WERTHERSFIEBER

Just returned from one of the best queer art congresses I have ever been to with the dynamic title of Perverse Assemblages-Heteronormative Ordnungen Inter/Medial Queeren held at the Institut fuer Kunst und Visuelle Kulture Helene-Lange-Kolleg Queer Studies & Intermedialitaet Kunst-Musik-Medienkulture at the Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Oldenburg.  It seems like the bold scholarship is bubbling forth from these small provincial university towns and hamlets.  I had a blast in Oldenburg which is quite pretty and inviting.  It was great to get away from Berlin and be someplace a little bit more laid back.  The atmosphere generated by the organizers of the conference was very congenial, open and gracious.  I want to give open mouth shout outs to Professor Dr. Barbara Paul the big boss at the University, creative instigators:  Atlanta Ina Beyer a lovesexy butch, Rena Onat a Turkish/German glamorour girl young scholarina and Natascha Frankenberg a willowy Amazon with personality plus.

Things started off with a nice low key bang in the form of a roundtable discussion under the heading: Queering and Decolonizing Art and Visual Culture with British writer, activist and interdisciplinaryartist Raju Rage and gorgeous Afro German blacktavist, curator and scholar Sandrine Micosse’-Atkins whose new tome Little Book of Big Visions I am dying to read.

The second day the theme was Queer Temporalities, Film & Movement and the first lecturina was by the dazzling Katrin Koppert, “Tableaux and Tableaux Vivants of Pain and Queer Time in Photography and/as Film. Katrin lives in Berlin but works in Linz Austria and collaborates with Todd Sekular.

My CHEAP kollektiv co-hort Marcuse Siegelstein also shined with his Catskills circuit talk Images From the Post Heterosexual Age.

I felt bad that I missed most of the vivacious Eliza Steinboch’s Puncture Wounds, Sensing Gender-Nonconformity Stigma in the Anti-Portrait and the personable and engaging Anthony Clair Wagner’s REappropriating the Monster:  From Stigma to Empowerment part of the Trans Media-Trans Bodies program as I had to get into hair & make-up as I was the keynote speaker that evening under the heading of Queer Punk Politics. 

Special thankx to my juicy & lovely personal assistant Marieka who is an undergraduate student who devoted herself to me during my visit and did a wonderful job doing my hair and make-up.  I love you Mareika you are the bestest!  After my artist talk there was a delish catered vegan dinner at Club Polyester in the Olde City Center and after party which featured the famous feministische Djane from Aotearoa, New Zealand Bella Cuts aka: Jen Bell who makes u dance on the ruins of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.  Miss Bella Cuts has relocated to Berlin and I hope to be seeing lots of her in the future as she is the one adoreable young woman.

The last day of the festivities WoWed and featured academic super shtar Mimi Thi Nguyen  an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign who presented with punque aplomb Minor Threats.  Mimi has brought to her university my old comrade in femme arms Alice Bag Armendariz and is such a solid archivist of all things punc having written for Maximumrocknroll, Punk Planet and her own compilation zine Race Riot. Katherina Wiedlack who is based in Vienna Austria closed things beautifully and sonically with her lecture Loud, Rude and with an Attitude:  Queer-Feminist Punk in/as Form, Meaning and Affect concentrating on letting us hear some amazing new punk bands of color based in Portland and Seattle while mixing in a little theory via  Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.  Honey it doesn’t get any better then this.  But yes it did get better with a nice summation by the famed lesbianfeminist Antke Engel of the legendary Queer Institute Berlin.  Yowza!

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For those of you visiting Berlin in February and want to have some alternatives to the International Berlinale Film Festival please check out this exciting event by underground film legend Wilhelm Hein and his art photog girlfriend Annette Frick:

IN KÜRZE GROSSES TAMTAM!!!!!!!!!  

WIEDERERÖFFNUNG 

ZEIG' WAS DU WIRKLICH KANNST!!!!!

COMING SOON!!!!!!! RE-OPENING!!!!!!!!!

BIG WHOOPY-WHOOPY !!!! 

SHOW WHAT YOU REALLY CAN DO !!!!!!!!  

