Monday 31 January 2011

shape and situate zine - the latest

'Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women' zine



This zine is made up of of posters made by artists and DIY creatives within Europe, each poster highlighting the (often hidden) history and lives of radical inspirational women and collectives from Europe, as a way of connecting us with the past, the present and to help us to make sure that there will be a future which contains such creative and pioneering female action and activity.

Contributers include: Nina Nijsten, Jo Harrison, Flo Brooks, Molly Askey-Goldsbury, Sarah Francis, Stephanie Young, Erica Smith, Verity Hall, Jenny Howe, Red Chidgey, Deborah M. Withers, Siân Williams, Emily Aoibheann, Sarah Maple, Charlotte Cooper, Ralph Fox, Jay Bernard, Gladys Badhands, Isy Morgenmuffel, Rachael House, and Lauren Hutchinson.



The zine is available (if still in stock) from the following places:

Deny Everything Distro (Rome)
Ricochet Ricochet distro (UK)
Marching Stars Distro (UK)
Dear Soeurs Distro (UK)
Ms Valerie Park Distro (US)
Dead Trees And Dye (UK)
Ink Spot Book Shop (Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Ireland)
Canny Little Library (Newcastle, UK)
Good Grief! (Manchester, UK)
Folksy
Etsy


Submissions to issue 2 of the zine are now being accepted. Please do get in touch and contribute a poster:


[EDIT: The deadline for submissions has been extended until the end of April 2011. Please see: http://remember-who-u-are.blogspot.com/2011/03/shape-situate-2-submissions-open.html for details on how to contribute]

pictoplasma berlin

I am beyond jealous of anybody at all who may be going to Pictoplasma Festival in Berlin in April. Waaaa!

Tuesday 25 January 2011

a great bunch of stuff

Things that have made my heart go BOOM today:


My fine friends at Aorta Magazine now have an etsy site for all your purchasing-of-rad-arts-magazine needs: http://www.etsy.com/shop/aortamagazine#


One of my favourite people, Lex Non Scripta, has set up a website for her Argot Prints project: http://argotprints.wordpress.com/
Lex describes the project thusly: "Argot was started in solidarity. It took years of internal debate of how art might/can contribute to a greater good, and, moreover, how it might have some agency in supporting my ideas and political beliefs in a tangible way. I’ve been able to advocate for people, projects and organizations with volunteer hours, demonstrations, speaking and listening….but, rarely am I able to offer financial support. Argot is my attempt at filling that gap, while simultaneously nurturing my own creative inclinations."
Totally rad!


Siobhan McNamara let me know about the awesome sounding TURN THE LIGHT ON festival happening in Dublin. It's a festival of films and art by women, with a showcase and network day set for March 2011.
They're currently accepting local submissions.

Monday 24 January 2011

cinenova fundraising campaign

Cinenova is a volunteer-led, charitable organisation dedicated to preserving and distributing the work of women/feminist film and video makers, artists and activists.

Cinenova are currently having a fundraising drive online here to raise funds to digitise videos and archive materials. Money will go towards supporting the distribution and preservation of historical, international women's film and video work.

Friday 21 January 2011

sabrina chap in the UK summer 2011

Sabrina Chap is coming back to the UK/Ireland this summer and is looking for gigs/shows/lectures.
Please contact her on: ertrecords@gmail.com if you're interested in setting anything up.


Sabrina wries:

This past year has been a great one for me! I started performing in the burlesque scene back in February, and took to it like a fish takes to water. I developed a crazy character called, Mama Schlapentickle and toured last summer with a family of burlesque and sideshow people. Usually I just sing really bawdy, sexy, dirty songs as a separate act. For some reason, one of my songs has sort of taken off in this arena and ladies have started stripping to it!



Musically- I've been performing more solo shows than ever, and finally released my album, "Oompa!" which has received some very nice press. I'm currently putting my next album together, 'We Are the Parade'.

And, as ever, I'm still lecturing and doing workshops on my book, Live Through This- On Creativity and Self-Destruction which features stories from women and trans artists who've used art to deal with self-destructive tendencies.

