HEUTE ZURUECKGEBUCHTE MEDIEN

Was such a delight to see that super hot lady of high art Ms. Lia Gangitano of the incredible Participant Inc. Gallery in Berlin bringing her universally lauded Greer Lankton exhibition to Berlin at Wolfgang Tilman’s Between Bridges Gallery on Keith Strasse in Schoeneberg.  This exhibit is on every critic in the worlds top ten list as the best of the best in 2014 and it really is divine.  I first met the late Miss Lankton back in the 1990s in Chicago as she was part of the clique surrounding Steve LeFreniere.  Her famed doll sculptures do really transcend, and she was just the sweetest most lovely human being that ever called this Island earthina home. Lia was being flanked by hordes of well wishers that included art superstar Nan Goldin.  I am so glad Lia is getting her due as she is the last of a special breed of smart with it curators.  Her not-for-profit gallery Participant Inc on the Lower East Side is the only one of its kind still left in the “New Danger Capitalism New York City”.  I first met Lia in 1990 when she was the head curator at Boston’s ICA and she brought me to that city for the first time for the legendary series Dress Codes.  Lia also gave Catherine Opie her first big institutional art gig as well.  Lia left Boston and joined Thread Waxing Space in SoHo before starting her her gallery where I had my first solo exhibition in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy Duncan. 

Coming back to Berlin from my travels to Canada and the UK I caught a cold and then stomach flu with the flying patooties(projectile excrementing) so I thought I would miss Lia’s visit but thankfully I recovered-but barely.  Will be off on another trek to far off locations which I will talk more about in another postada but just want to give 1,000,000 kisses to the great and powerful Miss Lia I love you lady!!!!!

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Those of you in Frankfurt am Main area please check out this exhibition and long overdue retrospectacle by art fotog Annette Frick who along with her longtime life partner Wilhelm Hein have been getting a lot of International attention and admiration lately:

A C H T U N G !! B I T T E  V O R M E R K E N !!!

Filmkollektiv Frankfurt zeigt:

EIN AUGENBLICK IM NIEMANDSLAND

RETROSPEKTIVE: ANNETTE FRICK

FILME - VIDEOS - DIAS 

+ MEHRFACHPROJEKTIONEN

SAMSTAG 11.4.2015 ab 16 Uhr 

im HORST - in der Kleyerstr.15-17 - Frankfurt

 in den Adlerwerken an der Galluswarte

es erscheint eine Publikation

mit zahlreichen Abbildungen, Materialien und  Texten von u.A.

Angela Mc Robbie

Dennis Vetter

Gary Vanisian

Sissi Tax

Wilhelm Hein

Dr. BearBoy

Ruvi Simmons

und einem Comic von Flore Vigneron

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The wonderful Manuela Schinina’ aka:  DJane Bianca Kruk hosted an Easter Mongay dinner at her lovely flat at Kott Busser Damn the food was heavenly and the fellowship divoon consisting of Nanna Heidenreich, Daniel Hendrickson and a lovely lesbianfeministiche couple Bettina and Xana who have recently given up being artists and curators which I applaud. Their work can be found here: windberreira.com.  And now the simply delici menu:

caponata di melanzane (tradizionale siciliana) , which was the side dish with aubergine

salsa di menta , which was the sauce  insalata arance e finocchi , also sicilian ! but very fashionable lately in berlin and lamb with roasted internationalist potatoes

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Felix Knoke the editor of greatly missed D-bug Magazine and writer with Der Spiegel and Der Stern hosted a Filmhighlights Magazine studio audience intervention in the Schiller Kiez in Neu Kolln.  Felix rents a studio at the Kamo Atelier and told me he thought it would be a nice idea if Manuel Schubert aka: Vicki Baum and I did our monthly podcast promoting Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music in front of a live audience of his studio mates. I said yes not realizing that Felix would make a public announcement on Facebook I wanted just a nice quiet little thing in front of a few of his select friends and associates.  Well thankfully Felix took down the Facebook posting, but there was still quite a large unexpected turnout that included Felix’s beautiful girlfriend Angela Nicoletti,Glen Meadmore European tour guitarist Tilmann Schuepter,Dutch photographer Sandra van Egmond, Luca Bendandi of publishing firm Vetro Editions which is part of the Kamo Atelier, Slovenian dramaturgist Urska Brodar, penile projectionist Marius Roth who also works for Juergen Bruning and his girlfriend the filmmaker Cylixe who was a top student of Birgit Hein,interior architect Michele Bruni and psychology Phd student Anna Janssen, the underground musician Andreas “Krach”Stoiber who more people need to know about as he is a Berlin treasure, designer and illustrator Kasha Beyer, Italian Fordham Baldie Andrea Teller, hunky young and very personable Tobias Zimmerman and young artist and junior curator Andre Kirchner who took quite a liking to our little Manuel Schubert-could Springtime romance be blooming? Plus, Mariabrigida from Mama Roma, and an assortment of Argentine party girls just happy to be anywhere.

