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Archive: Gendered

1 + 1 = 1: A Tribute To Bryer P-Orridge

Friday, March 5, 2010

Genesis Bryer P-Orridge and her wife Lady Jaye were one of few pandrogynist couples in the world, actually they are sort of the inventor of what is called Pandrogeny. As a (male) singer and musician of the British band Throbbing Gristle as well as the founder of Psychic TV Genesis has always been interested in the transformations of the body and the possibilities these transformations can open up in terms of rethinking gender identity and finding new concepts of what love means. Genesis and Lady Jaye perceived their love as so strong that the both of them were just parts of one shared entity, a “pandrogynist” person called “Bryer P-Orridge”. This is why through several surgeries they started to change their bodies in a way that they would more and more resemble each other. Sadly Lady Jay Bryer P-Orridge died of a heart failure in 2007, but recently several film projects have been released that in different ways deal with the couple’s relationship – one of them is Jake’s Yuzna’s awesome film “Open” that won a special Teddy award at this year’s Berlinale (click here for the Berlinale info sheet), another second one is a documentary called “The Ballade Of Lady Jay” by filmmaker Marie Losier (trailer below) who also shot the brilliant great video to “Have Mercy” by Psychic TV. More about Genesis P-Orridge and the concept of Pandrogeny on her website. Jake Yuzna will soon be part II of the CATCH FIRE interviews series – as soon as I have completely transcripted the interview. I also posted a clip of another documentary about the couple produced by Metropolis Web TV.

Posted by Hanson on March 5, 2010 | Tags: Activism, Music, Queer Icons, Tributes | Comments (0)

The Downlow Radio Celebrates Valentine’s Day

Thursday, February 11, 2010

The New York City Downlow is “the world’s first travelling homo disco”, a mobile venue that seems to work like a soundsystem and is run by Block9, a set and environment design team from London. If I got this right, the whole thing started at the Glastonbury Festvial of Contemporary Performance Art in 2007 where the founders of NYC Downlow hat the idea of building up at replica of a bombed-out NYC tenement as a space for parties and all sorts of drag performances that were supposed to revive the spirit of the the disco culture of the late seventies (click here for a video from 2008 to get an impression). Since last year the team of the Downlow now also runs its own radio station The Downlow Radio which allows people to listen to and download a bunch of regularly updated and sometimes pretty amazing DJ sets. This month they are doing a special promotion for Valentines Day featuring sets by Tee Cardaci, Nacho, Horse Meat Disco, Filthy Luka and Schnezzy. Click here for the website.

Posted by Hanson on February 11, 2010 | Tags: Music, Recommended Links, Seventies | Comments (0)

Turning Trash Into… Trash: Jiz / Sienna D’Enema

Sunday, February 7, 2010

John Waters would love this: Jiz is a spoof on the campy kids’ cartoon show “Jem and the Holograms” about a female glamrock band. The re-dubbed version turns the main character Jem into a violent drug addicted drag queen and everyone else into queer weirdos. The episode below in which Jiz turns out to be a huge fan of abortions may not completly have the drive of the older, shorter Jiz clips, but is still pretty funny. You find more Jiz-stuff and other rude re-dub experiments like the “Golden Shower Girls” on this YouTube channel. It’s run by a guy called Sienna D’Enema, who in this small interview he gave the online magazine Heeb turns out to be a film maker from L.A. who wants to stay anonymous but at the same time announces more of these kinds of clips.

Posted by Hanson on February 7, 2010 | Tags: Comic/Anime/Illustration, Eighties, TV, Trash | Comments (0)

Out Now: Post / Porn / Politics

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

P/P/P is based on a symposium that took place at Volksbühne Berlin in October 2008, which brought together different queer/feminist movie makers, percformance artists, activists and film scientists which presented their work on the subject of porn. The main approach of the whole event was on the one hand to take porn seriously not only as a genre, but also as a media that most of the time contains and transports ideas of what “right sex” in Western societies is supposed to be. On the other hand it tried to show new ways and strategies to produce “better” porn beyond the mainstream as well as to critically analyze the present and the history of the genre. The reader (which is edited by Tim Stüttgen aka Timi Mei Monigatti who also organized the symposium) combines contributions of a whole bunch of people that are into these kinds of questions such as Beatrice Preciado, Annie Sprinkle, Bruce La Bruce, Terre Thaemlitz and Cosey Fanni Tutti. You find more information about it on the website of b_books where you can also order it. For more information about the contributors check out the website of the symposium.

