pico union police state

last sunday LAPD shot and killed Manuel Jamines outside of the upper level of the Home Depot parking lot at 6th and Union. Jamines was a 37-year old indigenous Guatemalan day laborer, and father of 3. LAPD claims the man was armed, and shot him twice in the head. on thursday the LA Times reported that a witness has publicly countered this report to say the the man was unarmed: "At the moment when the police were shooting, he had nothing." according to the times, "She said the man appeared drunk, and was having trouble keeping his balance. He stepped toward the officers, but it appeared to be an attempt to keep from falling forward, she said."

i think this is an intensely moving example of how there are multiple overlapping classes of people in this country who are not able to exist as human. whose lives can be treated like wild dogs. immigrant, criminal, poor. substance abuse, mental health, unemployment, and so many other vectors of violence that limit our life chances. solidarity from the trans movement.

(photos from cop watch LA)

old team

i just got a new frida book for inspiration... endlessly editing damelo todo is bringin me back to my visual art roots... wanting to make sense the old way...!

plussss frida is also the original gay style icon. that's right- this is where the POWER BALL (hairdo) began.

i'm collaborating with an old friend, comic artist EDIE FAKE on damelo todo titles. a couple months ago at the one institute's film festival, i saw a '70s short film called THE LIBERATION OF GRIFFITH PARK, which really got me thinking about handmade fonts and titles... super excited to bring it all together!

speaking of pop culture / visual art marriages have you said yes to MEN yet?

MEN's JD sampson in front of performance painting backdrop by celeste dupuy

MEN single out on trouble records - painting/cover by ulrike müller

pregnant

yo! so i know posting has been slowing down, but i promise not for much longer! we are in the final stretch of an editing deadline for DAMELO TODO. EPIC TRANSFORMATION GOING ON OVA HERE. for one thing the title is changing (as i suspected it might for a while...), because the story is revealing itself. can't divulge yet, but one thing is for sure; the actual movie is finally emerging!!! what's amazing is that there are over 100 hours of footage, but in the end, this movie is more about what i DIDN'T shoot. meaning that the times when i turned my camera off (or didn't want to turn it on), are turning out to be the most significant and revealing parts. ie the things i shyed away from, initially dismissed, the most painful, honest, self-critical parts have now become the backbone of the story. as case in point, for the three years that i was filming at silver platter, i always thought that wildness had nothing to do with it. i told myself, "i'm making a movie about this place and the community here, and wildness is just something i happen to be doing on the side that has nothing to do with it." yall are probably scratching yr heads at me like DER. but believe me, sometimes the thing that is closest to you is the thing you really cannot see. so amazingly, there was like this GIANT VOID HOLE in my process. which now that i have gained enough tiny amount of distance to see it, i realize it's like THEE most incredibly messy powerful shit. looking forward to sharing more soon, but in the meantime gearing up for NY INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK IFP MARKET thingy. that's where we werk it werk it with industry execsxxx. will TELL ALL fo sure

ps UUGGGG i have some serious style updates i just need like a body double to do the typing and posting 

or maybe asma can catch me up but um seriously more soon!!! we are already on to FALL

DAMELO TODO TEASER IN TRANSGIVING FILM FEST TODAY

hey los angeles this is a totally righteous event!!! ALL DAY TODAY

(DAMELO TODO 13-MIN TEASER IS SCREENING IN 7:30PM PROGRAM!)

TG Film Fest
August 28th 11:30am - 9 pm
The Renberg Theater, 1125 N McCadden Pl, Hollywood

DJ, live performances, art for sale
$5-20 suggested donation, no one turned away

the limits of community

i've been thinking a lot all the time about andrea fraser - who is an artist and a friend that i've had the good fortune to study and work with over time... and the more i do anything creative, the more i feel indebted to her practice and her contributions to institutional critique (of the art world).