HAMER ON THE HEATHER

. . .With me one and only highland fling . . .

Yes Glasgow Scotland is divine and the Vagimule Davis doll is having the time of her life at the Glitch Film Festival presented by the dynamic lovesexy Digital Desperados curator team of Nosheen Khwaja and Cloudberry. Glitch is a queer, trans, intersex, people of color film festival that is completely free of charge.  More festivals should follow the Glitch example. I hadn’t been in Glasgow since 2003 when Franko B. was the artist in residence at the National Review of Live Arts at The Arches.  At that time I only saw my hotel and the underground venue with all the people coming to the performances being other artists or art students with no one outside of that realm.  Glitch which was held at the Center For Contemporary Art (CCA)seems much more open and inclusive then The National Review of Live Art which I don’t think exists anymore.

I was picked up at the airport by the wonderful Ben a sweet otter of a boy who has lived for 18 years in Canada but has just returned to making art in his hometown of Glasgow.  I just loved my accomodations at the Citizen M. Hotel in the downtown district.  The lovely and gregarious Scotish/Polish hotel ambassador Dominike gave me the full Monty celebrity treatment sending me a giant gift bag of designer products that included anatomical day cream believer daily face cream and puffy the eye bag slayer revitalising eye mask and champagne.  The Digital Desperados also presented me with a giant gift bag and a huge beautiful  bouquet of flowers.The CCA was only five minutes away from the Citizen M hotel but with my bad sense of direction I needed an escort so the wonderful David from North London was recruited as the celebrity wrangler.  David has that typical Sloan Ranger dry humour and had me rolling doubled back in stitches the entire time I was at the festival.  It was so good to also see Raju Rage who was in Glasgow from London presenting with his Collective Creativity Arts Collectiv.  I met the marveoux Raju when I was at the Perverse Assemblages Congress in Oldenberg.  Want to give shoutouts to hot Gordon who did my signage wearing a pair of leopard skin pumps, Lewis the tech guy and Michael one of the CCA head production managers who is the step cousin of my great friend and collaborator Glenn Belverio of New York.  Michael is married to a Scottish man and used to live in Pennsylvania and NYC but has been in Glasgow for several years.

Special kissyz go out to  The world famous Open Barbers: Felix & Greygory who came all the way from London who brilliantly styled my wigs and gave free haircuts to the audience members. The Open Barbers are part of a new breed of business entrepeneurs who have vision and purpose providing a salon experience at affordable pricing, non-judgemental environment welcoming people of all ages, genders and sexualities.  Please check them out at openbarbers.tumblr.com and tell them Ms. Davis sent you.  My make-up artist was a UK rose name Kaeleigh Wallace who had me looking so major Ms. Gorgeous that I didn’t recognize myself.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see that much of the festival as I had to concentrate my energies on my performance and since I am a chatty Cathy every time I socialize it drains me physically.  Was happy I was able to catch the documentary film Kuma Hina directed by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson about the legendary Hawaiian transgendered activist that also featured a little 12 year girl who was so self-possessed in becoming the leader of an all-male hula troupe. 

