Author, Comix Illustrator, Performance poet, and all-round daredevil, Erika Lopez is heading to the UK in February to perform The Welfare Queen at a few shows. A treat to be sure!
More details on the shows:
30 Jan. - Club Wotever, The Cross Kings, 126 York Way, Kings Cross, N1 0AX London Doors: 8pm-2am, show: 8.30-9.30 (no entry when show is running!) After the show Club Wotever party! Entry: £10 for show & party / £5 after 9.30pm www.woteverworld.com
03 Feb. - Bar Wotever, Central Station, 37 Wharfdale Rd, Kings Cross, N1 9SE London Doors: 7pm-Midnight Show: start 8pm Entry: pay what you can for show www.woteverworld.com
05 Feb. - Cup - For Folks Sake Tonight at FFS, Erika will be emceeing and performing a taster from her new show - so come to the Yard Theatre on Friday night too to see the whole show 53-55 Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester M4 1NA Telephone 0161 832 3233 6-9pm, £4/£2 concessions www.myspace.com/forfolkssake
06 Feb. - Yard Theatre. In the Work for Change/Homes for Change Building 41 Old Birley Street, Hulme, Manchester, M15 5RF Doors: 7:30, show: 8.00 Entry: £5/£3 concessions www.work.change.coop
New years resolutions. I never make them, but I think I need a kick up the ass in 2009, so here we go...
*Take Less On in 2009 so that I can:
- Prioritise important projects - Go to my job more regularly - Spend more time with good friends - Have time to visit people - Get a bit of my "life" back - Be a more active co-member of the Manifesta Distro team
*Try and get a hold of my ridiculous fatigue by seeking more helpful (medical) advice and support than I got this year
*Do the things I said I'd do without opting out, and enjoy doing them rather than stressing out about them. Mainly:
- The UK Female Comix Zine exhibition at The Women's Library, 24th Jan 09 - My work for Art XX Magazine - The Colouring Outside The Lines exhibition June-July 2009 in Bradford - Colouring Outside The Lines issue 5, due to launch at the above exhibition, June 09 - Write the book chapter on European female comix zines that I've been asked to write for the 'Grassroots Feminism' book
From my inbox... Cine25 event in York, UK, part of the celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary of The Centre For Women's Studies, University of York (CWS has a place in my heart after studying there in 2001)
Cine25: Women in Film & Media Showcase are excited to announce the programme contents of the day.
Discussion panel: Where is gender in film and media today? Cathy Lane: music composer/lecturer in music & sound design, London School of the Arts Kristyn Gorton: lecturer in Television, University of York Stacy Gillis: lecturer in modern and contemporary literature, Newcastle University Anahid Kassabian: lecturer in School of Music, Liverpool University Caroline Bainbridge: reader in visual culture, Roehampton University, author ‘feminine cinematics’ Mo White: Lecturer in art and design, Loughborough University Florence Ayisi: Filmmaker & Reader in Film Practice, Newport School of Art, Media & Design.
Short film screening programme: Kate Jessop: ‘When The Telescope Came’ Shyla Lee: 'Honour' Jason Elvis Barker: ‘Millenium Man’ Abbe Robinson: ‘Private Lives’ Florence Ayisi: ‘Zanzibar Soccer Queens’ Mo White: ‘on stones’ Taz Wyllie: ‘Belle… je t’aime’
Low-budget filmmaking workshop Alissa Juvan (Workshop Facilitator): from Girls on Film and Fabric Ana Kronschnabl: Web media practitioner (Fluffy Logic etc) & author ‘Plug in, Turn on: a guide to Internet filmmaking’ Kate Jessop: co- founder Girls on Film Jason Elvis Barker: artist, filmmaker & LBGTI film fest programmer Abbe Robinson: filmmaker Denise Fahmy: Arts Council funding advisor
Main Feature: The UK Premiere of 'The Viva Voce Virus', Directors Kathleen Bryson and Kimmo Mokky Cine25 is very proud to present, with City Screen York, Picturehouse, this new, supercamp, time-travelling extravaganza exploring the closet. Already hailed as a queer film classic, this screening will be the film's UK premiere. Tickets for the movie are included in the event cost for Cine25 or can be bought separately from City Screen box office 13-17 Coney StreetYork, YO1 9QL Tel: 0870 758 3219 o Or book online, near the date of the screening.