i haven't been posting much lately because we are DEEP into editing DAMELO TODO - and coming up on an epic editing deadline - so i haven't had too many cute things to say slash/ i keep changing my mind about absolutely everything. but one thing is for certain: this movie is increasingly about the limits of community. it's NOT a social history of a bar, and it's NOT like a fantastical portrait of the trans movement. i still kind of wish it was the latter, but the politics of making this movie have actually become so paramount, that it feels unethical to obsure it with any sort of aesthetical wanking. so the movie is and will be about: 2 communities mixing for a brief period of time: wildness & silver platter: a group of young queer artists & a community of trans latina women - and all of creativity and the race and class tensions that resulted from it. in the words of brian kates: "wildness creates comraderie and conflict." TRUE THAT. there's your industry takeaway if ya need it. or an art world takeaway might be something like: a critical representation of the limits of community and its modes of production. riiiight?

exploitation of trans women in mainstream movies - part zillionth

i was recently contacted by a warner brothers casting agent to audition for a role in an undisclosed major motion picture that features a "truly beautiful" thai-chinese trans woman. i'm guessing by the sides it's possibly a bro comedy (bromedy?) check it out: i actually almost went into the studio because i wanted to be able do more in-depth reporting for you my readers, but i couldn't go though with it! memorizing these lines was way too toxic.

i know it's kinda hard to read - but basically: tranny hooker speaks broken english, drops load in ignorant wasted bachelor dude, and doesn't know what a condom is. comments?

real time arizona

on aug 2nd, two tucson AZ police call border patrol on a woman during a traffic stop. border patrol takes her away into detention.

3 days later, the senate approves $600 million in "emergency border security funds" - which includes 1,500 new enforcement agents; $32 million in unmanned aerial drones, and $15 million for communication equipment

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

i have seen and read a lot of things about SB1070 but the above video keeps haunting me.*

those last bulleted bits are from a washington post investigative report on "top secret america." took me forevs to track down the article, cause i remembered reading it but blew my brain trying to recount WHERE. i guess like many modern folk i'm constantly absorbing current events through phone (news blogs & FB), so whenever i want to remember where some information came from, it's usually most helpful to try to remember where i was STANDING when i encountered it. this mostly works, but today my problem locating this article was because i read it on an actual physical piece of paper = total short circuit!

i've been thinking a lot about visual art lately. my friend stuart comer was in town from london, who's a curator at the tate modern - so i got the MOTHERLOAD backroom treatment while escorting him on his rounds one day. we hit over a dozen galleries, highlights including: nick relph at overduin & kite, group show at michael benevento, thomas eakins at LACMA, mario testino outside of mark foxx, & witnessing michael kohn give a 5-minute aquistions pitch as we were sailing out the door... amazing.

then last night i saw alex segade's brilliant new multimedia epic-act video theatre troupe piece entitled "replicant vs separatist" - which played 3 sold out nights at the REDCAT now fest.

i've been generally reflecting on visual art lately as a traditon of creative *freedom* - as in, opening up, asking questions, taking things apart, & taking pleasure in not making straightforward meaning out of stuff. it's like veiled, you know? as opposed to documentary movie-making, which kinda feels like the opposite equally hard process of putting things together and trying illustrate an idea as clearly and effectively as you can.

this continues to be my negoation with DAMELO TODO, which is a movie that engages some very intense queer/immigration issues particuarly surrounding RACE & CLASS tensions, and therefore is being worked on squarely in the "making sense" zone, but which wants at the same time to be free... i'm not sure exactly what i mean by that, but i guess it has something to do with trying to show something (wildness & the silver platter) accurately without totally killing it. they have an expression called "kill your darlings" - which means cutting out most of the stuff you care about - all the excess that doesn't expidite meaning and move the story along. at every impasse, the operative question is WHY would anyone care about this scene? and with 91+ hours of footage, the answer to 95% of it is, they wouldn't. whoever THEY is, it continues to be a very powerful challenge to my natural way of working... also my friend ryan trecartin just moved back to town so my social art zone just majorly expanded... as in los feliz mansion rental yea wat !

