LA now

normal life

SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS

dean spade's long awaited book on administrative law!! you should read this book! it's like miu miu glittery booties- some trends SHOULD be followed. so this is like an academic book but very accessible. you can order it from the extremely righteous south end press or if your morals get loose when you're impatient like me you can also overnight thru amazon... I SAY whatever you do GET IT

to me his words read like a kind of poetry/blade/waterfall in their truth:

The stories I heard from my first clients and continued to hear from the trans people I met through my work at SRLP [Sylvia Rivera Law Project] portrayed a set of barriers--both from bias and from the web of inconsistent administrative rules governing gender--that produce significant vulnerability. The impact of these conditions ranges across subpopulations of trans people: even those with privilege, education, white privilege, US citizenship, physical and mental ability perceived as average or above, and English-language skills experience many of these hurdles. Those with such privileges have many of the same ID problems, often cannot afford health care, experience incidents of physical attack, have their parental rights terminated by courts, are arrested for using bathrooms or barred from gender appropriate bathrooms at work and/or school, are discriminated against in hiring, are discriminated against by insurance companies, and lose family support. Most experience a downward mobility in terms of wealth/income because of their trans identities. However, access to certain privileges that serve in determining the distribution of life chances (e.g., whiteness, perceived ablebodiedness, employment, immigration status) often offer some individuals degrees of buffering from violences faced by people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, indigenous people, prisoners, foster youth, and homeless people. The most marginalized trans people experience the most extreme vulnerability, in part because more aspects of their lives are directly controlled by legal and administrative systems of domination--prisons, welfare programs, foster care, drug treatment centers, homeless shelters, job training centers--that employ rigid gender binaries. These intersecting vectors of control make obtaining resources especially difficult, restrict access to zones of retreat or safety, and render every loss of a job, family support, or access to an advocate or a health care opportunity more costly. The most marginalized trans people have the least protection from violence, experience more beatings and rapes, are imprisoned at extremely high rates, and are more likely to be disappeared and killed. 

[BOLDS my emphasis] 

for some reason the idea that poverty can actually "restrict access to zones of retreat or safety" feels like MIND BENDING. it makes me think about how often people use money to push boundaries and buy their way through closed doors, etc... but when you don't have that, it's like there can be no relief. no space where you are not completely bent over ass dominated by the law...

lately i've been trying to better understand what "safe space" really means, in terms of queerness transness - but also in terms of wealth. dean's voice inspires me to keep re-thinking how we create it...  

it's also powerful analysis that can be difficult to share and communicate, this basic transformative idea that the most vulnerable members of our communities (trans or whatever X) experience the most violence and therefore should be put at the center of our movements as opposed to periphery. in my experience, "vulnerable" can also be tricky when put into practice particularly in organizing/service provision contexts, because it can strip people of their agency and turn them into victims or "clients." it's a wobbly but important line to keep walking...


**
post update.

NO

this is some gay mag cover i held onto from a few years go... i think about this image a lot. (especially re dean's work) because it's it really feels like the time we are slogging through right now: the gay agenda, obama etc. from the moment of wildness's genesis til now - which is the filter i'm processing through. i notice the world paying a little more attention to trans stuff. i think our movement runs the risk just like any other of co-opting weird norms, if we end of fighting for inclusion or legal equality...

week in ny

whew back in LA after an emotional week in ny... we were in FULL production mode for FBQ but also feeding off the intense energy of occupy/N17 etc SUCH AN EXCITING TIME right now ...!

morning after the eviction seemed like total confusion/loss but a lot of people say has made the movement stronger

total freedom setting up in the sky room at sunset... my favorite hour in there... the party did come that part for sure was FUN ;) but need to digest generational galala experience more before making comment

ON THE SET

LTR: performer mikeah jennings, special visitors hector xtravaganza wit such cute boyfriend jay, cherrye davis (performer), travis chamberlain (producer) and derek wright, our grip/electrician...

 PA halston bruce operating our poorman's dolly (wheelchair = works!) while DP martina radwan and AC alvah chomes frame the shot... we had super awesome crew! other amazing people not pictured: performer nicholas gorham, makeup artist gage ofthe boone, PAs naomi huth & loreli ramirez, and eungie joo craft services ;)

 

keepin' it fresh at 2am last night ;)

full body quotation at the new museum

tomorrow night is the official live presentation of full body quotation at new museum, but tonight we are performing at a private "friendraiser" for the museum's triennial. it's not an explicit fundraiser, but the purpose of the event is to develop the long term investment of young affluent/influential patrons. i've been worrying about participating in this event for a while... especially in light of the Abramovic stunt at MOCA Gala last week... and generally thinking about the role that performance artists often play in these situations, as being complicit "entertainment" jesters for elite patronage of museums.