Time of screening and individual ticket cost to be confirmed. Check this blog regularly for more details.w.vivavocevirus.com/
The event times will be advertised shortly, please check the blog regularly - http://cine25.blogspot.com
BOOK NOW FOR CINE25 TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT cine25@ymail.com
I’m going to organise a kind of “zine gathering” in Espace Ladda, a temporary alternative gallery in Gent, in Belgium, from January 31st - February 1st. Espace Ladda is a space that is being used by the organisation Ladda for a few months and where different kinds of projects can be done related to the themes skills, gathering, ideas or membership. The zine gathering will be part of the “gathering” activities. Ladda is very interested in zines and DIY and related things (my dissertation about riot grrrl is on their website for example). Afterwards a book will be published with the results of all the activities and the “alternative research” that have taken place in Espace Ladda. So it looks like a nice opportunity to do something fun there!
So I proposed them to give a zine workshop there, but when talking to one of Ladda’s members the idea came up to make it a real zine gathering during a weekend. So all participants can all work on making a zine together and there is also space and time to do other things (film screenings, quiet performances, related workshops, zine infostands, games, spontaneous actions, whatever you can think of that can fit into such a zine gathering). Ladda has a copy machine we can use to copy the zine and a button machine.
But I’m now looking for people who want to participate in the zine weekend! So let us know soon if you are interested. (Travel expenses can be covered from Belgium and the Netherlands ONLY, but let me know SOON). If you want to “do” something besides taking part in the zine, I can mention it on the website and also I can mention who is taking part and which zine(s) they publish. But you don’t have to be a (zine) writer to take part! I’m looking more for “like-minded” people (feminists, queers, DIY-artists, anar-activists, crafty people, etc) to make a DIY publication together. Like I said, there’s also space for other things besides making the zine; I’m very open for your suggestions and ideas! So it can be an entire creative DIY-queer-anarcha-riot-feminist gathering! It would be nice to meet up with lots of zinesters and creators and activists in such a space, so we don’t only know each other through mail and letters and zines, but also in real life!
This is the website of Espace Ladda: http://www.espaceladda.be and of Ladda: http://www.ladda.be
Mail me if you are interested or curious: flapper_grrrl@yahoo.co.uk ! Then I’ll keep you up to date!
A little bird told me that The Lollipop Generation may actually be screening at the 2009 London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Or at least the LLGFF have been in touch with GB Jones' distributors - so it looks possible! Phew! This stops me from going into a massive sulk about it!
19 Fri December London, UK @ the Horse Hospital The Mad & Strange / Strange & Mad Show starring Bonfire Madigan and Richard Strange (songwriter, storyteller, punk legend, actor: see him in Harmony Korine's latest film, Mister Lonely playing an impersonator playing Abe Lincoln)http://www.myspace.com/richardkidstrange
w/ Neotropic (a founding Future Sounds of London memeber)
DJing it all together. only £ 6-8
Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1HX by tube: Russell Square, Piccadilly Line buses: 7, 59, 68, 91, 168, 188 http://www.thehorsehospital.com/
* * *
21 Sun Dec London, UK @ Royal Academy of Arts Bar/Cafe last gig of the year = on winter solstice = a special 3pm afternoon musical presentation in this beautiful high ceilinged space, presenting nearly all instrumental music. Bonfire Madigan showcasing avant-classical cello and vocal work from her 2008 scoring commissions for the American Conservatory Theater. last chance to get the rest of BMad's merch directly + as solstice gifts (she can't take it back!) Including the book Live Thru This that she will sign for your loved one.
with a whole different set than Fri from Riz Maslen/Neotropic/Small Fish with Spine In 6 Burlington Gardens W1
Sweeter than candy on a stick The film buffs at Light Industry are suckers for G.B. Jones's new film.