This past year, I've started to tour doing all three of these things- it's insane but it works. I'm planning a UK tour going out sometime in the summer doing events on all three,

I'm looking to
1. Feature in any burlesque shows
2. Do any solo music shows (for this any good clubs or like-minded musical acts to feature with would be awesome)
3. Do any workshops or lectures on my book, "Live Through This- On Creativity and Self-Destruction"

Thursday 20 January 2011

we are here: queer youth support project (Portland, OR)

We Are Here is a community support project for queer youth, based at Portland, Oregon's Q Center. Kids and teens are Here to speak out, LGBTQ adults are Here to help. We Are Here, together!
Join the Facebook group, We Are Here to add your story (see bottom of this blog post for more details on this)

http://www.pdxqcenter.org/wearehere/
http://www.pdxqcenter.org/community-youth-resources-page/

General information:
In October of 2010, the world was saddened by news coverage of a suicide epidemic among queer youth. While the LGBTQ community has long been aware of the struggles faced by our youngest and most vulnerable, the suicide crisis forced the issue and made it clear that our community needs to reinforce the support available to queer youth. Q Center partnered with SMYRC (Portland’s LGBTQ Youth Center) to host two community forums in October, at which members of the local community gathered to listen to queer youth speak about their everyday lives. The large, diverse crowd was encouraged to fill out survey cards addressing the needs of youth, and Q Center staff compiled the responses into a comprehensive report.

Out of these forums came a mission. The We Are Here project has two goals, each a reflection of the other. As LGBTQ adults who have passed through and beyond the difficulties of our youth, we must stand as examples of success, providing encouragement and inspiration. LGBTQ adults must say: We Are Here to help. Part of that job is offering to listen, to provide a forum for youth to share their experiences and communicate their needs. One of the greatest needs of queer youth is the desire to not feel alone, judged, and in crisis. To keep our youth safe and strong, peer community is vital. LGBTQ youth are saying to us: We Are Here, too, and we need to be heard.

The We Are Here project is new and evolving. Our starting goals are to continue the discussions that began in Fall of 2010, to initiate a campaign of providing resources to queer youth in the Portland area and Southwest Washington, to engage the attention of civil authorities (police, educators, and other people in institutional contact with youth) towards an understanding of the issues, to create and disburse media content by and for local LGBTQ youth, and to help strengthen the ties between existing youth service organizations in our area so that our community can provide increased services to youth.

Q Center Director Kendall Clawson has this to say to LGBTQ youth: “Each one of us has a story to tell about how we survived it all and our stories aren’t all about being our fabulously gay adult selves. In fact, most of the people I know grew up in small towns and long stretches of suburbia where images of urban, cool, artsy, interesting LGBT people didn’t really exist. In my era, there were no Wills, no Graces; Ellen was kind of straight, and Facebook’s creators had not been born. But we survived.” And now, it’s our turn to listen and to help- so that being young and gay, bi, trans, or questioning means more than just struggling to survive, it means being special, being wonderful, being young, and most importantly, being alive.

Contact Details
For more information, email: WeAreHere@pdxqcenter.org
Website: http://www.pdxqcenter.org/wearehere/


On the Facebook page,We Are Here, people (not just those in Portland) are invited to contribute in two ways:

Adults: What Was Your Queer Youth Story?
One of the great things about Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" video series is that it allows queer adults to revisit their childhoods and teen years, and relate them to youth that can understand. When someone has gone through the same struggles as you have, and they've grown to be happy and successful, it can be really comforting and inspiring.
Think back to what life was like when you were a kid...
When did you first realize you were queer/LGBTQ? Did you always feel "different" or did you change your sexuality later in life?
Did you have support?
Did you experience opposition, harassment, or family conflicts?
How did you get through it?
How has your life changed since you were a queer youth?
If you could say anything to a queer kid or teen who might be struggling, what would it be?
Thanks for sharing your stories!

Queer Youth Stories: Kids and Teens Post Here!
Tell your story here! If you don't know what to write about, try answering some of these questions:
- How do you identify? Gay, Lesbian, Trans, Bi, Straight, Questioning? Fluid? Only on Thursdays?
- Are you out? If so, what was coming out like for you? If not, why do you feel it's better to stay private?
- Do you have LGBTQ friends? Are they your own age, or older? Who are the people in your personal queer community?
- How are things at your school? Are the other students gay-friendly or homophobic? Does your school have a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance?) Are teachers cool and supportive?
- What would make it easier for you to get through life as a young LGBTQ person?
- If you had any question to ask an older queer person, what would it be?
Thanks for sharing your stories!



