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South African artist Athi-Patra Ruga’s hybrid and highly reflective work removes the borders between fashion, performance and contemporary art in an imaginative and playful way. Ruga subverts ideas of beauty, gender and race, trying to “transcend all boundaries that have been put on who and what one should create”, as he points out in an interview with photographer René Habermacher, which was published on Habermacher’s blog The Stimuleye last year and which I really recommend. Germans and French internet user also find a video interview with him about (hyper-)femininity and alienation in his work on the arte website.
Athi-Patra Ruga most recent works are a beautiful tapestry series based on portraits, which he created last year in his studio in Cape Town (see “Voodoo Face” below) and the synchronized-swimming performance “Ilulwane” (blurry excerpt here), which was shown at the Performa festival in New York City in November 2011 and at during Cape Town’s Infecting the City public arts festival in March. For a proper overview over his work please check out the website of Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town, who represents him.

 

“…The Naivety of Beiruth” (2007), Photographer: Chris Saunders

“Untitled” – Intervention for the X-Homes Hillbrow project (2010), Photographer: Nadine Hutton

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on Wednesday, June 6, 2012 | Category: Arts & Culture, Fashion, Photography | Tags: , | Comments (0)

Directed by Mitch Moore
“Join My Militia” (Produced By Arca) out via Itunes
“Mutant Angels EP” (7″ vinyl) out via UNO NYC/OHWOW
http://soundcloud.com/mykkiblanco

Download “Rise” (written for the documentary Coral Rekindling Venus)
for free or donate for coral reef conservation over here.
http://antonyandthejohnsons.com

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The film and video series TMI – curated by Aykan Safoğlu & Todd Sekuler – will accompany a Larry Clark retrospective on display at C/O Berlin – International Forum For Visual Dialogues. The series has been created to reflect upon the dynamics of working across, through and against generational differences. ‘TMI’ – or ‘too much information’ – signifies the transgression of barriers of privacy and intimacy, and the centrality of resistance in narratives of family and community. The series hones in on issues of alleged danger or contagion, seeking to unpack them and to explore how emotions such as fear and shame are critical to creating and maintaining cultures of censorship and taboo. Beyond the dualisms of the acceptable and the taboo, the public and the personal, and the self and the other, the series delves into the neoliberal power structures that regulate social and political dynamics of ‘excess’. It explores personal and sociopolitical aspects of generational transformations and resists essentialized notions of time, space and experience.

The series will open on June 5 with Annika Eriksson’s Berlin premiere of It Did Happen Soon (2012). This video work emerges from research done into the writings and experiences of iconic Berlin based collective Kommune 1, often described as Germany’s first politically motivated commune. Here the experiences of some of the leading figures and of the movement are pushed into temporal ambiguity as the narrative around the desire and drive for transformation is transported into an ambiguous time and space. Documentary material merges with material from science fiction narratives in a three-part loop delivered by a young actor.

Annika Eriksson: It Did Happen Soon, video still, 2012; Courtesy of the artist and NON Gallery Istanbul + KROME Gallery Berlin.

(Full program below the jump)

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Tyler Holmes is one of the shiny jewels of the vibrant queer music scene of the Bay Area, and I have a feeling that 2012 could become his year, if it isn’t so already. I discovered the handsome guy and his music last autumn by stumbling upon his self-produced and self-released third album “Hipsterisms” (free download via bandcamp) and instantly fell in love with its twisted, eclectic, atmospheric songwriting and his beautiful voice.
Tyler is currently touring the west coast to promote his new album ”The Exorcism Of Tyler Holmes”, which will be released online June 1st, and I’m happy I can already offer you a stream + download of two tracks of the new album: The hypnotic, fragile ”White Nectarine III” and the clattery goth pop track “Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Stomach”, which both seem to suggest a shift away from the folk influences on “Hipsterisms” to a more synth based sound and songwriting. For more of Tyler Holmes music (including a his very special version of “Video Games“) please check out his bandcamp page, for news about the album release and upcoming shows follow him on Facebook or his twitter site.

UPDATE: You can now download the full album for free via Bandcamp.