i continue to struggle with figuring out a smart way to respond. one way would be to just not perform- but then i miss an opportunity to dialog with the thing i wanna critique. another obvious impulse would be some FUCK THE 1% gesture, but that so often plays right into the expectations of the audience, that you become this "transgressive" queer freaky artist. my friend alex (of my barbarian) warned me they love it when you bite their hand that feeds you...

ironically enough, my performance is about the film Paris is Burning. i may have been alluding to that for months now, but the context now demands it be more explicit. because when i look at that photo above (which was taken in the sky room, the event space at the new museum) i see an image equivalent to paris is burning, and a metaphor for the way that film (and things like it) function for mainstream audiences- to like capture and placate their fantasy of queer/poor/poc self-expression. (and i mean the IMAGE not necessarily the content, but how it gets used as certain kind of marketing etc...) i could go on for days about the nuances, but basically this work is about exploitation. not like in a judgmental way, but like a rubiks-cube way, like these are all the sides to the problem - there is no easy solution. and there are SO MANY ways it can go wrong... it's a really tight spot.

so the solution i came up with is to make this statement at the beginning of the piece, and also to share the source material.

this is the statement (well maybe it won't be these exact words, but this sentiment):

Dear Audience,
Tonight's performance features all misappropriated material. We are channeling voices of people involved in the making of the film Paris is Burning 20 years ago. Originally I wanted to keep this source secret because I didn't want you to take these voices for granted as being "authentic." But the site of this performance (ie a party at the New Museum, Performa, downtown Manhattan, etc) is not necessarily a safe space for all the communities referenced in this work. If you wanna witness this; please first recognize that we exist. In order to fall apart as complex beings, we need first to be able to live.

oops that might be a little abstract ;) i still have a couple hours to come up with the right wording... but i felt the need to get this information out there...

anyway here are the sources of the performance:

Characters (in order of appearance):
Octavia St. Laurent, Paris is Burning (1990)
Venus Xtravaganza, Paris is Burning (1990)
Crystal LaBeija, The Queen (1968)
Unidentified Photographer, Paris is Burning (1990)
Jennie Livingston, Paris is Burning archives (UCLA Film & Television Archives)
Junior LaBeija, Paris is Burning archives (UCLA Film & Television Archives)
Unidentified kids, Paris is Burning (1990)
Grandfather Hector Xtravaganza, interview, June 2011

if you are in NYC hope to see you there!!!

1991 inside now inside now

long day in space

yesterday was a double-header at elysain, the new space i'm working on that is my job. we had an all-day retreat for LGL, the legal clinic. LGL is undergoing yet another transformation - we are continuing now as a mobile clinic, which is actually working better than when we had Imprenta. long story short, we ran out of money and had to give up the space. now our clinic is every other month, at different locations around LA area... the last one and next one (nov 17) are with the east valley community health center in el monte. apparently there have been a lot of problems in this area with the cops harassing and arresting trans people without cause, one officer in particular. so there is need for this clinic, but at the same time we are trying to recommit ourselves to community accountability. another long story short: LGL was started by a group of predominately white non-trans lawyers, and last year we did a campaign to get more community participation, which was initially super successful, exciting time. but we had trouble with decision-making, structure, and ultimately power dynamics between the lawyers and community members were hard to overcome and community participation dropped off. at this point, given the the clinic is starting to gain traction, i see that it would be very easy for LGL to just push ahead operate as a lawyer-driven group. but we are committed to figuring out how to slow the process down, and find ways to sustain community participation in a more long term way.

later that night we did a test screening of wildness with a group of artists editors collaborators and community members... it was invigorating to have for the first time a small audience of many perspectives all in one room. i still have a lot of work to do :0

one thing i've been thinking about is how much storytelling is itself a master tool. like grand arcs and stuff. it's something i had never previously learned how to do, because i come from communities who are having to resist master narratives all day long every day.... so storytelling can be extra hard backbending when we are trying to represent our own communities because we end up either trying imitate or assimilate into these narratives where we don't quite fit, or if we say things in our own language with our own logic, it often gets dismissed as "community-based" art. so this project has been very much about trying to learn the masters tools - not to dismantle the house - but to build a different house in our own zone exactly the way we want it! or something ;)

*extra special TNX to roya raquel and hannah for talkin me through this week

FBQ

getting ready for performa performance at new museum coming up NOV 19th! 

TOTAL FREEDOM will b djing - i am so obsessed with this future beard

http://www.google.com/search?q=dj+total+freedom
ashland has always is in the future - his website is a google search

speaking of future the www### says FUTUREBROWN EP COMING SOON ♥ FUTUREBROWN IS Fatima Al Qadiri + Asma Maroof+ Venus Jasmin

my friend RACHEL BERKS is helping me to make FACES for the show

i requested to work in the sky room because i'm interested in the classy "event space" 

how it feels and also how it functions for museums...

$economic$

thinking about my look for the show... time to reconsider thigh-cuts