy writer and scholar Travis Jeppeson wrote for the online journal:

https://13thgwangjubiennale.org/minds-rising/#bimonthly-no-4

*

Hump of the Month




*

Jose E. Montaño the super gorgeous and talented Swedish/Bolivian production designer at the Cheese Endique Trifecta, the studio of Vaginal Davis at 7850 Sunset Blvd on the Sunset Strip at La Villa Rosa, the location of Fertile La Toyah Jackson Magazine, Shrimp-the Magazine for Licking and Sucking Bigger and Better Feet and Hag Gallery-small, contemporary,haggard 1992. The disco ball is the same one that Afro Sister "Pop That Cherry Jefferson" aka the late Priscilla Hazelwood stole from the pop group Devo when the Afro Sisters opened up for Devo at LlasaLand back in the late 1980s




Berlin actor and beauty "IT" Boy  Emilio Sakraya



Sunday, December 06, 2020

LEGT IHRE HAND AUF SEIN GEWAND UND WEIST AUF DIE WÄRTERIN



legt ihre Hand auf sein Gewand und weist auf die Wäarterin

lächelt und führt sie mit sich hin

My supremely talented best girlfriend that gifted young woman known as Ms. Glen Meadmore of Winnipeg, Canada is back at his dayjob as the Limousine Driver to the Schtars. Because of the Pandora Pandemic he was furloughed by the company he works for several months. Glen has made a very good living as a driver, well he did until the horrible ride sharing apps of Lyft and Über came to Los Angeles.

Recently Glen was driving fashion design God Rick Owens who was back in California visiting his elderly mom Connie. Rick is from the central California town of Porterville. His mother is Mexican and is one of the most beautiful and loving ladies I have ever met. Rick's late father was caucasion and possessed a super intellect but was somewhat cold and distant. Rick is now in Dubai for business with his longtime companion and wife of over twenty years the legends legend Michele Lamy. I've actually known Michele much longer then Rick. Michele and I have had a contentious relationship over the years. Michele is very tough and doesn't take any shit from anyone. We've called each other out many times over the four decades we've known each other. One time at Michele's studio in downtown LA in the late 1980s on Traction Avenue she was dying some clothes which she would do when she was troubled about something. I said one of my smart alec flippant remarks in that innocent manner in which one is not exactly sure the meaning behind it. Of course Michele who is a genius knew exactly my meaning and she did not mince words and yelled at me with her sexy cigarette fueled voice "GET OUT! banishing me from her inner circle for about a month. Michele loves to dance, and I was her favourite dance partner at clubs like Flaming Colossus so I was able to worm myself back into her good graces.

*

Just received a note from one of my alltime favourite peeps the delicious anarchist artist extroidinaire Sherry Milner who sent me another one of her amazing post card serials. Sherry and her longtime companion Ernie Larson are the real deal 100%. Enjoy.




And this from my old pal from my spoken word days in the 1980s, Miss Janet Klein:





Friday, December 04, 2020

DER FÜNFTE BÜRGER

DER FÜNFTE BÜRGER

in der Nähe der Tür zügernd

Our little tiny five feet two lady Vaginal Davis has been courted by juicy Canadian pop wunderkind Shawn Mendes to collaborate on material. Whether it will happen or not is anyone's guess as Ms. D can be a bit difficult to corral. Will keep you postada.

Whatever happened to Stephen and Gladys May the famous mother and son couple of Los Angeles in the 1980s. They were like the mother and son in Suddenly, Last Summer but much more glamorous. Stephen's boyfriend at the time was the incredibly attractive and talented ginger make-up and graphic artist Jeff Judd who also dabbles as a DJ creating the fab soundtrack for Rick Owens fashion shows in Paris. Jeff also had a drag persona known as Jolet who wore costumes designed by Marina Spadafora. The rumor floating about at that time was that Jeff, his boyfriend and the boyfriends mother were part of a scandalous menage.



Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi is pleased to announce

Michaela Eichwald

MICHAELA EICHWALD
Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany

1 December 2020 – 16 May 2021
Opening: Postponed until further notice

Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
in

Boy Vereecken, Back Matter
MACRO, Rome, Italy

3 December 2020 – 14 February 20201

Vaginal Davis
in

THE STORE, curated by Jonathan Berger
Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO, USA

December 2020 – December 2021

Wu Tsang
in conversation with boychild

INFERNO Summit 2020
ICA London, Cinema 3, London, UK

Saturday, 5 December 2020, 11 am
Available online through 3 January 2021

Veit Laurent Kurz

Winterfest: An Exhibition of Arts and Crafts
Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO, USA

18 December 2020 – 21 February 2021

Diamond Stingily
in

NGV Triennial 2
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

19 December 2020 – 18 April 2021


Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi
Schöneberger Ufer 61
10785 Berlin
+49–(0)30–26 39 76 20
info@bortolozzi.com
www.bortolozzi.com

*

Episode 3: The Comedian
Featuring Gregg Bordowitz
with Morgan Bassichis and The Illustrious Pearl

Watch the advice show on YouTube

Tonight, on the final episode of Answers with Questions, host Gregg Bordowitz confers with the comedic performer Morgan Bassichisand the poet and drag artist The Illustrious Pearl to answer questions from viewers on canine incontinence, sexual hope, friendship’s limits, and the social uses of humor. The episode features appearances by several people seeking advice from Bordowitz and his guests, including the theorist and educator Lauren Berlant, the artist and scholar Vaginal Davis, the scholar and performer Malik Gaines, the cultural theorist Sianne Ngai, and the artists Jason Simon and Moyra Davey.

