In 1989 British artist Malcolm McLaren (1946 – 2010) invited vogue legend Willi Ninja (1961 – 2006) to London to record a spoken word introduction to his song “Deep In Vogue”, with which he wanted to present the New York ballroom culture to a new audience. The main part of the song was performend by singer Lourdes Morales and released as a single from McLaren’s album Waltz Darling in a remix by producers Mark Moore and William Orbit, which McLaren liked better than his own version. Singer Lordes today claims that McLaren stole the original idea for the song from house DJ and producer David Delvalle, while Willie Ninja shortly before his death criticized McLaren for misspelling his name on the single and not mentioning him as the writer of intro’s lyrics.
McLaren for his part later on openly criticized Madonna for stealing his idea of introducing ballroom to the mainstream with her single “Vogue”, which was released one year later: ”I found myself on the same bill as Madonna at some Greenpeace concert and I remember her watching my dancers voguing from the side of the stage. A few weeks later she had stolen all my dancers, brought out her own single and carried it over into the mainstream. The cheek of her!” It is said that Madonna learned about voguing through actress Lauren Hutton, who was McLaren’s girlfriend at the time.
The epic video to “Deep In Vogue” starring ballroom legend Willi Ninja and his crew was shot in 1989, shortly before the release of “Paris is Burning”, which already existed on VHS at that time. It was director Jenny Livingston herself, who allowed producers Mark Moore and William Orbit to use samples from the film for their version of the song.
If you live in Berlin and don’t have plans for tomorrow yet, we might have something for you: Queer theorist, drag performer and Catch Fire contributor Tim Stüttgen (Post/Porn/Politics) has just recently finished a new book entitled In a Quare Time and Place and will present it Haus der Kulturen der Welt on the last day of the transmediale festival. The book, which deals according to Tim deals with “post/slavery, Queer of Color politics, debates around intersectionality and assamblage, blaxploitation cinema and Sun Ras afrofuturism” (as mapped out in his most famous movie Space is the place, still on top), will be released in a few weeks and be presented to the public for the first time. The event takes place tomorrow, February 3rd, at 2 pm in the Konferenzsaal K1, for more detailed information please check out this link. And if you’re already there, we can also recommend you two other queer events – the talk by artist and theorist Sandy Stone (4pm) and the performance Eier haben by legendary drag artist Diane Torr (Venus Boyz, Man for a Day) and a group of other performers (6:30pm, followed by a conversation between Torr and Warbear).
When the media hype around new queer hip hop artists reached its peak last year, many journalists and bloggers highlighted House of Ladosha in line with artists such as LE1F and Mykki Blanco, assuming that the name stands solely for a music act. But it would be a mistake to reduce the New York based collective to its music, even if the music created and performed by Ladosha members Dosha Devastation and Cunty Crawford Ladosha is the most visible part of the collective.
Nevertheless, “Ladosha” stands for a group of individual artists and performers, who in their own way continue the concept of the “house” as it emerged from the Ballroom community as a way of opposing traditional ideas of family and “the home”. The concept of “house” is meant in a more abstract way. It is about a state of mind, about friendship and shared interests such as music, art and fashion, with house members who all question and transform stereotypical ideas of race, sexuality and gender in their own creative ways.
New Yorkers now have the possibility to explore the Ladosha world through an exhibition at Superchief gallery, which will open on Thursday. “The Whole House Eats” curated by artist and Ladosha member Christopher Udemezue aka Neon Christina Ladosha will feature artwork, video and photography by the members of the Ladosha family, as well as a live performance by Dosha Devastation and Cunty Crawford Ladosha, who will perform at the opening. If you want to know what awaits you can check out the video below or the exhibition tumblr, as well as the Ladosha soundcloud page, where they just recently posted a new track entitled “9 or 11″. For a more theoretical introduction to the exhibition and the galleries opening hours check out the Superchief website.
“The Whole House Eats”, February 7th to 14th at Superchief Gallery at Culturfix, 9 Clinton Street, New York.