*thanks to daniel for sharing SB1070 video

DIS SUMMER TRENDS LA EDITION

TOTALLYEEEEE !!!!!!!!!!!!!! INFLUENTIAL

DIS

TOMORROW NIGHT WEDNESDAY

CHEF WU TSANG - kitchen

SONJI KIMMONS - piano

DINNER 9pm-1am
...LIVE MUSIC 10pm (sharp!)

as always GROWN is free before 2am

no drink minimum for diners
two drink minimum for other guests

DINNER HOUSE M

1263 w Temple Street 90026
Los Angeles, CA

LIGHT QUALITY

the other day fritz haeg asked me to contribute to his upcoming Frieze essay, by answering the question "why do you live in LA?" in one or two words. at first i thought THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE but then i realized oh yeah,

LIGHT-QUALITY.

for some reason this image reminds me of the light quality in LA. vibrant, illusory, and super FLAT.

ready to wwww

more fall ready to wear

(vivienne westwood, viktor & rolf)

one of the reasons i started CLASS was to try to be transparent around my experiences doing wildness... and since wildness has more or less turned into a movie, i feel equally compelled to make THIS process transparent. i haven't been able to do that as much recently cause i've been caught up in the DOING of everything - mostly editing & fundraising on crazy deadlines - that i haven't had much time to reflect. but now that we've reached our 12K kickstarter goal (less than 48 hours to go!!!!), i feel the gravity of this moment as both momentum and weight. periodically i try to FULLY take time out in order to check myself about what's at stake (and spent the last 2 weeks in san francisco retreating THINKING and taking care) so ready to do that now.

the main question for me continues to be what does this MOVIE form do to creative process... in other words how does story-telling for sit-down audiences in dark theaters require serious skill at conventions (or manipulating them). 

on one hand i feel deeply responsible to several social issues- mainly the intense struggles of trans/gender-variant people worldwide, and the strategic importance of centering our movement on the most vulnerable members of our community- in our case, undocumented trans folks and therefore in LA, the latin american context. mobilizing people's HUMANITY (documentary ta da!) can actually be a badass means to an end- like to represent more radical possibilites for the LGBT movement, and if a movie can do that, I SAY YES !

on the other hand, i'm totally restistant to that whole illusion of objectivity thing, and the sacrifice of complexity that documentary requires. to become truly skilled at it, it kind of changes your brain- makes you look at things like: how can i make everyone and everything look/sound a certain way, so i can say what i want?

the reason why this negotiation matters so much is that it shapes the movie, and the form ultimately determines who and how many people might want to watch it... and given that my subject is both fragile and important (to me & community) - it continues to be a fine line between raising conciousness versus exposure.

so i find myself somewhere in the middle,

possibly had a major breakthrough tonight working with my editors suzanne mejean and kaliisa conlon (!!!) which made me stop trippin about which way documentary. basically we discovered how to represent something super basic, essential, and epically complex about wildness, through a performance by ariel prodigy (left). it was one of those moments where i could really appreciate what a blessing it is to be able to WORK on something for so long that you are no longer actually LIVING with it. just when you think you can't eak any more meaning out of it, you realize you can finally SEE it, instead of yourself... or something? yea it's late... so excited to see how this spins everything around!!!! see u on the other side ;)

kickstarter success!

Dearest Friends,

It is our greatest pleasure to inform you that, sometime around 5am this morning, we passed our Kickstarter finishing mark at $12,126!!! WE ARE NOW GUARANTEED FUNDING!

It took 37 days & 216 supporters, and thanks to EVERYONE we totally DID IT - we are now fully on our path to finishing DAMELO TODO by the end of this year! Thank you SO MUCH for hearing our urgency and making it RAIN with your dollars. This is truly a moment to say that we could NOT have done it without each and every one of you!

Special shout out to those of you who pledged early, in the middle, and at the end - together we created a tidal wave of momentum! Extra special thanks to the many folks who reposted, blogged, and whispered into ears about our efforts, and WOW to those of you who gave over $100!! ALL of your combined resources had a super powerful effect. And last but not least, MEGA thanks to the 85 PERCENT of you who pledged $100 or under!!! Your unbelievably generous offerings (whether it was a dollar or x10) were the BACKBONE of this operation. In other words in a nutshell, this is a COLLECTIVE THANK YOU WAHOO TO EVERYONE!!!

