Antony's Meltdown Souvenir Book by Zeffadelica

Antonyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Meltdown Programme Creative Director: Antony

The publisher has made every effort to contact all copyright holders. All works of art are ÂŠ the artist unless otherwise stated.

Antony’s Meltdown at Southbank Centre, 2012

Planningtorock + Light Asylum Wednesday 1 August, 7.30pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

Marina Abramović: Lecture for Women Sunday 5 August, 5pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

Diamanda Galás: The Hour Will Come Wednesday 1 August, 8pm Royal Festival Hall

Antony and the Ohnos: with Yoshito Ohno, Antony and the Johnsons, Johanna Constantine, William Basinski, and Mr. O's Book of The Dead film screening (dir. Chiaki Nagano) Sunday 5 August, 8pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

Selda Bağcan Thursday 2 August, 7.30pm Queen Elizabeth Hall Diamanda Galás Schrei 27 (dir. Davide Pepe) screening and talk Friday 3 August, 7pm Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall Joan As Police Woman + Julia Kent + Matteah Baim Friday 3 August, 7.30pm Queen Elizabeth Hall Laurie Anderson: Dirtday! Friday 3 August, 8pm Royal Festival Hall CocoRosie: We Are On Fire + Yasmine + Jessica 6 Saturday 4 August, 7.30pm Royal Festival Hall Cyclobe + Myrninerest + Derek Jarman Films Saturday 4 August, 7.30pm Queen Elizabeth Hall Tea with Janet Suzman, Kim Cattrall and Jude Kelly: Cleopatra - Not The Usual Passion Assigned to a Woman Sunday 5 August, 2pm Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

Marc Almond performs Marc and the Mambas' Torment and Toreros Thursday 9 August, 8pm Royal Festival Hall

Coral: Rekindling Venus (dir. Lynette Wallworth) Sunday 12 August, 6.30pm Peter Harrison Planetarium at Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Pay It No Mind: Marsha P. Johnson (Michael Kasino) + Hail The New Puritan (dir. Charles Atlas) Thursday 9 August, 8.20pm NFT3 at BFI Southbank

Hal Willner: Freedom Rides with musical director Steve Bernstein, Peggy Seeger, Tim Robbins and special guests Sunday 12 August, 7.30pm Royal Festival Hall

Elizabeth Fraser Monday 6 & Tuesday 7 August, 8pm Royal Festival Hall

Lou Reed: From VU to Lulu Friday 10 August, 7.30pm Royal Festival Hall

Matmos + o F F Love Monday 6 August, 7.30pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black + Tenderloin Friday 10 August, 8pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

Hercules & Love Affair featuring Antony and John Grant + Sissy Nobby Monday 6 August, 8pm Priceless London Wonderground Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life Lecture and Q&A Monday 6 August, 8.30pm Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall Buffy Sainte-Marie Tuesday 7 August, 7.30pm Queen Elizabeth Hall Joey Arias: Strange Fruit The songs of Billie Holiday Wednesday 8 August, 8pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

Kembra Pfahler: Availabism and Anti-Naturalism + Michael Cavadias: A Conversation with Claywoman Lecture and performance Saturday 11 August, 7pm Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall

William Basinski: The Disintegration Loops with London Contemporary Orchestra Sunday 12 August, 8pm Queen Elizabeth Hall Chris Levine: Installation Wednesday 1 to Sunday 12 August Southbank Centre

The Salt Mines (dir. by Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio) + The Transformation (dir. by Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio) Saturday 11 August, 1.20pm NFT3 at BFI Southbank TURNING (UK Premiere): (dir. Charles Atlas and featuring Antony and the Johnsons) Saturday 11 August, 8pm Queen Elizabeth Hall

Paris Is Burning (dir. Jennie Livingston) Thursday 9 August, 6.10pm NFT3 at BFI Southbank

emerges among males, and those in positions of power surrender their authority to the community. Grandmothers are ushered into the majority of seats in parliaments. A sweeping legislation of kindness cradles the world. No action may hurt or exploit another. The circle of the family expands to embrace the community, and then the species, and then all of creation. Or we can continue to prepare like the HIV virus for space travel, ejected from our host cell in pods, in search of a new planet to infect, to drain of its resources. We pour from the womb of our host cell, we pour from her side, among a stream of mammals. We are made of her elemental body, however virulent in our behavior, we are still animals, children of this place. We did not spawn from some paradise elsewhere, though many would have us believe it. The idea that our spirits are constitutionally different from the rest of nature has created a terrible, lonely lurch in our collective consciousness. Corporations have collaborated with fundamentalists in exploiting this alienation. But perhaps we can lurch again, towards the source of our being, and give, like a gaping river gives fish, we can give back to this place, we can give it all back.

Future Feminism I was asked to do Meltdown and I said yes. I have been doing a tour called Cut The World. In every country I talk to the newspapers and tell them what I think. I tell the audiences between songs: Jesus is a girl, Allah is a woman, Buddha is a mother. Feminise the deities, for the future will be feminine. We need more estrogenbased thinking. Patriarchal religions cannot be redeemed. A government that persecutes its homosexuals is trying to hide something more important. Corporations insidiously undermining the democratic process and do not have are best intrests at heart. I am going to participate. I just want to rise up now. I just want to cut the world. I can do my best with what I have been graciously afforded. I am no expert, but my intuitive perception of our world today is meaningful, and so is yours. Me, Kembra Pfahler, Johanna Constantine, and Bianca and Sierra Casady started Future Feminist Foundation. I first identified Johanna and Kembra as ‘future feminists’ in an effort to describe their approaches as artists. They are creating visionary work, proposing and embodying new manifestations and rituals for women, and creating provocative new archetypes. Kembra Pfahler sews her vagina shut to indicate that it is ‘CLOSED’. Piling the Girls of Karen Black on top of one another with their legs splayed open, Kembra builds a monumental and impassable ‘Wall of Vagina’. In her dances, Johanna Constantine invokes mythical creatures struggling to survive in

an apocalyptic landscape, and makes them holy. CocoRosie (Bianca and Sierra Casady’s band) insist on a child-like, ecstatic point of view in their music, appropriating fragments of cultural debris and reconfiguring them into components of end-times fairytales.

I don't think the earth will ever stop giving, not until she collapses. It is her nature to give, and give, to feed children. Do you sense that weather is changing? Our scientists say soon the polar ice caps will be gone. And if we punch the earth, crude oil will pour out, lumber, an exodus of animals, precious minerals, if we just punch the earth, Her spoils will pour forth in sickening abundance, signifying death, signifying the climax of our brokenness and we can harvest our mother's body, the ocean from which we crawled, it is so useful to us in our virulence. Punch her stomach and watch the exodus or resources emerge from her interior and pass before us on a conveyer belt, ready for exploitation. The earth doesn't mourn her loss. She just loses. She doesn't mourn her changes. She just changes. She fed me all those years, and now she's dry as her tears. But I am crying, and we cry, we cry, we cry, as we are led away, we will cry, we will cry, we will cry. Future feminists please save our world. Antony Follow @FutureFeminists on Twitter

There is a hope that drives us all forward. We each reject patriarchy in its myriad virulent and apocalyptic manifestations, and we advocate a fundamental shift towards the feminine in all our systems and structures of governance. We have named this approach ‘Future Feminism’. The other the participants in this Meltdown have inspired, changed and taught me. They are courageous artists who have used their platforms as cultural producers to challenge us. Many of them have exhibited ferocity in their pursuit of beauty, and, falling like a guillotine behind it, justice. I want to die here, I want to feel the water rush over me, I want to hear the stone crack my skull, I want to hear that sound as my blood escapes into the night, white water. Just like a hyena, to drink the water tainted with my blood, all the mosquitoes settled on the lake to breathe, the night the lake smelled of my blood. I never ask a man for advice about spiritual thinking. I imagine a new feminism taking hold of us like an ethical fever. We organise in circles of women. A purposeful humility