From The Knife’s upcoming album “Shaking The Habitual”, which can be pre-ordered now via Rabin Records store. The short film was shot by Berlin and Stockholm based artist and filmmaker Marit Östberg (“Dirty Diaries”), director of photographer was Berlin based artist and filmmaker Liz Rosenfeld. This is what Östberg writes about the project:
“The film started to grow as an embryo in the song´s lines ‘Who looks after my story’. Who takes care of our stories when the big history, written by straight rich white men, erase the complexity of human´s lives, desires and conditions? The film consists of a network of fates, fears, cravings, longings, losses, and promises. Fates that at first sight seem isolated from each other, but if we pay attention, we can see that everything essentially moves into each other. Our lives are intertwined and our eyes on each other, our sounds and smells, mean something. Our actions create reality, we create each other. We are never faceless, not even in the most grey anonymous streets of the city. We will never stop being responsible, being extensions, of one another. We will never stop longing for each other, and for something else.” (Quote via YouTube).
“a doubling, a haunting, a generational negotiation”
– Elisabeth Subrin on Shulie
The brilliant radical feminist Shulamith Firestone died this past year at the age of 67, though she essentially withdrew from public life four decades ago, as if let down by the movement she helped build. I first heard of her work via feminist band Le Tigre, and promptly read her bestselling book, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970). Years later, I found out about the 1997 film Shulie by American experimental filmmaker Elisabeth Subrin, which has become a classic of the avant-garde and an object of passionate study for scholars interested in non-fiction cinema, memory and historical re-enactment; and queer and feminist temporalities. Queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman calls Shulie “feminist history’s outtakes.”
In 1967, as a BFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Firestone was featured in a short documentary made by four male film students: a portrait of an emerging female artist of the so-called “Now” generation. Discovering the long-forgotten short in the 1990s, Subrin decided to remake Shulie shot by shot with an actor playing Firestone and with the thirty years of hindsight that knows this unremarkable young woman featured on film would go on to become one of the most articulate and boldly original voices of 20th-century feminism, soon moving to New York and then completing The Dialectic of Sex a mere three years later. (At the time of the shooting, Firestone was already a part of the radical feminist organizing in Chicago, though this remains unspoken in the film.) Shulie asks us to scrutinize Firestone in art school for the traces of who she would soon become, and the radical theories she would evolve. (And not only this, but to do so at a remove – through an actor, in a remake.)
Subrin wanted to investigate the “residue” of the late 1960s and, identifying strongly with Shulie, she asks, “Why, if we had reaped the benefits of second-wave feminism, should Shulie’s life seem so contemporary?” Part of the contemporary power of the film is the awkwardness of the 22-year-old woman as she goes through the painfully familiar machinations of art school – including a torturous critique by her male painting professors – and the other small indignities that attend a life on the margins (which have not changed much), as well as having to unwillingly articulate her place in a “generation.” It is precisely these “minor” historical forces – and not just great political events and movements – that compel individuals to take on certain identifications and positions in the world. MORE >>>
My first time I came upon the work of Los Angeles artist Margaret Haines was when I found her beautiful video she made for her friend Dan Bodan‘s single “Nudity and Atrocity”, which was released in spring last year. The video is one of her artistic “trailers” anticipating her feature movie “Coco”, which will be released later this year. For the film Haines invented “Coco”, a female character, who she characterises as “very girly, hysteric and into horses” and who tries to deal with her delusions of making it in the pop business.
After a performance at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), a sound installation at the Cirrus Gallery, and a sculptural presentation at Commonwealth and Council Gallery, Haines has just recently finished another two studies of the Coco character. The first one is the book “Coco x Love With Stranger”, which was launched with an event at the LA book stork Ooga Booga in December. The publication references the style of Eigthies’ fanzines and teen pulp novels and like the film is loosely based on motives of the story of Don Quixote, exploring different facets of female identity. It is published by New Byzantium in an edition of 500.
The second new “trailer” is a collection of silk scarfs, which are printed with stills from the “Coco” films and which you can discover on the pictures below. For more information about the film and her work please visit Margaret Haines website.
LE1F has released his new single “Coins” via Soundcloud today. The track (originally produced for the Norwegian hip hop act A-laget by Norwegian producers Drippin & Souldrop last year) will be on his upcoming mixtape “Fly Zone” which will be out next Monday (download here):
Cakes the Killa is about to release his new mixtape (album?) “The Eulogy” via Mishka Records on Tuesday. The first single is called “Goodie” and is the ideal continuation of his debut tape “Easy Bake Oven” from 2011:
The members of House of Ladosha will be featured in a group exhibition entitled “The Whole House Eats” at Superchief Gallery, NYC, which opens on February 7th and will for run week. Will will provide more information soon. Meanwhile, here’s the latest Ladosha track ”9 OR 11″:
