May 31, 2010

TONIGHT


wildness djs tonight at mustache!!! see you there... 
i've been bustin serious ass shooting damelo todo pickups this weekend- so lots of VISUALZ soon !!!

May 27, 2010

TONIGHT


TRANCE TRANCE A-BA-RA-CA-DA-BA-RA HOLY FUCKING TRANCE! FINGERS HOT AT THE TIP WHERE THEY TOUCH BLACK OUT POWERS SNAP SING AND RING!

COME DABLE IN THE DARK ART OF NIGHT TIME SOUND SYSTEM CULTURE DEVELOPMENT WITH US

LIVE DOING:

WU TSANG
 
HIM
 

AND YOU

FREE in general unless you want us to eat food and have homes then you can donate. 

TONIGHT @ JALISCO 245 S. MAIN 10PM

May 26, 2010

brown solidarity

back in january the nytimes released a report about the influx of chinese immigrants crossing the US border through Arizona- the numbers have increased TENFOLD this past year. the reason is primarily economic within a super complex transcontinental human trafficking system but whatever the reason, these statistics are grounds for evidence that there is growing solidarity amongst brown people within the immigrant rights movement. standing FIRM reports that the asian & pacific islander community in arizona is one of the fastest growing minority populations in the state, nearly doubling in size between 1990 and 2005. this week the asian pacific american legal center and the asian american justice center filed a lawsuit with other national civil rights organizations to challenge SB 1070.

WERK.

there's also a really cute moving video by a young undocumented gay iranian student named mohammad - LOOK.



i'm interested in the intersection of this stuff on a personal level cause my dad immigrated "illegally" the to US from china when he was young, and like mohammad i grew up with the expectation of being able to take advantages of opportunities he never had. unlike mohammad, i didn't have the traumatizing experience of having my opportunity to go to college taken out from under my nose, because of the simple difference that i was born here. i went to college- in fact i was lucky to get a stellar education but the point is there are so many many many young people out who are in this same position. if you take 2 MINUTES to read or watch youth responses to SB1070, i think nuff said.

just to bring it all back to da club, when wildness was getting criticized for gentrification at the time of LA Weekly's 'Best of LA' article - there was an obvious backlash that we didn't "belong" at the bar and our presence was destroying something. did we belong? the question revolved around whether we wildness (myself TOTAL FREEDOM & NGUZUNGUZU) could be a part of the Silver Platter community, or even claim solidarity on the basis of identity race class etc. were we specifically trans Latina immigrant? no. we were collectively trans, Latino, African American, South and East Asian, and queer. i'm not saying that's the answer either, but those are facts. another fact is that we came from different class backgrounds- we were predominantly 1st & 2nd generation immigrant, from varying lower-to-middle income backgrounds. some of us had higher level education (including myself), some no college education at all... more facts that don't necessarily answer the question, but it's a place to start thinking.

speaking of education- there is something that continues to kind of blow my mind when i think about wildness being criticized as an "art school party" - not to say that it was or wasn't. i mean anyone who walked into wildness (or THE TABLE/Jalisco) might look around and make a judgment about the people partying based on age, style, and perceived income level, race and class etc. but actually just the idea that art and school is an inherently bad thing- and it makes me uncomfortable to question this. but i guess i want to put it out there since i've been thinking a lot about the immigrant rights youth movement. because i guess the underlying assumption that i question is: what do people WANT when they encounter oppressed/low income/immigrant community spaces? do we want communities to remain separate and oppressed or do we want to exchange? who decides? what are we really saying when we say that classes don't belong together?

another thing that stuck with me from the whole wildness debate was a comment someone made about asian not being BROWN, which is also unfortunate cause it reminds me that we often don't focus on racism between communities of color, or mixed race communities (i'm mixed) etc. and how that finger pointing just perpetuates the larger (white) racism...

i guess it REALLY comes back to the problem i have with the idea of privilege. i want there to be another way to talk about power. the word privilege is a problem for me because it implies you have like PITY on someone else. it's like this idea of owning one's XYZ privilege (racial, economic, educational etc) is really like saying "i have something that other people don't." but then it's like- who am I to decide what other people DON'T have? how about instead focusing on what I HAVE- isn't that all we can ever really know? or at least if we can start from there, instead of being ashamed, because that is how i often see privilege played out around me... and it causes a LOT of anxiety.