Stream Episode 1: The Rock Star, with Jasmine Nyende and Vivien Goldman
Stream Episode 2: The Rabbi, with Joy Ladin and Kendall Thomas

Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Triple Canopy here. A gift of any size will go a long way in supporting our ambitious programs and goals for the year ahead. You can also become a sustaining member of Triple Canopy here.

Humpz of the Month








Saturday, November 28, 2020

EINER KOMMT, DEN SPORNT DIE WUT

Einer kommt, den spornt die Wut.

Wut entzündet die Gier

That wonderful human sex bomb Bradford Nordeen,The Fourth of Dirty Looks just sent me a lovely gift packet of goodies from Los Angeles including a Day Goth poster (his dance club with the amazing Kimberly-Kim Nesgore), his latest tome Because Horror co-written by that fabulous scribe Johnny Ray Huston, with an afterward by Hedi El Kholti of Semio Text is out now so do yourself a favour and get it  now.

Mr. Nordeen is quite a notable national figurine for all his many prolific projects that encompass writing, curating and film programming. He is also known for spreading beyonda sexual joy to many, with his five and counting children from different baby mommas and a myriad of butt babies with a cornucopia of humpy baby papas. La Mr. Nordeen brings pleasure to so many men and women even though he's from the problematic city of St. Louis. Well I can assure you our Mr. Nordeen who hails from one of America's most patrician olde $money families doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, class and ethnicity as he is the proud father of so many biracial children that he could single handedly bring back United Colors of Benetton.

Oh much thanks to Hedi El Kholti and Chris Kraus of Semio Text for the photo book of the work of Reynaldo Rivera which features a juicy essay/conversation between the handsome photographer and Ms. Vaginal Davis. Pick it up at your local high end bookshop. Speaking of fancy books, you must run out and purchase Queer Communion: Ron Athey edited by Amelia Jones and Andy Campbell, the definitive book on the famed performance artist and love god Ron Athey Jr. What makes this book a lot better then the book that came out in 2013 is this one features much more of Ron Athey in his own voice with both published and never before published pieces of his incredible prose. The book also culminates with an art exhibition at Participant Inc Gallery in New York City in 2021.

One of Vaginal Davis' ex students at the Art University in Geneva is Prince Aly Muhammad Aga Khan whose is related to Princess Yasmin Aga Khan the daughter of Hollywood Golden era star Rita Hayworth. The young Prince is a very sweet boy of 20 years who audited Ms. Davis' performance art seminar Perverse Assemblages for a short time as the majority of Ms. Davis' students are of the graduate level in the program Work Master HEAD.








Friday, November 27, 2020

DUNKLER NOCH DER VERDACT



Dunkler noch der Verdacht

schwerer die Beschwerde: die Pforte ist es, daraus der König von Frankreich leicht und schnell nach England dringt!

My NYC gallerist the hunky Benjamin Tischer and his lovely wife Gala Verdugo have my work in the Future Fair which launches today. Spread the word:






https://www.futurefairs.com/hm2020-new-discretions


And as an added bonus here:


https://www.artsy.net/show/new-discretions-future-fair-holiday-market-expanded?sort=partner_show_position


NEW DISCRETIONS/INVISIBLE-EXPORTSPO Box 1439
New York NY 10276
ARTSY


CURRENT


HOLD THE HORIZON CLOSE | Paul Gabrielli, LoVid, Agathe Snow
Marquee Projects, Bellport NY
October 24 — November 29, 2020

Thursday, November 19, 2020

ES IST EIN WÜTENDER WIND AUSGEBROCHEN

Es ist ein wütender Wind ausgebrochen

der von allen Enden die Scharen zusammengetrieben hat

Michael Socha the young British actor who is a dead ringer for American star Jake Gyllenhaal almost collided with Vaginal Davis on Potsdamer Str. It's the second time this month that La Diva has had a bit of a spill riding on her cute and cuddly Dutch girl bike. She was coming back from seeing the latest offering at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi of the divine Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings fresco exhibition Public Affairs. The young artist duo have merged themselves into one dynamic entity producing beautiful work that not only comments and critique's are savage times but is also able to channel Sir Carol Reed's 1968 musical Oliver in one singular breath. The exhibition runs until January 9th.

