Heather Cassils

Thinking I should post some of my fave links here, where everyone can find them and not just on facecrack.

Here's my latest wet-spot for the day, of an arty variety at least:

Heather Cassils, Visual Artist.

Goddamn. She is a body builder. And a stunt person. And does intense performances based on Greek myth, amongst other things. Oh my...

Every time I consider a more sensible 'career' I look at stuff like this and remember this is where my heart is at!

Zoo Thousand and Ten

So, its the end of the noughties and into the... umm.. tweens? Much has been posted about making the next decade better that the last, but for me, the last was pretty grand on the whole (not in chronological order):

* Met the Monster. Several times, before we finally got ourselves sorted into the MonsterUnit.
* Came out. Repeatedly. As queer, kinky, etc etc.
* Reconfigured my gender. Bye bye 'girl/woman', hello 'monster'. Works for me.
* Got my arse to Uni, got my BA (Hons) and am currently a proto-Dr. Still have days of feeling like a pretendy academic, and paranoia from the fact that I was a high-school drop out. Silly, I know.
* Started performing. Still scary. Still do it. Still not sure why, but I need to.
* Embraced my creative side again. Participated in tons of photo shoots, films, wrote for magazines etc.
* Began to read fiction again.
* Learned to dance in public without a) freaking out that I was unco or b) need to be really drunk to avoid a).
* Got a lot of ink and metal. Shaved my head a lot. Didn't shave anything else much.
* Travelled a lot, mostly on my own. Lived in Sweden, visited NZ a few times, wandered around Europe and San Fran and NYC. Lived in Perth for a bit too, which is kind of like another country.
* Lived in zillions of sharehouses. Mostly with amazing, if mad, people.
* Had many relationships of various durations and configurations. Most of them lovely at some point, lots of them quite hideous in parts. Learned a lot from all of it-- I hope.
* Was quite a trashy tart when not having relationships. Or sometimes whilst having them.
* Became part of a fabulous community of performers, artists, writers, perverts, bears, divas and other gorgeous, generous, and joyous eccentrics.
* Stopped taking many chemicals, or thinking that I had to.
* Learned to appreciate my body in entirely different ways.
* Saw stupid amounts of fantastic art around the world, and lots of great theatre.

And ever so much more. Looking forward to the next decade of consolidating and building on all of this. Bottoms up!

Academia Again

Something I have long suspected:

'Academics, who are sometimes critics, and often reviewers, are notorious fence-sitters, afraid of ridicule, afraid of risk, the risk and ridicule that the true writer faces every time she publishes. Unlike writers, academics draw a salary and this will be taken away from them if they back a wild horse. They do not back wild horses; they record the virtues of nags long past their prime.'

-- Winterson, Art Objects (191)

Chintz dipped in mud...

'I do not think of art as Consolation. I think of it as Creation. I think of it as an energetic space that begets energetic space. Works of art do not reproduce themselves, they re-create themselves and have at the same time sufficient permanent power to create room for us, the dispossessed. In other words, art makes it possible to live in energetic space.
When I talk about creating emotion around the forbidden, I do not mean disgust around the well known. Forget the lowlife, tourist, squeaky clean middle-class bad boys who call their sex-depravity in blunt prose, fine writing. Forget the copycat girls who do not know then end of a dildo from a vacuum rod. They are only chintz dipped in mud and we are after real material. What is forbidden is scarier, sexier, unnightmared by the white-collar cataloguers of crap.'

--Winterson, Art Objects (114)

Art, And Lies

The other week Necortitties and I gave a lecture on queer art at the National Art School (for a predominately non-queer audience). It was a JOY to research and write up and discuss, and made me realise that maybe, just maybe, I can enjoy teaching somehow. And made me wonder (again) if perhaps I have been barking up the wrong tree, looking in the wrong places, in respects to my own academic work-- its the ART stuff that really grabs me, that makes me wet, that hardens me nipples and gets me wanting to read theory and to create beautiful objects. Writing as an artform, practice-led research, the materiality of words, art and alchemy, art and life, the texture of text...

But I digress. What I wanted to discuss here was some of the comments we got after the paper. We had given examples of some of our own performance pieces, mostly blood work, and naturally people were curious and so question time largely focussed on our process, the meaning of the pieces, the effect that making this work had on us and such. We answered as honestly as we could, and people seemed quite blown away at our frankness. I was surprised that they were surprised.