C ut Away The Bad No.2 by Antony → What Happened, Europe? by Antony

Has A Soul / Has No Soul by Antony

â&#x2020;&#x2019; Cut Away The Bad No.4 by Antony

Ghost Ship by Antony â&#x2020;? Suffocating Nowhere by Antony

Patriarchy Over & Out By Janine Rostron I don’t want to wait Patriarchal life you’re out of date Patriarchal life Get out of the way Patriarchal time Patriarchal time Patriarchal time Patriarchal time Patriarchal life Patriarchal life you’re out of time Time to step aside Patriarchal life it’s time It’s time to step aside

Planningtorock, video stills taken from The Breaks

Say... can you see me? It's dawn and my hand's been up for three hours and I been ringing the buzzer. I'm not proud to say it, but I've soiled the bed again and the air stinks real bad in here. Everyone has been waiting for the day nurse. What stink bomb I am. Just a stinking old Bomb. Can you hear me bursting in here? – Diamanda Galás

Diamanda Galás (2011)

Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke (1912) By Gottfried Benn (Deutschland)

Man and Woman Go Through the Cancer Ward (1912) By Gottfried Benn (Germany) Translation: Babette Deutsch

Der Mann: Hier diese Reihe sind zerfallene Schöße und diese Reihe ist zerfallene Brust. Bett stinkt bei Bett. Die Schwestern wechseln stündlich.

The man: Here in this row are wombs that have decayed, and in this row are breasts that have decayed. Bed beside stinking bed. Hourly the sisters change.

Komm, hebe ruhig diese Decke auf. Sieh, dieser Klumpen Fett und faule Säfte, das war einst irgendeinem Mann groß und hieß auch Rausch und Heimat.

Come, quietly lift up this coverlet. Look, this great mass and ugly humours was precious to a man once, and meant ecstasy and home.

Komm, sieh auf diese Narbe an der Brust. Fühlst du den Rosenkranz von weichen Knoten? Fühl ruhig hin. Das Fleisch ist weich und schmerzt nicht.

Come, now look at the scars upon this breast. Do you feel the rosary of small soft knots? Feel it, no fear. The flesh yields and is numb.

Hier diese blutet wie aus dreißig Leibern. Kein Mensch hat soviel Blut. Hier dieser schnitt man erst noch ein Kind aus dem verkrebsten Schoß.

Here's one who bleeds as though from thirty bodies. No one has so much blood. They had to cut a child from this one, from her cancerous womb.

Man läßt sie schlafen. Tag und Nacht. – Den Neuen sagt man: hier schläft man sich gesund. – Nur sonntags für den Besuch läßt man sie etwas wacher.

They let them sleep. All day, all night. – They tell the newcomers: here sleep will make you well. – But Sundays one rouses them up a bit for visitors. –

Nahrung wird wenig noch verzehrt. Die Rücken sind wund. Du siehst die Fliegen. Manchmal wäscht sie die Schwester. Wie man Bänke wäscht.

They take a little nourishment. Their backs are sore. You see the flies. Sometimes the sisters wash them. As one washes benches.

Hier schwillt der Acker schon um jedes Bett. Fleisch ebnet sich zu Land. Glut gibt sich fort, Saft schickt sich an zu rinnen. Erde ruft.

Here the grave rises up about each bed. And flesh is leveled down to earth. The fire burns out. And sap prepares to flow. Earth calls.

Untitled (1989) By Heinz Knoke (Deutschland)

Untitled (1989) By Heinz Knoke (Germany) Translation: Robert Knoke

Die blecherne Faust öffnete sich und entliess schwirrendes Eisen (minderwertiges Metall). Der Sensenstrich spitziger Kugeln liess die Grashalme knicken. Im Sonnenglast schwirren die Insekten. Ich lag flach, den Kopf seitlich, die Hacken runter (wie gelernt). Als das Elmsfeuer auf meinen Wirbeln zu hüpfen begann, die Hydraulik meine Flüssigkeiten in mir zerdehnte – als ich Achselh öhle und Kniekehle nich mehr unterschied – als mir die Fresse zur Kloake wurde und die Bregenpkapsel zu zerspringen drohte – da krallte ich meine Finger in die wundervoll duftende Erde. Ich umarmte eine riesige Geliebte mit mächtigen Gliedern – oder eine Mutter? Mein kochendes Gehirn gebar: Gott ist Kosmos. Das Feuer ebbte ab und ich erhob mich.

The tin hand opened up And ejaculated Iron (cheap Metal) The reapers move of pointy bullets Let the grass stalks bend. In the glare of the sun insects whirr. I was laying flat, head sideways, the heels down (as trained). When the corpusant started to bounce on my vertebrae, The hydraulic expanded my liquids inside myself – When I couldn't differentiate between my armpit and the back of my knee – As my snout turned into a toilet And the brain shell almost burst – I cling my fingers into the wonderful fragrant earth. I embrace a giant lover With powerful limbs – or a mother? My boiling brain bore: God is kosmos. The fire abated and I got up.

Später dann erfolgte der Aufmarsch der Giganten.

Later started the march of the giants.

Ich schichtete das Fleisch neu zu den Knochen.

I layered the flesh in new order to the bones.

Architektur!

Architecture!

← Diamanda Galás (2011)

I gatti lo sapranno (1946) Cesare Pavese (Italia)

The Cats Will Know (1946) Cesare Pavese (Italy) Translation: Geoffrey Brock

Ancora cadrà la pioggia sui tuoi dolci selciatti, una poggia leggera come un alito o un passo. Ancora la brezza e l'alba fioriranno leggere come sotto il tuo passo, quando tu rientrerai. Tra fiori e davanzali i gatti lo sapranno.

Rain will fall again on your smooth pavement, a light rain like a breath or a step. The breeze and the dawn will flourish again when you return, as if beneath your step. Between flowers and sills the cats will know.

Ci saranno altri giorni ci saranno altre voci. Sorriderai da sola. I gatti lo sapranno. Udrai parole antiche, parole stanche e vane come i costumi smessi delle festi di ieri. Farai gesti anche tu. Risponderai parole – viso di primavera, farai geste anche tu. I gatti lo sapranno, viso di primavera; e la poggia leggera, l'alba color giacinto, che dilannio il cuore di chi piú non ti spera,

There will be other days, there will be other voices. You will smile alone. The cats will know. You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties.

sono il triste sorriso che sorridi da sola. Ci saranno altri giornni, altre voci e risvegli. Soffriremo nell'alba, viso di primavera.

Εν απογνώσει (1923) By Καβάφης Κ. Π. (Αίγυπτος)

In Despair (1923) By Constantine P. Cavafy (Egypt) Translation: Stratis Haviaras

Τον έχασ’ εντελώς. Και τώρα πια ζητεί στα χείλη καθενός καινούριου εραστή τα χείλη τα δικά του· στην ένωσι με κάθε καινούριον εραστή ζητεί να πλανηθεί πως είναι ο ίδιος νέος, πως δίδεται σ’ εκείνον.

He has lost him completely. And now he is seeking on the lips of every new lover the lips of his beloved; in the embrace of every new lover he seeks to be deluded that he is the same lad, that it to him he is yielding.

Τον έχασ’ εντελώς, σαν να μη υπήρχε καν. Γιατί ήθελε —είπ’ εκείνος— ήθελε να σωθεί απ’ την στιγματισμένη, την νοσηρά ηδονή· απ’ την στιγματισμένη, του αίσχους ηδονή. Ήταν καιρός ακόμη— ως είπε— να σωθεί.

He has lost him completely, as if he had never been at all. For he wanted – so he said – he wanted to be saved from the stigmatised, the sick sensual delight; from the stigmatised, sensual delight of shame. There was still time – as he said – to be saved.

Τον έχασ’ εντελώς, σαν να μη υπήρχε καν. Aπό την φαντασίαν, από τες παραισθήσεις στα χείλη άλλων νέων τα χείλη του ζητεί· γυρεύει να αισθανθεί ξανά τον έρωτά του.