Ms. Davis' work is nearing completion for her installation for the 13th Gwangju Biennale that will take place next year from late February to May in South Korea. Below is some more info:


* 국문 콘텐츠는 영문 버전의 하단에서 확인하실 수 있습니다.

Dear all,

Our public program initiative GB Talks | Rising to the Surface: Practicing Solidarity Futures continues with three sessions this month: a panel discussion about the unspeakable in the archives related to uprisings; a healing workshop about Rites of Passage and renewal; and a conversation about artistic strategies to address collective trauma with Tibet and Indonesia as conflict sites of study. Join us on Zoom or on the Gwangju Biennale Foundation’s Facebook page.

To watch the recordings of past events, please click here and here for a two-part lecture by academic Vladan Joler about cyber forensics and data networks behind the major web service platforms as part of technocapitalism; here for the nourishing keynote by social justice activist Djamila Ribeiro about the integral role of Brazilian Black feminism in the current political debates globally; and here for a panel focusing on feminist legacies of social uprisings with Gwangju and Khartoum as sites of study, with academic Jeong Kyung-woon, journalist Reem Abbas, and activist Huiyeon Choi.

On Thursday, November 20th, at 8–9.30am CET / 4–5.30pm Gwangju time, we will host a panel titled From Istanbul to Gwangju: Archiving the Unarchivable in Uprisings, exploring the strategies of remembrance for social uprisings from the 1980s onward. Archive researcher Kwon Do Gyun will introduce The May 18 Democratic Movement Records as part of UNESCO World Heritage Records. Artist Zeyno Pekünlü will discuss the ‘unrepresentable’ in the massive visual data related to recent uprisings in Turkey, whereas sociologist Begüm Fırat Özden will speak about how the crowds reemerge in contemporary politics. This event is co-hosted by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and 5·18 Archives in Gwangju. Join us on Zoom by clicking here (Zoom Webinar ID: 914 1015 4133). We are grateful for SAHA Association’s support for Pekünlü’s and Özden’s participation.

On Wednesday, November 25th, at 8–9.30am CET / 4–5.30pm Gwangju time, Māori Healing practitioner Haaweatea Holly Bryson will lead a workshop titled “Rites of Passage and Renewal,” which looks at the processes to mark the transition from one phase of life to another. Together, we will explore the three stages of the Rites of Passage, leading to intergenerational healing. This map will show us the “bones” or codes of how humanity transitions and transforms, our consciousness, resiliency, belonging, purpose, revelation, and renewal. The workshop is limited to 50 people on a first come first-served basis. Please email publicprogram@gwangjubiennale.org to register and we will send you the Zoom details.

On Saturday, November 28th, at 7–8.30am CET / 3–4.30pm Gwangju time, we will host a conversation titled From Tibet to Indonesia: Rupture and Continuum,about artistic and cinematic strategies dedicated to sites of collective memory and the persistance of trauma under authoritarian rule and occupation. Researcher Kartika Pratiwi will discuss the potential of digital storytelling to create space for witness accounts and survivors’ stories from the mass killings in 1965–66 in Indonesia. Filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam will introduce their long-term project featuring the personal archive of Lhamo Tsering—Sonam’s father who was one of the leaders of the CIA-backed guerrilla resistance against Communist China’s military operation in occupied Tibet. Inza Lim will act as respondent and share reflections from her theatre making and activism around the Gwangju democratization process. Join us on Zoom by clicking here (Zoom Webinar ID: 987 3072 1064)

Upcoming schedule is as follows:
December 11th: A conversation around ecocide, Indigenous resistance, and planetary movements with artist Cian Dayrit and Beaska Niillas
December 12th: A discussion about women peasants and commoning farming practices in South Korea with artist collective Rice Brewing Sisters Club
January 16th: A workshop about Rites of passage, renewal, and intergenerational healing with Māori Healing practitioner Haaweatea Holly Bryson
January 30th: A keynote addressing an ethics of renunciation toward a unique proposal for non-injuriousness as a way of life by academic Leela Gandhi

Also, check out our website to watch the video contributions by activist Nadège; curator, researcher, translator, and artist Min-hyung Kang; scholar and activist Lokman Tsui, about collective care on and off the internet, ownership of technology, and the relationship of digital surveillance and grassroots social movements.

As we gear up for the opening of the 13th Gwangju Biennale on February 26 2021, we look forward to our journey with you unravelling the potential of collective intelligence addressing anti-systemic kinship, creative modes of resistance and renewal.

Hope you will join us.

Defne Ayas and Natasha Ginwala
Artistic Directors, 13th Gwangju Biennale

With Public Programming Team (Özge Ersoy, Riksa Afiaty, and Subin Park)


구독자 여러분께,

제13회 광주비엔날레의 공공 프로그램 ‘GB 토크 | 수면 위로 떠오르기: 연대의 미래를 실천하기’가 이번 11월에는 총 세 가지 세션을 진행합니다. 여러 시민 봉기에 대한 연구 기록물 및 보존물 중 재현할 수 없는 요소들을 살펴보는 패널 토론, 통과 의례와 갱신의 의식을 통한 힐링 워크숍, 지역 갈등이 심한 티베트 및 인도네시아를 중심 사례로 집단적 트라우마를 논하는 예술적 전략에 관한 담화 등으로 구성됩니다. 이 모든 프로그램은 줌(Zoom) 혹은 광주비엔날레재단 페이스북 페이지에서 라이브로 감상하실 수 있습니다.

지난 이벤트를 다시 시청하고 싶으시다면 다음의 링크를 클릭해 주시기 바랍니다. 다양한 데이터 네트워크 및 사이버 법의학 기법을 활용해 기술자본주의를 구성하는 주요 온라인 플랫폼의 이면을 살펴본 블라단 욜러(Vladan Joler)의 첫 번째두 번째 강의, 현재 브라질의 정치 담론에서 흑인 페미니즘이 맡은 역할을 논한 철학자 자밀라 리바이로(Djamila Ribeiro)의 키노트, 그리고 광주와 하르툼을 주요 사례로 사회 운동 및 봉기에서 페미니스트의 유산을 살펴본 학자 정경운, 저널리스트 림 압바스(Reem Abbas), 사회 운동가 최희연의 패널 토론 등을 다시 감상하실 수 있습니다.

11월 20일 목요일 오후 4시~5시 30분(중앙유럽 표준시 오전 8시~9시 30분)에는 패널 토론 ‘이스탄불에서 광주까지: 봉기에서 ‘아카이브할 수 없는 것’을 아카이브하기’를 마련해 1980년대 이후 발생한 여러 사회적 봉기를 기억 및 기록하기 위한 전략들을 탐구합니다. 아카이브 연구자 권도균은 유네스코 세계기록유산으로 등재된 광주 5.18 민주화운동 기록물을 소개합니다. 작가 제이노 페퀸루(Zeyno Pekünlü)는 최근 터키에서 일어난 봉기와 관련해 아카이브에서 ‘재현할 수 없는 것’을 논하며, 사회학자 베귐외즈덴 프라트(Begüm Özden Fırat)는 군중이 동시대 정치에 어떻게 재등장하는지 이야기합니다. 이번 행사는 광주비엔날레재단과 5.18민주화운동기록관이 공동 주최합니다. 본 프로그램은 이 링크(Zoom Webinar ID: 914 1015 4133)의 줌 웹사이트에서 참여하실 수 있습니다. 페퀸뤼 및 프라트 씨의 프로그램을 후원해 주신 사하(SAHA: 터키 현대미술 후원 협회)에 감사드립니다.

11월 25일 수요일 오후 4시~5시 30분(중앙유럽 표준시 오전 8시~9시 30분)에는 마오리 힐링 치유사 하웨테 홀리 브라이슨(Haaweatea Holly Bryson)이 ‘통과 의례와 갱신의 의식’을 진행해, 삶의 한 단계에서 다른 단계로의 이행을 표시하는 과정을 살펴봅니다. 통과 의례의 세 단계를 함께 탐구하며 세대 간의 치유를 끌어내고자 합니다. 이를 그려낸 지도는 인류의 이행과 변환, 우리의 의식, 회복력, 소속감, 목적, 계시, 갱신의 ‘뼈대’ 또는 코드를 보여줄 예정입니다. 워크숍 참여 인원은 선착순 50명으로 제한하며, 참여 신청은 publicprogram@gwangjubiennale.org로 연락해 주시기 바랍니다. 이후 메일을 통해 참가자 분들께 개별적으로 줌 링크를 전달해 드리겠습니다.

11월 28일 토요일 오후 3시~4시 30분(중앙유럽 표준시 오전 7시~8시 30분)에는 패널 토론 ‘티베트에서 인도네시아까지: 단절과 연속체’를 마련해 집단적 기억의 장소를 위한 예술적, 영화적 전략과 함께 권위주의적 지배와 점령하에 지속되는 트라우마를 다룹니다. 카르티카 프래티비(Kartika Pratiwi)는 1965~1966년 인도네시아 대량 학살에서 생존한 이들이 증언할 수 있는 공간을 만드는 데 있어서 디지털 스토리텔링과 대안 교육 플랫폼이 가진 잠재력을 논합니다. 리투 사린(Ritu Sarin)과 텐징 소남(Tenzing Sonam)은 중국 공산군 점령하의 티베트에서 CIA의 지원을 받아 게릴라 저항군 지도자로 활동했으며 소남의 아버지인 라모 체링의 개인 아카이브를 다루는 장기 프로젝트를 소개합니다. 임인자는 토크의 참여자들과 질의응답을 주고받으며, 광주 민주화 과정을 다루는 연극 만들기와 시민운동에 관한 생각을 공유합니다. 본 프로그램은 이 링크(Zoom Webinar ID: 987 3072 1064)의 줌 웹사이트에서 참여하실 수 있습니다.

앞으로 다음과 같은 프로그램도 준비돼 있습니다.
12월 11일: 시안 데이리트(Cian Dayrit)와 베아스카 닐라스(Beaska Niillas)가 의도적인 생태계 파괴, 토착민 사회의 저항, 지구 전반의 생태 운동 등을 주제로 나누는 대담
12월 12일: 라이스 브루잉 시스터즈 클럽(Rice Brewing Sisters Club)이 진행하는 한국에서의 공동체 농업의 제반 활동 및 여성 농부에 관한 워크숍
1월 15일(추후 확정): 하웨테 홀리 브라이슨(Haaweatea Holly Bryson)이 진행하는 통과의례, 재생, 세대 간의 치유에 관한 워크숍
1월 30일: 릴라 간디(Leela Gandhi)가 삶의 한 방식으로서, 서로에게 해를 가하지 않는 유일한 방법론으로서 금욕의 윤리를 논하는 키노트 발제

더불어 사회 운동가 나데게(Nadège), 큐레이터이자 연구자, 번역가, 미술가 강민형, 학자이자 사회 운동가 록만 추이(Lokman Tsui) 등의 참가자가 인터넷 안팎의 집단적 상호 보호 활동, 기술의 소유권, 디지털 감시의 관계 양상, 풀뿌리 사회 운동 등에 관해 논한 영상 프로그램을 이 링크의 웹사이트에서 확인하실 수 있습니다.

2021년 2월 26일 개최할 제13회 광주비엔날레를 준비하는 기간 동안 반체제주의 공동체 의식, 저항과 재생을 위한 창의적인 방편을 제시하는 집단 지성의 잠재력을 여러분과 공유할 수 있길 기대합니다.

이 여정에 저희와 함께 해주시길 바라겠습니다.

데프네 아야스(Defne Ayas), 나타샤 진발라(Natasha Ginwala)
제13회 광주비엔날레 공동예술감독

외즈게 에르소이(Özge Ersoy), 릭사 아피아티(Riksa Afiaty), 박수빈
제13회 광주비엔날레 공공 프로그램 제작팀

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That lovesexy young artist Elliot Reed , the Black Jerry Lewis of performance art just sent me a link for his latest art video which is quite lovely and he is looking so amazing in it wearing some fancy trainers that everyone will want to get their hands on. Catch him while you can.


Internal Recreation online screening
Though Nov. 22 2020 (Hosted by Women & Performance Journal of Feminist Theory)
Watch my video here

I'm honored to be featured in the digital exhibition Screen Share: Access & Collaboration in the Video Archive Alongside art by Jeneen Frei Njootli, isa & troizel, and Anh Vo. Organized by Kristen Holfeuer and Joanna Evans through W&P Journal at NYU Performance Studies. Special thanks as well to Isa Saldana.

This work is a 2020 video re-imaging of my song "Internal Recreation" originally recorded in 2013. With cinematographers/co-performers Jade Kuriki Olivo (Puppies Puppies) and Diamond Stingily. Read the full description and view the work here.

7pm EST Thursday Nov 19th, visit womenandperformance.org for a live panel with all the artists!

You have until Nov 22nd before it goes offline

...for now







Saturday, November 14, 2020

DER VERTRAUTE DES FÜNFTEN BÜRGERS

Der Vertraute des Fünften Bürgers

Die helle Glocke ist der Ruf in die Halle

The Ms. Davis doll was asked by Art Forum to write about the recent 2020 election. Actually she could have done a drawing, video or produce a text, but because the lady gets so many emails she forgot that detail. Now the text is online and you can read it here:

https://www.artforum.com/slant/vaginal-davis-on-the-us-presidential-election-84335

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Do you know what you'll be doing Sunday nite at 8pm? Yes I am sure like everyone in the know you will be looking at Participant Inc. latest magnificent eventa. Participant is the only not-for-profit gallery left in Manhattan and so they need your support. Look at this line-up....GO DONATE FOLKS!

Live-streamed on https://participantafterdark.art
This event will include live ASL interpretation
Donate: https://www.paypal.me/PARTICIPANTINC
Arrival DJ set by: April Hunt
Welcome cocktail by our host: Justin Vivian Bond
A toast to our outgoing Board President Jacqueline Humphries by:
Lia Gangitano and Jeffrey Gibson
Presidential Acceptance Poem for Participant Inc
by our incoming Board President: Vaginal Davis
Followed by remarks, performance and video interludes by:
Jonathan Berger with Michael Stipe
Baseera Khan
Susanne Sachsse
Sofia Moreno
Charles Atlas
Glendalys Medina
CHRISTEENE
Narcissister
Ron Athey
And a closing astrological forecast by:
Constantina Zavitsanos and Tourmaline

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Who do you think is cute, and have your hairy eyeball on? Is it junior high looking bose buben Oliver Malcolm or Lovesexy Jubas Jubilee Jonathan Majors the star of TV's Lovecraft Country? You don't have to answer that right away just think about it.