And this got me thinking about how being openly and brazenly queer contributed to my own answers. About how commonplace it has become for me to be fielding questions about how I live my life, my relationships, my kinks and such, about how the support of my community has given my the space and the strength in which to act upon and articulate my desires. About how I wasn't ashamed of anything I get up to, or who I get up to it with, and about how damned lucky I am to be where I am in the world. Blessed.

Succour

At Perv Box Brownie last night (24th), with Necrotitties-- more pix on my facecrack!

PERV FILM FEST

I be doing something with Necrotitties on the Friday at Box Brownie, and lurking around most of it I should imagine...

PERV
Thursday 23 April - Sunday 26 April 2009
film sessions and opening night $5 each
or
Festival Pass $25, includes opening night PERV Peep Show. The Box Brownie Flash tickets sold separately.


PERV is a new international film, video and performance festival dedicated to QUEEROTICA. Encompassing a four-day program of screenings, installations, panels, parties and play that promise to stimulate, titillate and engage. Highlights include:

The Perv Peepshow Launch party
7pm-10pm Thurs 23 April $5
DJ Tokyolovekitten
Host Mr Big Pants
video sculptures, projections, peek a booth, slides
a celebration of installation, from the radical to the retro.
Drink up the sounds of DJ Tokyolovekitten as you mingle with the works of Lady Penelope, Marion Conrow, the peeping tomboy, Adonis, Kino 55, Samuel Hodge, Regret and more.. Join our special review tour of installation destinations with the honourable member Mr Big Pants.


The Box Brownie Flash 9pm-1am
Friday 24 April $20/$15
A very special night where all experimental media play goes, queer performers bend your lens with KK No Pants, Catheterine and Necrotitties, Adonis, Crash, Sarah Greenwood, Regret, Mighty Hermaphrodity, Stranger Danger, Tara Cook, and more with DJ Gemma and VJ Mim Visuals

Katrina Del Mar PERV’S Festival guest - meet the film maker
6-8pm Saturday 25 April $5
Katrina Del Mar’s infamous gang girls have been tearing up our screens since 2000. As a guest of the festival, this renowned New York filmmaker dishes the dirt on her formidable cast of truck driving sluts, roughnecks, petrol heads, surfer girls and candy lickin’ bikers. Del Mar will also introduce new works A Beautiful Death and Punchin & Crussin. Be one of the first to check out her lecherous lesbian vampires as they sink their fangs into each other at this premiere event.

Archiving tales with Tom Fairweather
1-3pm Sunday 26 April $5
Photographer Tom Fairweather has had his lens trained on the Sydney queer scene for many many years. Join him and Domino (Slit Magazine ed) in conversation over lunch and a cup of tea as they chat about some of his
favourite shots in his newest slideshow.
Food by the amazing Jaffle Café.

Perv International Short Film competition
7-10pm Sunday 26 April
Celebrate the best global purveyors of queerotica with mistress of ceremonies Kellie Jean Drinkwater. Cast your vote for the film that rocks your jocks to decide who takes out the seriously cheeky prize for the Audience Award. An illustrious panel of experts will also be on hand to present the Grand Jury Prize.

Check out PERV for the full film festival program

GO TO THIS *SYDNEY*

Rumour has it I may be featured in this issue *blush*...

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ISSUE 14 Weird Science
yesss its finally hear ! and its an amazing...!!! profiles, fiction, photos, its an awsume issue! Come help us launch the newest member of the Slit Mag family!

A Weird Science Affair to celebrate.
Get your nerd/geek on and get down to see sexy scientists Anna Westbrook, Molly & the Pony, Roborotic, MoJo Ju Ju , with science nerds to predict your sexual future and MC Zoe and with Bocky from Press Eject's playlisting some tunes in between!!


ITS a HUGE Weird Science Affair
Sunday 15th March 4pm-8pm
Red Rattler Theatre
6 Faversham St
Marrickville
Slit Mags $10

with merch from other great indi publishers so if you don't have your trannie trucker cards yet or the new issue of spunk mag bring some extra dosh !!

