kusama pyjamas
Titled for Yayoi Kusama, who is the cat's pyjamas.
I am not sure how to convey the power of this poetry collection. I can tell you that once I picked up Love Cake, I could not put it down until I finished every poem, even though I sometimes had to read through my tears. Upon finishing, I immediately had to call a femme friend to read her a poem that reminded me of her.
These poems demand that I feel everything more intensely–including grief and rage–but in return, they give me back something I didn’t know I was missing: an expansive sense of possibility. The morning after I read this collection, I woke up from my sleep with a feeling of anticipation, remembering that I had been given an unexpectedly precious gift that I will carry deep inside me. The gift of this poetry collection is nothing less than a roadmap to what liberation can look like for queer people who survive personal and collective trauma.
Describing border crossings that she experiences as a queer working class person of color, Leah Laskshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha gives voice to the involuntary incursions on her body: child abuse, colonialism, racism, and war; as well as her voluntary crossings of boundaries: leaving her family of origin, rediscovering her roots in Sri Lanka, and reclaiming her body. She maintains a tension between oppression and healing throughout, in poems that leave no doubt about her power as a survivor, healer, and activist.
(via The Femme Monologues: Documenting queer/femme/feminist history | rabble.ca)
The Femme Monologues: A radio book lounge interview with the creators of a new graphic memoir series
by Marusya Bociurkiw, graphics by Terri Roberton (Xtra!, 2011; )
Ellie Gordon-Moershel interviews Marusya Bociurkiw and Terri Roberton about collaborating on their new graphic memoir series, The Femme Monologues. Written by Bociurkiw with graphics by Roberton, the series appears monthly in Xtra! Toronto and in Capital Xtra! (Ottawa).
The Femme Monologues presents short vignettes from a queer/femme/feminist archive, covering such topics as feminist publishing, women’s dances, the new queer cinema and the re-emergence of butch/femme culture in the 1990s. It features a wide-eyed femme discovering lesbianism, vegetarian food, women’s music and butches for the first time.
Attention all Femmes that are strapped/poor/broke ass/working class Artists! Performers! Writers! Activists! Wanderers! Seekers!
We are looking for submissions for our zine compilation of stories and art from the road that we are calling Bus Fare To Kentucky.
Show us how do you feed yourself artistically and otherwise. How you afford plane tickets, train tickets and gas money. How you make it all fit in your suitcase. Show us your tour romances, hook ups, art inspiration and friends you made along the way. We want your struggle and your triumph. We want to know your hilarious, raunchy, heartbreaking and fierce stories of touring and traveling with your art (whatever that looks like for you) and making it work while maintaining your standard of Femme in the process.
We accept all visual art, photography, stories as long as it can be emailed. Stories must be submitted in Times 12 point single spaced. Art must be a reasonably high DPI and viewable on a Mac.
Femmes of any gender and ability welcome and encouraged to submit. Tell your friends!
Deadline for this project is March 15th.
(Source: femmestyles, via fuckyeahfemmes)
I’m on the look out for models to pose as an animal, character, creature, object or other fun thing for a new publication project of mine, a kids A to Z Book.
A portrait session takes around 1 hour, up to 3 hours, and can be drawn at your home, my studio in Collingwood, Melbourne or other location (backdrops/backgrounds not really required). I will use your portrait as a basis for a scenario that frames your character in your chosen letter. For example, models Warren and Poss have already posed together as two hotdogs squirting each other with sauce to form the letter ‘H’ (sample at www.flickr.com/photos/textaqueen). A little verse for each letter scenario will accompany illustrations that I intend to be kid-friendly but cheeky as heck.
Preferably YOU come up with your letter, character and scenario (some letters are already spoken for), including your costume! Of course I can help with ideas and I can’t sew very well but I can staple and sticky tape ok. I’m imagining some of you have some amazing performance, halloween or dress up number you can appropriate. And I’ll use my texta magic to work the creases out. You don’t need a backdrop, because I can make it up.
I’m based in Melbourne but visit Sydney often. I might make it to Brisbane sometime before print time, and possibly Alice Springs and Perth too.
In return for posing you’ll receive a little load of TextaQueen merchandise and, also, if I use your portrait in the publication, you will receive a copy of the book.
Please drop me a line to textasforever at gmail dot com with the subject heading ‘Alphabet!’ if you’re interested in posing, the letter you like, the character or thing you want to pose as, where you are, etc and I’ll get back to you shortly.