Was also impressed by the expert curatorial selection of short subjects that included 1000 Cumshots and My Asian Boyfriend by Canadian Wayne Yung who I never heard of before but who must be part of  Nguyen Tan Hoang ’s gaysian mafia who I later found out has been living in Berlin for almost as long as I have.  Wayne is very tall and personable,  so strange that our paths have never crossed before, but Berlina is a big town and I live mostly out of a suitcase so there are a lot of queer artist that live in Berlin that I haven’t met or who are not part of the cosmos that surrounds The CHEAP kollektiv.  Something about Mr. Yung reminds me of that other Canadian video artist Benny Namerofsky famous for having had a sexual liason with Berlin’s gay mayor Klaus Wolvereit. 

Other shorts that really got my attention were: Drone by Sharlene Bamboat, In The Ladies Lounge by Fadia Abboud, Group of Seven Inches by Kent Morkman and the stellar standout Vogue Train by Kemar Jewel.

Was grateful to have a day of cooling down and the curators treated me to a fab vegan luncheon at the Mononucleosis Café in the centrale district.  The Mono Café is owned by a local musician who also runs several other cafes in town under the names of Stereo, and 78.  One intriguing fact about Glasgow is that it has the highest number of vegan oriented restaurants in the entirety of the UK.  Joining the Digital Desperados for lunch Miss Eva who is an old friend of my British husband Andrew “Lord Audre Beardsley” Gould of Brickstops at the Parlouclub fame, and juicy couple Sherrie from Canada & Ms. Evelyn Waugh.  I also learned a new Glaswegian word called Tattie Scones.  HA

O GIRL YOU BE ONE TOUGH KERSHMERGA!

So sorry I have been neglecting my blogina writing duties but touring North America with stops in Toronto and Kingston, Ontario Canada have left me physically drained.  Very exciting being brought to Kingston,  I’ve been to Montreal, Vancouver, and the big T many times but Kingston is a first for the Vagimule and I must say I just adore  the oldest Canuckian city.  The beautiful Robin Alex McDonald of the young curatorial collective Turbines fetched me from the airport and delivered la diva to the historic Hotel Belvedere which is a sumptuous shabby chic Victorian mansion with a very friendly accommodating staff. My lush hotel room was just beyond magnificent taking me into a comfort zone that I have never experienced before.  I was fortunate that the weather was bright, sunny and crisp.  Kingston is a University town so everywhere the eye could roam was humpy boy eye candy jogging about in tight shorts showing off rugby style thick thighs, rump and calf----yowza!
The Turbine Curatorial Collective consists of a charming clique of youthful scholars that along with Miss Kelly include delicious Maria Montez doppleganger Pansee Atta, lovesexy Gabriel Cheung, pert Anne Dunsford and translucent skinned lovely Katharine Vingoe-Cram. I predict that you’ll be hearing a lot about the Turbine Collective in the future and I felt so lucky that I was was apart of their Utopias Performance Art Congress which was co-sponsored by the Department of Art, Gender and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, The City of Kingston Art Council, The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund and Modern Fuel Artist –Run Center.
Being that I am so fragile when it comes to aeroplane travel and not wanting to drain my strength I missed the Mercury queer dance party, panel discussions, lectures and electric performances by emerging live artists Andrew Rabyniuk, Avery Everhart and Hazel Meyer the Girl Jock.  I presented my artist talk to a packed intergenerational audience at the gorgeous Agnes Etherington Art Centre Atrium and on another day did my “Twee & Sympathy- Lesbian seperatist high tea performance for one person at a time at the fab Renaissance Event Hall which is a renovated church  that was built in the Regency England period and is expertly managed by the hot famed showtune queen Denis LeBlanc.
