AFTER MUCH ANTICIPATION

Los Angeles-based performance trio Butchlalis de Panochtitlan and the emerging queer collective La Maricolectiva (San Jose/Las Vegas/Los Angeles) team up with international performance artist and theater director Shakina Nayfack to present a workshop premiere of COSA RARA, a new play by Claudia Rodriguez. An only-in-LA love story, the play follows a budding relationship between a young Chicana butch dyke and a transgender Salvadoran immigrant woman as they search for common ground and community.

Dec. 4 & 5, 8:30PM @ Highways Performance Space (1651 18th Street, Santa Monica CA at the 18th Street Arts Center) $13 Students/Members/Seniors, $15 general

umm listen BUTCHLALIS are like so important for performance art. Raquel Gutierrez (who is wrote the short story for Damelo Todo's narrative section) is a member of the troupe...

SOOHOHHH GOING

WILDNESS 11.24 - Shannon Funchess

HAPPY TNXGVNG YALL

UNITED GROOVESSSSSSSSS

Last Wednesday at Wildness, We all were graced by the original vocalist on Lvis 1990's track United Groove, URSE SKURSE MALERCE. Though he never showed for the live PA, he came when we were closing up and told us a few crazy stories, one on how his vocals travelled all over the world and into the lap of this London producer.

Crank up the volume and enjoy the video!!!!!!

thinking more about hate crimes laws - LA building more ICE detention centers

this image kinda totally freaks me out and it's like from the government's website...
published by the Center for Investigative Reporting (11/12/09):

ICE moving forward with Los Angeles-area immigration center lock-up

The federal agency that oversees immigration detention will solicit bids next month for a new 2,200-bed detention center in the Los Angeles area. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, posted an online notice this week stating that it intends to open bids on Dec. 15 for a contractor to own and operate a low-custody detention facility for men. The facility would be one of the largest immigration lock-ups in the country.

Continuing a policy pushed under the Bush administration, the Obama team has moved to deport more criminal aliens, which has also driven a need for more bed space. Los Angeles County is one of the first counties in California to participate in ICE’s Secure Communities program, which screens the immigration status of all booked inmates. Several dozen counties, mostly along the Southwest border, participate in the program, which will be rolled out nationwide over the next few years.

ICE announced today that its Secure Communities initiative identified more than 111,000 criminal aliens in local custody during its first year. From the press release:

Since its inception in October 2008, Secure Communities has identified more than 11,000 aliens charged or convicted with Level 1 crimes, such as murder, rape and kidnapping—1,900 of which have already been removed from the United States—and more than 100,000 aliens convicted of Level 2 and 3 crimes, including burglary and serious property crimes.

read more

more about Secure Communities (gov website)

thinking along the lines of criminal deportation initaitives, i remember that i wanted to call attention to the fact that recently Silvia Rivera Law Project came out in opposition to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. you can read ALL ABOUT THAT HERE. i mention this in relation to the above image/news beacuse i'm thinking about how intensely interlocked criminal/incarceration and immigration/deportation issues are in Los Angeles. so i just wanted to put them side by side to see how they talk to each other. i know it's controversial and upsetting for most of us gay and trans folks to imagine opposing hate crimes laws. however as an organization SRLP works to "understand mass imprisonment as a primary vector of violence in the lives of our constituents" and they "belive that hate crimes legislation is a counterproductive response to the violence faced by LGBT people." here are some of their very compelling reasons:

Already, the U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other nation in the world. ONE OUT OF EVERY 32 PEOPLE [my emphasis] in the U.S. live under criminal punishment system supervision. African-American people are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white people; Latin people are twice as likely to be incarcerated as white people.  LGBTS and queer people, transgender people, and poor people are also at greatly increased risk for interaction with the criminal justice system.  It is clear that this monstrous system of laws and enforcement specifically targets marginalized communities, particularly people of color.

What hate crimes laws do is expand and increase the power of the same unjust and corrupt criminal punishment system. Evidence demonstrates that hate crimes legislation, like other criminal punishment legislation, is used unequally and improperly against communities that are already marginalized in our society...