I plan to draw the initial drawings from March til later in the year (publication date not set as yet).
OMG! TextaQueen is a personal favorite artist. Can I make it to Melbourne, is “F” taken [femme outfoxers]. If you’re in Brisbane, and I provide the costume, would you be up to be the Red Riding Hood to my F?
(Source: creatrixtiara)
WHAT IS IT?
Femme Femme a Film (provisional title!) is a documentary about femmes. Featuring interviews, footage from femme events and footage of femmes performing, existing & collaborating.
I want it to be about femme as both a performative and gender identity. I want to find out what femme means to different people, how it works for them, how they think about it politically and personally, why and how they identify as femme. I want to find out the different ways people perform as femme. I want to make visible and heard all the different types of femmes and show all the different ways femme identity can be presented, performed and lived. I want to look at femme collaboration and break down how people perceive that working to see how it actually happens. I want to celebrate femmes and femme identity.
HOW CAN I BE INVOLVED?
This is going to be a documentary made up of your voices talking about your experiences and identities. If you’re interested in contributing please get in contact! From there we can work out a time to do an interview.
If you are organising or attending a femme-centered event sometime soon, let me know the details of what it is as I’d love to come and film it.
If you’re feeling camera shy but still want to be a part of the film there are heaps of other ways this can happen! Let me know what your worries are and we’ll talk about ways around them.
If you think this project is a neat idea but don’t identify as femme but do know heaps of other amazing femmes you think will be interested please feel free to pass this on.
I really, really, really want to represent the diversity of femme identity in this film. This is not about showing just one type of femme or one type of femme presentation/representation. If you identify as a femme some of the time, most of the time or all of the time then I want to talk to you. If you are a flamboyant femme I want to talk to you. If you are a secret femme I want to talk to you. If femme is only one fraction of your identity I want to talk to you. If femme is your life I want to talk to you. I’m not interested in policing femme identities, I’m interested in finding out what femme means to femmes.
WHERE IS THIS AMAZING THING HAPPENING?
Melbourne, Australia! Unfortunately I don’t think I can currently travel interstate to interview or film people there. But if you are interested in the project and in being interviewed or having your femme-centered event filmed then please do get in touch. I’m sure that later on/pretty soon it’ll be totally possible for me to film outside Melbourne and include femmes from all over Australia.
check it out and get in contact! caitlin [dot] ate [at] gmail [dot] com.
please reblog even if you’re not from Australia, it’ll be interesting to watch regardless and you most likely have followers who are.
“I’m interested in finding out what femme means to femmes”
That is so femme.
(Source: femmedocumentary, via creatrixtiara)
![Art and Soul Tomorrow/Cupcake Cabaret on Friday (as part of Quorum Forum) | Queer Fat Femme
A CAMPUS PRIDE 2009 Hot List artist, Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, educator, and martial artist navigating life as a pin@y-amerikan trans/queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter.
Currently based in NY/NJ, with roots in Chicago, K’s work is the perfect mix of gritty city flex and Midwest open sky grounded in homeland soil. In Mango Tribe and in solo work, K. has featured in colleges and stages nationally and internationally; from the NJ Performing Arts Center to Chicago’s Hot House, The Brooklyn Museum to The Loft in Minneapolis, K’s bold work continues to excite and challenge audiences.
Awesome idea from quorumnyc: a queer skillshare, festival, community building week of events in queers own homes around the city.
One of those things Brisvegas probably lacks the critical mass for [though Tiara’s going with home venue to foster some erotic cabaret too!]
If in NYC, another Cupcake Cabaret hosted by Queer Fat Femme is set for February.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lfls1iqEuC1qaqhqdo1_250.jpg)
Art and Soul Tomorrow/Cupcake Cabaret on Friday (as part of Quorum Forum) | Queer Fat Femme
A CAMPUS PRIDE 2009 Hot List artist, Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, performer, educator, and martial artist navigating life as a pin@y-amerikan trans/queer in the U.S. with struggle, resistance, and laughter.
Currently based in NY/NJ, with roots in Chicago, K’s work is the perfect mix of gritty city flex and Midwest open sky grounded in homeland soil. In Mango Tribe and in solo work, K. has featured in colleges and stages nationally and internationally; from the NJ Performing Arts Center to Chicago’s Hot House, The Brooklyn Museum to The Loft in Minneapolis, K’s bold work continues to excite and challenge audiences.
Awesome idea from quorumnyc: a queer skillshare, festival, community building week of events in queers own homes around the city.
