crankyskirt:

ISBN 978-1-935950-05-9
Softcover 6″ x 9″, 240pp
Coming September 2012

What Are You Doing Here? investigates how black women musicians and fans navigate the metal, hardcore, and punk music genres that are regularly thought of as inclusive spaces and centered on a community spirit, but fail to block out the race and gender issues that exist in the outside world.

“We can neither reflectively choose our color identity nor downplay its social significance simply by willing it to be unimportant… but our color no more binds us to send a predetermined group message to our fellow human beings than our language binds us to convey predetermined thoughts.”—Amy Gutmann

“Sometimes I think nothing is simple but the feeling of pain.”—Lester Bangs

I’ll be the first to admit that, like any other book, What Are You Doing Here? is partly self-serving. I wanted to find other black women like me: metal, hardcore, and punk fans and musicians that were rabid about the music and culture and adamant about asserting their rightful place as black women within those scenes. I wanted to find other women who put aside the cultural baggage that dictates that we must listen to certain musical styles, and simply enjoy the music that influenced us, not just as black women, but as individuals who grew up in an era when, thanks to technology, a large variety of music is accessible and available to everyone. I found many black women and have shared their stories, but I also realize there is still a lot of work to be done.

Sweet! Looking forward to reading this.

(via fuckyeahbrownandbutch)

curate:

Zanele has started an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to replace her equipment – PLEASE watch the video and donate what you can

I”ve lost all the work I produced from 2008 – 2012. Also backups were stolen.
I thought of the day I spoke with another friend about alternative storage. Now it is too late.
I feel like a breathing zombie right now.
I don’t even know where to start. I’m wasted.
I’ve sent out a note to friends to tell them about the incident.

The person/s got access to the flat via the toilet window, broke the burglar guard and got away with my cameras, lenses, memory cards and external hard drives, laptop, cellphones…
Whoever ransacked the place got away with more than 20 external hard drives with the most valuable content I’ve ever produced

I am hoping that a few of my good friends are willing to go to pawn shops or to other places where this type of equipment is sold. I do not even want to know who the thief is.

Campaign to replace Zanele Muholi’s stolen photography equipment

On the 28th April, Zanele returned home from Seoul, South Korea to discover that all her work between 2008 and 2012 stored on 20 hard drives and including backups had been stolen on the 20th. The thieves also stole her cameras, lens, memory sticks and laptops. There are no words to describe Zanele’s feelings at this time as an entire original archive of Black queer lesbian history has been destroyed and that impacts on all of us – makes invisible what Zanele has worked so hard to make visible and speak of through her photography. via blacklooks

(via derica)

(via absolutearts.com)

Renée Cox, The Discreet Charm of the Bougies - Missy At Home (detail), 2008.

possibilitiesof:

Hottentot Venus 2000

Lyle Ashton Harris & Renee Valerie Cox 1995

comment by Cox;

“This reclaiming of the image of the Hottentot Venus is a way of exploring my own psychic identification with the image at the level of spectacle. I am playing with what it means to be an African diasporic artist  producing and selling work in a culture that is by and large narcissistically mired in the debasement and objectification of blackness.  And yet, I see my work less as a didactic critique and more as an interrogation of the ambivalence around the body.” [source]

(via Gladys Bentley) a better pic.

vintageblackglamour:

gray37:

Courtney Gillette (via The real lives of celesbians | AfterEllen.com)

Way before Janelle Monae made cute suits her signature, or Lady Gaga was flaunting her alter ego Jo Calderone, there was Gladys Bentley, flirting and singing the blues in men’s clothing during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance.

Why no one has paid Betley homage with a proper documentary or biography is baffling to me. She wasn’t just into women (gossip columns were all a twitter when Bentley married a white woman in Atlantic City), she was an openly lesbian performer, who sang the blues not only at rent parties and speakeasies but at well known gay establishments. As for her style and preference for suits (and top hats! Homegirl rocks a top hat like nobody’s business!), she later told Ebony magazine, “It seems I was born different. At least, I always thought so….From the time I can remember anything, even as I was toddling, I never wanted a man to touch me…Soon I began to feel more comfortable in boys clothes than in dresses.”