Angles in the Architecture

Two quotes for this day:

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

and

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

Both Michelangelo, and both very apt for my current creative situation.

TAWDRY HEARTBURN'S MANIC CURES

The Manic Cures Project

Do Something for Someone in Exchange for an Anonymous Secret
“The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep”

Edgar Watson Howe

You may be wondering just what A World Of Secrets, and Tawdry Heartburn are all about. I have been thinking much the same thing, for quite a while! The name Tawdry Heartburn, a draggy word play on that movie star (and you'd be surprised how many don't get it) has been rattling around in my head for years. Depending which of my buddies you talk to, I've been blathering on about doing something with Audrey Hepburn/ Tawdry Heartburn for 5 or 6 years, but I didn't wanna do just another drag thing. Finally I realised early this year that Tawdry was a man! Funny how if you stick around for long enough, life conspires for a seemingly haphazard confluence of events to add up to something that is possibly well ordered and more significant. Know what I'm saying? Life falls into place and now all the pieces of the puzzle seem to make sense. However, trying to articulate that effectively and succinctly, well that's the trick, huh?

The project is basically a free interactive performance and webwork (web network of sites, blogs, social networking pages) performed by Tawdry Heartburn, who is a character created by performing artist, teacher and qualified nail technician, James Berlyn. I knew that course would come in handy one day. God knows I hated the six months I ran my own business in a hair dressing salon in Sydney in the mid 90s! But that entry, "The Evolution of Tawdry" is for another day.

So, TAWDRY HEARTBURN'S MANIC CURES, can be a street performance or festival gig with just Tawdry doing the nails of participants/audience members, passers by or depending on the budget of the sponsor, promoter, funding body, there can be multiple Tawdrys, but the key element is that the audience doesn't pay. Tawdry does their nails and in return they write down on the note paper a genuine personal secret, and then fold it up like a ballot paper and put it into the cookie jar on Tawdry's table. Of course, they use ASSUMED NAMES ONLY, but everyone is free to interact with Tawdry or the sites at no charge.

So that's the whole box and dice (as I understand it) as of this moment. I have performances coming up soon and more of that later, so let me know what you think : email Tawdry at tawdry@aworldofsecrets.com

On at the Blue Room in Perth for the next couple of Tuesdays. See the website.

Spending Pennies

The World Toilet Info site is not only quirky, but quite useful if one is to venture to foreign parts. Tells you how to ask for the location of the toilette, and also provides points on what to expect when you get there, in pictures and cute English.

Fairy Queen

Go to this.

Tools For Actions

A very cute collection of public actions/guerilla art initiatives and whatnot can be found at CCA Action, organised by tool. For example:

'Bristol Food for Free is an online database of edible plants in Bristol. The website generates a map of any of the 113 species identified by its authors. Plants rooted in private lots are included if they branch into public space. The website also contains photo-documentation of potential planting sites selected for suitability. Bristol Food for Free allows inexperienced foragers to find fresh fruits and vegetables quickly and safely. Kayle Brandon and Heath Bunting are part of Irational.org, an international network for information and materials for the displaced and roaming. Irational.org supports non-corporate art and engineering work.'

and

'Pants fitted with high-tension cords, metal clips, and a reinforced seat, the Flee Suspend Pants can be attached to almost any surface, transforming it into a space for people to swing. Wearers are equipped to modify any space they enter just by untying the suspenders and attaching them to the reinforced seat. The design supports up to 91 kg of weight, so there is no age restriction for swinging on the Flee Suspend Pants.'

Judith Supine

Amazing street art can be found at Judith Supine's flickr site. Here is just one example, Gouge It Out.

I Found Myself Alone

Eat Me Daily is a curious blog full of interesting food-related articles. Such as this piece: 'Currently on display at the Zach Feuer Gallery in New York City is a stop-motion film and sculpture exhibition by Nathalie Djurberg called "I found myself alone." In the film, a hand-made puppet of a ballerina dances on a giant table set for tea, full of pastries. She wreaks havoc, attempting to cover a white vase with chocolate sauce, and eventually, she's overpowered by the table itself, drowning in candle wax dripping from a candelabra.'

Whimper. Pretties. Wax. Sauce. Whimper.

Erin Dollar Makes Beards

You can find a link at LostAtEMinor.