The writer Dennis Cooper once compared The Lollipop Generation, the famously unfinished film about underage porn stars by Canadian director and queercore icon G.B. Jones, to Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind. Jones’s film, he wrote, “is roughly to queer cinema” what Welles’s film “is to, well, cinema.” In addition to being a filmmaker, musician and visual artist, Jones also cofounded J.D.’s, the zine that launched the queer antiestablishment cultural movement of the mid-’80s. After 15 years in the making, the bisexual artist’s erotic magnum opus is finally hitting the screen in all its lo-fi, grainy glory.
The Lollipop Generation will make its New York premiere Tuesday 16 at Light Industry, a venue for alternative and experimental film and art in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Light Industry is located in Industry City, a mammoth, six-million-square-foot former industrial complex that now offers low-rent studios to artists. Ed Halter, 38, and Thomas Beard, 24, opened Light Industry this spring, where they’ve been screening avant-garde films every Tuesday.
Both men have made their careers in the experimental cinema and art worlds: Halter is a film critic, was a programmer for San Francisco’s gay film fest Frameline and served as the head of the New York Underground Film Festival for ten years; Beard is a freelance art writer and curator and was a programmer for Cinematexas in Austin and Ocularis in Brooklyn. Their love affair with cinema extends beyond work, though—Halter and Beard met five years ago in the lobby of Anthology Film Archives and have been a couple since.
Running Light Industry has given Halter and Beard the chance to expose the work of artists they’ve admired to the public, while keeping the underground element central. The queer aspect to their programming has followed quite naturally. “One goal of ours is to bring together disparate communities of the moving image,” says Halter. “While we definitely think about maintaining a good gender balance, we don’t explicitly think about whether the invitees are queer or not. But a number have been. ”
Some of those past guests include William E. Jones, who presented his own reconstruction of classic Fred Halsted gay porn this summer, and the pioneering lesbian filmmaker Su Friedrich, who curated a show. Artists like these certainly draw an LGBT audience, but, says Beard, “while these people are very well known to those who are familiar with contemporary queer culture, they are also people who are known in the art world more broadly. And you wouldn’t see artists like this in an exclusively gay festival. ”
Welcoming G.B. Jones to Light Industry is a particular triumph for the organizers. “Her work is just such a perfect emblem of a certain strain of DIY filmmaking and DIY culture in North America,” says Beard. “The whole ethos that epitomizes that work is, in a way, how we conceived of the space itself: being a little punk rock in its design and really only needing the bare essential elements to make this sort of event happen. Her work and our space have an affinity to one another. ”
The attraction began when Halter saw Jones’s previous film, the cult faux-documentary The Yo-Yo Gang, in the mid-’90s. “It wasn’t even finished but it was already showing,” he says. “It was the quintessential underground punk film. Like Lollipop, it was shot over several years, had an overlaid soundtrack, and was very funny and kind of crazy.” The film stuck in his mind for years.
Halter has been awaiting the completion of Lollipop ever since, not just because of an interest in Jones’s lo-fi technique, but because of the length of time over which it was shot. “By being so many years in the making, it’s chronicling a really interesting piece of queer culture in North America over 15 years,” explains Beard.
One Super-8 reel at a time, Jones captured an extraordinary array of queer underground performers—a generation, indeed (actor Mark Ewert, multimedia artist Scott Treleaven, Yo-Yo Gang star Jena von Brucker and punk drag legend Vaginal Davis are just a few). In this slice of history portraying the youthful freedom of alternative street life, a grotesque, John Waters–ian band of young runaways connect with one another by indulging in intense oral fixations satisfied only by lollipops (use your imagination, people), accompanied by a time-spanning soundtrack featuring Jane Danger, the Hidden Cameras and Italian industrial-music project Mariae Nascenti.