Achtung: neuer Termin:

Samstag 7.2.2015 ab 18 Uhr 

PFUSCHEN VERBOTEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO MESSING AROUND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

schummeln und flunkern erlaubt

fudging and cheating allowed

YOU HAVE 3 MINUTES TO CREATE YOUR PIECE OF ART

DU HAST 3 MINUTEN ZEIT  (D)EIN KUNSTWERK ZU SCHAFFEN!!!

SEND US YOUR CONTRIBUTION: IMAGE,  SOUND,  TEXT,  FILM,  FOTO,  MUSIC,  POEM OR  PERFORMANCE TO THE FOLLOWING ADRESS: 

Kintoppp@gmx.de  or: Frick@gmx.de 

or analogue  Post to

Wilhelm Hein -  Seest.107 - D-13353 Berlin

or bring it personal at least one day before the big WHOOPY-WHOOPY !

oder bring es persönlich mindestens 1 Tag vor Eröffnung

schick uns deinen Beitrag: Bild, Sound, Text, Film, Foto, Musik, Gedicht, Poem, Performance, per mail an Kintoppp@gmx.de  oder Frick@gmx.de oder per Post an 

Wilhelm Hein -  Seest.107 - D-13353 Berlin

herzlichst Wilhelm Hein und Annette Frick

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And this happening by Basso Art Guru Yusuf Etiman:

dear friends of audio pleasures

i am very happy to announce that i will be programming some 'sonic adventures' at the non-profit exhibition space between bridges in schöneberg for the whole month of february. since september, between bridges has installed a playback room featuring a high end stereo sound system, which not only in its sweet spot provides a fabulous hearing experience.

the rough framework of the programme is like this:
throughout the month, between bridges will be open wednesdays to fridays from 3pm and i will be present during opening hours.
every wednesday at 7 pm, we will screen a film programme with a special emphasis on the soundtrack.
saturdays is open house, where everybody can come and share their favourite tracks (or video clips etc).
thursdays and fridays, there is the opportunity to put up special listening events…

so all of you, from high end nerds to disco fire birds - this goes out to you!

let me know if you have ideas! let's take the opportunity to spoil our ears… the only limit is that we keep it to the playback framework, meaning no live gigs/performances etc.

with great help of some of our friends, the space will be transformed for leisurely comfort and there will always be a hot tea waiting for you. i would also be very happy if this month gives us the framework to further reflect about spaces for sound presentation, which, as some of you well know, has been a main topic in my research since basso closed down. in recent time, i teamed up with mate galic and barbara architects to push and further crystalise the ideas about purpose building a sound space for our community. if you have any ideas, tips, knowledge, whatever you might think is important to share in this context - this february we can talk about all of that.

you will get a weekly programme email from between bridges on every sunday in the coming month - please let me know if you do not wish this. i know that some of you are abroad or packed with other things and can not join physically. but please, if you have any proposals for listening adventures, get in touch with me. i will be happy to spread your sound in your absence. also if you have friends who you think might be interested, please forward them the programme, or send their email to me or between bridges, so we can include them in the mailings.

there is a cd player, a turntable (not two!), a projector and the possiblity to play sound files - which preferably should be really good quality, not lores mp3s or so…
if you want to know precisely about the tech set up, please download: www.etiman.de/Techniks.pdf

i hope this finds you all well, and i wish all of you could pay a visit to

Bring Your Own (Playback Room part III)
a month of sonic adventures
04.02.2015 – 28.02.2015
www.betweenbridges.net
Keithstrasse 15, 10787 Berlin