He has lost him completely, as if he had never been at all. In his imagination, in his delusions, on the lips of others it is his lips he is seeking; he is longing to feel again the love he has known.

Diamanda Galás (2011)

You too will make gestures. You’ll answer with words – face of springtime, you too will make gestures. The cats will know, face of springtime; and the light rain and the hyacinth dawn that wrench the heart of him who hopes no more for you – they are the sad smile you smile by yourself. There will be other days, other voices and renewals. Face of springtime, we will suffer at daybreak.

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (1950) By Cesare Pavese (Italia)

Death Will Come and Will Wear Your Eyes (1950) By Cesare Pavese (Italy) Translation: Marco Sonzogni, David Wheatley

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhiquesta morte che ci accompagna dal mattino alla sera, insonne, sorda, come un vecchio rimorso o un vizio assurdo. I tuoi occhi saranno una vana parola, un grido taciuto, un silenzio. Così li vedi ogni mattina quando su te sola ti pieghi nello specchio. O cara speranza, quel giorno sapremo anche noi che sei la vita e sei il nulla Per tutti la morte ha uno sguardo. Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi. Sarà come smettere un vizio, come vedere nello specchio riemergere un viso morto, come ascoltare un labbro chiuso. Scenderemo nel gorgo muti.

Death will come and will wear your eyes – the death that is with us from morning to evening, sleepless, deaf, like an old regret or an absurd vice. Your eyes will be a futile word, a cry kept silent, a silence. Thus you see them every morning when alone you stoop over yourself in the mirror. O dear hope, that day we too will know that you are life and nothingness. Death keeps an eye on each of us. Death will come and will have your eyes. It will be like giving up a vice, like watching a dead face re-emerge in the mirror, like listening to closed lips. We will go down into the vortex mute.

Selda Bağcan Interview by Antony

A: I have described Selda Bağcan as the Edith Piaf of Turkey. She is one of the great voices of her country. No one can deny the power and the emotion of her voice. There is purity and a sense of humility; a voice of the people and for the people. As a singer I can understand the universal part of the language of music, the sense of spirit, of ecstasy, of sadness, grief, love and beauty. All of these things ache inside me when I hear Selda sing. But there is so much that I do not understand, and non-Turkish people have little access to a deeper understanding of her life and work. I propose these questions as a starting point for someone such as myself who is eager to understand more about Selda's legacy. SB: Dear Antony, I would like to thank you for your compliments. I liked your Edith Piaf analogy, however I have not suffered as much as she did, even if you take into consideration the times I was imprisoned. The power of my voice comes from a sense of rebellion against inequality, although my lungs are not what they used to be. In my voice one can find the voice of the millions, the spirit, enthusiasm, sadness, love and beauty. As you have pointed out, one does not need to understand the lyrics in full to feel this because the human voice appeals to a common emotion found in every person. A: When did you learn to sing? SB: I started singing when I was very young. I had already learned to play the guitar before I started singing. If you look at my album credits, especially those songs I wrote, you can see me playing the guitar. For the first 20 years on stage, I played the guitar and bağlama (Turkish string instrument) myself. During that time, I performed with folk rock groups and recorded ‘psychedelic’ songs. One of my most famous songs, ‘Ince Ince’, is a product of those years. In the last 20 years I’ve performed on stage with my own orchestra. The 40 years I’m referring to are between 1971 and 2011. 2012 marks the 41st anniversary of my musical career. A- Where were you raised? What were your parents like? SB: My father was a vet and my mother was a teacher. Their work took them to various places in Turkey. Although I was born in Muğla, a city near the tourist area of Bodrum, we moved to Van, which is in the eastern part of Turkey near Lake Van, bordering Iran.

My childhood was spent largely in Van. We lived in the hospital lodgings where my father worked. It was a rural area surrounded by nature.

Paraguay’s Luis Alberto Del Paraná (and his group Las Paraguayos), Chilean singer Lucho Gatica and Raphael from Spain.

My father played a variety of instruments, almost as well as any professional musician. I learned to play the mandolin before I started school. I had already deciphered solfège [the system of sight-signing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, such as do, re, mi etc] before I could recite the alphabet. After my father’s sudden death when I was nine, we moved to Ankara (the capital of Turkey) for better educational opportunities. I finished high school there and graduated from Ankara University’s Faculty of Science, Physics and Mathematics. What I didn’t learn at the university was taught to me in the school of life.

A: What material did you choose to sing?

My relationship with my family has always been very positive. My mother, who now has passed away, always supported me, and my three brothers, who have worked as arrangers on several of my albums, always believed that I would someday be a famous artist. They were right, indeed. A: What was Turkey like when you were growing up? SB: I spent my childhood in the 1950s, my youth and early adulthood in the 1960s and 1970s. During my college years, the spirit of the 1968 events also spread to Turkey and I was quite active in the movement. This had a huge impact on my career when I started in 1971. It was also the time of the ‘hippie’ movement in the USA. My contemporaries and I grew up listening to The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals. Turkey at that time was a positive country full of ethical and humanitarian values, however it had political complications. Turkey is the inheritor of the Ottoman Empire and had problems implementing democracy. The movements, which started in 1968 as innocent student protests and activism, turned bloody ending with a coup on 12 March, 1971. In the following years, the tension never waned and lead to another coup on 12 September, 1980. A: When did you start to sing in public? SB: My professional career began with two 45-RPM vinyls I recorded in 1971. I sing for the public, but at the same time I sing for myself. Spanish music critic Vicente Fabuel once wrote, ‘I am asking Selda Bağcan where her voice comes from. How can a person be so active, deep, creative, and still sing emotionally? And finally I am coming to the question ‘Why’? What is forcing her to this? What is pushing her? Why? What is it that singers like Selda are trying to reveal?’ After reading this article I asked myself those questions. What was I suppose to reveal? Then I found the answer: In a world where the distribution of income is so unequal, where a lot of children die from hunger, where a lot of people don’t care about them at all, my voice should be a cry. My songs are pleas raised against inequality, grievances and maliciousness. As a young child, I was influenced by a range of international singers of the time including US chanteuse Connie Francis, Austria’s Caterina Valente,

SB: I always listen to my heart. If I like a song I will definitely sing it. Since the songs are from the heart, people respond to that. I’ve composed songs based on work of well-known Turkish and international poets. In my 40-plus year career, I’ve recorded approximately 400 songs; 40 of them are my own compositions. A: What were the lyrics of some of the most passionate songs you sang as a young musician? SB: The most emotional and the most meaningful songs that I sang were protest songs. But I also believe that I sing love songs well. Let me give you some examples: – ‘İnce İnce’ – ‘Tatlı Dillim’ – ‘Adaletin Bu mu Dünya’ – ‘Maden Dağı’ – ‘Beni Unutma’ – ‘Sevgilerde’ – ‘Uğurlar Olsun’ – ‘Gün Biter Gülüşün Kalır Bende’ – ‘Gesi Bağları’ – ‘O Günler’ A: What were the expected roles for women in Turkish society when you were growing up? Was your identity as a female artist every an issue? SB: While I was growing up the main role for women was basically to be a mother. Although the right to vote and be elected in Turkey was given to women by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk much earlier than in other countries – Switzerland, for example – we are still a Middle-Eastern country. However, the number of women professors in Turkey is higher than in some European countries. Until now I have had no problems with my identity as a woman, however I don’t know what the future holds, as the winds are blowing in a different direction at the moment. A: When did you first start to have success as a musician in Turkey? Did you have an audience outside the country? SB: When two of my 12-inch singles went on sale in July of 1971, it took just 15 days for them to rocket to the top of the charts. I toured Western Europe for the first time in 1972 and the concerts I performed for the German Democratic Party (SPD) played a part in my growing fame abroad. During the coups in Turkey, I was put on trial nine times because of my songs and I was imprisoned three times. The injustice that I faced attracted the world’s attention. The Guardian UK described me as ‘The Prohibited Singer’. In 1986 I received an invitation from the WOMAD Festival. Because my passport was confiscated, I couldn’t attend. Even so, the Festival Committee included one of my songs in the official festival