Providing our Ms. Davis with personal assistance during her stay was macho Italian power top Dan Vena the best dressed man in Ontario.  Mr. Vena along with some wonderful student volunteers provided the lady with the most sumptuous meals, toiletries and gift bags anticipating her every desire.  Major kudos and thankx also to Jan Allen and Barry Fagan of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Miss Ann Marie Claire a personable and highly spirited  no nonsense vixen, bubble butt booty pie Justin the blumenlove sex god medical student and husband of Gabriel Cheung.  There are just so many wonderful people to thank for my visit to Kingston and the Turbine Curatorial Collective know just how to spoil international black lady artistes.  Veteran curators could learn a thing or two from them in how to properly treat visitors and about pure utter graciousness.  Are you listening MoMa PS-1?
The Turbines Curatorial Collective even paid for me a relaxing full-body massage at the Annex Therapy Spa and Treatment Center from the muscular Portuguese masseuse Angel who expertly banished all my anxiety and stress so that I could just fully concentrate on giving the best possible performance.
I also reconnected with some olde Canadian zine pals from the 1980s like  the wonderous Mr.Tim Murphy who I met years ago through G.B.Jones &Carolyn Azar of Fifth Column and Don Pyle of Shadowy Men, Shadowy Planet and Phonocomb. I also got to flirt at my performance with the beefy bald headed pud of a British director Yann DeMange of the feature film 1971.
In my hotel room I OD’s on silly reality TV shows like one from A&E that was really ill called Marriage At First Sight that featured a muscle headed EMT and of course being in an English language country  I was able to enjoy  marathon sessions of tough love guru Judge Judy who I can’t get enough of. Living now for almost a decade in Berlin I really miss counter culture so being taken to several 1950s style diners was a true blessing.  One place  called Tommy’s we were served by a perfect curly haired pillow lipped skater thrash boy with warm bright blue eyes and joyous manner about him.  What can I say but Ah Canada!
Because of my tour to Canadia Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music was held on the first Sunday of the month instead of its usual last Sunday.  Fortunately that didn’t stop the multitudes from showing up including some A-list American scholars in the form of the legendary David “GayShame” Halperin who is in Berlin doing research at the Wissenschaft Villa in Wilmerdorf  with radiant youth musicologist suprema Roger Mathew Grant who is collaborating with Fearless Leader of CHEAP Kollectiv Susanne Sachsse and I on The Magic Flute.  Also at RSFS: goodlooking musician Fabrizio Moretti,  journalist and novelist Murat Ham, with Iranian British hacktor Kayvan Novak, young fit Italian male ingénue Lorenzo Richelmy who played Marco Polo in a recent TV mini series,  hottie Ryan Guzman, and Jack Nicholson’s  23 year old son with Rebecca Broussard  Ray Nicholson hanging with the Gersch Twins Salome and Richard. La Susanne Sachsse with her film historian lover Marcuse Siegelstein, who will join Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus on an experimental film tour of India for an entire month sponsored by the Goethre Institute.  I screened the 2007 Tamil Indian film Paruthi Veeran directed by Ameer Sultan starring the chunky but funky little sex machine Karthik Sivakumar.  This movie is quite atmospheric and even features a trans singing dancing crew who are part of two big production numbers one featuring the male lead in a dance off that is highly spirited.  The violent flourishes in the film are a bit unsettling but give the movie its salty dog edge.  My partner in grime Daniel Hendrickson the Scandinavian Muzlim was in the hospital and wasn’t at my side at RSFS this month with his intoxicating piano playing skills so I felt my introduction suffered quite a bit and overall I was lacking in energy with having to coordinate several upcoming visual art exhibitions and performances in North America, Scandinavia and The Netherlands

