CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS

Those of you Vagimule Davis fans in Paris don’t miss the rare opportunity to see the maestro of underground film Wilhelm Hein in France.  Yes Wilhelm and his lovesexy self live in person.  Here’s a personal note from feisty Wilhelm.  Enjoy!

FORGET ALL THESE COPYCATS AND MAINSTREAM FILMCURATORS !!

 JOIN ME AT THE OPENING NIGHT OF THE MARCEL DUCHAMP EXHIBITION

AT THE ANALOGUE FILMSCREENING OF MY 35 MM MATERIALFILM 2+3 FROM 1976 WHICH RUNS UNDER THE LABEL W+B HEIN MATERIALFILME.

24.9.2014 AT CENTRE POMPIDOU (CINEMA 2) 19 UHR

WITH LIVE SOUND BY RAPHAEL HENARD.

HAPPY TO MEET YOU IN PARIS AT THIS RARE EVENT

BEST WILHELM HEIN 

Visuel d'un événement

À propos de l'événement

Ready-made : Inconscient matériel

Duchamp du film

Cinéma et Vidéo

24 septembre 2014, à 19h00 

Cinéma 2 - Centre Pompidou, Paris

6€, 4€, LP gratuit

Le ready-made duchampien appliqué aux pratiques expérimentales du film peut être décliné du point de vue des caractéristiques strictement matérielles du support. Les œuvres présentées dans ce programme apparaissent comme des productions involontaires, voire inconscientes, d’un processus d’élaboration qui repose sur les spécificités technologiques du médium (développement, tirage, dégradation, etc.). La place laissée à l’intervention de l’artiste s’efface au profit d’une révélation de la matière filmique elle-même. En présence du cinéaste Wilhelm Hein.

Hans Scheugl, Eroticon Sublim, 1968,16mm, coul, sil, 2'
Hollis Frampton, Palindrome, 1969, 16mm, coul, sil, 22'
Paul Sharits, Bad Burns, 1982, 16mm, coul, sil, 6'
Luther Price, URF 6, 2005-2006, 16mm, coul, son, 6'
Wilhelm & Birgit Hein, Materialfilme, 1976,16mm, nb, 35'

Commissaire : Mnam/Cci, Philippe-Alain Michaud

Avec le soutien du Goethe Institut de Paris

SPLENDEURS ET MISERES DES COURTISANES

I’m constantly being asked what is on my Vagimulic nightstand, well during the Douglas Crimp congress I received a wonderful gift from Nanna Heidenreich of the new book by Chloe’ Griffin Edgewise-A Picture of Cookie Mueller that I can’t seem to put down. Miss Chloe who is Canadian and has been a Berlin fixture for many years did a fanfabtastical job editing the commentary of those who knew the gifted writer and John Waters muse Cookie Mueller the best. Special kudos should also go to ginger beauty boy Gwenael Rattke whose illustrations and book design are an integral part of what makes this sensational book click. Chloe Griffin posits herself as just a simple fan of Cookie Mueller’s prose not a professional writer who somehow was just driven to go out and research Mueller and compile the testimonials that make up this literary documentary. Yowza!

Was taken out for breakfast club by Anna Muelter formerly of the HAU who is now the dance curator with the Sophiensale in Berlin Mitte. Anna and I had a lovely girlish catch up on every little thing complete with a plethora of continental gossip. Anna will be going to Greece soon for another international version of X-Wohne project which had become a staple of the HAU under Mathias Lienthal. I also had a bruncheon date with Uli Ziemons of Forum Expanded. Uli is also known as one of the handsomest men in all Europa. We went to the cute Café Lind on KolonBrucke right next to the Julius Leber Brucke S-1 station. Uli told me all about his time spent on spooky Faroe Island in Sweden on the Baltic Sea at the late director Ingmar Bergman’s compound to set up a landscape and cinema summer school with Canadian artist and filmmaker Joshua Bonnetta. While on the isle they saw from a distance two large tornados hovering over the water. Dorothy Surrender!One more item related to the great Douglas Crimp. It seems that film director and Spiegel heiress Spike Jonze has gotten wind of the upcoming Crimp memoir and wants to turn it into a film starring Ryan Gosling as the young Crimp and Brad Pitt as artist Elsworth Kelly who Crimp had a short lived fling with. I’d love to see on the big silver screen Brad Pitt shrimping the bare feet of Ryan Gosling which is what Kelly did to Crimp who was ticklish in that area. Just hope Hollywood doesn’t muck it up.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS

Went to the premiere screening at Moviemento Kino of Sadness is an Evil Gas Inside Me by my former student from Malmo Art Academy/Lund University Stine Omar who wrote the script and stars along with her super sexy boyfriend Max Boss who directed the project. They are also in the very popular indie electro band Easter. Omar&Boss developed their international following by making a series of music videos on YouTube and are a bonafide internet sensation. Sadness is a not-ready-for- prime time TV serial which feels as if the Queercore G.B.Jones teen rivalry flick The YoYo Gang was psychotropically crosspollinated in a secret Monsanto lab with the shards of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and David Lynch’s early 90s TV soap opera Twin Peaks. I loved the deadpan loopyness of it all. On my way out of the screening some American dimestore critics were complaining of the poor quality of the video. The lowtech nature of the work makes it even more interesting to me.

In keeping with the trend of spreading the word about my talented former students, my perfect baby boy Alex Jovanovich of NYU who is also a damn amazing art critic at Art Forum Magazine is in a group show at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac curated by Jack Pierson that runs until October 25th.

Dear All:

If you happen to be in Salzburg during the next couple of months, please check out this wonderful show I'm in:Tomorrow´s Man - curated by Jack Pierson - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Jack Pierson's gorgeous solo exhibit, "A Town Not This One, " is in the gallery's main space!:

A TOWN NOT THIS ONE - Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Those of you on the left coast of Los Angeles should run to the Janc Ar Gallery at 961 Chung King Road in Chinatown to see the expressive painting exhibition Mirrored Face Off by my Swiss German high art child Cyril Kuhn who I first met when he was studying at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia California in the 1990s. Both Ron Athey & I were guest art professors at the time.  Cyril is brilliant and comes from a long line of famous artists.  His grandmother who is over 100 still creates tapestries for all the churches in Europe and his mother Rosina Kuhn is a lauded portraiturist.

Also in Los Angeles is a solo show at CB1 Gallery called On Ice by Lily Simonson who was in a class I taught years ago with Warhol superstar Bibbe Hansen who is also the mother of pop star Beck and daughter of the late/great Fluxxus artist Al Hansen.
September 14 - October 26, 2014 CB1 Gallery 207 W 5th Street Los Angeles, California 90013

Last year, Lily Simonson spent over a month in Antarctica, sleeping in a one-person tent and plein air painting in the McMurdo Dry Valleys--one of the coldest, driest environments on the planet. As the embedded artist in a National Science Foundation expedition, she worked in tandem with geologists to investigate changes in this alien landscape of ice and volcanic rock. Invoking the tradition of Romantic landscape painting, Simonson’s new series of mammoth canvases transports viewers to this sublime, barely-explored, and thrillingly inhospitable world. Invoking the tradition of Romantic landscape painting, Simonson’s new series of mammoth canvases transport viewers to this sublime, barely-explored, and thrillingly inhospitable world. On Ice will also feature Lily Simonson’s concurrent series of hyper-saturated glowing abstract paintings. These works evoke the dazzling skies of the Aurora Australis, and the prismatic splintering of white light through crystalline ice.

Simonson's Antarctic exploration will continue this winter, when she embarks on a three-month residency on the ice as the 2014-15 National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Awardee. She plans to SCUBA dive beneath the sea ice to observe and paint new subjects thriving in the frigid, otherworldly habitat of the Southern Ocean. Simonson will also join the Exploration Vessel Nautilus this month, painting aboard the ship as it explores Kick-em Jenny, the Carribbean's only active submarine volcano. Visit nautiluslive.org to chat with her live while she is at sea. (Full press release.)
Oh and my student from Weissensee Art academy Ann Duk Hee Jordan who is an actual Mongolian Princess is having a solo show. I taught at Weissensee back in 2007 and from that class came several standout young artists including my protege Christophe DeRohan Chabot,  and Katja Maya von Hellsdorf of the band LeiseyLento.

Anne Duk Hee Jordan  OF bodies chang’d to various forms, I sing…i

13 September – 01 November, 2014 cubus-m | Pohlstraße 75 | 10785 Berlin

“In this closed garden of the first observations there always remains the possibility of dreamlike mutation, transformation, protean survival in an everchanging shape.”
***
I just found out that comedienne Joan Rivers died age 81.  She along with Phylis Diller are two of the first female stand up comics.  Ms. Rivers was known for her caustic humour.  I remember when she directed a low budget comedy feature film in the 1970s called Rabbit Test starring Billy Crystal as the first man to become impregnated.   I also adored the television film she wrote called The Girl Most Likely Too . . .featuring a young Stochard Channing before her star turn in The Fortune with Jack Nicholsen & Warren Beatty and the film musical of the Broadway hit Grease.  My sources tell me that Joan Rivers died from complications of cosmetic surgery and the overuse of botox.