Posted by
on Monday, May 28, 2012 | Category: Music | Tags: | Comments (1)

I missed to do a proper write-up about the first issue of the San Francisco based Das Einhorn when I got it, but I hope I can make it up to editor Paul Bookstaber (former The Sword blogger) and his team by announcing that the second issue of the local slut culture guide for the indie type of gay guys and their friends is now officially available through http://daseinhorn.com. I haven’t ordered #2 yet, but the preview on the website reads as kinky and entertaining as the “The Pity Sex Issue”, and with a modest prize of 6 bucks you just can’t really go wrong – especially after the printed version of BUTT has shut down.
Amongst the contributors of the “Second Issue issue” of Das Einhorn are local Bay Area heroes such as Alexis Blair Penney and street artist Jeremy Novy, and I’m also really looking forward to another piece of writing by L.A. based blogger and Slick It Up designer David Mason (“House of Vader”), whose refreshly non-pc essay about the multiple facets of steroids in the first issue I really enjoyed. For more info check out the zine’s website or Facebook page.

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on Sunday, May 27, 2012 | Category: Arts & Culture | Tags: , , , | Comments (0)

Filmmaker Daniel Peddle’s 2005 documentary is not only a powerful portrait of the lives of six aggressive women from NYC, but also one of the few film documents of the city’s lesbian ball scene. The movie was released on DVD in 2006 by Image Entertainment, but can no longer be ordered for private purposes – the current copyrights holder 7thart Releasing only distributes it to public institutions (lowest rate 60$). When I did some research for the Queer Film Archive Berlin project I found a YouTube link where a user uploaded the whole movie in 6 parts, and it seems like film’s current distribution company is tolerating the fact that the movie can be streamend online – it’s been there for nearly a year already and already had more than 90.000 clicks without being taken down. The quality of the stream is rather low, but at least there’s a way to get an impression of the film as long as there’s no other way to get it.

Posted by
on Saturday, May 26, 2012 | Category: Film | Tags: , , | Comments (0)

Directed by Grant Worth and David Riley (Mirror Mirror).
Self-titled debut album out via Mexican Summer, stream it here.

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on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 | Category: Music | Tags: , | Comments (0)

Workshop (June 6th & 7th) & Film Screenings (June 5th)
with Karin Michalski (Berlin) & Gregg Bordowitz (Chicago)

Organised by the interdisciplinary graduate research program Gender as a Category of Knowledge at the Humbold University in Berlin and and the Collaborative Research Center 626, Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits at the Free University in Berlin

The workshop Engaging with Bad Feelings, with Gregg Bordowitz and Karin Michalski, will focus on the aesthetic experience and political contexts of film and video art that are associated with current queer-feminist discussions about ‘political affect’ (i. e. Ann Cvetkovich, Lauren Berlant, Heather Love). The two-day workshop will enable intensive discussion about how queer-feminist politics related to negative experiences and feelings (such as trauma, shame, melancholy as they are related to homophobia, sexism, HIV/AIDS and racism) are reflected in certain film poetics.

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Posted by
on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 | Category: Berlin, Film, Queer Politics | Tags: , | Comments (0)

Sorry for the double-post, dear RSS feed followers – I pressed the “publish” button too early yesterday. Here are another 10 interesting/funny/weird tumblrs worth following, this time with a special emphasis on artist’s personal picture collections. Picture above: “Backyard Bull (Brian)” (c) SlavaMogutin, 2011.

Keith Haring: 1978-1982 Journals
“The Keith Haring Foundation has scanned Keith’s journals from 1971 to 1989, some of which are featured in Keith Haring: 1978–1982. A page will be posted each day for the duration of the show, which will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from March 16 through July 8, 2012. The exhibition is the first large-scale presentation to explore the early works of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century”

Dyke Duds
“Dyke Duds is a blog for lesbians, queer women, and transmasculine people to share our styles, fashion ideas, and stories around clothing.”

and so i missed my chance
(Queer) arts and culture tumblr with a focus on paintings by Canadian artist Travis McEwen, who also presents his own work there.

such a KATASTROPHE
Personal tumblr of San Francisco based rapper and Original Plumbing co-founder Rocco Katastrophe.

surbrunetto
Wonderful gay/queer art and zines blog, which honors both old and new heros of the queer art world and and highlights exciting new queer publications. 