The evidence also shows that hate crime laws and other “get tough on crime” measures do not deter or prevent violence.  Increased incarceration does not deter others from committing violent acts motivated by hate, does not it rehabilitate those who have committed past acts of hate, and does not make anyone safer. As we see trans people profiled by police, disproportionately arrested and detained, caught in systems of poverty and detention, and facing extreme violence in prisons, jails and detention centers, we believe that this system itself is a main perpetrator of violence against our communities.

umm what can i say i hear you.

just thinking about all this stuff after having just participated in LA's Transgender Day of Rememberance, which was BEAUTFUL BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL. (omg separate post about the BEAUTY, people) but also feeling bittersweet about the valence of our gesture of marching through the center of west hollywood, with all the pomp and circumstance of city officials and cops shepherding the way - and wondering how these activities sync up with potentially radical trans politics. or really WAY MORE importantly, whether these actions really help us to grieve - because healthy grieving for us needs to create a space for RAGE... repressive greiving leads only to melancholia...

i want to think more about our emotions in these types of officiated spaces (thinkin bout the LAPD forum in trans violence and the paulina ibarra press conference) so more on that soon.

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

okay, i was trying to search for the image of vintage Gaultier that reminded me of Wu's AMAZING look last Wildness, but i couldn't find it on damn google. What i did find though are these simple, yet breath-taking looks that remind me of perfect CLASS fashion. I mean, com'on now, LOOK AT THE HAIR!!!

UNOFFICIAL RELEASE OF THE TEASER FOR "DAMELO TODO: GIVE ME EVERYTHING"

AT LAST.

here is like a sneak peak at the teaser for the feature film i'm directing,

DAMELO TODO: GIVE ME EVERYTHING

(this baby was edited by Hans Kuzmich)

more about this soon and for many months to come... i'm so excited yall!!!!!!

WILDNESS 11.18

UMM WILDNESS WAS REALLY FUN THIS PAST WEDNESDAY. I FEEL LIKE THESE TWO SAY IT ALL. JUST FILL THE ROOM WITH BAGGY BUNCHY ROSES ON DA SLEEVES AT DA ELBOWS. THAT'S WHAT IT WAS LIKE. THERES LIKE A MILLION PARTY PICS AT BUTTDICKANDPUSSY AS USU. SO HIT IT. JUST WENT TO SEE JOEY ARIAS AT REDCAT AND FEELING GENERALLY INSPIRED BY CRAFT. AND INVISIBLE YOUNG BODIES THAT MOVE GIANT STUFFED HANDS... THE YOUNG PUPPETEERS WILL BE PERFORMING AT WILDNESS NOT THIS TUEZ BUT NEXT...

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE UC WALKOUTS

http://ucwalkout.ning.com

CLUB LOOKS 3

 

asma thinks this looks like 90's gaultier gotta do some rezearch

many layers of drag

 

hang on i'm actually tripping on something that i was trying to talk about earlier. question. can you use a traditional mode of production to end up with a thing that challenges it?


this is hard for me right now for some reason. i mean obviously with any project, especially like multiple-year-long projects, you just can't keep all the pieces in your head at once. ultimately all the many many small decisions that you make add up to something you hope is larger than the sum of it's parts. i think this is where ethics really matter, it's like a scale or something and each and every little teeny tiny decision has ethical weight.

i'm letting my mustache grow in, can you tell? it actually feels very experimental, like can i just go through every day people gawking? like yea uhhuh mkay anywaaay but really? it's not as easy as you might think.

we were casting tonight for the narrative section of my film. (see above my "transgender director" look- hows that workin for you) i'm casting non-actors, mostly from within la comunidad transgénero, for 2 lead roles. WOWWWIE casting is FUN. it's like a room, with hideous overhead lighting, where a group of strangers ask another stranger to pour her little heart out onto the floor (ie improvisational acting). wow. every single person was so amazing, just totally going for it - trying and being shy and uncomfortable and still giving so much. i feel really blessed and inspired by the whole process.

but see this is kinda what i'm talking about. casting is a movie convention, right, it's what everyone does right, so no biggie. but i guess i'm still tripping on the whole role thing, how it changes the way everyone relates to each other. i want to ammend what i said earlier and be clear that not at all am i saying these roles are inherently a good thing. no. i am just really trying to figure out what it all means to me. it seems casting creates a situation where suddenly as "director" I'M the one with a vision of who you're supposed to be, and you're supposed to convince me that you can be that person. and you're competing against other people. and then you have wait to find out if you did a good enough job. ???

i had a strategic need to do casting- a) to try to build peoples investment of course for many reasons, one of which being b) to ensure their participation because shooting is intense and expensive it totally depends on the actors showing up every day. like if someone misses their audition, you miiiight not want to work with them.... so....... that's what you get with a movie production, yep. for some reason (i mean for many reasons that i can say, just not here now) i am truly struggling with all of this. at the same time it seems like a necessary navigation, and i'm tryin to give it a go. i am. here i am.