Thursday, November 12, 2020

DEINE GEBURT IS MEINE GEBURT, DEIN TOD IST MEIN TOD

Deine Geburt ist meine Geburt, dein Tod ist mein Tod

In welchem der kluge Leser die Geschicte einer berühmten Münze vernimmt.

I was just thinking about the late great lovesexy actor Brad Davis star of the films Midnight Express and Fassbinder's adaptation of Jean Genet's Querelle. He had juicy hustler white energy. I remember seeing him at a Grammy Party doing drugs with the members of the band The Go-Go's. This was at the old Biltmore Hotel across the street from Pershing Square in Downtown, Los Angeles. The Go-Gos were performing in the Gold Ballroom which was the New Wave room for the evening, but almost everyone at the party was in the Crystal Ballroom which was the Disco room. I was at the soiree with the late actress Carrie Fisher, the beautiful and hunky Jon-Erik Hexum who wound up accidently killing himself on a film set. Jon-Erik had a very prominent basket, but rather small feet for a tall man, and was with his then girlfriend E.G. Daily(co-star of that Pee Wee Herman film) whose no nonsense mother Helen Guttman owned the East Hollywood Club Helen's Place that was also known as The Anti-Club. In our little party was also Robin Johnson who was the star of proto Riot Grrl film Times Square, and maybe a few other people that time has made me forget. I was probably the only person not doing cocaine and quaaludes. I've never been much of a drug or alcohol person, but I must admit I did enjoy cocaine and ludes the few times I did engage in them, but I much prefer champagne. Brad Davis was a very tiny man and I think he caused a scandal that evening sucking the penis of Spazz Attack. Whatever happened to olde Spazz. Last thing I heard is he moved to Japan. I will never forget him having a cameo role in that great Debra Winger film Mike's Murder.





Latest from my sexy gallerist Isabella Bortolozzi and La Famiglia:

Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi is pleased to announce


MICHAELA EICHWALD

Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN, USA

14 November 2020 – 16 May 2021

Virtual Exhibition Talk
Laura Hoptman on Michaela Eichwald
14 November 2020, 7 pm (CST)



ARTISSIMA UNPLUGGED
Online Catalogue


with works by

Ed Atkins
Juliette Blightman
Ellen Cantor
Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda
Michaela Eichwald
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff
Morag Keil
Veit Laurent Kurz
Danny McDonald
Seth Price
Richard Rezac
S.Greer Rhodes
Diamond Stingily

The platform will remain online
until 9 December 2020


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Something new and interesting from that very lovely and talented man Mr. Gregg Bordowitz.

The events of the past several months—and, in particular, the past week—pose innumerable questions about the present, about how the future might look and feel. For Answers with Questions, a three-episode streaming series, host Gregg Bordowitz will offer advice to viewers on dealing with inner turmoil and societal breakdown. Send your questions by emailing questions@canopycanopycanopy.com or calling 201-467-8592 by November 17.

With a rotating cast of cohosts and musical guests, Bordowitz will consider the interplay of patience and revolt, the spirit of devotion inherent in political and cultural work, the renewed relevance of Count von Count, and what to do after trading sourdough starters with friends has lost its allure. Tune in for the premiere of Episode 1, with Jasmine Nyende and musical guest Vivien Goldman, on November 18 at 8 p.m. EST via YouTube. They’ll discuss punk’s queer history, maintaining discipline while making trouble, and what the figures of the rock star and the deviant punk can teach us right now.

Bordowitz is still accepting questions for Episode 2 (premiering on Wednesday, November 25, at 8:00 p.m. EST), with Joy Ladin and musical guest Kendall Thomas, who will reflect on the role of belief and theology in facing adversity; and Episode 3 (premiering on Wednesday, December 2, at 8:00 p.m. EST), with Morgan Bassichisand musical guest The Illustrious Pearl, who will parse the relevance and political possibilities of humor. Send questions on belief and new beginnings, and how to navigate social isolation and find freedom amid uncertainty.

Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Triple Canopy here. A gift of any size will go a long way in supporting our ambitious programs and goals for the year ahead. You can also become a sustaining member of Triple Canopy here.


Two Ears and One Mouth receives support from the Stolbun Collection, Agnes Gund, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Monday, November 09, 2020

WIR BESCHLOSSEN,ZU KÄMPFEN

Wir beschlossen, zu kämpfen

Nachts wachten wir, tags schliefen wir, immer abwechselnd.

So now there is a little bit of symbolic hope, but lots of work ahead as we are not out of the muck and mire.

My wonderful talented ex-student from Malmö Art Akademy in Malmö Sweden - Maria Norrman is a young artist on the rise. She sent me this little note about her upcoming exploits:

Hi miss D!
Here's info on the upcoming group show, the Malmö tribute exhibition Fucking Boring!