One of those things Brisvegas probably lacks the critical mass for [though Tiara’s going with home venue to foster some erotic cabaret too!]
If in NYC, another Cupcake Cabaret hosted by Queer Fat Femme is set for February.
Euphoric Femme is a series of audio-visual artworks inspired by sex-positive feminism, and which explore women’s sexual subjectivity through non-objective media art experiences. The artworks are created in artistic collaboration with people who identify as women and want to explore and reinvent sexual expression and representation.
[…]
Call for artistic collaboration:
If you identify as a woman and are interested in contributing to these artworks, and are of age of majority, please email me at euphoricfemme@gmail.com. After we confirm your age of majority, I will email you the submission information and a consent form (confirming the use and protection of your contribution). Currently, there are two projects you can collaborate in as follows:
The first is an online artwork, an ever-expanding sound and image piece featuring up-to-date contributions from co-creators. While self-pleasuring, women take a photo of themselves or record their sound. Women then ornamentalize their photo into a mandala-like image (such as the one in the top right corner of the screen) using a simple special effect, or I edit their sound into a meditative and harmonic composition (resulting images & sounds are unrecognizable). The final result is an online slideshow with soundtrack, which you can experience here.
The second is a spring 2011 exhibition, an immersive audio-video installation whereby women create personal autoerotic image and sound recordings as source content for an audience-engaged interactive artwork. At the exhibition, visitors play with an interface to trigger kaleidoscope-like videos and meditative sounds (all unrecognizable) from the women’s recordings.
Not sure what the timeline is for submitting..
(Source: creatrixtiara)
Hey Ferocious Folk!
I am in the process of creating a femme paperdoll zine. I want to immortalize you and your style in all of your femme-gendered fabulousity.
This project will be Femme of Color-centered (What does this mean? It means that FOCs will not be othered! The majority of dolls with be…
Call open until Feb 14
(via lalunafemme)
JC: Art doesn’t need to be intellectual; it can be responsive or a reaction… I make hip hop and generally queer women stay away from that because of its sexist, racist and homophobic image. But it’s still a language and community and culture and form of poetry you have to understand for it to not offend you or affect you… I have to walk through and operate in these environments.
My girlfriend and I performed at a hip-hop show and I didn’t rap a single word in English. I don’t need a stage name – Jaheda means warrior… no one can fuck with that shit. I asked the crowd to feel my words; I performed in Bangla. It captured their attention and the feedback was really positive – we’d captured the difference that hip-hop came from in the first place. We were the only dykes in the room and as soon as I step on that stage I represent everything you hate but as soon as I open my mouth you can’t help but like me.
I have no time for white people…educating white people. The poem I am going to be spitting tonight is about being a Muslim woman within a Muslim community. Watch from afar and you will educate yourself if you want to – I don’t give a fuck about anybody else, I am not here to educate anybody else – but if you enter my realm, enter my space, we’ll get into the ring together…
Sample race riot zine artist interview..love this zine, awesome people every issue.
For my 2 NQAF shows this year. Official & fancy write-ups soon, but in the meantime:
“REBEL GIRL: a riot grrrl nostalgia show” = Thurs June 3, 8pm. Includes me, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Imogen Binnie+band, Meliza Banales, Billie Rain, more TBA.
“GIRL TALK: a cis & trans woman dialogue” = Weds June 23, includes me, Julia Serano, Rose Sims, Annie Danger, Ryka Aoki de la Cruz, D. Rita Alfonso, Danielle Askini, Meliza Banales, more TBA.
MARK YR CALENDARS ACCORDINGLY, FOLX!!!
FYI those who don’t follow her blog, radical femme, feminist, author, lesbian community historian and activist Joan Nestle has cancer again.
Thoughts are with her and hoping for the best, as she shows her usual grace about living:
“This is the glory of life, celebration and wearing down”
Judith ‘Jack’ Halberstam review in bullyblogger via/fuckyeahfemmes
“For me, Marina Abramovic’s work falls into a category of thought, performance and art that I call “shadow feminism.” In this genre, we find no “feminist subject” but only un-subjects who cannot speak, who refuse to speak; subjects who unravel, who refuse to cohere; subjects…
Tumblr isn’t letting me reblog karaj’s comments, but karaj your classes sound awesome!
FemmeCast Video 1-Activist Stretching (via FemmeCast)
Silly but it made me smile: activist stretches for femmes, from from the Queer Fat Femmes.