Hooked On Bakery

I leave Perth for ONE MINUTE and look what they get up to! Oh well... better find me some hook action in Sydney to make up for this! Any offers??

INTERSPECIES *MANCHESTER*

INTERSPECIES Private view: 6pm Friday 23 January 2009
24 January – 29 March 2009 (open Tuesday to Sunday)

Cornerhouse 70 Oxford Street ManchesterM1 5NH. Touring to London and Edinburgh

'Interspecies: artists collaborating with animals' consists of four new commissions by artists working closely with different species of animal, and three existing works, stimulated by the anniversary of Darwin's birth.

There have been many examples in history of 'living art', where artists have manipulated the actions of swarms of bees, herded sheep, commanded dogs and sent rats down mazes. But can artists work with animals as equals? It has recently been discovered that humans are closer to the higher primates than was previously thought. Following the well publicised observations by primatologist Jane Goodall and others of chimpanzees in the wild, our nearest relatives resemble us more that previously thought, with behaviour reflecting politics, deception and even possibly creativity as well as being able to be taught sign language to communicate with human primates. What does this mean to the way we humans see ourselves as just one species inhabiting a planet in crisis?

The Arts Catalyst is building on its extensive work in bringing knowledge about contested issues in science to the public through this new touring exhibition, opening at Manchester's Cornerhouse. Interspecies comprises new work by a group of four artists (Nicolas Primat, Kira O'Reilly, Antony Hall and Ruth Maclennan), and existing pieces by Rachel Mayeri, Beatriz Da Costa and Kathy High. All the artists in Interspecies question the one-sided manipulation of non-human life forms for art. They instead try to absorb the animal's point of view as a fundamental part of their work and practice. Nicolas Primat has proposed to work with primatologists and zoos to make a new work in which higher apes are taught video skills. The apes will make the creative decisions, with humans simply providing guidance and training. Primat's work explores how the animals' “natural” communication skills can be extended into the realm of human/ape creative collaboration.

Kira O'Reilly, one of the most experimental and controversial performance artists in the UK, will present an action/installed performance featuring herself and a sleeping female pig. The work addresses the ethics of human and non-human animal interaction, acknowledging the implicit ambivalences and violence in the appropriation of animals as a resource. Antony Hall will encourage the public to directly communicate with live electric fish in the gallery space, through mild electrical impulses (both tactile and visual). The artist's motivation for this project relates to his long term interest in aquariums. Typically installed as calming objects, on closer inspection there are revealed as contained environments of both aggressive conflict and submissive tolerance. The Department of Eagles (Ruth Maclennan) will produce will examine the relationship between falcons and falconers. For centuries, these birds have served to naturalise human surveillance. Arguably, their existence only continues today through human intervention such as tagging, breeding programmes, and the construction of artificial nesting environments. Two existing works will also be shown in the touring exhibition: Rachel Mayeri's 'Primate Cinema', which casts human actors in the role of mating non-human primates, Beatriz Da Costa's 'PigeonBlog' which investigates the military use of homing pigeons.

Interspecies will tour during the Darwin 200 celebrations in 2009. 12 February 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Interspecies will open at Cornerhouse in Manchester in January 2009, and then travel to Northumberland, London and Edinburgh A series of talks and debates between the artists, writers, scientists and animal welfare experts will accompany the exhibition.

Polymorph Gallery

From Grace:

'After a 10 year rest PolyGallery is returning to the Sydney art scene in January 2009, showing the cream of Australian and international contemporary artists.

Polymorph Art Gallery aims to create:
• A professionally selective platform for emerging artists to display their work.
• Exposure of a high quality of contemporary art to the diverse audience that is attracted to Polymorph Body Piercing.
• A safe space for self-expression, all embracing and accessible to minorities and fringe culture.
• Inspiration in those who may not usually visit galleries.
• Space for all mediums in a unique environment.
• Cultural Evolution.

Contact: gracekingston@gmail.com

http://www.poly-morph.com.au/

Polymorph Piercing Studio. 1 7/82 Enmore Rd Newtown, Australia'

Little China Girl...

'Beijing artist Li Xiaofeng uses traditional Chinese porcelain - from the Song, Ming, Yuan and Qing dynasties, to be precise - to make ceramic clothes' say the ABC's Articulate blog.