CLUB LOOKS 2

ROLES

i had an interesting debate late tonight with Hans Kuzmich about the relationship between... hm how could i say this... the relationship between people, power, and production. ppp. meaning simply that we were comparing different modes of production, having both recently worked on my film, which is slowly evolving into having a more traditional hollywood production mode, meaning there's a prescribed work-flow and division of labor etc. it started out with a typical art-making mode = totally formless & fundless. now it's well, super organized with a lot of people involved having specific roles, and we have some money (very little by industry standards, but astronomical in terms of what I'VE ever spent on a project, TENS of thousands people). it's been exhilarating to receive so much support and to gotten as far as i've gotten, but every step feels perilous in the sense that it affects the direction of the project. i've always worked with a poverty of means - meaning what you make is determined by your scarce resources. so i'm learning a lot about PPP right now as i go!

for example, this is like something REAL new to me and it blows my mind: having a hierarchy of LABOR and CREDIT:

DAMELO TODO: GIVE ME EVERYTHING  

Directed by Wu Ingrid Tsang
Produced by Ernesto Foronda and Felix Endara

Directors of Photography: Julia Meltzer and Ashley Hunt
Associate Producers: Daniel Eduvijes Carrerah and Mariana Marroquin
Cinematography: Rhys Ernst, Mariah Garnet, Michelle Lawler, and Leilah Weinraub
Contributing Writer: Raquel Gutierrez
Contributing Editor: Hans Kuzmich
Assistant Editor: Jimena Sarno
Music: NGUZUNGUZU
Additional Music: Total Freedom
Creative Consultant: Matt Wolf

With support from Good Works Foundation and the Wexner Center for the Arts

artists also have conventions of crediting, but it wouldn't be so formal. and actually the art world in the end kinda wants you to just pick one person to get all the credit. i just keep thinking about the operation of ROLES here. as in role-playing, and how amazing it is.

that's the crazy thing about having a person in a "producer" role - it makes you (ok it made me) feel like anything is possible. i remember the first time i felt that way i was terrified, like i how do i decide something if it's not determined by a limit??? of course having a producer doesn't actually mean anything is possible - it really just creates a DIVISION OF LABOR (hottness) whereby "creative" thinking is separated from "business" thinking... i only recently realized that they could be separated. in fact i've always kinda flourished by having the two merged together. but working on something as large scale as a film, i see that it's not always possible, and it's actually really cool to divide divide divide... i'm having a moment where i think that producers are really magical - and the way things are going in the art world, artists kind of need them too! i mean i'm artist, i need one. you need one. you deserve one. i guess i'm just thinking about how more and more these days artists are more like directors or conductors with ideas, and teams of people executing. trueish? basically we need the infrastructure of something like hollywood, because in actuality in the art world people just assume that the artist does all this stuff by herself. and for free. ANYWAYS i feel incredibly fortunate that this particular project morphed into something (a film) that merited the support of two really magical producers named Ernesto Foronda and Felix Endara. seriously bless you both. but i mean theoretically we could all just do it! you and your friend can do it to each other! it's just a role geez...

we're basically talking about GROUP WORK here. and i'm not even talking about productivity mkaaay? i'm just thinking about getting together in a room to make decisions. i come from a tradition of believing collective/collaborative non-hierarchical modes are more radical. i still do and participate in them with like the legal clinic for example, but right now there is something really radical and exciting to me about the film industry mode actually. which is that in my long ass experience of group work, all of it collective/collaborative, there is always this attempt to structure things non-hierarchically, but in reality the over-determining structure becomes psychical- ie everyone brings their shit to the table and acts it out on each other. totally cool to do that but i'm just sayin'... whereas the industry mode revolves around highly ordered divisions and roles and like contracts and shit, so it's kinda cool cause it's got built in all kinds of financial, temporal, and emotional boundaries, ya know? just for me, that's really radical right now... hm whatever modes are out there? i heart al anon. can we count that as productive?

woa sorry for so many wordz and no imagez

blast

hey you guys. so wildness is wednesday this week. WW. do you like it? it kind of sticks in mah brain real good... mmhhmmmmmm... just gave me pause to think about how we've been cada martes for a WHILE now. ONE YEAR + 10 MONTHS. that's like 88 weeks of performance in a row, over 150 performers yep. so i dragged this out of the basement thought i'd share it with you - CLASSIC early wildness. featuring leopold nunan (brazil), miss zackary drucker (mc), and total freedom (dj)... aren't we just all BABIES?? ps the totally nerdy technical breakdown warms my little heart with nostalgia, or actually no wait it's totally still like that bless us.