I will be showing a video of my drag character Millennium Starperforming MFF-Hymnen - the anthem of the local soccer team, at Lorensborg shopping center in Malmö.

I will also show a wall image of Millennium Star at Lorensborg, 4.15 x 2.25 m/163 x 88 inches (enclosed in this mail)

More hugs/Maria

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Fucking Boring

Participants:

Körner & Moreau

Maria Norrman

Bruno Weibelt

Ella Tillema

Runo Lagomarsino

Monika Larsen Dennis

Ditte Ejlerskov

Beck & Jung







Gallery 21, Malmö

http://www.galleri21.com/g21/




Opening 14 November, last day is 13 December, 2020.

Opening hours: Thursday 15-18/3-6pm , Friday-Sunday 12-16/Noon-4 pm





A text by artist Peter Johansson, curator of the exhibition.





In the late 90's, early 2000, I talked with my friend the art writer Patrik Moreau about the art scene in Malmö, Sweden. We had lived in Stockholm both of us and were about to move to Malmö. It was such a difference. Not only did we get away from the stressful competition-oriented art world in Stockholm, but artistically there was a big difference in attitude and gestures in Malmö.

We actually started planning for an exhibition about these experiences.

But time went by and life came in the way.

However, in fact it was for the better because I got time to really see more of the artists, their working methods and of course the city which influences the art. A kind of historical debt.




In a small town with an art scene dominated by its Art Academy, the trends of the place are often spread to other artists like a ripple effect. For better or worse. Whether one wants to or not, certain main actors become decisive for the opportunities of art students and artists. This also goes for Malmö.




But the approach to these games of power was different than in Stockholm. Here there was the Scanian-Malmö approach, the saying "Auh vaudau?" - meaning something in the lines of a laid back “Eh, what (ever)”, which I liked. Many artists made stripped, one might call it new minimalist work of art. Something uncomplicated in action, material and idea and preferably with an ironic or humorous touch directed at the art itself, or perhaps made with a feminist twist. Well, they reused minimalism but they added a lot of the Malmö-spirit to this.




Like Denmark, minimalism came to Scania late, only in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s. From the American 50s / 60s minimalism and its continued history, something new was simply pushed forward. We do not need, I believe, to immerse ourselves in formal or semantic reduction, art-historical facts or clarifications, this is a completely personal interpretation and the important thing here is which kind of art suddenly emerged.




Already in the late 1970s and early 80s I visited Malmö a lot. It was the punk movement that drew me to DAD's dancehall and KB, which was then out in Erikslust, as well as Olympen and later Mejeriet in Lund, the neighbour town.

Back then it was rebellious music, newspaper and book publishing, political activism and house occupations which occupied my time, art came to me much later.

Malmö was a heavy working-class city but I felt at home.




In Malmö of today you’ll find an extremely rich part versus the very poor part in the east. Here you find the terrible opposition between Jews and Palestinian and Muslim groups, gang culture, between urban development and old Malmö, and between high culture and economically difficult-to-run clubs like Plan B and activism. Malmö is certainly not Stockholm or Copenhagen, because it is a smaller city, so the distances between these opposites are not too long.

The heavy compact worker-Malmö was also in its time something different than the rest of Sweden.

Early labor immigration and the Kockums shipyard crane that dominated, especially the city towards both the countryside and Stockholm.

The closures and the depression of the 80s, the desire for revenge in the 90s and then the new construction with on opposite poles, the Social Democrat Ilmar Reepalu and the construction contractor Percy Nilsson, who despite all the differences, met in the making of the new Malmö.




The artists I have chosen for the exhibition are all parts of this sprawling memory image of Malmö which I call Fucking Boring. It is actually a tribute to Malmö.




Monika Larsen Dennis works with sculpture, photography and video. She was born and raised in Malmö but educated in Iceland and the Stockholm Academy of the Arts. She has lived and worked in Stockholm, New York and Malmö, among other places. She actually lived for a time in the famous building Turning Torso in Malmö, the house which by both the general public and the government became a symbol of the new Malmö during the early 2000s. Monika is a generational friend of mine. Her stripped-down small objects, but foremost her work "The Kiss", 2004 is for me the reason why she is in this exhibition.

The Kiss is a work for its time period. From Auguste Rodin's well-known sculpture from the 19th century, Monika has removed the kissing couple to make room for the viewer to take a seat in the work. When you do it, you get a physical feeling of the limitation in how close we can get to each other. With a simple shape and a purity in the choice of material, Monika examines this thing called love.




Körner & Moreau are Kristian Körner and Robert Moreau, both of them worked as artists on their own in the 90s and early 2000s. Robert was actually born, partly raised and studied in Malmö.

They meet 15 years ago when Kristian moved to Malmö and have worked in close collaboration for almost five years, they’ve been deeply focused on the slide frame's strange allure.