album. The song text was a poem by famous Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet. The album was well received all over the world. As a result, I began receiving numerous concert invitations. When WOMAD invited me again in 1987 some of the more reasonable politicians prevailed and my passport was given back to me so I was able to attend. That year, I also participated in the Rotterdam Art Festival, Glastonbury Festival, Jubilee Gardens Festival, Earls Court Festival, and the Capital Radio Festival. From 1988 to 1990 I gave numerous concerts for hundreds of thousands of people in Holland, Yugoslavia, Israel and Denmark. In 2000, in Cologne, Germany, I took part in a concert presented by the European Alevism Confederation. The concert made it to the Guinness Book of Records with a total of 2,167 artists participating in one concert! Additionally, I performed concerts in France, England, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Australia and Austria. A: At what point did your work start to become political? What was going on in Turkey at that time? What were your most famous songs from that era? SB: In the second half of the 1970s my country was divided into two political wings – leftists and rightists. In the 1980s because of the political situation 40 people were being killed every day. During my university years, I joined the leftists and my songs started to become more political. Some of my hits from that time, ‘Kizildere’ and ‘Yuh Yuh’ for example, were sung at meetings and rallies. Today these songs are still among the most popular ones at protest gatherings. The lyrics generally mention the wrong doings of politicians. A: What were the words to some of those songs? SB: HOWLED Don’t howl at me from nearby or far away If I had considered you as you have considered me I deserve to be howled at Seeming like a human being to every human being If I have destroyed every single person’s right as you have done than I deserve to be howled Everybody howl at the robbers! Howl at the robbers who have run away and who are full up And the murders Howl at the egocentrics, howl! A: Talk about the different styles of music you are known for. SB: It varies but for the most part authentic folk music, modern psychedelic rock, pop ballads and protest music, which is what I compose. A: What has your relationship been like with the people of Turkey? Have you been favored by certain

sectors or economic or religious or ethnic classes of the population? SB: The relationship I have with the Turkish people was and still is quite strong, although maybe not so obvious. I am one of the most recognised artists in my country and I appeal to a wide range of people – radicals, conservatives, old and young, however mostly leftists and Alevis, a large group of people with religious, ethnic, political and cultural views. Although I am a Muslim, I perform traditional Alevi music and songs, so Alevis feel a very strong bond with me. I was a banned singer on national television from 1971 to 1991, when there was only one, government-run TV channel in Turkey. Despite the fact that I was invisible to a large national audience, my strong ties with the Alevi community gave me the support to continue my career. A: How have you historically chosen your material? How many of your songs do you write? What are the themes of some of those songs, for those of us who do not speak the language? SB: In order for me to sing about a certain song, it first needs to make my heart ache. About ten percent of the songs I sing are my compositions. I am actually a pretty good performer, but lyrics that really touch my heart turn me into a composer. I composed a song for a wonderful journalist named Uğur Mumcu, who was murdered by fundamentalists. This song has become a rallying cry for demonstrations. My song ‘Kocero’ is about the problems faced by Kurds in our country. Sometimes literary works from other cultures inspire my compositions, like Mongane Wally Serote’s ‘The Little African Child’: This little Black child Came to the world as if picking up from its packet And burnt Looks at his rising, twisting, falling apart and ceasing hopes Grows up like the ashes of the cigarette Soft and insecure and smashed and damped I was always a slave I am a Negro Negro! Like the night, black like the depths of Africa I was always a slave I cleaned the stairs of the Palace in antique Rome I built the pyramids in Egypt I am the one who mixed the cements of the skyscrapers I was always singing folk songs My folksongs were from Africa to Missouri A: Who have been your greatest artistic collaborators? SB: In the 1970s I worked and recorded with rock groups. ‘Ince Ince’ is from those years. Turkey’s master poets such as Mahsuni, Şerif, Neşet Ertaş inspire me. Cem Karaca and Ahmet Kaya are a few of the artists that I worked with. In fact, Cem Karaca’s latest album was produced by the record company I own, Major Music Productions.

A: We have heard that you spent some years in a very difficult political position in Turkey. Can you describe those circumstances? How did they resolve? SB: Because of my lyrics, I was tried in nine different courts from 1977 to 1985. Between 1980 and 1984, I was imprisoned three times because of the lyrics I sang. My passport was confiscated and I couldn’t travel abroad from 1980 to 1987. Those were hard times, and a lot of sadness still remains. All of these trials resulted in dismissals of the charges. Today, I release songs through my own label, Major Music. A: What do you think is the role of the artist in society today? SB: The artist’s role in today’s society, as in the past, is that of a leader. The artist must see what other people don’t want to see and throw herself/himself into the fire to tell the truth, no matter what the price. There are artists who are unaware of the world today, happily singing la-la songs. Unfortunately, they are in the majority. A: What are your spiritual beliefs? SB: I have some spiritual and religious beliefs. I believe that everyone’s got a different and beautiful soul. In fact, even animals have different souls. I have cats as pets and I have observed this simple truth in them as well. A: What is your sense of the future that awaits us as humanity on earth? SB: Whatever I have been predicting is slowly turning true. My formal education was in science and I have been a fan of Stephen Hawking for years. I believe we can do what we want with our brains without using our hands. This is physics and moreover, it is metaphysics. Today technology moves faster than law. Our works are downloaded free of charge from the Internet. Lawyers struggle to find solutions to this problem. Copyright is regarded worthless. What kind of a world do we live in? On one hand, millions of people are dying from hunger. On the other hand, millions of dollars are being earned in weapons and gun manufacturing and trade. If the profit made from the sale of cigarettes decreases, business will increase trading in weapons. Today there are wars for oil, but when the oil runs out, there will be wars for water. Do human beings have to fight all the time? If ten per cent of the budgets for outer space projects were transferred to poor countries, where there are famines, then maybe so many people wouldn’t die.

Because of the way I make music – using the cello in conjunction with looping, processing, and electronics – I am interested in the boundaries between the organic and the technological, and, by extension, between the natural world and the human-created world. I tried to explore those intersections in my most recent solo record, Green and Grey, and to express my own perception of nature, which provides us with our poetry, our mythology and our strength, even as our relationship with it becomes increasingly unbalanced. – Julia Kent

I support democracy; however instead of having a regime with the majority suppressing the minority, we should find ways to support the rights of the minority. My hope is for a world where this can come true.

the most compelling and interesting story is the truth. some years ago I experienced – running like the wind through the woods with my brother after disrupting a hornet’s nest. – knowing that either us or them would hit that red button, and the earth and its inhabitants would all be gone forever – it was just a matter of when. – helping to paint my lover’s apartment mint green and black and the ebullience that ensued. – the feeling of freedom, divine obliteration and ecstasy when making and/or listening to music. and more recently I experienced – seeing a man in his mid-50s on a bus in Paris unabashedly sucking his thumb. – a cabbie telling me how he lost his entire family, slaughtered under Pol Pot, how he was the only survivor and how he has since made his own family. – acting on my mother’s advice, realising that when she was alive it was impossible for me to see its merit. – the feeling of freedom, divine obliteration and ecstasy when making and/or listening to music. we are constantly barraged with ‘information’ that claims that we don’t get along but in my experience, the opposite is true. if you can stay alive, a lifetime lived is one of the most relentlessly beautiful and wild things going. – Joan Wasser

Joan As Police Woman

All Night, Matteah Baim

Face 1, Matteah Baim Face 2, Matteah Baim

Snap Matteah Baim

First the bad news: The earth is desparately trying to shake us off like a fungus, like bacteria. It keeps spinning, trying to shake us off, scrape us off, whirl us off with its powerful centrifugal force. Yes the earth aspires to return to its origins. Bare red rock. Bald and hot. Slick and and smooth and free. Whirling spinning spinning round and round in space. I see it spinning. I see it spinning round in space. I see it spinning. I see it spinning round in space. And then the good news: The good news is that we have so many regrets. Because when you think about it, if we didn’t have regrets we wouldn’t have all that much music. And like the great Willie Nelson said, ‘Almost everybody in the world ends up with the wrong person and that’s what makes the juke box spin.’ That’s what makes the juke box spin. That’s what makles the juke box spin. New York City from the air Made of glass and light This is the pure illusory body Resting in the appearance of emptiness Basking in the appearance of emptiness The emptiness of appearance from Dirtday! © 2012 Laurie Anderson