Thanks to the ever terrific Mary Christmas for passing this info on

civil media 11: feminist media production in europe

As it turns out, I'm not going, but it's still rad as hell!


Call for presentations for the thematic stream "Feminist Media Production in Europe"
at „Civilmedia 11: Community Media for Social Change: Low Threshold – High Impact“; University Salzburg, 14. – 16. 04. 2011

The thematic stream „Feminist Media Production in Europe“ is part of „Civilmedia 11: Community Media for Social Change: Low Threshold – High Impact“ and will be organised by Rosa Reitsamer and Elke Zobl (on April 14).

http://wiki.civilmedia.eu/index.php/Main_Page
http://blog.radiofabrik.at/civilmedia/


Call for Presentations

Women have always played an important role in movements for social justice. Using media to transport their messages, to disrupt social orders and to spin novel social processes, feminists have long recognised the importance of self-managed media. In the past two decades an increasing number of women have taken the tools of media production into their hands; a vital social phenomenon that has gone largely undetected by members of the public, academia, and even sometimes the feminist movement. As a consequence of this invisibility, very little documentation and research has been done so far on women’s own media cultures, especially so in Europe and with a focus on current developments in the digital realm. To counter this gap and to explore the processes, effects, potentials, and limitations of women’s and feminist media production in Europe, the thematic streams focuses on contemporary feminist grassroots media in general and on blogs, E-zines, culture jamming, graffiti, r
adio, TV and digital archives in particular.

We encourage the submission of presentations (in the form of talks, discussions, workshops, exhibits etc.) by activists, media producers and academics on the following topics:

* feminism and anti-racism
With the raise of new media and communication technologies, women started to use these technologies for the production and distribution of feminist media. This demographics is often described to as part of „third wave feminism“, „pop feminism“ or „Do-It-Yourself-feminism“. How do feminist media producers engage with feminism and anti-racism? Can we identify a „new feminism“ in feminist blogs, E-zines, digital archives etc.? If so: How does this „new feminism“ distinguish itself from a Second Wave Feminism?

* local, transnational and virtual networks
The network concept, which emerged in the wake of the controversy over globalization and the globalization of media communications, is closely related to Manuel Castells’s theory of the “rise of the network society” (Castells 2010). The internet in general is perhaps the most obvious illustration of Castells’s theory. How do feminist media producers develop local, transnational and virtual networks? How are feminist media producers involved in various networks that seek for social change? Which kind of networks are developed in relation to the production, distribution, geographic spread, content and aims of their media?

* „alternative economies“
„Alternative economies“ are developed by media producers and consumers as an alternative to the global media conglomerates. Their primarily aim is not to commodify media; rather alternative economies focus on the exchange of knowledge and information, the spread of emancipatory concepts and activism, and they seek social change. How do feminist media producers develop and engage in „alternative economies“? What effect can they have? In which ways do these “alternative economies” make feminist media with a low threshold and high impact possible?

* DIY citizenship / cultural citizenship and political education
Feminist media offer a space to express opinions, experiences and political views, but they are also a space in which a critical and self-reflexive political education, and possibly a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) or cultural citizenship, could take place. Can we observe such an expression of DIY or cultural citizenship and political education in feminist media? How and under which circumstances and in which context can they take place?


Please submit abstracts with max. 200 words in English until Feb, 3rd, 2011 to Rosa Reitsamer rosa(at)female-consequences.org and
Elke Zobl elke.zobl(at)sbg.ac.at

Acceptance notification: March, 1st, 2011

Travel Costs: For conference participants from the EU, the organizers offer the possibility to apply for travel support. Please email Eva Schmidhuber regarding this: eva.schmidhuber(at)radiofabrik.at.

Registration: http://wiki.civilmedia.eu/index.php/Participants/Registration_11

Saturday 15 January 2011

bluff/blurry

More evidence of why Kristin Hersh (and her spot-on understanding and observation) has blown my mind for the squillionth time this month alone...

"If you watch your friends carefully, sometimes you’ll notice their features beginning to change; curling up into themselves, looking within rather than without. Hurt feelings or a distracting life event may precede this – sleepy disappointment, confusion. Sometimes your friend will accomplish something really impressive and then their features fall into themselves because the person feels finished. Or would like to before he or she gets boring or fucks up again."