Posted by Hanson on February 2, 2010 | Tags: Activism, Books, Porn | Comments (0)

Junior Boys: Working It

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The gorgeous video to the new Junior Boys song “Bits and Pieces” features Twista, Vixen and Snoopy, three dancers of the Canadian Voguing collective “House Of Monroe”. That group was formend in 2006 and since then seems to have a huge influence on the ballroom scene in Toronto (I think they even may have been the ones who have established it). You find a lot of other videos featuring their dancers if you search for House of Monroe on Youtube. (via produzentin)

Posted by Hanson on December 10, 2009 | Tags: Choreography, Dance, Music, Vogue | Comments (0)

Watch It Online: Black Lizard

Friday, November 20, 2009

BlackLizard

Some really cool person called “Zilbernet” managed to upload “Black Lizard” on Youtube. The movie was one of the favourite ones we showed at the Villainz filmfest last weekend – it’s a weird and campy Japanese detective based on a stage adaptation of a book by Edogawa Rampo. The Black Lizard is female jewel thief played by a drag artist called Akihiro Miwa who tries to kidnap the daughter of a famous jeweler to gain possession of the precious “Star of Egypt” (and, as you’ll find out later, to turn her into a puppet). The movie’s really a lot of fun, so if you don’t mind watching it in a rather suboptimal quality I recommend it to watch it on youtube since it’s not out on DVD yet. Here’s part one, don’t forget to click HQ for a better quality:

Posted by Hanson on November 20, 2009 | Tags: Film, Watch It Online | Comments (2)

Villainz Filmfest (Berlin)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

villainz_flyer

During the past few months I’ve been part of a group that organizes a filmfest called Villainz. It’s a 4-day series on the queer villain in fiction film taking place from November 12th to 15th. To describe the aim of the event I wanna quote from the proposal a friend of mine: “Villainz will create the unique opportunity for attendees to watch and discuss a diverse collection of films, and to consider topics relating to the creation, history, impact, control and diversity of queer images in cinema. Questions to consider will include: What are the different ways of presenting and interpreting the villain in films? How does the “queer villain” impact a diverse public? What value is there in discussing the impact of vilifying queers in film on health, politics, culture? How are technical qualities of film manipulated to nuance presentations of villains? How do these films inform about historical social attitudes and cinematic representations? In what ways might we want to control these images, or the ways that they are dispersed and interpreted by society?” Interested? Click here for the program or/and join our Facebook group.

Posted by Hanson on October 28, 2009 | Tags: Berlin Stuff, Film | Comments (0)

This Is Jack Smith (Berlin)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

jack_web

Starting tomorrow, Berlin’s arsenal cinema presents “LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World” an event everybody here seems to be really excited about. It is not only a retrospectice of Jack Smith’s work, but also some kind of a festival: “With performances, films and videos, slide presentations, exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and discussions, we look at the gender-bending and genre-breaking works of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and other avant-garde artists of the 1960s, from a number of angles. The work of Jack Smith is juxtaposed with recent works of numerous international contemporary artists. A special guest is the legendary drag performer and underground superstar Mario Montez, who on this occasion will appear in public for the first time in thirty years.” The whole announcement here.

Posted by Hanson on October 27, 2009 | Tags: Berlin Stuff, Film | Comments (0)

3 Links To Instantly Queer Up Your Life

Thursday, October 8, 2009

I always wanted to post something like a tribute to The Cockettes, a great performance group from the sixties here, but I must admit that I don’t really know enough about them to act like an expert. For this reason it’s pleasing that my colleague produzentin who seems to be a huge fan of the group yesterday posted a self-written article that gives a short overview on the 2 and a half years they worked together.

The Love Art Laboratory is a project by artist couple Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth M. Stephens, who symbolically “marry” once a year to celebrate their love. The wedding ceremony always is a colorful and wild performance show as far as I can tell from the videos and pictures on the site. It’s worth having a look at.

I would like to make some advertisement for a German magazine called “Hugs and Kisses” which releases its fifth issue these days. The main topic of the current issue is “Queer Cinema”, click here for the table of contents. I contributed the first part of an internet column I’ll write for them regularly now. So all you German-speaking people out there: Check it out.

Posted by Hanson on October 8, 2009 | Tags: Dance, Queer Icons, Recommended Links, Sixties | Comments (2)

Under Attack

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Posted by Hanson on September 10, 2009 | Tags: | Comments (0)