kusama pyjamas
Titled for Yayoi Kusama, who is the cat's pyjamas.
![tiona.m. is a multi-media artist whose mission is to make the invisible, visible and humanize her subjects. She believes that her work as a filmmaker and visual artist can inspire various communities by affirming their existence in contemporary society and culture. Her last film, black./womyn.: conversations with lesbians of African descent, provides a platform for Black lesbians to speak for themselves and to confront the hyper-sexualized image of the Black lesbian.
Tiona continues to develop and create films on progressive topics with the hope of directing a narrative feature-length project in the near future. She is currently in production with her next feature length documentary The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project,a short narrative film Bumming Cigarettes, and an experimental short series called Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic, which is an magical realism themed take on the Black American experience.
[via her tumblr in the meantime… + trailers on vimeo ]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2xmhjSlYs1qaqhqdo1_250.jpg)
tiona.m. is a multi-media artist whose mission is to make the invisible, visible and humanize her subjects. She believes that her work as a filmmaker and visual artist can inspire various communities by affirming their existence in contemporary society and culture. Her last film, black./womyn.: conversations with lesbians of African descent, provides a platform for Black lesbians to speak for themselves and to confront the hyper-sexualized image of the Black lesbian.
Tiona continues to develop and create films on progressive topics with the hope of directing a narrative feature-length project in the near future. She is currently in production with her next feature length documentary The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project,a short narrative film Bumming Cigarettes, and an experimental short series called Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic, which is an magical realism themed take on the Black American experience.
[via her tumblr in the meantime… + trailers on vimeo ]
Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Untitled” (Placebo), 1991
“Untitled” (Placebo) from1991, consisted of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of silver-foil wrapped candies originally laid out across the floor of the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York. Placebos are used in clinical trails; they are sugar pills that essentially have no effect on the body. Those who visit the gallery are invited to take a piece of candy; viewers are taking part in a clinical trail of Gonzalez-Torres’ creating. Individuals who participate in actual clinical trials do not know weather they are getting the real pills or the placebo. So too visitors to the gallery are partaking in something not completely known to them, they must put their trust in Gonzalez-Torres. Regardless, these pills, or candy, real or inert, become part of your body in a highly intimate way, for a time, actually becoming part of you. These individuals allow something into their body without fully understanding the implications, a sign of the desperation that griped so many during the AIDS crisis.
(via sexartandpolitics)
William Yang has documented the gay scene in Sydney since the 1970s. At this time many were celebrating new-found freedom, greater acceptance in society and the start of the Mardi Gras parades. In these images from the 1990s Yang investigates the impact of AIDS on his friends and community, as well as the broader social implications of the disease. The works act as memorials which acknowledge both individual fears, the illnesses that AIDS and HIV bring, the repercussions on the gay community, and the importance of public displays of recognition and remembrance.
Darrin and Linden (part 3), (1991, printed circa 1992) by William Yang
Text reads: “They showed me a Herb Ritts photo that they liked. The two men in it were in a stylised pose and they were naked. Could I do for them something like that? I explained I couldn’t reproduce the pace as that would be too difficult, moreover it was imitation, but I got the idea of what they wanted. They wanted sexy shots, but they wanted them artistic, definitely nothing pornographic. You see, they were madly in love.”
(via William Yang: Life Lines- Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art)
William Yang - William in scholar’s costume, 1984
text on photo reads: I learned Taoism, a Chinese philosophy, and this led me to embracing my Chinese heritage which hitherto had been denied and unacknowledged. People at the time called me Born Again Chinese, and that’s not a bad description, as there was a certain zealousness to the process. But now, I see it as a liberation from racial suppression, and prefer to say that I came out as Chinese.
(via Jamie Q)
Manufacturing Content: Immaterial Labour and the Value of Art (Notes From a Would-Be Nonbeliever)
This zine is both a self-published exhibition catalogue and a transcript of a talk Jamie Q gave at the graduate symposium I Don’t Care to Discuss It: Art, Media and the State in a Globalized Economy. It addresses the production of value in the art world, art as commodity, and creative labour. The art in the exhibition was priced according to a $14/hour wage.
What Makes an Object Queer? 2011.