WILDNESS IS ON A WEDNESDAY THIS WEEK

SPECIAL WEDNESDAYNESS TO HOST OUR FRIENDS FROM OUT OF TOWN.
THAT MEANS NO TUESDAY TOMORROW SORRY.

L-VIS 1990 & BOK BOK & NIGHT SLUGZ
L-VIS AND BOK BOK (FROM LONDON - WHO HAVE PRODUCED LIKE EVERY SICKENING CLUB TRACK YOU'VE DOWNLOADED FROM 08 TIL TODAY) FALL UPON LOS ANGELES FOR TWO TENDER DAYS, TAKE MAIN STAGE AT OUR FESTIVAL OF WILDNESS, BREAK IT TO PIECES, BURN THE PEICES, SCATTER THE ASH - WE PROMISE YOU NO PEACE. COME READY TO FEEL DIFFERENT.

Sandra de la Loza

i was at Otis today installing for a show organized by Robbie Herbst, and i ran into Sandra de la Loza, an amazing LA-based artist... we had a brief chat about her project, which is part of a larger series of "Declared Invisible Monuments" by the collectively-run Pocho Research Society. today she was hanging documentation of recent monuments to old Latin gay bars in east LA, whose communities have been usurped by gentrification. we talked about Wildness (apparently she's a fan!) and the fragile nature of creative scenes that involve cultural/economic mixing. having grown up in LA Sandra is veteran to the sadly familiar "dive bar turned hipster" story. (for example in my inbox this week: popular lesbian club's new location described as an "old east Hollywood tranny bar that is being converted into pure chic-ery") obviously i think about this stuff every day because Silver Platter/Wildness sometimes gets labeled as such. in fact when we do get mainstream publicity, which is kinda rare, cause we don't actively promote and officially don't talk to press, there's usually a cynical take on who "we" (wildness) are and who "they" (bar) are. the most painful characterization that comes to mind is the LA Weekly's "best tranny bar" article that came out last year, which began with (it's burned in my mind): "Finally! A crossroads convergence of self-involved, art-damaged 20-something kids and Third World gender illusionists at a water hole whose geography transcends the expanse of Silver Lake proper..." and went on to be way crazier than that.

oh btdubs you can read our response to that article when in came out here. it's kind of a huge saga that i can't get into right here and now, but at some point i will cause it has a really magical ending called the journalist actually APOLOGIZED and the LA Weekly pulled the article offline.

i guess right now, i just want to address this this idea of actually who "we" are and who "they" are, just to get the ball rolling...

we (wildness) are myself, ashland mines (aka total freedom), daniel pineda & asma maroof (aka NGUZUNGUZU). as a collective body we are 100% people of color (hapa/asian, african american, puerto rican/dominican, and east indian), 50%+ queer and trans, 75% first generation immigrant, 25%+ low income, 50% with degrees in higher education, and all under the age of 29... to try to start a useful(?) list. and the silver platter, our collaborators Koky Corral (owner), Javier Vargas, and Nicol dela Rocha, they are also 100% p.o.c. (mexican), 100% queer and trans, 2/3rds low income, and all under the age of 50... is this helpfully complicated? it's kinda making my brain spin but at the same time, i think important to try to lay out whatever factors contribute to our understanding of oppression. also to try to break apart this consolidating category of hipster. while i obviously agree that hipster is a real force of urban development, i think it's problematic to equate it with all that's cool/popular/trendy. that's one of the things that inspires me most about living in los angeles, is that there are multiple MULTIPLE accessible hott amazing social spaces that are run by and for queer people of color. and i like to imagine that wildness is one of them. just because our space looks a little more arty than some doesn't mean that we aren't people of color, and it also doesn't mean that people of color aren't entitled to be arty experimental etc. i think the bottom line is that there IS difference between us and silver platter, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact i'd say it's a really a good thing, and it is a real live actual exchange, that isn't utopian, that is full of tensions and challenges, but like it IS happening in a sustaining way, that gets mutually supported by both sides. solidarity, i believe yes. OH OH i could say so much more, but for now... how about some more...