→ Woman, oil on canvas 10’x14’ (3x4 meters) 2012, Laurie Anderson → → House, oil on canvas 10’x14’ (3x4 meters) 2012, Laurie Anderson

Cinderella’s Prison Bianca Casady (CocoRosie) → Harmless Monster, bucket & mop (19x25in) Bianca Casady (CocoRosie)

on meadows fringe a monotone voice earth’s one desire a fatal blissening of love not in tune but muted unheard red in glistening

a body unfolds her breast a mantel her heart a drone

– Sierra Casady

→ SM2 (38x60in), Bianca Casady (CocoRosie)

I wonder if he realised what he said. Whatever the case may be, I loved him. He filled the void that grew in me as a child. That void left by every male figure who stepped in and out of my life. My father, brother, stepfather. I longed for their attention; was always so curious to know what grownups did and said when I looked away; was eager to know what secrets were told when voices became whispers as I entered the room. I wanted to be in that gang. Wanted to know what it was like to be on the other side of life. Naive wasn’t fun for me. After seeing and knowing too much it became a pointless act. Made me feel dumb to act like I didn’t know any better. I thought if I could somehow please those around me they would let me into their world. Would tell me their secrets, would let me wear their clothes and touch their guns. I did what I could to make them smile but in return they would always walk away, and I would be left alone to play the role of a dumb child, forced to be naive when the heat of life had already scorched me. I remember the time I prepared a choreographed dance to celebrate the return of my stepfather who hadn’t been home for weeks. I don’t know where he went or why, but I knew he was returning. My mother promised me he would and I felt the certainty of this by the shift in her demeanor. Her whole essence had changed like the move from night to day. The cloud of cigarette smoke that surrounded her had fused into perfume. Her sulking skin and eyes were pulled up from a pool of beer by the end of a mascara wand and the beating of a powdered brush. Her spirit was light and alive like a brand new being and so I knew his return was guaranteed. He arrived right on time on the day he was supposed to. I designed a welcome home sign out of a cut up cardboard box and red markers. I hid it in my room and waited for him to get settled once he entered our apartment. My mother greeted him in the hallway and I waited in my room, listening as they did their secret adult stuff. I listened through

the door, trembling with anticipation. I was more excited to have an audience than that he was actually back. I waited for my mother to come tell me he was ready for my performance like I had asked her to. This meant that he was seated and quietly waiting and that my mother was about to turn the music on. Once I heard the opening chime of Janet Jackson’s ‘Escapade’ I walked out in my underwear with the welcome home sign held high over my head like a round-card girl. His smile was shining so bright past his dark Indian features. His teeth nearly blinded me as they peaked past his jet black handle bar mustache. His eyes, like the brightest of moons in the darkest of skies. He sat on our wooden rocking chair perched like a king on a throne with his chiseled features fitting the part as well. I refrained from any instant hugs or hellos for this would break the fantasy of my performance. Instead I put the sign down on his lap and went into my full dance routine. Once the last beat of the song rang out and the last step of my dance hit the floor he and my mom applauded. t was then that I ran to him, jumped on his lap and gave him a big hug and kiss. Daddy was back. When I look back at this memory it all seems so ridiculous and perverse. Ridiculous because I never really cared for him and perverse because of my eager submissive display of femininity. I think it was the mere idea of having a man back in the house that drove me. Someone who made my mother happy for the most part. Someone who gave me a glimpse of what being grown up was like and who watched over me like I felt a man should because they never had. Or maybe, I was excited because I knew I no longer had to play the role of mother and could get back to the fantasy land that awaited me in my room as my own mother would surely ignore me now. Either way, I realise now how whatever it was that made me dance and sing the praises of his return, would sit and rot inside of me until it grew into something way less innocent and much more sinister and poisonous. Something that, as I grew into an insecure young trans woman, would rear its ugly head and focus its deep vagrant eyes on the oncoming lust that furrowed its way through the road like angry, aging, brow lines. I spent a huge portion of my teenage years working out the choreography that made men stay. Trying hard to recall that combination of steps that made them feel at home while figuring out why this longing for those who came and went like the wind was the only thing that inspired me to dance in the first place. And as I danced that dance, flashing that welcome home sign for daddy as if to signal the next round, I slowly came to realise why it would never be enough for me when they finally did to stay. I began to see how I needed them to leave in order to have a reason to create. – Nomi (Jessica 6)

Nomi, photographed by Marco Ovando

NaughtyBOY, Lori E Seid

Lyrics by Yasmine Hamden

MYRNINEREST is the new Hallucinatory Cartoon I have channelled in order to work, outside of Current 93, with some of the artists and friends I admire the most. Her first album, “Jhonn,” Uttered Babylon , was written about my friendship with, and love for, the late Jhonn Balance of Coil and also about his death and how it affected some of his closest friends. His life and death have haunted me for so many years, and Jhonn,” Uttered Babylon is somehow a farewell to him until we meet each other again. I loved him so much. I still do. The text of “Jhonn,” Uttered Babylon was written by me in Hastings during November 2011 as Jhonn came softly to me in Haunted Dreams and Haunted Airs; James Blackshaw then composed the music at his home, also in Hastings, in a few short days during February 2012. The white ink on black paper drawing is a portrait of Jhonn as Pazuzu and was drawn by me in March 2012. The colour photograph of Balance and me walking away from the camera over the rocks in Cooloorta, Co. Clare was taken in 1990. James Blackshaw and I are OverMoon to be appearing tonight as Myrninerest with Aloma Ruiz Boada, Andrew Liles, Davide Pepe and Bobbie Watson. We delightedly thank Cyclobe for playing with us and James Mackay for kindly allowing us to provide the soundtrack to, and show, Derek Jarman’s Journey to Avebury, which was Jhonn’s favourite film by Derek. David Tibet, Hastings, July 5 2012

← ← Jhonn Balance as Pazuzu In ClownTown, David Tibet

← David Tibet and the late Jhonn Balance of the band Coil

← ← lyrics, David Tibet

Handwriting from a postcard sent by Jhonn Balance to David Tibet

Stills from Tarot, 1972, Derek Jarman, courtesy and © LUMA Foundation

the woods are alive with the smell of his coming (calligraphy by Geoff Cox-Dorée) © Cyclobe

← untitled by Alex Rose, © Alex Rose → The woods are alive with the smell of his coming (pen and ink drawing by Ossian Brown) © Ossian Brown

An Artist’s Life Manifesto By Marina Abramović An artist’s conduct in his life: – An artist should not lie to himself or others – An artist should not steal ideas from other artists – An artist should not compromise for himself or in regards to the art market – An artist should not kill other human beings – An artist should not make himself into an idol – An artist should not make himself into an idol – An artist should not make himself into an idol An artist’s relation to his love life: – An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist – An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist – An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist An artist’s relation to the erotic: – An artist should develop an erotic point of view on the world – An artist should be erotic – An artist should be erotic – An artist should be erotic An artist’s relation to suffering: – An artist should suffer – From the suffering comes the best work – Suffering brings transformation – Through the suffering an artist transcends his spirit – Through the suffering an artist transcends his spirit – Through the suffering an artist transcends his spirit An artist’s relation to depression: – An artist should not be depressed – Depression is a disease and should be cured – Depression is not productive for an artist – Depression is not productive for an artist – Depression is not productive for an artist An artist’s relation to suicide: – Suicide is a crime against life – An artist should not commit suicide – An artist should not commit suicide – An artist should not commit suicide An artist’s relation to inspiration: – An artist should look deep inside himself for inspiration – The deeper he looks inside himself, the more universal he becomes – The artist is universe – The artist is universe – The artist is universe