Friday 14 January 2011

while a hostile relative re-writes my life: who is, and who is not, my family - by leslie feinberg

While a hostile relative re-writes my life: 'Who is, and is not, my family'by Leslie Feinberg
January 2011

[please repost]



In autumn 2010, Knopf published a “transgender” themed young adult novel. The author, Catherine Ryan Hyde, is an estranged relative of mine.

The analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Hyde’s young adult fiction novel will come from those who are living the identities, and oppressions to which she has applied her imagination.

However, as part of the media coverage and publicity tour for the release of the young adult novel, Hyde claims much of her expertise and authority for writing her “transgender”-themed young adult novel as based on my life and identity.

The author is a relative with an axe to grind. When she claims me as kin in order to counter-narrate my life, I am forced to get up out of a sick bed in order to respond in writing.

Since I became acutely ill in October 2007, it has been very hard for me to write, or to speak. So it is opportunistic and unconscionable that a hostile relative would take this opportunity to re-tell my life in a way that changes my sex, mis-describes my gender expression, and closets my sexuality. Hyde also attempts to silence me politically as a revolutionary, reasserts the dominant legal control of the biological family, and ignores and disrespects my chosen family.

My verbal and written request for no further contact has been violated by my relatives numerous times over the last forty years. So I do not rely on them to respect my wishes. Instead, I have clarified and strengthened my legal papers, and I am making this statement public: My living biological relatives—Irving David Feinberg, Betty @Vance Hyde, and @Catherine Ryan Hyde—are not my family. They do not speak for me.

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) defines “family” as: “The person(s) who plays a significant role in the individual’s [patient’s] life. This may include a person(s) not legally related to the individual.”

Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde, and Catherine Ryan Hyde have not played any significant role in my adult life. I have not seen or spoken to my parents in 40 years. Catherine Ryan Hyde was a child when I left home as a youth, and has only met me a handful of times in her adult lifetime.

Catherine Ryan Hyde’s narrations about my identity and early family life to audiences and media on her young adult novel book tour is not the first time that she or other relatives have narrated hostile accounts of my life--in person and in print.

Who is, and who is not, my ‘family’

My estranged biological relatives know very little about the decades of my adult life. They are strangers, by my choice, because of their history of bigotry and abusive behaviors toward me.

Yet the capitalist state often cedes legal power to blood relatives by default. So, I’ve had to struggle to assert legal independence from the white, patriarchal, heterosexually-modeled nuclear family into which I was born.

For four decades I have been forced to create and revise sets of legal forms for every state in the U.S. in which I’ve lived or sought medical care. These foundational documents state in clear language that I have been legally autonomous from my birth family since I reached the age of legal consent.

My documents state that Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde, and Catherine Ryan Hyde have no legal rights in my life.

My legal papers also spell out clearly who does have the right to speak for me if I am unable to speak for myself.

Minnie Bruce Pratt has been my family, legally and in life, since 1992. As lovers, we have shared a home, life and struggle—in sickness and in health. We are domestic partners. We are civil union’d. Yet the state and federal government discriminate against our same-sex economic family unit by denying more than a thousand of the benefits that recognition of same-sex rights as a civil “marriage” certificate would provide.

Because I am female, and in a same-sex relationship, I have to live and travel with legal documents that expressly state who is, and who is not, my family.

Even chosen family members who travel with their legal documents intact can find themselves barred from visiting their loved one in an emergency room, while vindictive relatives who are virtual strangers can proceed to the bedside to make life-and-death decisions.I carry a hospital visitation authorization, the new Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (MOLST), my domestic partnership and civil union papers, advanced directives, living will and last will & testament. In addition, I carry a copy of caregivers’ rights, and requests for secular-based care.

I have to legally state in paperwork that Minnie Bruce Pratt is my health care proxy, together with my attorney--who has taught issues of law and transgender. They have my powers of attorney. Based on legal documents that I’ve worked hard to prepare, my chosen family would speak for me if I were unable to advocate for myself.

Minnie Bruce and I both have to carry each other’s documents at all times, as well.

Catherine Ryan Hyde is attempting to undermine all my painstaking documentation of chosen family relationships, by claiming blood ties give her intimate knowledge of my life and identity, and the right to re-write them.

Self-expression of oppressions,
Versus bashing counter-narrative


On her author promotional tour, Catherine Ryan Hyde is developing an embryonic biography of my life--fictionalized and unauthorized—to which I give no consent. Her assertions are all easily found on the web in a google search.