May 25, 2010

dance for will munro tomorrow night and forever

(photo by bruce la bruce)

Will Munro 

epically important artist DJ community leader and masterminder of Toronto queer nightlife died on friday at the age of 35 from brain cancer. i didn't know him well but he was best friends of many, and i will always think of his viginia puff paint performance at LTTR Explosion, art in general 2003. it is an unnameably huge loss for our world

THE THEME IS "TRANSCENDENCE"
Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West TORONTO

May 24, 2010

what could be more gay

CIARA
in givenchy for vogue paris june/july 2010

my weekend was all about feeling appreciative of being gay and gay community- like in the simplest most pleasurable ways! yesterday damelo todo teaser screened in a queer film festival organized by the ONE Archive at the Downtown Independent theater, which was co-hosted by Mustache Mondays' nacho nava and josh peace... it was an absolutely amazing invigorating event. andrew gould and bud thomas of the ONE organized a bunch of archival films from the 70s 80s and 90s combined with a few contemporary ones, and it was so inspiring to see the inter-generational dialog. basically everything was incredible, especially two films that focused on gay liberation in LA in the 70s- Liberation of Griffith Park (1971) directed by matt spero and Some of Your Best Friends (1971) directed by ken robinson. i haven't seen too many gay lib images that are LA-specific, most mainstream images are set in san franciso or new york, so that was cool, and ken robinson was THERE- and i had a total creative breakthrough realization that my movie needs hand-made titling! WATERCOLOR TITLING = GENIUS. the energy and spirit of the gay movement back in the early days is nonstop never ending exciting and visually inspiring to me. and also seeing how young filmmakers are dealing with queerness and race in the contemporary films gave me to so much to think about and get re-energized about the whole world. and during Q&A to look out over the packed audience and see grey-haired all leather and like kids from the club all mixed together- special favorite. and THEN there was the most perfect movie i have seen maybe ever called


a 20-min doc about early gay marriage. see it. own it. wear it. go there.
it was nominated for an academy award!
it's amazing. the STYLE. the SLEEVES on those dresses!
and so so so timely in the wake of prop 8 to think about all the issues of marriage, family, materialism, etc - like in the most open non-judgemental fascinating way. yay!


WHEW

oh and thrill! i was invited to participate in the CA Biennial! (that was one secret i'm now allowed to share, other good news on the way) which means fine art exhibition of damelo todo at some point in the near future, october to be exact, but more on that later ;) kiss kiss poof poof

May 20, 2010

M.I.A FIRST SHOW OFF NEW ALBUM


Hey! SO not sure if you guys know, I started djing for M.I.A!(SEE ME IN THE BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER?!) Its been amazzing, so inspiring and a lot of fun! LOVE LOVE LOVE<3 <3 Here's a peek at what went down at Gotham Hall in New York CIty for a private event hosted by Adult Swim. SHe had three back up singers in full burkas, a live drummer (our loved Butchy Fuego!)her whole outfit is made of tape, MADNESS (NOTE: the sound is shit in the videos)

May 19, 2010

tomorrow night la

letsgo!


i haven't posted in a while about IMPRENTA & LGL's activities... mostly because lately it's been bizness as usual... we finally hit an even keel in our partnership with Bienestar, doing free HIV testing every 2nd and 4th saturday of the month. it continues to be a little fly by the pants but we've managed to reach a level of consistency for the foreseeable future. one of my fav ladies on the planet Mariana Marroquin is developing a new program at Bienestar that may enable them to expand to doing a support group if the funding comes through...

LGL is about to have our first retreat! may 30th. in many ways this will mark the actual beginning of our organization- the first time we'll be making major decisions as a collective about our governance. more on that as it develops... and meanwhile the monthly legal clinic continues...

 
 
 haaay alexis rivera!

DISPATCH FROM GENDER JUSTICE LA

Want your voice to be heard? 
Want to become involved?
 Are you in advocate in your community?