The sad ending, though, came when Betley caved to the conservative pressures of the McCarthy era and “reformed,” marrying a dude, donning dresses, and saying she’d been cured. She also denounced her former ways as an effort to gain a mainstream audience, but that flopped. Gossip, style, blues, speakeasies, love affairs: Gladys Bentley’s life has the makings of some killer nonfiction. Who’s game?

Legendary 1930s blues singer Gladys Bentley. Openly lesbian, Bentley was the headliner at the Clam House, a gay and lesbian club on 133rd street in Harlem where she performed popular songs with double-entendre lyrics in top hat and tuxedo. 

I’ve wondered why she hasn’t received better recognition and queer homage to. Even allowing for the combined erasure of specifically lesbians, butch/bulldagger women and WOC in queer media, Bentley was just such an innovator socially and creatively, through such influential periods in queer history. Her story would appeal to just about any audience that aren’t far right haters.

*though she had accepted conservative public norms by the time of her death, so I dunno about the implications for intellectual property.

(via heyfatchick)

heysoapie:

tionam:

Reblogging this from when i had the chance to see Pariah at the New Director/New Films fest at the Lincoln Center earlier this year in March. please support this film if it happens to be playing in your city or a city near you!!!

TAKE ACTION! 

Here’s what YOU can do:

1) BUY movie tickets opening week! Bring your friends & family to watch PARIAH or buy tickets for friends & family in NY, LA or San Francisco as a gift online: http://bit.ly/PARIAHtheaters

2) Share PARIAH on your Facebook wall! We’ll keep you updated with release news including cities and dates for PARIAH near you: http://facebook.com/PARIAHthemovie

3) Change your Facebook profile picture! You can use our PARIAH avatar above, just right click, save and upload.

4) Check-In on GetGlue! Tell others what you’re watching and earn PARIAH stickers: http://bit.ly/PARIAHgetglue

5) Share your PARIAH Fan Photo! When you see a PARIAH poster or postcard, take a picture of yourself and share it with our PARIAH community. You can tweet your pic using #PARIAHmovie, share it on our Facebook wall or e-mail your pic to: connect@pariahthemovie.com

FAN & FOLLOW Team #PARIAHmovie!
 
@NorthstarPics @AdeperoOduye @Pernell @KimWayans @AashaDavis @Shadowflack @NinaDaniels @NekisaCooper @milesmaker

tionam:

I had the chance to see Pariah last Saturday for the New Director/New Films fest at the Lincoln Center. I had the chance to see the short film a few years ago and actually sit on a panel that funded the film over the years. So it was such a pleasure to be able to finally see the feature length version of the film.

THE BAR HAS BEEN RAISED.

In regards to Black independent filmmaking this film may have the chance to go down in history as one of the few features that actually stayed true to a high quality of writing and production value. It is a LOVELY film. A strong story that many can relate to. Not just Black lesbians. The characters that Dee Reese wrote are deeply complex and her direction gave the film such a tight and natural feel that is hard to come by these days. Kim Wayans has her first dramatic role in this film and she is absolutely amazing-i was shocked at how good she was! The cast in general contains many unknown but truly talented actors and actresses that will be sure to have a bright future i hope!

such a job well done! Please catch a screening if you can on the fest circuit. The filmmakers spoke of a late fall release, but in the meantime please spread the word! This film is SUCH a good look for Black cinema and has the chance to really reach an audience that may not even know of its existence. So we as a community must do our part and help get the word out!

www.pariahthefilm.com

and PLEASE don’t forget to support the independent queer artists of color that appear on the soundtrack by buying the Pariah album (available on iTunes!!)

reblog for the distro point even though some of the USA premiere screenings are past [but not all!]

this is a premiere theatre screening round. Coverage and turn out at this stage impacts on DVD sales and whether it’s included in all the regional and  international film fests next summer.  Bit of a distro domino effect. So you know, if you can see Pariah in a theatre - or include it in your reviews and promos, arts followers - pls. do!