“This is totally my story to tell,” Catherine Ryan Hyde publicly maintains. She claims insider knowledge, because, she says, she grew up with a “transgender sibling.”

She also claims that because I have written and spoken publicly about my own oppressions and life’s struggles, my life is now public domain for her imagination. This argument draws an equal sign between the right of oppressed individuals to self-expression, and the bigoted “voice-over” that contradicts and denies those oppressed identities and life experiences.

Hyde claims she learned acceptance from an early age because she “grew up” with a “transgender sibling.” However, she must admit she is either a virtual stranger to my life, or is maliciously re-writing my identity—or both.

Catherine Ryan Hyde appropriates the description of my life in order to contradict my identity. In her commentary, she co-opts my life’s journey, changes my sex, denies my pronoun(s) of choice, mis-describes my gender expression, and closets my declared sexuality.

I can say with certainty that if anyone claims “insider” knowledge of my life based on patriarchal blood relations--or claims to have been a long-lost “good friend,” or to have “dated” me long ago—in order to deny and obfuscate my life’s struggles, then I can guarantee you that the “love” is not mutual.

When a basher narrates my bio

The only authority any of my biological relatives, including Catherine Ryan Hyde, can muster to justify talking about my early life is that they were “there. “

But, those who take part in group beatings and gang rape of oppressed individuals are also “there” during assaults. That doesn’t give those bigots the right to “own” or re-write the biographies of those who survived their attacks.

Nor do bigots and bullies have the right to rewrite their violence against an oppressed individual as “loving” and “consensual.” Such actions are a continuation of the violent and prejudiced abuse; it’s trying to take over another person’s life; it’s attempting to control and define someone else, against their will.

“As some of you may know already, I grew up with a transgender sibling,” Hyde states--assigning a later 20th-century identity to my mid-20th-century birth.

“A transgender person is someone who is born with a type of birth defect, for lack of a better phrase,” she asserts. (People Profile; posted: xcell.paulmitchell.edu)

Hyde makes this pronouncement as someone who is not self-identified as “transgender.”

Hyde narrowly defines her use of the term “transgender” for her young adult novel character when she says that he has “not transitioned yet.” (my emphasis]

My own life’s journey and oppressions are different than those of her protagonist. To state or imply that my life’s identity is the same as Hyde’s leading “transgender” character pits my life and identity and oppressions against those of others.

See my writings for how I’ve defined my life’s journey, my sex, gender expression, sexuality, and politics.

So in having based herself as an authority on my life, is Hyde proclaiming my sex, my gender expression or my sexuality as biological “birth defects?”

In any case, she wasn’t around for my birth. As the youngest of three daughters, I was already about 6 years old when she was born.

Hyde was only about 7 years old when I was 13, and I had to ask my parents to sign working papers, so that I could get a job after high school and not have to come home until it was time to go to bed.

Outside my parents’ home, and beyond high school corridors and classrooms, I was able to find wage work during the Vietnam War, and loving relationships. I found communities, struggle, my voice and pride.

What happened, in Hyde’s publicity-tour narrative of my life, to my out-and-proud butch lesbian life in communities and struggles in Buffalo, Albany, and Rochester, New York; Erie, Pennsylvania; St. Catherine’s and Toronto, Ontario—at a time when same-sex love was illegal and subject to raids by police and groups of bashers?

I later moved out of my parents’ home before the legal age of consent, despite the fact that I was still their legal ward. After years of living independently, I had to return shortly before my 21st birthday, in order to ask my parents to sign permission for me to begin taking hormones. I did not self-identify as transgender at that time.

Several years later, when I told my parents that I was going to stop taking hormones, my biological father ridiculed me and my biological mother sat silently in another room, her back towards me as I left. Catherine Ryan Hyde was nowhere to be seen.

My biological parents reportedly debated, for the second time in my young life, whether they should sign legal papers that would forcibly confine me to a psychiatric institution. I did not self-identify as transgender at that time in my life, either.

By suddenly publicly claiming me as kin, and implying that familial knowledge is a foundation for her young adult novel, Hyde erases my chosen family, in order to return me, inaccurately, as her “brother,” back as a 20-year-old still under the legal control of the father-dominated, heterosexual, nuclear family.