READ MORE

LA art world

the art world was all agog last weekend about ryan trecartin's us premier 7-part movie installation "ANY EVER" at MOCA... it was a creme crop over at the pacific design center, and then afterwards things got foolish in the heated pool chez jeffery deitch... according to ARTFORUM, los angeles of late is both a "nonplace" and "the place to be" so go figure. anywayz she just moved back to town, so excited to expand the nest! brilliance.

endless editing part 2

the damelo todo editing marathon continues!

(another implausible but true scenario: wu in lawyer drag)

(trying to help koky puzzle out gonzalo's disputed will)

(which led to his disinheritance and consequently ended wildness etc etc)

i had a sweet inspiring phone sesh tonight with an old friend/artist/fontgenius edie fake who is designing titles... i like his holistic approach- instead of asking for visuals references, he said: "i want to read everything everyone ever said about how the bar looks and feels" forttttuuuunately i have been collecting!!! just thought i'd share here ;)

WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES AND PICTURE THE INSIDE OF THE SILVER PLATTER WHAT DO YOU SEE?

"That (cash) machine, which is pretty old, almost 40 years."

"The image that comes to my mind is the first time I came to this place. When I started coming, and I'm still coming. I feel comfortable here. Happy because this is a place where I come and I feel good. A place where I can have fun, and place where I know that I'm safe."

"When I'm inside, what I like is that me and my friends start drinking. They pay or we pay for each others drinks. And many guys are looking at us. And one them will come to us and ask us to dance. And then we drink and we have fun and dance. And at the end maybe he will take me to his apartment, or I will take him to mine."

"My idea of this place when I’m outside are the images of Marilyn, those mirrors, you know, these things, the bar’s frame…"

"That's who comes to mind. Marilyn. That's the first thing that you see when you arrive."

"Perhaps because he's not here anymore, Gonzalo. Now that he's not here anymore, and because he's something special to me, my friend. Now every time I hear Silver Platter, I think of him."

"My brother in law, Roy. His face, I can close my eyes and see him dancing from one side of the bar to the other. Snapping his fingers. He had a beautiful way of snapping his fingers. His jokes, his charisma."

"Fog and lights... Crazy lights and sequins... Disco ball and high heels, fingernails, hair twisting and turning and head-banging.  Fists going through walls... Thongs, a lot of thongs. Marilyn Monroe. James Dean. A dick on the wall. Kimonos. Koky's ass. Cowboy hats..."

WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES AND PICTURE THE OUTSIDE OF THE SILVER PLATTER WHAT DO YOU SEE?

"When I walk by and I see the place it brings back a lot of memories. Memories because I've met boyfriends here, girlfriends, the waiters, the bar-tenders. Koky, Nora, Julio, Javier. So you know a lot of people. So when I look at it from outside, I feel something beautiful. I say wow, that's my home. This is my house, it's something very beautiful."

"The color that it has always been painted. A silver-like color."

"From outside the bar, the fights that they have outside." (laughs)

"People that are not here anymore. That they're gone."

"Waiting for a nice boy to arrive. He talks to me, I talk to him, and I flirt with him, and if he asks me out, so - "yes!" If I like him, and he's attractive and all that. So it's worth it to go out with him. Taking the risks that might be involved also. But it's worth it, and one has to see how he behaves too."

hit list

so today they released the name of the person responsible for compiling the "hit list" of 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants, which was sent to the ICE and media last week. her name is teresa bassett, and she worked in the utah state department of workforce services (hey cali = EDD, unemployment etc) the list includes the names of family members and their children, and the due dates of women who are pregnant.

READ MORE

a message from the makers of damelo todo

totally nerdy but forreals yall!!

GROWN DINING ROOM: EVERY FIRST WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

NO GROWN DINNERS FOR THE NEXT 3 WEEKS (i'm traveling)

TOTAL FREEDOM & WU TSANG  PRESENT:

GROWN DINING ROOM

FIRST WEDNESDAYS OF EVERY MONTH

FULL DINNER MENU & LIVE PERFORMANCE BY RESIDENT SIREN SONJI KIMMONS

1263 West Temple Street, 9PM - 1AM

also check out this OUTFEST event! SATURDAY JULY 17th, 5PM @ DGA2
Trans-Politics Then and Now: From QUEENS AT HEART to BELLA MADDO
followed by a panel discussion featuring Bamby Salcedo, Drian Juarez, Kalil Cohen, Janice Danielle & moderated by Riku Matsuda!!!

race

today was another marathon of pickup shooting in macarthur park for damelo todo... and time is of the essence cause we're closing in on a new rough cut (aaaand my producer kathy rivkin is cutting me off! no more shooting after friday waaaah ok i get it). i'm trying to create a visual narrative about the neighborhood of silver platter without being too heavy handed- beacuse at the same time, for many of the folks seeing this movie, they will not know the nuances of the amazingness of macarthur park, so i have to figure out a way to REPRESENT it- which is like my most dreaded, and most compelling challenge about this project.

anyways i'm learning a lot from my director of photography michelle lawler- who is a seasoned doc maker and shooter- about how to create establishing shots, ie stuff we may have no personal connection to but that LOOKS like some of the major ideas we're trying to convey about the environment (race class ethnicity economics history etc etc etc). i tend to be suuuper uncomfortable with what thinking like this does to my brain, but we settled on a compromise of making portraits of the storefronts all the major labor/rad orgs in the neighborhood: UCLA LABOR, SEIU, CHIRLA, CARACEN, Opportunidad, Asian Pacific Legal Center, etc. hopefully that mixed with money shots of sunset skylines will do the trick ;)

trans law

i've been thinking a lot lately about what it really means to be working with trans communities & the LAW. both LGL and the movie are related, and most other things that excite me lately have to have to do with this general zone...

i had a super impactful conversation the other day with my friend vera miao (artist actor queer woman of color extraordaire who also haaaapens to be a no bullshit non-profit managment consultant) about this exact subject. vera was feeding back with me about IMPRENTA organizing (the space the legal clinic etc) and she offered up some words that kind of made everything crystal clear. i can't remember exaaactly what she said, but it was something to the effect of summarizing trans legal issues. she said, "basically what you are dealing with, is the the most oppressed brutalized marginalized population being acted upon by the most repressive arm of the state (ie the prison system, the police, the ICE, the government etc- especially since 9/11). so just know that you will always be one step away from total crisis." and i was all, "OOHHHHHHH." right. that's why it feels so intense all the time. thank you vera, for helping me to have that frame. just wanted to share it with yall ;)

and now, that i've used up my last brain cell, just wanetd to share some of the other things i got excited about this week...

CONTRE BLACK @ mustache last monday (holy shiiiiit

more dysfunctional jean pockets

recent video by zackary drucker at the ORIGINAL PLUMBING outfest release party last night !!!

outfest in general HELLOO so central to my scheduuule right now. places to be people !! absolutely everyone is hangin around ie TRACY CHAPMAN um what.

on the outfest tip here are two of my favorite people in the whole world !!! at the inspiring good feelings OP event as well... mariana marroquin (actress, genius, diva, associate producer on damelo todo lalala...) & raquel gutierrez (performer, genius, writer/performer on damelo todo) mariana did a FIERCE new version of the ongoing live romantic comedy COSA RARA directed by raquel's troupe butchlalis de panochtitlan. psst heres a dish- mariana plays HERSELF ;)

another favorite person and glamorous to-do this week: ryan trecartin opening at moca. also GO SEE rj messineo at steve turner gallery for seriously queer art


no visual for this one but how about ashley love's upcoming panel july 15 called WOMEN DEMANDING CHANGE NOW: THE DEHUMANIZING MISREPRESENTATION OF TRANSSEXUAL WOMEN THROUGH THE GAY MALE HOLLYWOOD LENS ?? um i say yes

finally back to the original thing - mia yamamoto is speaking about trans legal issues at the ONE glbt archives on july 18th BE THERE. daaamn she is so hot i dream about her. aaand that's right after outer space journey to M.I.A. at hardfest to see asma maroof who is now officially en orbit... will report back on all fer sure

on track

look at these cuties: NGUZUNGUZU producing a RYE RYE song for the new A-TEAM movie... um, what?
ps - MIA's new album (+ ngu mixtape) is about to drop ! craaazy like letterman show style

ALSO suuuper psyched today about all this amzing outreach for DAMELO TODO kickstarter!!!

WORLD OF WONDER

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