IM SUEDLICHEN WENDEKREIS DES STEINBOCK

As many of you know the Vagimule Davis doll doesn’t really cook so she depends on the kindness of friends and strangers alike to feed her face. Since the 1980s she has been a revered dinner guest, and loves small intimate dinner parties in favour of going to other kind of gatherings or soirees. Knowing so many talented gourmands is a plus especially when they appreciate inviting someone to table who really enjoys chowing down on their grub. The last artist dinner for Douglas Crimp at the close of his symposium at Arsenal was held at the Leipziger Strasse boite Centolire-Café e Panini which is a favourite spot used by Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus and Dieter Koslick during the Berlinale for VIP guests. The food at this tiny restaurant is beyond divoon.
Speaking of classy dinner functions I was invited to a major feast by the lovesexy visiting artist, choreographer,dancer,composer,opera singer(countertenor) Adham Hafez who is based in Cairo and is the founder of ARC HIVE, HaRaKa Dance Development and Research, the Arab performing arts archive. Multi-talented Adham also heads the Adham Hafez Dance Company and is artistic director of the only Egyptian dance festival - Transdance.

www.harakaproject.org www.adhamhafez.com

The dashing Adham Hafez is the epitome of continental-speaking a million different languages perfectly and is just pure joy and light to be around. He is constantly traveling so it was a great honor to be able to be in his hallowed presence eating food cooked from his mighty loving hands. My dear young friend Koen Claerhoutoen who works in Berlin at the Haus of World Cultures and in Egypt for the Cinematheque will be visiting the USA in September where I have already paired him with some of my closest comrades and sisters in the clothe. Koen graciously volunteered his spacious compound for the Hafez dinner festivities which included Koen’s his hunky dirty white boy Gallic roommate Michel Belague who is an award winning filmmaker, cinematographer and producer. Also on the VIP guest list: Michel’s lovely girlfriend Ame’lie Legrand(who is related to composer Michel Legrand) who is a cello virtuosa from the French Cantal mountain region,muscular hotsy totsy Rui Silveira a former dancer now working as an arts manager in both Lisboa and Berlin and Deborah Stokes a performance artist, filmmaker and video artist hailing from London who has worked for many decades in Japan, France, Greece and Egypt where Mr. Hafez discovered her. Here is the menu that luscious Adham Hafez prepared-
Appetizers: carrot puree with cinnamon and lemon,Grana padano bread sticks,toasted almonds in sweet and spicy coating,yoghurt dip in herb sauce,cucumbers with curried cheese. Soup: artichoke and rucola soup with pine nuts, mushroom cream soup. Main Dish: Green Salad with Balsamic vinaigrette butter blanched potatoes in tomme-cheese cream lentil loaf in carmalized onion sauce Desserts: selection of French cheeses frangipane with pears.

Had to go for a long overdue check-up at Dr. Stephan Minx’ office in Kreuzberg @ Moritzplatz. My high blood pressure has gone down which I am very happy to report. While in the waiting room ran into Fassbinder star Eva Mattes whose doctor is Thomas Minx, the twin brother of my physician.
***
O and now here is a long overdue snippet from my work-in-progress novel Naked on my Goad:

Once again Malloury Sheridan found herself in the Lucille Bremer-Weg under a waning Los Lobos moon. For several days she was feeling unattractive and bloated. It seemed as if the most hideous of creatures looked upon her as a pariah. In the park on a bench under a gas lit lamppost she met Praetor who seemed younger than his 44 years. He had dark thin hair that was showing traces of gray and recede, and wore thick horn rimmed glasses. Praetor was tall, thin and reedy. Secretly she was wishing to herself that Praetor’s frame was more muscular and defined as she longed to be held by a man of hulking force and determination. At this particular place and time the fact that Praetor was desirous of her was all that mattered. The ease in which they began discussing Uganda was thrilling to Malloury. His Norfolk was average in width and length, but he had a mighty sack of Howard which she grabbed with abandon. Praetor had lived in Baehr for 13 years, across the street from a lame kneipe bar The P-Konnect. He was originally a lazy student prince from Heidelberg, didn’t seem to be particularly ambitious having worked an assembly of low wage jobs unable to quench the ache over some Black musician from Austin Texas that he met ten years ago when the man was on holiday in Baehr. Malloury felt a tinge of sadness that sometimes her amorous nature got the better of her. But all she could do is sigh realizing that it’s not that easy being a Lotte Lenya lady with a difficult dance card to fill.

INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS

All of Berlin was wrapped up in the house of Douglas Crimp last week for three glorious days of congress, fellowship, laughter and gossip.For those of you not familiar with the writings of Mr. Crimp run to your local bookseller and purchase these titles:   AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism , On the Museum's Ruins, Melancholia and Moralism - Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics,  "Our Kind of Movie": The Films of Andy Warhol.  Looking back at my notes there is so much to lesbian process, that I’m finding it difficult to encapsulate all that took place.  The festivities began on Thursday August 28^th at the famed commercial art gallerie Buchholz in Charlottenberg off of the KU-Damm.  The charming gallerists Daniel Buchholz and his lifetime companion Christopher Mueller were gracious and engaging hosts, and very sweet unlike most art world movers&shakers.  I first met Buchholz&Mueller in the 1990s  at my Sunday Afternoon Silverlake artist space Sucker at the Garage through Stuart Comer who is now a curatorial chief at MoMa.  The exhibition at Buchholz Galerie- Pictures, Before and After in salute to Douglas Crimp features a dazzling array of artists as varied as Charles James, Agnes Martin, Fierce Pussy and The Cockettes.  The opening was a mob scene.  I hardly ever go to art openings unless its one of my former students or a very close dear friend. Hell, I don’t even go to my own openings.  I loved that this event was very cross generational, with a nice amount of radiant youth from different Berlin scenes that usually don’t mix plus gleaming eye candy in the form of some strapping young lads.  The hottest boy in the room was decidedly Goldenen Peter the patrician Buchholz exhibitions coordinator who recently moved to Berlin from New York City.  Peter is stunning,an immaculate child of WASP wealth with a flawless complexion,brilliantine smile, taunt torso and a bubble butt you could build a dream on. 

Gallery openings are not really for looking at the art its all about being social so I plan on going back during the run which lasts till Oct 30^th.  In Germany one thing I can’t stand at art galas is when they go into high speech mode, which tends to labour on and on ad nausea.  The exhibition & symposium organizers Juliane Rebentisch, Diedrich Diederichsen and CHEAP’s Marcuse Siegelstein wisely kept things to the verbosic bare minimum. The man of the hour:  Douglas Crimp, who is the very embodiment of grace, intelligence and elegance was radiant and looking like a Denton Welchian teen idol.  Its very difficult to believe that Douglas Crimp just turned 70.

The gallery was packed with celebutants including Wolfgang Tilmans, Susanne Sachsse, Michaela Wunsch looking like a sunkissed California girl on her return to Berlina from teaching in Los Angeles, the incredible German artist Isa Genzken(fresh from a spectacular retrospectacle at MOMA earlier this year) gorgeous Iranian artist Nairy Baghramian in a white latex blouse, (Ms. Baghramian was in the 2001 CHEAP production of Life of Juanita Castro at Podevil), Henrik Olesen, Discoteca Flaming Star, Katya Sander, Gesine Danckwart with little baby, Maria Losier, Lucile Desamory with fetching gal pal Pauline, LA’s Christopher Williams with hot powertop curator wife Ann Goldstein(Formerly of MOCA-LA and Stedelik Museum) Philip Smith, delightful glass blower Josiah McElheny(who flew in from NYC) Thomas Locher with curator partner Rike Frank, dandy dust artist Kerstin Honeit, Frank Wagner, film professor Gertrud Koch with media studkin professor Astrid Deuber Mankowsky, critic/gallerist Dominic Eichler, bbooks French New Wave scholar Nico Siepen, Stephan Geene of the amazing film Umsonst, cute Polish Phd Art Historian Magda Szczeniak,Symposium guest speakers: Juan Suarez, Dirck Linck, Rosalyn Deutsche, Jonathan Flatly, Rachel Haidu, writer Manfred Hermes, Matthias Haase, Koen Claerhout,humpy Indian actor Manish Dayal of the new Helen Mirren film,casting director Constantine Achmed Berger, Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Richard&Salome Gersch, Tobias Rauscher Ashaf and Saskia Wendland. The delicious artist dinner was at the cozy boite Manzini close to the gallery at Ludwigkirsch Strasse 11 and featured a specially designed serviette by Louise Lawler.