a big hug, can't wait!
yusuf

FILMERFAHRUNG UND ZUSCHAUER

Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music was SRO and jam packed with so many celebutants anxious to get swept up in the beauty of Chantal Akerman’s musical Golden Eighties starring the luminous Delphine Seyrig and pop star Lio. Golden Eighties or Window Shopping which was its title in The States is beyond brilliantine and uses language in such an innovative manner. Heading the Belgium contingent at our screening the lovely Anne Quirynen the video artist and Professor at the University in Potsdam with her girlfriend Bettina Knaup the performance gender curator of React: Feminism, Koen Claerhout of Haus de Kulturen die Welt, the vivacious DJane Manuela Schinina aka: Bianka Kruk, Michaela Wünsch, film scholar and bbooks kollektiv diva extroidinaire, Nanna Heidenreich, Uli Ziemons and Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus all overworked and exhausted from their tireless efforts with the Berlinales Forum Expanded Section, Trixie Schoenherr, Yusuf Etiman the creative director of Berghain Niteclub with humpy SouthAfrican artist Adrian who is Rosemary’s Baby all grown up, Marcuse Siegelstein the Goethe Universitaet film historian, visiting NYU student Marina C. Roselli who is the intern of the fab Art Forum writer Alex Jovanovich, Rami Malek the super handsome Egyptian/American male ingénue and star of the Twilight films, The Master and Night at the Museum franchise with supermodel Yasmine LeBon daughter of Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, Stephen Ira the 21 year old trans son of Warren Beatty and Annette Benning with Salome Gersch and film editor Ruth Schoeneger, choreographer Assaf Hochman, USC music fagademic Sean Nye, film scholar Christian F. Weber and his super lovesexy intellectual posse of queer activist Rufus Sona, Karsten Schubert and her handsome pal Rasmus,wealthy art patron Harry dÁvigdor-Goldsmid,Stanford University visting scholars Sianne Ngai and her life partner Mark McGurl who are fellows at the Wissenschaftskolleg for the next school year with a Romanian film critic and his artist wife Eike Wittrock. All the bottoms in the audience were going stir crazy over my partner in grime the power top Daniel Hendrickson, the Scandanavian Muzlim Mulatto who was so superlative on klavier and who curates the musical portion of my film event every month. There were so many famous people at RSFS that if I forgot to mention you please send my young student assistant Gleeson Brevard at GleeBrevard@aol.com a note and I will rectify the situation ASAP. I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off because I leave for the town of Oldenburg for the Perverse Gefuege Art Congress. Thank you for being patient with the Vagimule doll.

PUTZFIMMEL

Rising Stars, Falling Stars - January 2015 - Vaginal Davis, Chantal Ackerman, FORUM EXPANDED & CHEAP by Filmanzeiger on Mixcloud

HOERSTURZ

Saw the last of the Hollywood Musicals Festival at the Arsenal with Scandinavian Mulatto Muzlim Daniel Hendrickson.  Kino 1 was packed liked it is during The Berlinale for the rare screening of the 1943 all black musical Stormy Weather starring the incandescent Lena Horne who looks so much like my mother Mary Magdelene Duplantier.

The film also stars Bill “Bojangles”Robinson” Cab Callaway and his zoot suit, The Nicholas Brothers stealing the show in the final production number, Katherine Dunham, Ada Brown and Fats Waller.  The last time I saw the film was in the early 1970s when it was on TV so I forgot that it was fashioned as a semi biopic about the career of Bojangles.  Besides getting to see Ms. Horne in all her glamorous glory I was very impressed  by Fats Waller being allowed to be the queenly queen that he is.   Fats basically plays himself and I doubt if a mainstream audience of that time was aware that his references were towards people ‘in the life’ as they use to say in Harlem Renaissance days.  The blues singer Ada Brown is also a standout and I even liked the black face vaudeville bit by two black comics who darken their skin just a shade or two from their natural color which was oddly riveting. The films humour was so olde school its new school.  The Katherine Dunham ballet sequence was also intriguing, but the costumes for her gany male dancers was the ultimate in homo poovah.  Of the two all black musicals that came out in 1943 the other being Cabin in the Sky from MGM directed by Vincente Minnelli starring Ethel Waters I think I like Cabin better.  Cabin also features Lena Horne.  There is more of Ms. Horne in Stormy but when it comes to greatness no one can surpass Miss Ethel Waters.

DER NEO-AKTIONISTISCHE AUFBRUCH

Met with Marcuse Siegelstein, Daniel Hendrickson, Piero Bellomo my former students Glee Brevard, Acme Singt, Christophe De Rohan Chabot and Chrome Chastain at the Communist Pizza Parlour on Schonhauser Allee for din din before going to the ICI Kulturelabor Institute to hear a talk on the Theory of the Gimmick by visiting scholar Sianne Ngai.  Ms. Ngai is a glamorous delight bringing much needed pizazz to Berlina as she lectured wearing Vivienne Westwood.  Ms. Ngai’s research on the gimmick as a sometime failed special effect within the literary canon is in its earliest stages as she introduced some of her work-in-progress findings and observations.  Can’t wait to see how she furthers this discourse through race via Richard Wright’s The Outsider and Samuel R.Delaney’s Babel-17.