Jones, who rarely makes New York appearances, will introduce the screening herself, a true treat for underground-film buffs, queercore veterans and the latest generation of gay runaways, who these days seem to crawl around the South Brooklyn industrial park. They might be a little more clean-cut than Jones’s crew, but they like lollipops all the same.
The Lollipop Generation screens at Light Industry Tue 16.
Calling all artists ...Tower Hamlets LGBT Community Forum will be hosting an arts exhibition which celebrates the lives, experiences and contributions of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender people as part of LGBT History Month 2009.
We are in search of artists - professional or amateur - to contribute to this exhibition and we are particularly looking for local artists based in Tower Hamlets.
The theme for this year’s history month is ‘Respect and Protect’ and we especially welcome any submissions that interpret this theme.
All artistic mediums are welcome.
The exhibition will be open between 30th January and 8th February 2009 and will be held at the Arts Pavilion in Mile End Park.
If you are interested in accessing to free space to exhibit your work as part of this exhibition please contact Lizzie Guinness on 0207 364 4218 or e-mail lizzie.guinness@towerhamlets.gov.uk by Friday 19th December to register your interest and receive further details.
Lizzie Guinness National Management Trainee Scrutiny & Equalities London Borough of Tower Hamlets 0207 364 4218 lizzie.guinness@towerhamlets.gov.uk
fem ad lib, the wall/space event on Sunday 1 March 2008, from 2pm to 6pm.
It is a half-day event - we originally planned a full day but our funding applications were not accepted. We are lucky to be sponsored by Imece, the Turkish-speaking women's association in North London – see note 1.
The structure for the event will be: short introductory presentations by a range of practising women/feminist artists, leading to a general discussion about the issues raised by their work, what feminist art is or could be, and what it means to be a feminist artist. There will be a session in which you can share and discuss your own art work – please bring in images of your work if it's not possible to bring in the actual work. Finally there will be a short discussion about the feminist art exhibition we are holding in June 2009.
Numbers for this event are limited and we are asking you to book a place as soon as possible. We are also asking you for donations to help cover the costs of the event – either £6 or £4, depending on your income. If you can send in your donations when you make your booking, that would be really helpful. Please make cheques payable to wallspace and send to 31 Shacklewell Road London N16 7TW.
The venue is Oxford House, Derbyshire Street London E2 – see their website at: www.oxfordhouse.org.uk for details of access etc. If you need a signer or childcare, please let us know. If you have any further questions, please email us.
Best wishes, Banu, Caroline, Helen and Itziar for wall/space.
(1) IMECE is a women- only organisation which aims to empower Turkish/Kurdish/Turkish Cypriot women through providing culturally sensitive services in Turkish language. and through raising awareness on important issues including domestic violence, racism and the legal rights of women. Their website is: www.imece.org.uk. (2) For more information about wall/space, look on our website at: http://wallspace.digitalblonde.co.uk
I forgot to post about this at the time, but a few weeks ago I went to the Thought Bubble comics con in Leeds, predominantly to attend the 'Women In Comics' panel. The panel was chaired by Dr. Mel Gibson and included Emma Vieceli, Simone Lia, Liz Greenfield, Hannah Berry, and Robin Furth.
During the day I had the pleasure to finally meet Lizz Lunney, Liz Greenfield, and Simone Lia (Simone and Lizz have featured in Colouring Outside The Lines, but I'd never met them in person before).
All three ladies were a joy, and Simone even drew me my very own Fluffy...!
In the past week both Lynn Breedlove, and Sabrina Chapadjiev have emailed me about plans to visit the UK in 2009 to tour. Plus, I hear on the email grapevine that Erika Lopez has plans too. The new year looks brighter as a result!
Camilla's blog post, 'I Like My Friends', here just warmed the very cockles of my heart! Nan and Phoebe look ridiculously happy. Aww, this has cheered me up so very much!
