"PIG" (POLITICALLY INVOLVED GIRLS) WITH ZACKARY DRUCKER AND MARIANA MARROQUIN @ X INITIATIVE FOR ECSTATIC RESISTANCE

A GLITTERING FACADE

(on broadway we call that a "BUTTON")

VIDEO BY RHYS ERNST

SPECIAL THANKS TO CADEN MANSON FOR STAGING MAGIC AND GENERAL GAURDIAN ANGELNESS

photos by emily roysdon

DANG I HAD DINNER WITH HANS HAACKE LAST NIGHT

my friend brilliant top dog gay artist Andrea Geyer invited me to a very exclusive chic dinner party last night where artists talk about art and politics. i had a cute look!!! you CAN'T see it here. it was basically what i call "the gray bag" (you CAN'T see it at all sorry) - it's a gray silk floor length dress that i thrifted for 2.99 and tailored and wore it backwards so it looks like a gray silk bag on my body.

oh here it is. this is the gray bag as a club look, which is different then when you wear it to a creative time board member's dinner party...

it was a very interesting discussion that went all over the place, so i couldn't really summarize - but basically people are both frustrated and psyched about the world and art right now. one thing that struck me as surprising (or maybe i just realized i'm thinking about this stuff differently now) was that people seem to reference "Hollywood" as standing in for the opposite of critical anti-capitalist cultural production. as someone who has recently settled into LA (and a queer person of color) i find this sort of blanket compartmentalizing to be problematic. i think there is a lot of potential for capitalist critique to be done within the spectrum of fashion glamor and entertainment... well obvz i do... AND simply within art. particuarly thinking about the legacy of institutional critique while sitting next to Mr. Haacke there, to whom thinking is deeply indebted. i mean alls i'm trying to say is that i think it would be useful to bring together the discourse with the social relations. like for example, just take what was in the room. i want to include folk's race, class, dress, gender, performance stuff - especially the fancy ass FOOD - into the theoretical discussion, that's more my jam. it's something that i find often to be true of art world social scenarios - that people are much more comfortable to act like that stuff is transparent or irrelevant to what's at stake.

REHEARSING FOR PIG (Politically Involved Girls)

WITH ZACKARY DRUCKER AND MARIANA MARROQUIN

i'm obsessed with people born in the 90s

so yo i'm in ny. a little ragged already (super cute JAM CLUB in brooklyn + ridiculously wrong new pink silk jumpsuit + DJ TELFAR last night!!!) i had an amazing conversation this morning with my ahem "Creative Consultant" aka genius old friend Matt Wolf filmmaker extraordinaire. matt and i are pretty much the same age, we were both born in the early 80s... we are grown up now or something. people are way younger. anyways, discussing Damelo Todo really getting to nitty gritty point of making this movie. matt has a way of parsing things out into the most lucid judgment-free realities, SO GOOD of him. what exactly did he say...?...oh yes...something like... Damelo Todo is a story about immigrant experience, as told through the social history of a bar in downtown LA, from the perspective of young artist(s) working creatively and collaboratively inside the forces of gentrification/urban development. is that what he said?? i'm sure he said something that was way more intelligent nuanced and to the point, but these are the pieces i got.

immigrant experience

social history of the silver platter

wildness

(luv that transsexuality is just like a prism to look at other waaay more tripped out issues

such as race class violence femininity citizenship tricking etc)

READY.

my father and his family were illegal immigrants. growing up, i remember being told tales of their political exile -that sounded as fantastical to me as ghosts stories in the rural new england town where we lived. i was also transgendered and like many multi-multi queers of my generation, i sought community far away from home; found it in a lesbian-feminist art scene in NYC the early '00s (LTTRRRRHUH). i have spent the past 10 years living between ny-chicago-la. gay triangle urban modern being.

as a young creative person i have always operated inside the throes of gentrification. i find it difficult to say anything intelligent or interesting about this fact - but over time i will try. something ashland once said comes back to me... "i dont even really know what gentrification is - we need like a new word or something... like are we really talking about a class of horseback gentry or something - its a weird word. like its just so wide too - like what are we talking about? like land rights? LAND?? or like minority culture "authenticity" stabilization?" anyways the material point is that these forces are epically worldwide and they do not need to paralyze us. i also think there are other ways to act besides reactionary or just like anti-ness. if you have read this blog for more than a minute you know i'm not much an "anti" person - i'm kind of more of a YEEEESSSSSSSS person, so i'm always looking for this way forward.

what i have arrived at is that wildness exists. we are an irreversible presence now a part of the bar's evolution. i hope, out of humble respect for its long history, that we are a minor event in the overall scheme of things. however, if by chance, as we know to be the trend of gentrification of bars and neighborhoods in general around the country -IF wildness is in fact a harbinger signaling the end of an ethnic/minority/"authentic"/stabilized/thing -REGARDLESS OF OUR INTENTIONS (as individuals sharing in solidarity)- it is my hope that the film may actually serve as an intervention. because macarthur park IS changing, just the way silverlake and downtown changed 4-10 years ago, macarthur park is the next neighborhood to go. the problem is not simplistically that these changes can be prevented, but that these stories get lost. La Cita, El Sid, Silverlake Lounge - there must be literally hundreds of bars with the same ghosts, which are lost forever. my hope is that if the story of the bar AND of our presence could be better understood, then maybe it might affect the trajectory of what happens in the future... i just don't know. but i have been wrestling with it since day one will and continue to do so every step of the way. it's part of why i wanted to create a fictional narrative section, as a way to obscure the "truth" of the place - at least to the point that if someone is curious enough to see the movie and want to visit the bar, then it would be the kind of person who is able to think complexly enough to be able to uphold respect.

just where i'm at today....