This year, 2020, it is finally time to collect all the works of art, films, installations and thoughts they have prepared for exhibitions. First out was Aura Krognoshuset in Lund in October, and now I have had the great honor of receiving the baton.

It is something enormously imaginative which happens when you remove the image content from the slide frames. From the emptiness that arises, Körner & Moreau then builds both meticulous and time-consuming very strict works that receive dizzying references to art history, housing projects and family albums. Their work also consists of photography and video films as well as installations, where there is room for both dystopia and comedy. That's why the artist duo is in Fucking Boring.




Runo Lagomarsino was not born in Malmö, but Lund, the neighbouring town. Born in 1977, he is also a generation younger than me and the above mentioned persons, but he is also a bit more clever in his artistic work. I see him as a child of the refugees from southern South America which came to Malmö and Lund in the mid - 70s. His parents emigrated from Argentina.

For me, Runo is extremely important for this exhibition. He weaves new from old photographs, historical events, focuses on things most people would think of as rubbish, uninteresting or just completely misses, from this come fantastic poetic or even political works of art. He tells the story of things. He becomes to me like a bridge between the old and often forgotten history and the present.

The artwork which has meant the most to me is probably the film with Runo and his father as they approach a colossal monument and literally throw eggs at the grotesque sculpture and its history. ("More Delicate than the Historians" are the Map-makers " Colors ”video, 2012-13).




Bruno Wiebelt builds such grotesque sculptures that Runo throws eggs at, albeit in miniature.

These small masterpieces are not only the image of Malmö from the workers' era, but could be miniatures of communist monuments from Azerbaijan or Armenia, standing like bunkes in the middle of a border conflict, just to make a contemporary example. They are violent, brute, absurd and just simply wonderfully outstanding. I think Bruno spends as much time and care on his brutalist objects as our artist duo Körner & Moreau, but although the difference in form and appearance is miles wide, I still think the meaning is the same. Bruno makes the pictures which Körner & Moreau removed from the frames of their slides.




Ella Tillema is also of the younger generation, fortunately. Because if you take a quick glance, it may seem that Ella is a painter from the political 70s. But she is more a product of its time.

Ella is an activist and makes art as resistance to injustice, to struggle and change. Her paintings and objects are hopeful fantasies, sometimes mundane, sometimes magnificently visionary, but always stripped, daring picture stories. She builds optimistic castles made of air. Pictures of mountaineers walking towards their destiny, of the Malmö resident Wiehe, who sung about the Titanic, and self-portraits in the middle of everyday chores, all of this mixed together, yet clear and positive.

This is art against business and new degrading labor reforms, against excessive consumption, against capitalism, against the prevailing system and racism. Together with her whole family for feminism and justice.




Maria Norrman is always highly topical. She’s made one of the contemporary video works which inspire me the most: "The Regiment" (video, 2015), where five Danish history enthusiasts (reenactors) choose to dress in Nazi uniforms and play roles as if they were these people. They recreate various historical military battles and events. The strange and fantastic thing is how Maria also acts and goes in and out of the film and the story and manages to bring out both horrible and human aspects of the persons and history.

In this exhibition, Maria shows documentation of her drag character "Millennium Star,” a performance at the typically Malmö-dull Lorensborg, a shopping center, the heart of Malmö's joy of shopping. In this mundane space, Millennium sings in tribute to Malmö FF - the soccer team native to Lorensborg, and it all makes for an aesthetic chaos in my brain.




Ditte Ejlerskov also repeats events, more contemporary ones and more actively manipulates and dissects everything from stereotypes, contempt for women to the beauty industry and the world's need for space. Often with material taken from the digital world and always with the feminist angle. Stripped repetitions clarify what she sees and wants to point out.

Ditte has, just like Maria Norrman and Ella Tillema studied at Malmö Art Academy.

One of the works which really influenced me is her collaboration with EvaMarie Lindahl, "About: The Blank Pages" (2014), where they show with clear precision the skewed view on art made by women in the art world through the book publisher Taschen's art publications, where 95 books are published, 5 about female artists. Their artistic reaction woke me up.




Beck & Jung is an artist duo and the historical reference that this exhibition needs. Beck & Jung was the name of two Scanian artists: Holger Bäckström (born in Lund, 1939 - 1997) and Bo Ljungberg (born in Lund, 1939 - 2007), and they were computer art pioneers. They used mainframes as they were called at the time, as early as 1966 at Lund University's data center. They worked with line printers and later pen plotters and needle printers. Here their first works of art came to life. In the 70's, the inkjet printers came and they switched to using color.

They made concrete pictures with geometric patterns and their art was shown all over the world. Their last exhibition was called "Computer Art" and was shown 1997 in Germany.




The work I have personally fallen completely in love with and which has followed me from the 80s, is the aluminum or brass sculpture / ashtray "Ultima" which is available in countless versions (70s). This genius work is still a guiding light for me and is the artist duo's bestseller with an edition exceeding a million.