As a queer artist whose work usually exists somewhere between abstraction and representation, Jamie Q asks the question What Makes an Object Queer? Is an object queer when it’s not quite one thing or another? Can art that does not explicitly address queer topics reflect the identity of its maker in other ways? Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, this limited-edition silkscreened book proposes some criteria for queer objects, accompanied by illustrations reminiscent of Jamie Q’s sculptural work. via Jamie Q
From my series, The Perfect Housewife. 2008.
© Alex Chousa
Race, gender and sexuality are important concepts in your work. Can you talk about how these concepts inform your art practice?
As a queer person of colour, I am fascinated by how others construct their identities and how it manifests in other people’s bodies. I have a sense of how it manifests in my life and I am interested in exploring that in my work, but I suppose I am fascinated by how other people do that – perform their gender and their race and whether its important to them or not. Gender and sexuality were my first strong interests before realising as each work shed a skin, there were other things that were present in each work. My fascination was with human bodies and peeling away the surface, or puncturing the surface to find out what’s inside.
(via Tee A. Corinne)
MAKING RELATIONSHIPS VISIBLE
In 1975, the year in which I most fully came out, I started making self-portraits that combined my own image with that of a lover. Photographer Honey Lee Cottrell (see Nothing But The Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image) was my beloved at that time, and together we explored ways to make images that ìreadî as lesbian. In some of these pictures, I am nude and she is partially clothed. In one, I have my hand on her thigh and am looking into the camera as she looks at me.
(via Zanele Muholi: Indawo Yami : carlagirl photo.)
Miss Lesbian I. Amsterdam 2009
Dynamics of Desire by Del La Grace Volcano (an excerpt)
“Images exist; things themselves are images… Images constantly act on and react to one another, produce and consume. There is no difference between images, things and movement…”
Gilles Deleuze As a photographer who deals in seduction and exchange I have been wondering why it is that people allow themselves to be photographed by me in what you could call comprising positions. Although I usually pay travel expenses, give them prints and occasionally a bit of money, if I am being paid, the incentive to ‘pose, perform or model’ for me isn’t financial. I ask them to submit to my fantasies and to confess their own to me. At times they may be in great physical discomfort and occasionally at risk, from the law or the less than law abiding, who wish to censor their display. Is it any more than narcissistic pleasure? Or an overwhelming desire to speak sex and hear it spoken?”
In this piece I want to examine what I call the ‘photographic moments’ in terms of some of the processes involved. Those seldom seen and rarely talked about moments that exist before the images is created and after the images is ‘consumed’ by the spectator….
Southern Siren - Maheshwari (from the hijra fantasy series) by Tejal Shah.
Description: Maheshwari is a hijra identified woman. I met her in Bombay during my research on hijra’s while working on the project, “What are You?” I was struck by her loud laughter, sense of fantasy and belief in magic. Her desire was to become a south Indian film star and see herself in a song and dance sequence, romancing the hero and to be romanced by him.
Watch a video below where Shah talks about the series:
Cass Bird talking about her work.. check it out, she is incredible.
Here are some photographs:
The Red Rattler’s directors and volunteer co-ordinators are very excited to announce the first of the Red Rattler Grants: the Volunteers Grant ($2000) and the Queer Grant ($1000).
With so much hard work and passion put in by the volunteers over the last year it’s exciting to be able to push a bit of dosh back into our creative communities of Red Rattler volunteers.
The Volunteers Grant
This grant is open to application by all past and present Red Rattler volunteers. This grant has been contributed by the Red Rattler.
About the Volunteers Grant
This grant is for volunteers and volunteers decide who is awarded this grant. The Red Rattler decided to set up this volunteers grant as a pilot for a community grants scheme, even though the Red Rattler has not yet paid off the loan taken to turn the building into an events space. The Red Rattler operates almost entirely on volunteers – from the Directors, Volunteer Coordinators, Event Managers, Media and Maintenance people, to our Bar Staff, and behind the scenes legal and organisational workers and more. Although we feel that just being a part of maintaining and building an amazing creative space in Sydney is a reward, we are excited about acknowledging the long slog that volunteers do in keeping the doors open via a grants scheme. We hope you have your creative juices flowing and apply for some of these grants…Either way you can vote on the outcome!At this stage, the Red Rattler’s longer term aim is to build on this Pilot Scheme towards an ongoing Grants Scheme. The Red Rattler intends to commence a broader scheme once the costs incurred to set up the building as an event space (the fire compliance building work, the sound/lighting systems and so on) have been repaid. As at September 2011, the Red Rattler still has $44,000 to pay off the fire services loan, and about $20,000 to repay in other building set up costs. Our mission is to get the $64,000 fire services and building set up costs debt out of the way ASAP.