Come and join Gender Justice LA for their first campaign meeting at Plummer Park. Our new campaign will be launched on May 22nd. 
Our New campaign is working with LAPD, Gender Justice LA wants LAPD to adopt the model polices and standards when interacting with Trans people in Los Angeles.
 
When: Saturday May 22nd

Where: Plummer Park
 7377 Santa Monica Blvd.
 West Hollywood, CA, 90046

Time: 1:00pm – 3:00pm
Light snacks and beverages will be provided. 

If you have questions please feel free to contact me at alexis@genderjusticela.org

(proenzas from tavi's tumblr)

Damelo Todo (teaser) screening at NEW FEST NYC June 6th


DAMELO TODO 13-MINUTE EXTENDED TEASER IS SCREENING AT NEWFEST NYC!

WHERE: SVA Theater, 333 West 23rd St. (Chelsea)
WHEN: Sunday, June 6th, 3:00 pm

performalala


VAGINAL DAVIS
she has birthed enough artworks and aspiring young babes to colonize an entire free thinking planet





what could be more comely?

(photo by yours truly!)

May 18, 2010

GROWING



1263 WEST TEMPLE STREET
WEDNESDAYS
til dawn

presented by TOTAL FREEDOM & SFV ACID 
(psst: GROWN recently invited me to develop a prix fixe dinner menu... stay tuned!)

white people get richer people of color do not

just in case there was any question about it...

Racewire reports that  a study released today shows that the wealth gap between whites and blacks in america has increased X4 in our generation's lifetime. i also think the span of the early 80s to almost now (pre-recession) is significant because it's culturally considered our country's so-called "growth years" -aka time of relative economic prospertity...

(thanks again to Jorge Rivas for pointing me to this amazing online journal - go there people go)

May 17, 2010

mustache mondays


not sure i say this often enough- i ADORE mustache mondays! NACHO NAVA, JOSH PEACE, and TOTAL FREEDOM present the weekly club, which is like a major staple to LA nightlife. they've been sustaining their thing FORever (3 years yet?)- live performance, best sounds, A-list crowd, actually hot strippers, etc.

back in the early days of Charlie O's, mustache was a major inspiration for me personally to wanna start wildness. mustache was the thing that made me feel like i had a real dialog, like a real community i wanted to contribute to.

CLUB LOOK

fake alexander wang t-shirt i found at the corner store for $6! 
my look of the week = t-shirt + crystal-studded clutch... totally works for day and night.

last week i had a lovely catchup with a few of mah girls- rising star MISS BARBIE Q and the LADY RAJA (who did the most mind-blowing performance at mustache back in the day that changed my life)

(raja at charlie o's forever ago - total tattered 9/11 chic!!!)

i also befriended Jorge Rivas handsome young journalist who writes for RACEWIRE and COLORLINES 2 totally amazing racial justice online projects... check them outttttt! and see you der. tonight ;)

May 14, 2010

(...)

sorry for the slow down in posts... i've been editing up a storm of Damelo Todo with editor suzanne mejean = brain dead + too much to report! aaaaand more exciting news as soon as i'm allowed to share ;)

May 10, 2010

NO TABLE this thursday, grown wednesday

NO TABLE THIS THURSDAY
(it's art walk week and they have another party)
IE.
THE TABLE IS EVERY THURSDAY
EXCEPT NOT 2ND THURSDAYS


BUT YOU CAN...

TOTAL FREEDOM & SFV ACID PRESENT:
DINNER HOUSE M 1263 West Temple Street 
LATE NIGHT LESBIAN-OWNED SPEAKEASY JAZZ CLUB

May 9, 2010

spring cleaning

 i just unloaded 2/3rds of my closet and paired down to the essentials... apparently everything i wear is either leather, sequined, or see-through lace or mesh. and almost entirely black with a few mauvey.


I KNOW!

damelo todo short screening in tokyo may 15


the damelo todo short is screening in a queer art exhibition in tokyo this month! my AHMAZING  lesbian lifestyle photographer friend yuri manabi is showing it with a series of portraits she made of yours truly in death valley a few years ago... WOW i don't speak japanese but she told me the flyer description is inspired by Wildness: YASEI NO SHIKOU. anyone?? i guess SHIKOU is a sound that has many different character-words and meanings, "thinking/orientation/construction/plaque/preference" ...umm DANG.