It’s been over a year since I last had a rendezvous with my sometime fuckbuddy the Scientist I call Saarbrucken who is from said German/French border town.  On this visit we met at his Charlottenburg hotel for goodies and then he took me to the cute and very authentic Italian boite Pasta & Basta at Knesebeckstrasse 94 where I gorged on white bean soup and Linguini with Lachs.  I am always famished after a bit of longoverdue sexing.  Saarbrucken retired this year from his stressful job with the German government and wants to buy an apartment in Berlin.  Maybe I can get him to buy a flat for me as he’s loaded coming from a prominent German industrialist family. 

Went to a birthday breakfast with the handsomest man in all Europa Uli Ziemons of Forum Expanded.  Uli was happy to take a little time off from work on the ten year anniversary of The Berlinale’s Forum Expanded planning.  The Vagimule Davis doll and kollektiv CHEAP will be a part of the celebration which will start on Feb 3^rd at the Akademie de Kunst.  I love the theme this year, “To The Sound of the Closing Door” which for me is very Nora of A Doll’s House.

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE

Was taken for a nice luncheon to Maxway Café at Winterfeldt Platz by the personable visiting art dealer from Chicago G.Craig Smith.  Mr. Smith has been following my retarded lady career since the early 1990s when we first met at a reading I did at the People Like Us bookshoppe.

The great fearless leader of kollektiv CHEAP Ms. Susanne Sachsse had one of her delightful dinner parties for the visiting literary scholars Sianne Ngai and Mark McGurl of Stanford University.  We were joined by my young proteges Acme Singt, Christophe DeRohan Chabot and film historian Marcuse Siegelstein who actually did the cooking following La Sachsse’s secret recipe.  The food was heavenly as is always the case at the famous East Berlin salon of Susi Su.  Mr. McGurl and Ms. Ngai are enchanting and very vivacious.  Ms. Ngai will be giving the talk “Theory of the Gimmick” on Monday January 12 7:30pm at the ICI Foundation.  She is a Harvard educated English professor and has published the books Ugly Feelings, Out Aesthetic Catagories-Zany, Cute & Interesting as well as essays with such fab titles as “The Cuteness of the Avant Garde” and “Merely Interesting”.  I can’t wait to hear what she has to say at her lecturina and I’m bringing a cadre of my interns and young former students.  During dinner Ms. Ngai  recommended two books by D.A.Miller  A Place for Us on Hollywood Musicals and Jane Austen and the Secret of Style.

I took Scandinavian Muzlim jihadist Daniel Hendrickson for his birthday breakfast to a relatively new café on the canal in NeuKoeln called California Breakfast Slam at Instrasse 47.  Loved the décor of the joint and the food was American style without being too chi chi.  I had mushroom scrambled eggs that were very fluffy the way I like em with homefries and Daniel had gravy & biscuits. Our waitress was a lovely young  Spanish woman.

On Silvester I watched several serials that were sent to me on DVD including Transparent which includes a small role by my delightful multi media artist daughter  ZacKary Drucker.  Love ZacKery but I didn’t care for the main characters in this program which involves three grown children of an elderly man who comes out as a transgendered woman.  The acting of Gaby Hoffman(the daughter of Warhol legend Viva) is superb.  I’ve known lil Miss Gaby since she was a young girl.  But all of the other leads just come across as too sour Apple Annie in that American TV fashion that tries to be edgy and winds up falling flat.  Was also sent an Australian TV show called Please Like Me with a lead in the form of the ungainly Josh Thomas who is quite unlikeable on many fronts besides being fugly.  In one of the episodes he calls himself “a 50 year old looking baby” and I couldn’t agree more.  Because Mr. Thomas is the writer and star of this series he chooses only the best looking young lads to play his love interests.  Nice work if you can get it . . .   I much prefer watching the episodes sent to me of two defunct series The Tomorrow People and Star Crossed that don’t try to be anything other then mindless escapism.