SLAVA MOGUTIN
The artist and photographer’s photo diary. Replaces his blogspot blog, where he states: “After over 5 years of  The Pinko Commie Fag Blog it’s time to say goodbye to Blogspot and it’s ridiculous ‘Content Warning’.”

Congratulations!
Artist Brian Kenny’s very lively photo tumblr. Still waiting for a Superm (Kenny+Mogutin) tumblr.

Bat Country
“Kitsch, Trash, Filth, Perversion, Camp, Oddities, Music, Art” / “My blog is not named after that Avenged Sevenfold song… Anyways, I’m an art student in Baltimore (originally from Virginia), typically I abuse my Tumblr by reblogging whatever I like and rarely (but surely) I post things that happened to me–you know, bloggy things.”

moustache rides for everyone
A bearded guy documents his pretty creative sex live (super-NSFW).

Bears I’m Disappointed In
Crazy and funny. For everyone who’s fed up with the new bear cult.

MORE GOOD BLOGS.

Posted by
on Saturday, May 19, 2012 | Category: Arts & Culture, Photography, Web | Tags: , , , , , | Comments (0)

Rashard Bradshaw aka Cakes Da Killa is our current cover boy on Facebook – I instantly fell in love with the black and white pictures by photographer Alana Yolande he recently published on his own FB site (she also took the picture above). The 21-year-old rapper from New Jersey is one of the up and coming artists of the NYC queer hip hop scene and has just announced a follow-up to his awesome debut mixtape Easy Bake Oven from last October, as well as a new video to the mixtape track “Whistle (Beat It Up)”, so there’s a lot to expect from him in the upcoming months. Cakes was also one of the artists who got featured on the highly recommended Pitchfork article “We Invented Swag – NYC’s queer rap” from March, where you find a little more information about him (bottom of the page). For Catch Fire he has put together a list with his 5 favorite web videos and along the way reveals some of his artistic influences.

“Gangtresses is the realness. The film tells the story of violence, poverty, and survival in the streets from a female perspective. Filmed over a two-year period, Harry Davis interviews female hustlers, drug dealers, rappers, porn stars, prostitutes, mothers, and daughters. It has cameos from hip-hop royalty Tupac, Lil Kim, Mary J. Blige, and Russell Simmons. Getcha life!”

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on Saturday, May 19, 2012 | Category: Film, Music | Tags: , , , | Comments (1)

If you’re a regular Catch Fire reader, you might recall Alexander’s pretty face from about a year ago when he and I had a little interview in which he revealed he wanted to collaborate with different musicians and producers. As we stayed in touch, one of them turned out to be me, and now the fruits of our efforts have become his first official release: “Bad Language” is out today on 7″ and digitally via Haute Areal. You can stream the single and its B-side here, and head to BUTT Magazine for a new interview along with an exclusive mp3 download of “Bad Language” as remixed by TUSK.

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on Friday, May 18, 2012 | Category: Berlin, Music | Tags: | Comments (1)

The makers of New York City’s successful queer monthly screening series Dirty Looks are currently preparing a very exiting and ambitious new festival, that will take place throughout July and seeks to celebrate the historical roots of the city’s vibrant queer scene by rediscovering forgotten queer sites and venues. Dirty Looks: On Location is planned as a month-long series of interventions in New York City spaces: Films and video works selected by a group of curators will be installed in former queer spaces like shuttered bars, bathhouses or cruising spaces, one piece will be presented in a different location every night throughout July.

You can currently support the festival and its organizers by donating via Kickstarter through June 2, 2012 (official video on top). Donators receive awesome thank-you gifts, such as an exclusive Mike Kuchar poster, a postcard-book with all the venues, shirts designed by Curt McDowell and Luther Price or and beautiful works by a whole bunch of contempory artists such as Adam Shecter, Jonathan VanDyke, Dani Leventhal, A.L. Steiner, Gary Indiana, Gavin Lambert, Michelle Handelman or Liz Magic Laser.

UPDATE (2 June 2012): The project was successfully funded!

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Posted by
on Thursday, May 17, 2012 | Category: Arts & Culture, Film, Queer Politics | Tags: | Comments (1)

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