OH PS WE GOT BLESSED TODAY WITH AN ADDITION TO THE PIG TEAM - CADEN MANSON - MY NEW ART AND POSSIBLY LIFE COACH - LEARNING SO MUCH ALREADY AND GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER IS THE BEST PART

more about this when i have visuals

NEW YORK THIS IS GONNA BE SO WORTH YOUR WHILE

"Free State Epitaph and PIG" @ X Initiative (Closing of the Ecstatic Resistance Show)

Thurs Jan 28th 7-9pm etc GO HERE FOR DETAILZ

TUESDAY - JAWS/G XTRAVAGANZA

WILDNESS 01.19.10

BASICALLY QUENTINS FABULOUSA BLOGA SAVES MY BUTT EVERY WEEK
CAUSE SHE TAKES PICTURES WHILE WE MELT THROUGH THE FLOOR

MELTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GO THERE BUTTDICKANDPUSSY

KINGDOMMMMMMMMMM

LUV THE LESBIAN GAZE - SO IMPORTANT


ps.
secretly i'm in OHIO
editing DAMELO TODO!!!!!!!!!
be back on the east and west coasts soon - keep ya posted ;)

living and breathing silver platter right now...

FREE LEGAL SERVICES FOR THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY EVERY LAST TUESDAY OF THE MONTH @ IMPRENTA

WILDNESS THIS WEEK

R&R&R&R&R

so i'm in san francisco for the weekend, holed up at the inn on castro trying to decompress from the Damelo Todo shoot (finally living up to it's name) before i head to the wexner for 3 week of editing... have no thoughts in my brain at all, no needs, and not ready to do anything, so i thought i would just throw out whatever's been on my radar this week that didn't quite materialize cause i had to deprioritize everything to get through 17-hour shooting dayz... email inbox is about 10 times what it should be so i wil get to that too please thank you for your patience!

first of all

alexander mqueenish hips combined with the ultimate tranny-sucking spandex tights makes this the look of 2010 doncha think? (along with beyone's new cgi-enhanced dance moves in general) i would literally wear this look until it fell off my body

CALVES

what makes da calves work best is heels that match a skin tone of course

PRIVATIZATION OF PRISONS IN GENERAL

in his final annual address to the legislature last week schwarzenegger announced a plan to further cut public funding of prisons in favor of the private sector. he calls this "choosing universities over prisons" - yet another example of the slippery debate around california's insane incarceration crisis. according to the nytimes article, the CA system houses roughly 170,000 inmates in its 33 prisons and 12 community correctional facilities and has an annual budget of roughly $10.6 billion; the private prison industry is one of the few growth industries in CA's recession economy. checkout the statewide campaign called Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) which is a broad based of over 40 orgs seeking to reduce prison spending by reducing the number of people in prison and number of prisons in the state...

BOUTIQUE PRISON BUSINESS CONTINUES TO FIND NEW MARKETS

Italy to open first prison for transgender inmates

perhaps the first of it's kind in the world... italy is riviving an almost empty prison - i guess we are supposed to be excited that they are making it a trans prison rather than CLOSING it. so here is yet another example of how twisted the issue of incarceration is for the trans movement. you would think this is a good thing, right? except that remember from earlier discussions about hate crimes laws, the ultimate goal is not define rights in terms of the lives that are locked away. like we don't necessarily want to fight to put MORE people in jail, and feed an industrial complex that discriminates like 6-10 times more against people of color, poor people, and trans folks... AH ANYWAYZ... back to braindead. starting tomorrow i will be a human being again.

RIP Flo McGarrell and the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in Haiti

Flo (2nd from left & edge of frame right)

Flo was a friend from Chicago and a wonderful queer/trans artist, who has been living and working in Jacmel as the director of FOSAJ, a non-profit art center. these are the last photos that i have of him, taken a couple weeks ago by Zackary Drucker during the filming of Oakie Treadwell's adaptation of Kathy Acker goes to Haiti... Flo was a really amazing generous extremely talented person, who will live in my memory forever. i especially like think of the beautiful iconic inflated television that he contributed to Pilot TV back in 2004.

if you want to support Haiti relief effort there is an important post on ENOUGH about organizations doing good aid work that we should support.

HERE IS WHY AND HERE IS WHY WE SHOULD NOT GIVE THROUGH RED CROSS.

i think what's important to note here is that the problem of distributing resources is always fraught with racism and corporatism... even in LA, on the small level that I've been working within the LETSGO LIBERATION L(e)G(a)L group - I see how difficult and rare it is to create situations where resources are able to be mobilized in a critical way. so here it takes like 10 minutes of your time to read up on more community-based radically concious orgs, and take yr pick!

DAMELO TODO NARRATIVE SHOOT PRODUCTION STILLS - PHOTOS BY LOVE

THANK YOU QUREW!!!!!! SHOUT TO ERNESTO FORONDA, ARCHIE HERNANDEZ, ASHLEY HUNT, MICHELLE LAWLER, BRITT RINGER, ELSA VALDEZ, DESSIE COALE, RHYS ERNST, CHIARA GIOVANDO, DARELLE VARY, CANDI GUTTERES, MIGUEL BARRAGAN, LOVE ABLAN, SUZANNE MEJEAN, JEN SMITH, YU KARITANI, SHAKINA NAYVAK, DANI CARRERA, ASHLEY CORDOVA, ALYSSA MORGAN, GEORGE HUANG, AND TAISHA PAGGET!!!!!! 

AND OF COURSE DEEP TEARS OF LOVE AND RESPECT FOR TALENT WORKERS GABY, YASENYA, RAQUEL, SILVER PLATTER AND WILDNESS WORLDS

DAMELO TODO NARRATIVE SHOOT PRODUCTION STILLS - PHOTOS BY LOVE