I am not a daughter or a son to Irving David Feinberg and B. Vance Hyde; I am not a sister or a brother to Catherine Ryan Hyde. I could not be forced into those legal categories or those violent dynamics of group bigotry with these three relatives, even at gunpoint: metaphorically or literally.

Burying my life in fiction,
while I’m still living the non-fiction


After 20 years of respecting my request for no contact, Catherine Ryan Hyde called me and asked to meet. At that time, I thought she accurately narrated the prejudices articulated through group scapegoating in the nuclear family of my birth.

But when I agreed to meet with her several times over the most recent two decades, she just delivered more “family” horror stories: an earlier account of parents debating whether to permanently institutionalize me when I was a young teen; family members actually speculating, as adults, whether I might have been possessed by an evil spirit at birth; the patriarch of the family disowning me in his will; the fear of a family member that I might kill her children if I knew of their existence.

If Catherine Ryan Hyde, the willing messenger, answered the bigotries, she did not relate that to me.

I last met Hyde when she came to my 60th birthday party. I had hoped to spend one-on-one time with many loved ones that weekend, on the eve of treatment for long-untreated Lyme plus serious co-infections.

Catherine Ryan Hyde dominated my weekend when she argued with me for hours that the story of the Tutsi people in Rwanda is hers to tell. Her statements about the peoples of Rwanda were so racist, so apologetic for colonialism and imperialism, that I informed Hyde at that time that she was no political kin to me.

She continued to press by e-mail argument. At that time, I restated my request for no further contact from these living biological relatives.

Now Catherine Ryan Hyde is appropriating my life and voice in order to try counter-narrate it. Hyde, a coward who is emboldened with Knopf’s power and money behind her, is trying to bury my life in fiction, while I’m still living my non-fiction journey and struggles.

‘Crossing the street to start trouble’

In a web interview traveling the Internet, Hyde writes that she created a “transgender” character because: “I was so outraged by the violence and abuse faced by transgender people. The way someone will cross over from the other side of the street to start trouble. To get in their faces, push them.”

The fact is, however, that’s exactly what this biological relative is doing to me.

Hyde’s counter-narration of my life attempts to silence my adult lifetime of revolutionary anti-capitalist political writing and activism. She replaces my message of collective struggle and liberation with her timid appeal for “tolerance.”

Catherine Ryan Hyde’s story of my life and her relationship to it omit this real-life fact: She and her parents are not welcome in her “transgender sibling’s” home.

The only way Irving David Feinberg, Betty Vance Hyde, and Catherine Ryan Hyde can prove they’ve learned a lesson in acceptance is to respect my stated and written requests to stay out of my life--and the lives of my chosen family.

However, based on past experiences, I do not expect any of the three to respect my requests. And in this case, the bully pulpit of the public relations speaking tour is paid for and promoted by a major industry publisher, with money and media power.

As public relations, repeated over and over in publicity, on the web, and before audiences, this co-optation of my own life’s narrative is a form of identity theft.

I can only write this public message one time. I have suffered a serious medical setback during the time and effort it took me to write and post this.

I thank each person who has asked me if there’s any way they could help lift a burden from me in time of illness. I ask your help in circulating this statement from me into the public record.

I ask for help in circulating this message from workers in the publishing, and other media industries--from media for LGBT communities to Publisher's Weekly—from legal and library and medical workers, those who work as secretaries and researchers, bloggers and journalists, those who defend the rights of youth and elders, revolutionaries and all who fight for social and economic justice, my literary agency Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., and my labor union--the National Writers' Union, UAW Local 1981.

I ask you to aid delivery of this message—on flat typography and raised Braille, in signed languages and spoken languages. As an internationalist and anti-imperialist I am sorry to be posting a message that I hope will be read around the world, and yet, I am only able to post my statement in the English language—the lingua franca of imperialism.

I ask help from some of the skilled and thoughtful translators I’ve worked with around the world in translating this statement.

Message to my chosen family:

I have had a very low quality of life since October 2007; however, I treasure the love in my life—the only riches I desire.

To my chosen family: I can feel the strength of your love and caring and support--even when there are so few words in the English-language that recognize the power of our bonds.

We are all unique. We don’t all share the same ideas. Instead, as chosen family, we are defined by our loving, mutually supportive relations. Our chosen family bonds are built on principles that aren’t for sale, including mutual respect, and a process of understanding through increasingly clear communication.