On Friday at Arsenal Institut fur film und Videokunst was the first day of the Douglas Crimp Symposium honouring his work in the academy, as curator and activist taking his forthcoming 2015 memoires as a departure point for a reconsideration of artistic, theoretical and queer subcultural practices from the 1960s to the present. Things got off on a rousing note with a mini lecturina by Marc Siegel who expertly applies the principles of Catskills-Borcht Belt humour to his scholarship.  My pen ran out of ink during Diedrich Diedereichsen’s presentation so I wasn’t able to take any notes, but I can attest that the famous DD was in fine form. The incandescent  Juliana Rebentisch of the lovely  voice and perfect diction (whose 2012 tome The Aesthetics of Installation Art is a must read) proved in her talk why the Gospel According to Saint Rebentisch is the be all and end all. 

The divine Rosalyn Deutsch of Barnard College in New York who has been a dear friend to Douglas Crimp for almost 40 years and her Museum of Innocence lecture which was very timely as she gave a nice overview of the narrative of loss from before the World Trade Center and its displacement of the Little Syria Community, small business destruction and the moving of the Washington Market and the fetishism inherent in turning the shards of the WTC into a victim and the inherent evil of developers that create new buildings with a separate entrance for the poor and misbegotten.

The Arsenal was SRO like it is during the Berlinale Film Festival and Forum & Forum Expanded screenings so by the time Douglas Crimp read the Hotel des Artistes chapter from his memoir it was pure pandemonium as everyone in the auditorium was riveted to his transporting prose.  My ear prickled when he mentioned Zoli’s Model Management Agency as both Glen Meadmore and I were briefly signed to them.  Zoli was the modelling agency with all the freaks in the early 1980s when I was on the scene in New York.  The hot gossip that had everyones jaws flapping was the revelation that famed artist Ellsworth Kelly was a shrimp enthusiast.  Friday evening closed with a screening of the wonderful 1972 Yvonne Rainer film Lives of Performers which I had never seen but somehow I channelled in my 1994 short subject VooDoo Williamson-The Dona of Dance.

 At the Arsenal was a myriad of curators and students from around the known and unknown world,including visiting scholars Tobias Nagl(author of the important book on race and Weimar Cinema) Sianne Ngai with life partner literary  critic Mark McGurl, Penny Deutscher, Virve Sutinen, Andrea Niederbuchner from Tanz in August, Antonia Baehr,Renate Lorenz, Karin Michaelski, Pauline Boudry, sexyline junior queer film scholar Chris Tedjasukmana, Sissy Magazine writer Andre Wendler,Turkish artist Aykan Safoglu, queer curator Todd Sekuler, art critic Tom Holert and legend Noll Brinkmann.

The last day of the symposium on Saturday the tone seemed to shift and everything was like speed dating where on Friday things were very languid.  Douglas Crimps colleague at the University of Rochester the lovely Rachel Haidu and her Lives of Complications was the perfect way to begin the day answering the questions raised by the Yvonne Rainer film.  Stanley Kubrick certainly can’t hold a candle to Ms. Rainer and Ms. Haidu made that evident.  I kept wondering during the lecture what ever happened to Fernando the Chillean beauty with the strong nose, incredible bone structure and lithe lean musculature.  He was so my type accept for having his hair in an unsightly ponytail.  The other young dark haired semetic beauty boy in the piece also looked delectable in the recreation scenes of Frank Wedekind’s LuLu where in his newsboy cap he was the perfect Alwa.

The next talk by activist Dirck Linck on the Bricolage Camp Genius in Irving Rosenthal’s literary cult classic Sheeper got everyone in the place wanting to find a copy of this bejewelled tome. Sheeper is definitely  the book with a bulge ---a queer masterwork.  Mr. Rosenthal was a colleague of Jack Smith and was part of the Beat Generation of writers Ginsberg and Borroughs.  Having the fantastiche Herr Linck in the symposium helped lift it from being a pure New York Fest, which is in keeping with the history that Douglas Crimp has in Berlin since the early 1980s.

The last two talks Jonathan Flatley’s Just Alike and Juan Suarez’, Grids,Folds and Disco were the perfect way to end the proceedings on a lively note.  Jonathan and his lovesexy boyish enthusiasm is so compelling in bringing to light the cross racial imitations and layers of repetition for emphasis in Warhol’s bla-tino drag queen poloroid portrait series.  Anytime someone evokes queer foremothers Marcia P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera they are aces high with me.  The handsome and stately Spaniard Juan Suarez who also wowed at Camp/Anti-Camp back in 2012 really knows how to connect the gridlike and disco mirror ball dots.  From Lesbian zen to Larry Lavan and the Paradise Garage boogie intimacy El Suarez took it from coon to caint in the dynamic of continuity and dislocation.  Can’t wait till next year with Douglas’ 71^st .