CLUB LOOKZ YAYY

ps. sandra's installation was lookin totally cute awesome nearby to mine which is a kind of janky neon sign that says CONVIVENCIA/COEXISTENCE... i don't have any pics yet but this was the idea and i reeeeallly don't know if it works but anyway you can pretend it looks exactly as good as da mockup

multi-use space

IMPRENTA TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT MONTHLY CORE MEETINGS

ARE EVERY 2ND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

(705 s. rampart 90057)

open to the public, free dinner!

we are also working on having a $50 stipend for anyone who self-identifies as low income

starting with 10 of the 20 seats. more on that soooooooon......

photos by Riku Matsuda.

IMPRENTA 11.10 - RJ Messineo

WILDNESS 11.10 - Sid Brown

ALL PHOTOS BY BUTTDICKANDPUSSY

we know this story

i gave a talk at UCLA Law School on Tuesday, in Saul Sarabia's seminar "Latinos and the Law" - about my film, and it's relationship to IMPRENTA organizing and the legal clinic. we were discussing a bunch of amazing shared references: this book called Seeking Community in a Gobal City, which is about Central American immigrant experiences in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles in the 80s. we also looked at the case of Victoria Arellano, a 23 year-old undocumented transwoman who died in a detention center in 2007, because authorities refused to administer her HIV meds. There is a nice well-written article on the subject by Ben Ehrenreich, who is a friend of Saul's:

...No matter how heated the larger debate on immigration becomes, it is safe to predict that Victoria Arellano will not be a poster child for either side. HIV-positive, transgender, with a history of drug addiction, she falls far outside the image of the ideal immigrant. Her death was too cruel, too humiliating to be of use to even the angriest extremists of the nativist right. She has become something of a martyr in the small community of transgender advocates, but Arellano’s fame stops there. Not only her death but her life—the very fact of her existence—makes too many people too uncomfortable.
Until 1996, immigration law used a telling term to refer to noncitizens who can be legally denied residency in the United States. They were not only excluded, although they were that, too; they were “excludable.” The idea still prevails. They provide an opportunity for exclusion, for the nation to define itself by what it is not. Victoria Arellano was almost perfectly unwanted: not just a Latina, but an immigrant; not just an immigrant, but illegal; not just gay, but transgender; not just transgender, but infected with HIV—and an addict to boot. She did not merely slip through the cracks of the system. The system, cracks and all, was built with her in mind...

READ IT

this is story really powerful source material for the film because it ties together a major schism between the immigrant rights and transgender movement. i want the film to focus on this schism because i think framing the Silver Platter in terms of gender over-simplifies it, kinda misses the point. on the other hand within the immigration debate, gender becomes a complication that really challenges people. that's how we arrived at Raquel's story... or rather, how I keep returning to it. coincidentally, Victoria's favorite singer was GLORIA TREVI, who is featured in the the film. i can't say more about that yet but i'm soooooo excited to real SOON.

fan out!

mention! 

FROM THE BLOG OF MISS VAGINAL DAVIS:

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

LIEBER SCHOKI ALS SEX

Just wanted to inform my quarter of a million love sexy readers about a hot new blog in town CLASS written by one of my juicy, young, beautiful kai kai girlyfriends Ms. Wu who lives in Los Angeles and has taken over the mantle in making my old hometown a fun place again with her MacArthur Park Live Art venue Wildness...

AAHHHHHH. AAAAHHHHHHHH. UH... AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.

i hope that every single person in the world has this feeling occasionally: love and support from the person who you idolize most. thank you Miss Vag i can go now.

i put one foot in your step, and i follow 4evs.

Miss Davis is performing in "Advanced Capitalism Reunion: Reparations and Retardations" at PARTICIPANT INC (fan!!! 253 E Houston NYC), as part of the Stuart Sherman exhibition in PERFORMA '09 on Nov 16th. that's so soon you can just go, just like that. this is an extremely RARE opportunity for the north americas.

as usual, when i begin to write about someone (ie VD) or something that brings together everything i care about and am inspired by, my impulse is to end by saying, "more about this later..." and i'm sorry but it's true! how could i summarize what she means to los angeles, queer community, and art in general? this is obviously another cyclical subject (i guess in blog-terminology, also known as a "tag categeory"), a life that is threaded through mine, or rather i'm threaded through hers, or like i'm grasping at the threads of her mantle... SOOOO umm. i will write more about Miss Davis again and again, and just assume you already know everything about her or will NOW learn everything instantly. cause that's what the internet's good for.

installing today for RJ Messineo - opening this tues

i would not call IMPRENTA a gallery. but at the same time, it's kinda nice to realize that you can take and use whatever you want from from the commercial art world and feel good about it. like really just decorum maybe. we pick the artist up from the airport, we pay for all her meals, we pay for the production of the work, and we physically labor on it. actually wait commercial galleries don't even usually do that. but whenever anyone does that, this is a good thing yea? one of the ways that IMPRENTA can function is as a "project space," and that's how RJ is using it. she has reorganized the entire room, directing us how she wants everything arranged, down to the details of the wall trim. and she can do that because it's something available to her, a liberty i guess - strange specific thing that a project space is. she's thinking about the whole space, the whole block, everyone coming and going from here, who what why here... she's fucking smart. and she's making a gorgeous thing i really can't wait! for tuesday... 8-10pm yall.

WILDNESS 11.03

OH QUENTIN

ALL PHOTOS BY http://buttdickandpussy.blogspot.com/

realradicalwildness.com

Ashland Mines: SHUT THE F UP ABOUT PROP 8 - IMMEDIATELY - OMG - THAT DOOR IS CLOSED AND I AM SO OVR YR GAY CLASSIST BULL - WHY AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE ABOUT THIS??? - NO REALLY, WHY? - LETS REALLY DO SOMETHING ACTUALLY COOL AND ABOLISH MARRIAGE FOREVER - MAKE MARRIAGE ILLEGAL FOR EVERYONE NOW!!!!

not even a jk at all


in other wordz...


i guess this all makes me think about what i think about all the time, which is way simple consciousness that these "equality" fights are not going to change our lives AT ALL. especially for like almost ALL OF US. legal rights for marriage and gay sex is really a fight for private property and privacy. job discrimination legislation HUH IMAGINES that it would fix the extreme economic disadvantages plaguing most of us- like the economy is otherwise ok without discrimination, um no we know better. and actually most of the violence we suffer is not at the hands of pathological haters, but at the hands of cops, prison guards, administrative bureaucrats etc

or really just INDULGE YEHSELF in Dean Spade's ideas. it's really fun and easy go for it.

being a teenager is so cool

this is Kye AKA Pandora Prestige performing at Wildness yesterday. THE GIRL IS 19!!!!!!

bless US.

she's part of tranny rockstars, based out of the CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL trans youth program organized by Bamby Salcedo - another magical human/institutional combo. i cannot even begin to tell you how hot and amazing this situtaion is. these kids are 10-25 years old (!!!!!) and their shit is way more together than mine will ever be. ps. way more glamourous too. look at their photo album you will DIIIEEEEE of inspiration.

THIS IS BAMBY. i will go wherever you go.

when a cop asked her what M.F. stands for she "my friends."

thank you.

more about Bamby soon. she obviously deserves her own post.

ACCESSORIZE

IVE BEEN MAKING THESE FUNNY FRENCH MANICURE FAKE NAIL EARRINGS THAT I SELL AT A NY STORE "A NEW YORK THING". CHECK IT OUT

seriously crunching numbers

IMPRENTA is an art project. IMPRENTA TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT (ITLP) is a law project. we are fiscally intertwined in a really cool way. basically IMPRENTA the art space is getting 501c3 (non-profit) status, in order to fiscally sponsor the legal clinic. the amazing thing about this arrangement is that by making IMPRENTA a relatively straightforward arts org, it enables ITLP to operate autonomously in a really radical way. for starters, then ITLP doesn't have to have a Board, which traditionally creates all kinds of hierarchical, funder-driven issues that prevent us from maintaining "by and forness" within the community. also our mission statement isn't beholden to the government. there are many ways in which this enables us to be super stealth and do things we could never do if we are a traditional non-profit service org. at the same time, i think that for IMPRENTA the arts org to wear the cloak makes it also a really inventive project, because it manipulates the institutional frame of art... ya know what i mean?

so yesterday was spent all day seriously crunching numbers, working with 2 rad awesome young GAY lawyers (Shayla Meyers and Gina Nicholls), trying to get the books straight into one massive ledger. i was like SO TURNED ON. i looooove math and balancing check books and shit. i really can't help but admit that it's true.

if this is interesting check out INCITE women of color against violence: they published a whole book about why non-profits are so damaging to social movements.

ITLP is modeling after of course the omgsupersoimportant org Silvia Rivera Law Project.