May 8, 2010

too hott to cant wait to keep up


PS SEE DEM TOMORROW AT ANOONTIME CLUB
W TOTAL FREEDOM SFV ACID FRANCES STARK

more thoughts on gentrification

starting THE TABLE at JALISCO and continuing to work on the Damelo Todo movie has returned me to the question of gentrification- in fact it seems lately to be a main subject of the movie... funny cause most people expect a movie about trans folks would be about "being trans" whatever that means but actually this keeps coming up as being the most pressing, anxiety causing issue. and also more interesting for me to work with, cause it's like a way multi-dimensional issue.

was wildness gentrifying the Silver Platter?
is THE TABLE going to gentrify Jalisco?
is the movie going to have gentrifying effects on the Silver Platter? 
what is gentrification really?
i ask these questions now obviously NOT because it's the first time i'm thinking about them, but oppositely because these questions have affected every tiny decision i've ever made. so i continue to ask them all the time, again and again, always, and forever.

there is no simple answer, but i think all the answers are worth spelling out. in the overall grand narrative, one fact is that wildness is over, and the community of the bar remains. our presence did not destroy or displace anyone. we happened- and now we are something else, and still involved with some members of the bar (mainly Koky & Javier). the changes had nothing to do with us not belonging there. if anything, we ended because we were SO involved, we had real friendships and alliegances that made it impossible for us to remain as just a biznessstyle-party. and we were invited to stay...

i am returning to old criticism of wildness now because i anticipate it coming up again with THE TABLE. and the movie is potentially going to be an even bigger monster - i knew that from the first day i picked up a camera. representation. exposure. access. audience. format. it's always all been there, and it WILL have affects on how the movie ultimately exists in the world. and then also things we make are never fully in our control. i would argue the best things require giving up a lot of control, trusting your personal ethics, and allowing people the freedom to like make up their own minds. i mean that about making a movie, a party, any kind of creative thing...

these are all threads that i could say sooo much more about, but i'll try to get to the point mkaay

so there's this blog entry that was written a while ago, like over a year ago by an LA-based artist named michael buitron. it's totally obscure but at the same time emblematic from a lot of sentiment that was going on at the time. the entry is heavy with art language so i'll try to parse in the most simple terms, because i think his point of view (minus all the theory) boils down to a set of common reactions to wildness - and therefore likely to be relevant THE TABLE and the movie. so more orless in order, here are his main arguments, which are very familiar...

1. i've been hanging out at bars like the silver platter for a long time so i know these kids don't belong here - frequently our critics pull this kind of rank. in doing so they also are basically saying, it's ok for me to experience this place, but not for others. or worse, i have a more sensitive knowledgeable understanding of this place, that i need to "protect" it from others. or even creepier, this is my slumming territory, i found it first!

2. wildness is getting written about by XXX magazine/newspaper and therefore is threatening the existence of the bar. therefore exposure in itself = death. i guess i really question that. i question it based on lived experience. for example, our worst nightmare "best of LA" coverage caused a HUGE uproar within the so-called wildness community (ie people on the internet who had stake in what we represented, i guess?) - people were taking sides either for or against us, but in the end it did not noticeably change our clientele. occassionally every couple months a few random people would come out as having heard about us through the LA Weekly, but those people came and went, and did not affect the core of our community. in the end of that particular saga, the drama seemed mostly internal to the people who where invested in wildness (including the so-called "protectors") -and really not from the silver platter or the trans latina community in general. on the other hand i tohtally get that things do change when they gain popularity- many times for the worse. BUT i think that jaded attitude that if something's getting "famous" it's going to ruin everything- that perspective feels actually dated to me. it's something i've been thinking about a lot lately, i used to take for granted the idea that exposure = death, but i don't know if i agree that's necessarily always the case anymore, because of the way our culture is so super-saturated with hype and late capitalism and all that. but THAT is like a way huger topic than can be handled by this post- and sort of one the main questions of this blog in general. IS exposure inherently a bad thing- for a project and/or peoples? um i think no, and that is my experiment in general.

3. artists are evil colonizers. now this is an epically THEMATIC proposition. and it's like soooo complex dude. could it be more fair to say that the vast forces of urbanization, class movement, racism, and the shitty capitalist economic system often put artists in difficult situations, where they are both ostracized as "gentrifiers" and at the same time exploited for "taste" value, to make neighborhoods more "liveable"? in my experience (disclosure: i am an artist) it's not the artists that are the problem, it's the people who come after them. artists tend to be actually interested in nuanced things like history, locality, cultural difference, etc. they're usually not just there to TAKE and DISPLACE -or even if they are "taking" little pieces of their life experience to hash out for a specialized niche of the art world that is actually interested in monority/identity issues (and we know that the larger art world/market does NOT care about this stuff -and even if there is interest or support, there is definitely not a lot of money...) but the conventional narrative goes that artists "pave the way" for the people who DO take/displace/exploit. so my question is where can an intervention happen in this process?

4. so this one was hard to paraphrase, i'll just quote directly: "In the era of globalization, we can't have hermetic cultures absent of cultural mixing. At the same time, I really believe there are some fragile cultural spaces that warrant a bit of respectful isolation. The feelings, sights, smells, and testosterone vibe of a sex club would be lost if the space was infiltrated by art patrons sipping glasses of white wine." - maybe this statement is like - can radical queer culture mix with the art world? 
then he goes on to talk about the difference between a mapplethorpe PHOTOGRAPH versus sighting random art celebrities (including Zackary!! squeal) at a sex club. ok so really he is asking should these things be mixing in real life? and it sounds like he thinks that art should stay in the art world, and radical queer people should stay in the clubs. or maybe that it's ok for freaky club people to try to make it in the art world, but art people should stay out of the clubs. but isn't that kind of privileging the art world? like putting it above sex clubs, as though we are all clamoring to try to get up in there, and that art people have to mobility to go (to descend?) anywhere they want? i find that people in the art world often have this kind of narcissistic perspective - that if they are venturing outside of their immediate scene then they are "observing" or "infiltrating" or merely performing etc. when i first crossed into the film world i think i was guilty of doing a little of that myself - as IF the artworld were a NEUTRAL place from which to critque. PUSFFFFTTT!! (do you hear the sound of me DIIEEING?) i would like to think that there could be a more egalitarian way to think about difference, that maybe worlds can be mutually exclusive, or that they can even overlap, and have totally separate codes and values, etc. AND that one can't negate another, you know what i mean?

OR MAYBE he's just repulsed by the idea of CLASSES mixing in general (white wine and leather?). that's another big thematic one... to be tackled!


lastly, there were 2 comments - one person i think intelligently pointed out that the real question was, "whom is queer art for? Does it define a community, and if so, is it for the sake of that community or for others or both?" i agree with those questions. GOOD QUESTION!

then the other comment basically said "Wildness should be ashamed of themselves" specifically targeting at the fact that some of us are artists and/or were art students.
What's worse? That Wildness has cheapened what was once a rich and specific community, casting a freak-light on the bar's longstanding clientele -- all under the umbrella of an art project?

Or their childish smuggery as self-defined ambassadors to a tranny hooker / john community that they don't really understand beyond art school trans-politics?
i'm kind of weirdly satisfied to end on this note, because there you have it: the whole pendulum of wildness critique - from abstract theoretical criticism to straightup hater. all of it bearing the weight of partial truth and deeply flawed untrue judgement. and like truly sad and painful and everything.

WHOOPS, this really turned in to an essayhay didn't it? goddddd i try not to be such a long typer mm, but sometimes things just need hashing out. this is all to say i believe the michael buitrons of the world have some valid points, and also their invalid points reveal other fucked up inner workings of the world. but it's easier to mount a defense than to craft an argument, so i have the upper hand here. in general my mode IS to try to put my shit out there, but sometimes you just gotta deal directly with what people are sayin. just sayin. i am MOST DEFINITELY taking it all into account.

May 7, 2010

STILL LIFE AFTER THE TABLE


(my favorite part is when the lights come up...)

THE TABLE IS THURSDAYS @ JALSICO
EXCEPT NOT THE 2ND THURSDAY IE NOT NEXT WEEK

May 5, 2010

"THE TABLE" THURSDAYS @ JALISCO


THE NEW THING
THE WEEKLY THING
(EXCEPT 2ND THURSDAYS)
LIVE PERFORMANCE BY TOTAL FREEDOM & NGUZUNGUZU
HOSTED BY WU TSANG, JAVIER VARGAS, & KOKI CORRAL

245 S. MAIN - NO LIST - $5 AFTER MIDNIGHT

May 4, 2010

damelo todo (teaser) community screening may 23


DAMELO TODO 13-MINUTE TEASER IS SCREENING AT ONE QUEER FILM FEST!
 SUNDAY MAY 23
 
Sunday, May 23, 2010
3 - 5 PM
Downtown Independant Theater
251 S. Main St. Downtown LA

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the world's largest LGBT history collection and the nation's oldest LGBT organization, hosts an afternoon of queer culture on the big screen. Join us as we link our history and our future through an array of stories told through short films. All proceeds will benefit ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives and will help preserve the rich history of our LGBT community.

Films will show from 3 - 5 PM with a rooftop after party featuring DJ music and cash bar.
Tickets are available for sale at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/107516

May 3, 2010

according to nytimes art critic identity-politics are EVIL

"Is it time to retire the identity-based group show?"

WOW. when nytimes critic ken johnson opens his article with this question, panning the art exhibition "Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement" my blood is already boiling. i FUCKING HATE when people act like identity politics are over. according to johnson we are so POST POST POST everything that we don't need to talk about it, make work about it, and certainly not support organizing shows about it.

as case in point, Johnson cites this year's Whitney Biennial as evidence that the art world has fully evolved beyond the relevancy of identity-politics: "Artists of many different backgrounds and sexual orientations have been assimilated into the art world. There are more women than men in this year’s Whitney Biennial." whereas in fact there are ZERO LATINOS in the biennial this year! according to mainstream latino press mezcla, and i QUAHOTE "The roster for this year’s biennial features 55 artists (yes, 55), and not a single one of them is Latino, nor a representative of the Latin America or Latino diaspora." so i think, ken johnson, that you are flat out wrong. and it's appropriate to say that there may be a slightly better proportion of women represented in the art world than there used to be - but for people of color, shit is more or less the same. PROVE ME OTHERWISE PUHLEASE.

johnson concludes:
It has long been said that the identity-based show is an EVIL [my emphasis] whose necessity would disappear in a more equitable world, but museums and grant-giving foundations will continue to support this kind of project because of its appeal to various interest groups. In truth, it as much a bureaucratic artifact as a curatorial one. A more astutely focused, judiciously selected exhibition might lead to different conclusions, but this one will not alter the impression that last rites for this type of show are in order.
WOW. so that is just like one giant assthumbs up to COLORBLINDNESS and the whole neoliberal caboodle. eeww. thanks. what truly could be more evil and insidious? (not EVEN to get into the specifics of the "Phantoms" show, which is in fact a fascinatingly complex, smart smart exhibition- NOT coincidentally emerging from the los angeles landscape)

hmmmmmm i don't usually get so straightup bitchy but i get all HOT AND BOTHERED when it seems that the art world is the least transparent and most contradictory workplace i've ever participated in. UGH.

STEAM. BLOWN OFF.

(alejandro diaz)

May 2, 2010

morning coffee

................DAY AFTER MAYDAY! la times estimate 60,000 but we know it was more. totally thrilling thing all the bodies turning out. success. i was filming walking down the middle of broadway in reverse direction it looked so AHMAZING endless parting sea.
portrait of a group of QUEER CONTINGENT - shout out to LGL member RIKU MATSUDA down in front and HAAAY BAMBY, above center. 

THUMBS UP.

i like to make sunday a real start of the week, like the day before bizness. good day to organizize brain.

LA - WEDNESDAY


NY - THESE DATES


i'm especially excited about
IDEAS_PRESENT THEM: Lecture with LEILAH WEINRAUB
This talk is about where ideas come from, youtube/peer2peer networks and the entrepreneurial middle, technology & governance, and the combustion engine.

yesterday we had time to march and go to malibu! that's what's it's like if you live in LA people yes you can do that.


hello?
(http://jakandjil.com/blog/?p=4190)