My caring circle extends across the U.S. and around the world, and each member of my chosen family can recognize a bashing, whether the verbal delivery is hard-knuckled or honey-smooth.

So I take this opportunity to publicly thank you for your support. And I’d like to also honor two of my relatives, who I do think of as family.

After rejecting mean-spirited family gossip about my sister Christie, I went to visit her in a nursing home on her birthday, shortly before her death. Because I will not co-opt her voice in life, or after death. I will only say that I talked to her about the way I felt that violent family dynamics pitted me against her. I learned a lot that day about how she felt about the role she’d been put in as a child, as well.

When we said our goodbyes, I hugged her as a sister.

I also want to honor one of my grandfathers; I never met either one.

I honor my grandfather who labored all winter long without a paycheck during the last Great Depression in order to stoke the furnace at the “poor house.” I’ve been told that when he later died, his funeral drew more people from the town than that of its mayor.

I have never taken off my hat for a cop, a boss or a foreman. But as my grandfather’s communist grandchild, I take my place in that gathering of respect--hat in my hands--to honor this worker, who demonstrated with his labor, his consciousness of the class truth that the union movement is built on: An injury to one is an injury to all!

Monday 10 January 2011

73 women feminist art exhibition july 2011, london

from my inbox...

RE: 73 Women - Feminist Art Exhibition (July, 2011)

If you are interested in being informed about this event, In Stoke Newington, London, UK, please email: 73women@phonecoop.coop

Please forward information to any artists and feminists who may be interested and ask them to send a one line (yes only one line!) email, and we will put them on the email list.

Thank you, Banu Cansever, Caroline Halliday, Zoe Clifford from 73 Women

This is not a call out for work, please do NOT send images or other details to this address, at this point.

Brief outline

73 Women is a women's art trail along the route of the 73 bus, from Tottenham Court Road to Tottenham. Between 5 and 7 cafes, venues and galleries are involved. Each venue will arrange their own show based on this theme. Some of the venues may choose to have specific focuses, e.g. Turkish, lesbian or black women artists.

At The Gallery, Stoke Newington, (in the middle of the art trail) we will have a Feminist Art Show, No Compromise, (title not yet confirmed). We expect about 40 artists to be involved, all media.
We plan to have a projector show in addition to work in the gallery space.
All feminist/women artists encouraged to contact us.
There will be some costs involved unless we are able to secure funding.

We will answer your queries at a later date. Thanks.

Saturday 8 January 2011

yes and yes, thank you for the inspiration ladies




Mel Stringer's Mantra for 2011, and Favianna Rodriguez's piece about that need to simplify her unsustainable pace of life both fill me with more hope for myself in this new year.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

redykeulous

If I were to play a game of list-as-many-totally-inspiring-and-rad-people-in-one-press-release-who-are-all-exhibiting-together, it may just look a little something like this wondrousness:

INVISIBLE-EXPORTS is pleased to present Readykeulous: The Hurtful Healer: The Correspondance Issue, an exhibition by Ridykeulous. Participating artists include, but are not limited to, Ali Liebegott, Allyson Mitchell, Bernadette Mayer, Carolee Schneeman, Catherine Lord, Chuck Nanney, Daniel Feinberg & Rhyne Piggot, David Wojnarowicz, Dr. Weeks, Eileen Myles, Gary Gissler, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Glen Fogel, Harmony Hammond, I.U.D. (Lizzi Bougatsos & Sadie Laska), Jack Smith, Jibz Cameron aka Dynasty Handbag, K8 Hardy, Kara Walker, Kathe Burkhart, Kathleen Hanna, Kathy Acker/Dennis Cooper, Laura Parnes, Leidy Churchman, Louise Fishman, Mike Albo, Nao Bustamente, Nicola Tyson, Simon Fujiwara, Tobi Vail, William Powhida, Zackary Drucker, Zoe Leonard and other selections from the patriARCHIVES.

Founded in 2005 by A.L. Steiner and Nicole Eisenman, Ridykeulous has appeared at the Kitchen, New York; Leo Koenig Projekte, New York; Bronx Museum, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; and Participant Inc., New York, among others.


EDIT:
Wowzers: http://dailyserving.com/2011/02/leave-it-to-beaver-ridykeulous-at-invisible-exports