← The Spirit in Any Condition Does Not Burn, C-Print, 2011, © Marina Abramovic, Courtesy Marina Abramovic and Sean Kelly Gallery New York

An artist’s relation to self-control: – The artist should not have self-control about his life – The artist should have total self-control about his work – The artist should not have self-control about his life – The artist should have total self-control about his work

An artist’s relation with transparency: – The artist should give and receive at the same time – Transparency means receptive – Transparency means to give – Transparency means to receive – Transparency means receptive – Transparency means to give – Transparency means to receive – Transparency means receptive – Transparency means to give – Transparency means to receive An artist’s relation to symbols: – An artist creates his own symbols – Symbols are an artist’s language – The language must then be translated – Sometimes it is difficult to find the key – Sometimes it is difficult to find the key – Sometimes it is difficult to find the key An artist’s relation to silence: – An artist has to understand silence – An artist has to create a space for silence to enter his work – Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean – Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean – Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean An artist’s relation to solitude: – An artist must make time for the long periods of solitude – Solitude is extremely important – Away from home – Away from the studio – Away from family – Away from friends – An artist should stay for long periods of time at waterfalls – An artist should stay for long periods of time at exploding volcanoes – An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at fast-running rivers – An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the horizon where the ocean and sky meet – An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the stars in the night sky An artist’s conduct in relation to work: – An artist should avoid going to the studio every day – An artist should not treat his work schedule as a bank employee does – An artist should explore life and work only when an idea comes to him in a dream or during the day as a vision that arises as a surprise – An artist should not repeat himself – An artist should not overproduce – An artist should avoid his own art pollution – An artist should avoid his own art pollution – An artist should avoid his own art pollution

An artist’s possessions: – Buddhist monks advise that it is best to have nine possessions in their life: 1 robe for the summer 1 robe for the winter 1 pair of shoes 1 begging bowl for food 1 mosquito net 1 prayer book 1 umbrella 1 mat to sleep on 1 pair of glasses if needed – An artist should decide for himself the minimum personal possessions they should have – An artist should have more and more of less and less – An artist should have more and more of less and less – An artist should have more and more of less and less A list of an artist’s friends: – An artist should have friends that lift his spirits – An artist should have friends that lift his spirits – An artist should have friends that lift his spirits A list of an artist’s enemies: – Enemies are very important – The Dalai Lama has said that it is easy to have compassion with friends but much more difficult to have compassion with enemies – An artist has to learn to forgive – An artist has to learn to forgive – An artist has to learn to forgive Different death scenarios: – An artist has to be aware of his own mortality – For an artist, it is not only important how he lives his life but also how he dies – An artist should look at the symbols of his work for the signs of different death scenarios – An artist should die consciously without fear – An artist should die consciously without fear – An artist should die consciously without fear Different funeral scenarios: – An artist should give instructions before the funeral so that everything is done the way he wants it – The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving – The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving – The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving

‘It's the richest, most varied, most misunderstood part that Shakespeare wrote, and it's quite impossible to get it all. I don't believe for a moment that a boy would have played it in his time, as the scholars would have us believe, but a grown man (like Antony Hegarty!) - an experienced actor with an apprenticeship in the younger parts under his belt, surely would have been what the Bard had in mind when he wrote it. Even more enticing, I secretly think that there were some women actors who slipped in to The Globe and The Blackfriars Theatre under cover of darkness to play these richly varied older women in his plays. The play Antony and Cleopatra sports the size and glamour, the restless movement of a great big beautiful movie, and the two great big beautiful movie stars who made it famous in our time, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, had the power to make us think that this play is about a fatal love story, a mature and raunchy tale of passion. But Cleopatra herself is a far more arresting character historically than Taylor's seductive cleavage allowed us to notice, and Shakespeare is a far more arresting writer than we give him credit for in this play. It's the man who suffers from fatal love in this great play, and it's the woman who seeks to preserve her power. How's that for a turn-around?’ – Janet Suzman on Shakespeare’s Cleopatra

→ Johanna Constantine, photograph by Don Felix Cervantes

Johanna Constantine Excerpt from Deer Monster an interview by Antony [Johanna Constantine has been my creative partner since we met when we were 17 years old. We moved to New York City in the early 1990s and started a late night performance event called Blacklips.] Antony: When you danced at the Pyramid Club, New York, in the early 1990s, and manifested so much dark energy, did you desire to become that force? What was your thinking behind it? Johanna Constantine: My thinking was that it was something I could bring to the table. I could present that hatred in representation of all of those who felt it. I felt it should be present, so that the softer things could safely emerge. A: Was it hatred? It felt at times totally primordial. JC: Its intent, really, was protective. At that time the dances were usually coupled with your work, which I felt balanced it out. A: We always had that notion that we were a foil for each other. I presented this intense vulnerability and you presented this fearsome threatening otherness. JC: Yes, that was the working template at the time. It’s surprising how things have developed. Now it often seems that I am the defender of the gentler side of human endeavor, when it seems you have given up on them altogether. A: At a certain point, did you start to identify your choreographies as separate from the goings on at Blacklips? JC: Yes, the first time I really focused on a solo dance piece outside of Blacklips or club presentation was in the first Johnsons projects. I also started making pieces with Charles Atlas, who is, to this day, the only person of whose advice I would ever listen to in the world of my dances. A: I remember an extended piece you did at William Basinski’s loft, Arcadia, in the mid 1990s as being a turning point. It had a kind of narrative to it; it was more episodic and stood alone. JC: At that point I had formed a composition template involving mixing sounds and pieces of music together to signify the changes in the dance. They became very tightly composed and the outfits became much more complex, as they had no constraints of characters placed upon them except for the litany of archetypes that I was starting to consolidate. A very specific pantheon of creatures began to emerge, representing to me different purposes and occasions. I began to compose around specific events and ideas. There were funeral pieces, defensive pieces, even mating rituals. A: For my concerts in the early 2000s, you would always do a piece at the beginning, after Dr Julia Yasuda’s introduction. I remember just calling you and asking the name of your piece each week. By that time, your compositions were completely independent of any themes being laid out by anyone else. The names of the pieces were always so beautiful.

JC: That is when I really began to hone my ideas. I realised that I could do a very effective dance piece in a way that was almost stationary, which was something that Charlie had asked of me on multiple occasions when filming whatever I would chose to present him with that afternoon. He would always look at me and say in a monotone, ‘slow it down’. I finally took to heart his permission to do this in the spatially limited orchestra pits of the early Johnsons concerts. It’s strange. I liked that format of having a central presentation with intense frontal movement for so long. I have only recently started walking around and moving through space again on stage. A: What are your primary influences as a dancer? JC: Aside from my few classes at UCSC, I was a relative stranger to the greater world of dance. I was working with very little information about what is currently happening in that professional world. I have only studied the Bauhaus ballets in the last four years. I haven’t got a clue about dance history. My approach to dance came more from images of ceremonial dance and figures dancing than from classical movements. I was working mainly with my own impressions of what was possible. A: There was always something transformative and intensely animated about your pieces. Perhaps they were so concentrated in part because they were based on the three-minute model of doing a number in a club. JC: The dances when birthed are made up of three components, the first being the image, which has never been a human image; it’s always been an older image or an organic image that has deep meaning to me. Then comes the movement, and the music. I can see the image in my head and then I look out through its eyes and decide how it would move through the world. So I suppose it’s not like watching a human dance but a representation of something else. I try to let that energy come through me and invite the audience to look at me, not entirely as a person, but as the concept of what I am representing. I think taking non-physical existential visions and trying to place them onto the human body makes them relatable in a different way. Like when I performed the bird dance at that East Village festival, another dancer said she had heard about my work but had never seen it live. She said she could really feel me physically going through it. To make these non-human images involves lots of time, discomfort, stress, and pain on the body; it’s lifting, shaping, and covering in ways that are not practical or comfortable. I need to adapt specialised workouts before I do certain pieces to lift the body extensions. There are certain limitations placed on duration of dance due to the pain and heaviness of the headpieces. My building materials are very important to me in relation to the dance. It has to be organic… real bone, real wood, real metal. I find these constructions do have a warmth to them. There is a specific emotional purpose and delegation to each of the representations. They all represent something very specifically human. A: Your dances often seem to suggest a future world in which life forms are struggling in a bleak landscape.