AUFKLAERUNG

Rising Stars, Falling Stars - March 2015 - Vaginal Davis & Ameer Sulthans PARUTHIVEERAN by Filmanzeiger on Mixcloud

TRAU KEINEM, DEM DU NICHT TRAUST

Was taken to dinner for my birthday to a cute little Austrian boite off the Ku-Damn by the young and very handsome Justin Patterson who is a relative to the very famous wealthy and powerful Mellon Family Dynasty of America.  Despite popular belief I do not have a complete disdain for all rich people, just the icky ones.  In my dealings over the years with the Mellon clan they are true blue.  How does a black drag queen from the ghettos of Los Angeles get mixed up with the mega rich you ask.  Well its a bit of a long story but it all started back in the 1970s when I received a scholarship to attend the prep school Choate Rosemary in Wallingford Connecticut.  Through this scholarship I got to meet the late Paul Mellon and his wife Bunny Mellon who died last year at the age of 103.  Mrs. Mellon loved black people and my insane eccentricities caught her eye many years ago and its through her that I met the sincere charmer that is Justin Patterson. 

Back in the 1990s I had a flirty relationship with the late John-John Kennedy before he was married.  He was somewhat of a dinge queen, and Bunny Mellon was best friends with his mother Jackie O.  Anyway at dinner Justin and I got talking about falling out with friends, a subject I could build a mansion upon and I told him that any relationship in which one party feels even the slightest sense of diminishment from the other for me that relationship is not worth enduring.  I also never regret my decisions to pull away from people with an ultimately corrosive aura.  Those faithful readers of my blogina will know just who I am talking about as well as the person in questions who reads this blog regularly.

SAUGEIL

Fearless Leader Susanne Sachsse and I had a wonderous Skype conference call with our Magic Flute crack team of Jackie Shemish lighting designer from London, Jonathan Berger & Kate Beach handling production design in New York.  There is still so much to do with this project before it premieres in the Fall 2015 during the Performa Biennale. So excited working with indie pop god Jamie Stewart, Roger Mathew Grant the Musicalogist and all the others who will bring this event to fruition.

Susi and Marcuse Siegelstein took me to a delicious birthday fische dinner at the Portuguese restaurant that is on their East Berlin street.  Yes I turned 369 on Feb 20^th which makes me a very old chrystaline entity.  Thank you one and all  for the lovely cards, emugs, texts and juicy presents including the endowment of a very frisky young American born male ingénue . . .

I haven’t watched the telecast of the Oscar ceremony since the late 1970s with my family.  It was boring then and I gather its even duller now, but I was made aware by friends that my old pal Patricia Arquette of the Arquette acting dynasty won an award for best supporting actress for her role in the film Boyhood.  The movie was shown at the Berlinale International Film Festival last year, but I didn’t get a chance to see it but was able to hang out with Patty and she stopped by the Forum Party at the Volksbuhne where I was DJaning last year.  She had heard that I moved to Berlin but didn’t know I had been living here for almost a decade.  Well now the lady is an Oscar winning actress and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer gal.  Also Julianne Moore won for best actress and I met her years ago through director Todd Haynes.  Julianne won for a film called Still Alice that I haven’t seen,  directed by the gay couple Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland.  It was sad to find out that  Richard Glatzer is suffering from a debilitating illness, but I’m glad that his husband Wash has stuck by him and they are continuing to direct films together.  They are both very ambitious so helming an Academy Award winning film I am sure has brought them much happiness and comfort.

On my way to a formal dinner party at the Kreuzburg compound of Nanna Heidenreich of Forum Expanded I was transferring to the U7 UBahn line at Yorkstrasse and saw a meltdown by this Black American busker who usually is parked on this platform hallway singing very badly tedious pop tunes and playing his keyboard in an equally horrid manner.  On this occasion he flipped out because no one was tipping him and threatened everyone walking by that he would kill them.  That’s the downside of living in Berlin, so many performers from the States come here thinking that because there is less competition that they will become huge stars here.  I call it the Gayle Tufts complex.  Not every mediocre American performer can become a success abroad like the talentless Ms. Tufts who I am told is quite popular on German television for her Dinglish routine and also performing in the bland upscale cabaret scene in Berlin.

Frau Heidenreich’s fabulous supper was filled with lots of young perky Berlin youth and with a menu that included chestnut galettes with radicchio & dried apricots and scamorza, a grapefruit avocado salad, a salad from roasted cauliflower with hazelnuts and pomegranate a bouillabaisse with a Tunesian twist, a chestnut fennel celery soup, a mushroom bourguignong stew, roasted chicken with fennel, clementine and pernod and for desert a pavlova homemade baklava, candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate pate’ de fruit from blood oranges.  The celebutants at the soiree:  Salome Gershe, Nora Melitor, the Forum Expanded Set-up team:  DJane Olga Damnitz aka Angela Anderson, Noam, Seamus, Richard, Laura, Dafne, Mark, Thais, Evan, Mascha who was on the Teddy Jury this year, Katrin, Adam who helped with the final crazy stages of cooking along with Anouschka.

Ran into the stunning young Berlin born and raised artist Kerstin Honeit and her partner at Nollendorky Platz.  Ms. Honeit looks like a young version of the famous lesbian writer Mary McCarthy and is featured  in a group Exhibition at N.B.K. Gallery called History is a Warm Gun that opens Friday Feb 27^th at 7pm at Chausseestrasse 128/129 that also features the sexy Pola Sieverding.  If you are in town looking for some fun Berlin flavoured event this is the place to be.