(Source: tionam, via so-treu)

(via Border Crossings Magazine | Issue 105)

BORDER CROSSINGS: What emerges in your work is that collage is a natural way of recognizing how you view the world. If the world is a broken place, then is collage a way of demonstrating that brokenness or a way of putting it together again?

WANGECHI MUTU: It’s both. Because in the end, the image has a beauty to it. It’s not something I’m afraid to address and I’m not trying to dissuade conversation. I’m optimistic and I believe we grow and will learn to heal. I guess I’m in this in-between situation, culturally, economically and socially, where I’m not ignorant about how these things relate to one another and the bridges between them.

I love collage because I studied sculpture and I’m fascinated by material. The kinds of things I choose in the collage have a very particular resonance for me. So if I pick up a National Geographic or Motorbike magazine, it’s about what it stands for and who reads it and why. What is its purpose and how are women’s bodies used in there?As a woman of colour, how I’m represented in these publications is of absolute relevance and importance to me because it tells me where I stand in that particular culture. So, in that way, collage tells us not just what cultures have produced but what they’ve fostered.

The poems in Nikky Finney’s breathtaking new collection Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life: from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina.

Finney’s poetic voice is defined by an intimacy that holds a soft yet exacting eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother’s wedding waltz with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heartbreaking hilarity of an American president’s final State of the Union address. Artful and intense, Finney’s poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.

via Write With Your Spine: A Poet Sings: Nikky Finney’s Head Off & Split

definition: Aya de Leon looks at the process of Bay area spoken word artist Aya de Leon, whose work is at all times political and certainly fresh. Whether dissecting images of women in hip hop, or exposing the constructs of gender and beauty, Aya de Leon makes you think, makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you listen. To learn more about the phenom’s work, check out the docu-bio, which explores the writer/poet/activist’s artistic process, and the lives she touches as she moves through the world.

* definition: Aya de Leon is Directed by Jennifer Ongiri Produced by Marla Renee Leech and Shalonda Ingram. via Purchase definition: Aya de Leon | Nursha Project

thegang:

Each year, QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA ARTS PROJECT offers 4 free Filmmaking Workshops through our award-winning Training Program. Our workshops serve teenagers to elders. 

To better serve our community, QWOCMAP has conducted Training Program workshops specifically for youth (ages 18 to 25), queer folks of color who are butch/genderqueer/transgender, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black/African descent, Chicanas/Latinas, and Native American/Indigenous/First Nations queer women. We also offered a workshop focused on queer immigration. We do this to deepen the dialogue and address issues specific to each community’s needs. 

Intermediate workshops (and soon, advanced workshops) are available to participants who have completed a film through our QWOCMAP introductory workshop. Information regarding intermediate workshops will be announced through our filmmaker listserve and on this page when available. Please contact TRAINING@qwocmap.org with questions or inquiries. 

Jump to QWOCMAP FREE Video WORKSHOP FOR YOUTH 2012 Jump to QWOCMAP FREE VIDEO WORKSHOP 2012

(via etiquette-etc)

garconniere:

noaesthetic:

thesinglesjukebox:

AZEALIA BANKS - 212

Jonathan Bogart: She deserves better than to be championed by critics as a moral rebuke to Odd Future or Kreayshawn, especially when those rebukes carry overtones of East Coast snobbery and white people deciding who’s properly black. She also deserves better than to be championed by critics as an aesthetic rebuke to Nicki Minaj or M.I.A., especially when those rebukes carry overtones of anti-chart rockism and dudes deciding who’s properly feminist. But mainly, she deserves better than to be the subject of yet another Women Rapping (Too) profile, only to be forgotten by the time the next XX-chromosomed rap hype comes along. In the relatively brief space of this single song, she’s created not just a persona and a point of view — standard tools for any would-be musician, pop or indie or hip-hop or whatever — but a fully-formed aesthetic, dirty without sleaze, aggressive without sociopathy, gleeful without dumbness. There’s a reason the video focuses so much on her mouth whether rapping, stretching, or smiling: it’s both uncomfortably intimate and unvarnishedly truthful. There’s no escape. She’s here.
[10]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox ]

attn: l

WHAT A FANTASTIC WAY OF WRITING ABOUT AZEALIA BANKS. I SECOND ALL OF THIS.