JC: Yes, that is exactly what I am projecting and representing. Though the purpose of the dances is not to portray that, but to transcend it. For the past three years, I have been composing what I call ‘Survivalist Pastorals’. They are all things that exist in nature at the end of time. Things that could survive a holocaust, things that could live in a void, and what their simple lives consist of. A: Do you yearn for that future existence, or are you afraid of it. Why do you wish to represent it? JC: I am afraid of it. And I look for solutions in that fear. It’s not what is dying but what is surviving, what most basic precepts of life, human and animal, could survive the collapse of the world as we have known it. They are all still alive and engaging in the most natural, simple things. I find beauty in these pantheons. Some of them are ghosts and gods that deal with the dead. Others are insects and simple rudimentary life forms that I look at as the cleaners of death and the mothers. They clean the death and bring the life. These are the insect creatures. They are all mothers. They breed and they eat. Or the one human figure still farming with its rudimentary implements. I would like to think that there would be humans alive at the end of the world. I really want this to be so. Even just a few on top of a mountain somewhere, finding a way to live. A: Do you believe that an environmental apocalypse is inevitable? JC: I believe that it is inevitable in all of its horror and tragedy. I hope that it is not. I don’t believe it, but I passionately hope it. At the very least we can have this. A: Why do you choose to focus on fearful subjects that you project into the future, rather than manifesting more pleasant visions of the natural world from the present or the past? JC: I can enjoy the past and the present, but I can’t engage it in my art. When I think of what I want to feel, it’s a struggle to understand where it’s going from here, to make some peace with it. I think that the world is laboring under a huge amount of fear right now. I would rather aid in the embracing and processing of those emotions that to distract from them. This is something I would like to give to my audience if they choose to take it. If they do not, I think the spectacle of these strange yet familiar images is enough to make it worthwhile. A: How are your creative vision and the scope of your dreams different now from when you were a young girl in the woods? JC: I find that she and I still share the same visions. A: Was there always this sense of foreboding in your life, or is that accurate to say? JC: I would often perceive things as hostile and confusing when looking at the larger scope of life. I could never look into the future and see it laid out in a way that was happy or secure, though it always

seemed like a great adventure and I treasure life immensely. I never felt we had any more of a place on this planet or control of it than the animals I saw dying in the sun. I didn’t have any religion. No one ever told me that God put us here and we are good and we are expected to be ok and we are this elevated entity. What I saw as greatness wasn’t in humanity, but in the images created by humanity. Archetypes were where I saw power. A: In that way, your work seems to bear a relationship with some indigenous dance and modern Japanese dance. The reliance on the transformative power of costume and the sense of embodying a form with an inhuman energy – in fact, the projection of energy and essence generally – seems more allied with Eastern dance. JC: I love the style or the idea of ceremonial dance. I find the higher aspects of dance to be amazing. I find myself more engaged with ceremonial and indigenous dances, though it was never my intent to pattern my dances upon religious dance. I did want to be more like a monolith than a complex body moving through spaces, like a ballerina. A: I have always thought your dances had a shamanistic quality to them. JC: Something I enjoy in music and apply to movement is repetitive cycles. On paper it looks wrong, but it feels so right. I do utilise symmetrical, cyclical movement in many compositions, as it conveys an activity and a stillness at the same time. I would definitely relate it to a trance-like mentality or state. That’s actually why I was invited to participate in the recent Brion Gysin exhibition at the New Museum. It was the parallel between this type of dance and altered states and trance. A: You are starting to make forays into creating art objects. JC: My intention is to move the constructs from my body into more stand alone sculptural form and permanence. To move it from the body to other surfaces. Several of my headpieces have been exhibited as sculptures, and while the make-ups can be photographed, I think that the primary aspects to the body painting could be interesting when moved to paper. Lately I have been doing pressings of the makeups directly from my body. They are reminiscent of shrouds. It’s a primary instinct to follow the forms of the body, adding symbolic colors and shapes. A: It feels, again, ceremonial – and it like a kind of magical evidence. JC: That’s what I would like this original series to be. I am calling them ‘Veils’ and they are directly created from specific dance pieces, which I think does imbue them with a little bit of magic. First published in Dead Flowers, 2011, Vox Populi, Philadelphia and Participant Inc, New York

On being asked about the meaning of his dance, my late father Kazuo Ohno replied that butoh, for him, meant to cherish life in its every aspect. His own, naturally, but more importantly those of others. I cannot help feeling that humanity is approaching a crisis point as I look at the world around us, with people everywhere suffering from man-made and natural disasters. Butoh embraces life in its entirety: the strong, the weak – and is nothing more than life itself. While relishing my personal joy of sharing the stage with Antony, this most soulful of musicians, I pray that this occasion will assist us all to re-awaken an awareness of how we need to cherish life. – Yoshito Ohno

Johanna Constantine, photograph by Don Felix Cervantes

Yoshito Ohno, photographed by Munesuke Yamamoto © Canta Co.Ltd

Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno, photograph by Eikoh Hosoe â&#x2020;&#x2019; Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito, photograph by Eikoh Hosoe

Spirit manifests itself in every phenomena in the universe. A night train through the stars is passing through your inner life. My feet are forcing me to go on an outing. The Dead share my body with me. My Butoh roots can be traced back to my Mother's womb. Countless birds are flocking around you. Dance must be abstract. It's not a case of experience, nor of demonstrating one's skill. Moving quietly allows one to walk with great care. Many are born within me. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Kazuo Ohno

â&#x2020;&#x2019; Kazuo Ohno, photograph by Eikoh Hosoe

On Chrissy Lux Some of Chrissy's earliest memories weren't from his childhood, but from experiences previous to this lifetime, and mostly revolving around a similar theme: being in some position of service to, for, or of, a person of higher ranking, in courts and palaces throughout the ancient world. Usually involving healing, pleasure or frivolity, and always either female, feminine male or third gender. Whether it was the art of touch, sensuality, movement or the decorative arts, he felt strongly he had played a lot of these roles in a variety of places and situations for a long, long time. Strongly identifying with a gender other than male or female, he learned many of these arts early in life, such as massage and henna. In 1998 Chrissy viewed a five-minute act that changed his course. It was of a Chinese acrobatic star from the 1980s named Li Liping, who performed an ancient traditional contortion act called Pagoda of Bowls. ‘I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I watched her, her body had become supernatural, the most beautiful machine. It seemed natural to me to follow this path and after a string of challenging and life-changing events around 2000, I basically decided to shift the entire focus of my life and follow the direction of these ancient performers, moving to San Francisco to train with Chinese acrobats.’

‘For me it wasn't a career move. I was never the young athletic candidate who's typically encouraged very early in life to begin rigorous circus training. For me it was destiny. My spirit needed to follow this path, because it was what my spirit felt accustomed to.’ Chrissy is the only non-Chinese performer in the world who has learned and can perform traditional Chinese plates pinning, an artform with a 3,500 year history traditionally performed by both sexes, but now only by ensembles of young Chinese women in acrobatic troupes throughout China. After years of bitter training with Master Lu Yi and Xie Ke Min of the famed Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe, he can comfortably move through a variety of traditional repertoire including plate spinning, carpet spinning, hand balancing with objects and acrobatic contortion. He makes it his own by doing it in his fem, white-boy way as a variety artist in San Francisco and performing with several circus troupes. Last year he traveled to China to visit the circus school of his teachers in Nanjing and looks forward to going back soon. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but it feels right.’

← Chrissy Lux, The Spinner, photograph by Tyler Ondine Whitman, http://heavyred.com

No No Keshagesh

Buffy Saint-Marie

Keshagesh means Greedy Guts. I t's what you call a little puppy who eats his own and then wants everybody else's.