Once that debt is repaid, the Red Rattler plans to use surplus income towards furthering its eco-sustainability, and the Red Rattler Grants scheme! This 2011 Volunteers Grant is open for application by all past and present Red Rattler volunteers. It is envisaged that some future grants scheme will be open to (and the grant award decided by) only those volunteers who volunteer at least four hours per month.
Grant Conditions
The Grant is for $2000, and must be used for a project or event to be staged in the Red Rattler in 2012. You could pay some serious wages to put on an event, pay your favourite overseas artists or airfares out to Australia for an event, use the funds to make some mad props or screens for your event, undertake massive promotions and marketing blitz. The options are endless…. A $2000 budget is pretty sweet either way. It is open to all past and present volunteers of the Red Rattler.Applying for the Volunteers Grant
To apply, email your application to volunteers@redrattler.org, marking the subject line “Volunteers Grant”. The deadline for grant applications is 5th November 2011 (yes that’s really soon !!!) This deadline is strict and late applications can not be considered in this round.Your application must include the following details:
Project Name: ………………………..(word limit:15 words)
Project Description:…………………..(word limit:400 words)
Proposed date of event in 2012:………………………..
Your volunteer role at the Red Rattler…..(word limit:25 words)
Who makes the award decision?
The decision as to which application should be awarded the grant will be made by Red Rattler Volunteers. The Red Rattler Grant Coordination group will collate all the grant applications, and send out one email to all Red Rattler volunteers to vote for which application should be selected.When will the decision be announced?
The grant decision will be announced in December 2011.The Queer Grant
This grant is a contribution from the proceeds of the 2011 Camp Betty Festival (thank you Camp Betty!). It was provided to fund a queer community project. The Camp Betty Festival chose the Red Rattler to distribute this grant in recognition of the contribution of the Red Rattler to the Camp Betty festival. A massive number of Red Rattler volunteers helped made Camp Betty happen during the weekend of Camp Betty! The Camp Betty Collective said “Without the donation of space and human resources from the Red Rattler the festival would not have been able to happen. Thank you!”
Queer Grant conditions
This grant is open to anyone to apply. The project must be for a queer community project. The project is for the the queer community, the benefit may be political, practical, arty, health related, sexy, it may bring a smile to peoples faces. It’s up to you to decide what you think is “queer”. Unlike the Volunteers Grant, this project is not required to be undertaken at the Red Rattler Theatre.Queer Grant Application
To apply, email your application to volunteers@redrattler.org, marking the subject line “Queer Project Grant”. The deadline for grant applications is 5th November 2011 (yes that’s really soon !!!) This deadline is strict and late applications can not be considered.The application must include the following details:
Project Name: …………………………(word limit: 15 words)
Project Description:……………………(word limit: 400 words)
Who Decides?
The decision as to which application should be awarded the grant will be made by Red Rattler volunteers. The Red Rattler Grant Coordination group will collate all the grant applications, and send out one email to all Red Rattler volunteers to vote for which application should be selected.When will be the decision be announced?
The grant decision will be announced in December 2011.
God I am so impressed with the RR crew for getting this together, with all the other stuff they have on.
(Source: creatrixtiara)
The work of gay artist and activist David McDiarmid is still illuminating, writes Stephanie Bunbury. IN 1993, two years before he died at the age of 43, artist David McDiarmid gave a snappily illustrated talk about his own life called A Short History of Facial Hair.
This mix of art, queer activism and whiskers put a whole new spin on the idea of the personal being political. Witness McDiarmid in Melbourne in the ’70s, right in the thick of Gay Liberation and looking every inch the radical. ”Curly Afro, terrible beard, gonorrhoea,” he summed himself up. Cut to a gang of he-boys outside a Sydney bar. ”Butch. Syphilis. Short hair,” he said. There he is on Fire Island, having moved to New York and into Studio 54 circles via hustling, art or both. Naturally, he had a large moustache.
A Short History of Facial Hair has now been turned into a film, with an actor reading McDiarmid’s essay and a riot of images of the artist and some of his works - murals and Mardi Gras installations, flamboyant male fashions and paintings - that form the centrepiece of a small exhibition of his work at the London College of Fashion until the end of this month.