nuestrahermana:

Nuestra Hermana’s WOC Photography Series: Zanele Muholi

In 1972, Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi Durban. After completing an Advanced Photography Course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newton, she held her first exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. She most recently earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Documentary Media from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada in 2009.

She worked as a reporter and photographer for Behind The Mask an LGBTQI African magazine tackling queer community issues and visibility. In 2002, she began FEW (Forum For The Empowerment of Women), an organization providing a safe space for black queer women to discuss and organize.

Her photographic work is deeply rooted in both exposing the issues affecting the lives of African lesbians, African women and the black queer community. Her photographic art challenges the usual portrayal of black bodies. Her work has addressed and brought visibility to HIV/AIDS, assault and the violent crime of “curative rape” against black queers. 

Her work is intimate, honest, raw and emotionally charged.

She has held 6 solo exhibitions and has been part of several exhibits. One of her most well known being her first solo exhibit titled ‘Visual Sexuality: Only Half The Picture’. She has received 6 awards and contributions including the Tollman Award for Visual Arts and the Casa Africa award for Best Female Photographer.

You can learn more about her and her work by checking her website HERE.

Check out the archives here

(Please do not remove this article/bio attached to this photoset. This series is written specifically to promote & educate about POC photographers/QPOC/POC issues.)

(via guerrillamamamedicine)

nuestrahermana:

Nuestra Hermana WOC Photography Series :

Gracelia Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide is a 69 year old Mexican photographer born in 1942. Around 1970, Iturbide studied photography at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

The majority of her photography is black & white and uses natural life and whichever environment she is submerged in at the time.

Her first collection released was titled “Mujer Angel” and embodied her feminist views which continued to be weaved through her career. Her best known collection was shot in Juchitan, Oaxaca, a city where women dominated life. It was titled “Señora de Las Iguanas”. Out of this series, came a photograph named “Magnolia”, featuring a physically male person wearing a dress. This photograph challenged and discussed sexuality and gender in Mexico.

She is also the founder of Mexican Council of Photography. Her work can be found in many major museums including but not limited to: Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum.

(via guerrillamamamedicine)

Women’s Hair in the works of Michael D. Harris By A. M. Weaver

[image: ‘Rootscape’ by Michael D. Harris]

Upon examining Michael D. Harris’ works, I realized they were like pages from a memoir. His imagery is analytic and sleek in design, yet there is a quality of sentiment about them. Harris watching his girls grow-up realized treatment of their hair marked the transition of years. His observations of women in particular and their hair are pivotal aspects to the oeuvre presented in his exhibition, Equal Rites. A presentation delineating rights of passage, civil rights and rituals that mark a transition and a specific point of time in a life.

Race matters in Harris’ works as he explores the various hues of blackness in What Are You?: For Colored Girls Who Are Cornered, 2008. The Blackberry, 2008 portrait takes a racialized epithet about color and explores its ramifications in sequential filtered images of a dark girl’s smile. It is obvious that color is an issue even in 2011. Harris is caught between worlds here trying to mitigate the color line within the black community. “What are you…” raises the question of origin or hue in its diversity—Atlantan; Ethiopian; Brazilian; Irish African American; Californian; Jamaican, Scotch, Puerto Rican; African American” , while Blackberry singles out the adage “ Blacker the berry….” that is all too well known and may reinforce the stereotype associated with darker women.

The article goes on to discuss the beauty stigma against WOC based on colourism and racist stereotypes, that are recurring themes in Harris’ works. 

via AfricanColours - Race Matters, Equal Rites and Women’s Hair in the works of Michael D. Harris