Little Wheel Spin and Spin

By Buffy Sainte-Marie

I never saw so many business suits Never knew a dollar sign could look so cute Never knew a junkie with a money jones Who's buying Park Place? Who's buying Boardwalk? These old men they make their dirty deals Go in the back room and see what they can steal Talk about your beautiful for spacious skies It's about uranium. It's about the water rights Got Mother Nature on a luncheon plate They carve her up and call it real estate Want all the resources and all of the land They make a war over it; they blow things up for it The reservation out at Poverty Row The cookin's cookin and the lights are low Somebody tryin’ to save our Mother Earth I'm gonna Help ‘em to Save it and Sing it and Pray it Singin’

By Buffy Sainte-Marie

Little wheel spin and spin Big wheels turn around and around Little wheel spin and spin Big wheels turn around and around Merry Christmas Jingle Bells Christ is born and the devil’s in hell hearts they shrink, pockets swell Everybody know and nobody tell Oh the sins of Caesar’s men cry the pious citizens who petty thieve the five and tens and the big wheels turn around and around Blame the angels, blame the fates Blame the Jews or your sister Kate Teach your children how to hate and the big wheels turn around and around

No No Keshagesh you can't do that no more.

Turn your back on weeds you’ve hoed silly sinful seeds you’ve sowed Add your straw to the camel’s load and the big wheels turn around and around

Ol Columbus he was lookin’ good When he got lost in our neighborhood Garden of Eden right before his eyes Now it's all spyware, Now it's all income tax

Swing your girl fiddler say Later on the piper pay Do see do, swing and sway Dead will dance on judgment day

Ol Brother Midas lookin’ hungry today What he can't buy he'll get some other way. Send in the troopers if the Natives resist same old story, boys; that's how ya do it, boys Look at these people, Lord they're on a roll Got to have it all; gotta have complete control Want all the resources and all of the land They break the law over it; blow things up for it While all our champions are off in the war Their final rip off here at home is on Mister Greed I think your time has come I'm gonna Sing it and Say it and Live it and Pray it Singin’ No No Keshagesh you can't do that no more.

← Buffy with a Leopard, Buffy Sainte Marie

My Country 'Tis of thy People You're Dying By Buffy Sainte-Marie Now that your big eyes are finally opened. Now that you're wondering, ‘How must they feel?’ Meaning them that you've chased cross America's movie screens; Now that you're wondering, ‘How can it be real?’ That the ones you've called colorful, noble and proud In your school propaganda, they starve in their splendour. You asked for our comment, I simply will render: My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

The past it just crumbled; the future just threatens Our life blood is shut up in your chemical tanks, And now here you come, bill of sale in your hand And surprise in your eyes, that we're lacking in thanks For the blessings of civilisation you brought us The lessons you've taught us; The ruin you've wrought us; Oh see what our trust in America got us. My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the long houses ‘breed superstition’ You force us to send our children away To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions Forbid them their languages; Then further say that American history really began When Columbus set sail out of Europe and stress That the nations of leeches who conquered this land Were the biggest, and bravest, and boldest, and best. And yet where in your history books is the tale Of the genocide basic to this country's birth? Of the preachers who lied? How the Bill of Rights failed? How a nation of patriots returned to their earth? And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell As it rang with a thud over Kinzua mud? Or of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year? My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Now that the pride of the sires receives charity. Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws. Now that my life's to be known as your heritage. Now that even the graves have been robbed. Now that our own chosen way is your novelty. Hands on our hearts We salute you your victory: Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy. Pitying your blindness; How you never see – that the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory, Were never no more than buzzards & crows: Pushed some wrens from their nest; Stole their eggs; changed their story. The mockingbird sings it; It's all that she knows. ‘Oh what can I do?’, say a powerless few. With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye: Can't you see how their poverty's profiting you? My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Hear how the bargain was made for West, With her shivering children in zero degrees. ‘Blankets for your land’ - so the treaties attest. Oh well, blankets for land, that's a bargain indeed. And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected From smallpox diseased dying soldiers that day. And the tribes were wiped out And the history books censored A hundred years of your statesmen say, ‘It's better this way’. But a few of the conquered have somehow survived And their blood runs the redder Though genes have been paled. From the Grand Canyon's caverns To Craven's sad hills The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale. From Los Angeles County to upstate New York, The white nation fattens while other grow lean. Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean: My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.

Painted Fifi, Buffy Sainte Marie

Liz By Antony sharp hoarse thresh l’d fire he and able I love you more I shy choral, coal own bone Right dance, the impossible to and fro how lark! are you, love, love you dart like silver reign sold in true me, reason moahr in your whisper dee indeed from gasp white shallow plumes exact ecstatics

you willow'd me to ride, towards yoar gold en sea you wait for me, the werld awake, unlike a fort makes me unhappy make me mere an die, london un crest mollocan orchid a ocelot Call A coo, coo Call A coo come toowards My golden throne Throan, throan The light Before A four four My golden Shone Each rest Inside Pa ra dice

and my slave, free grave! ex-arctic

← My Cat, Antony

Manifesto For Men by Drew Daniel and M C Schmidt (Matmos) As gay men, we like maleness, and we like men. Qualities shared by the men that we like: exuberance, joy, experimentation, risk-taking, energy, and force. Qualities shared by the men we don’t like: arrogance, cruelty, entitlement, and stupidity. Anyone can possess these good qualities or these bad qualities. But the centrifuge of culture separates out these characteristics with an eye towards gender norms, doling out punishments and rewards along the way, turning the energetic boy into the cheeky lad, turning the cheeky lad into the chauvinist jerk, turning the chauvinist jerk into the crusty but loveable good old boy. Since in a patriarchal society maleness is an often necessary but insufficient condition for having authority and privilege, to talk as a man to other men about what they should or should not do is to occupy a speaking position that is already predicated upon the silence of women, their subservience, their meekness, their patience. It’s a speaking position relentlessly fought over, with stakes that are economic and political in nature: one more page filled with mantalk = one less page in which a woman might speak for herself. One more man filling the air with mantalk = one more man in a capitalist society making a bid for authenticity, cultural capital, attention, status, and prestige. Business as usual (but so is this mea culpa). To pedantically or piously correct men, to make males ‘better’, (more likable, more sympathetic, thus less likely to be called out for their behavior) takes them off the very hooks that so many deserve to hang from. Maleness itself is a fraught enterprise, a bid to inhabit a symbolic position of supposed self-sufficiency that frequently needs propping up from outside. Consider two possible ways to define maleness. Call them the view from outside and the view from inside:

A man should not tell others what they should or should not do.

Anyone who thinks he is a man is a man, regardless of the configuration, presence or absence of genitalia.

A man should always be kind.

A man should look people in the eye.

A man should always be efficient.

A man should always be thinking of those around him.

Definition 1: To be a man = to show up as a man for others. Definition 2: To be a man = to feel one’s self to be male.

A man should only interrupt people who are boring, selfish, or on fire.

Sometimes these ratify each other, sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, the resulting anxiety can lead to overcompensation and violence. Just look outside any pub at closing time. Now let’s turn to the ambient script of masculinity, musty, shopworn, ready-to-hand, like a jockstrap inherited from an older brother.

A man should never wear a hat indoors, unless it is unreasonably cold.

Definition 3: To be a man = to be the rugged, lonely, self-sufficient, careless stoic who does not need the ascription or approval of others. Definition 3 works to paper over the experiential gap between definition 1 and definition 2. The laddish result is a studied carelessness that cares very much about your recognition of the aloof disdain that it radiates. In the more virulent cases of machismo, we see a histrionic display of strength and the capacity to suffer that is mired in bad faith about its own inherent theatricality. But it goes deeper than that. For those who happen to be born in a male body, this basic non-self-sameness is morphologically basic: whether hard or soft, one’s sense of one’s own maleness comes and goes. In psychoanalytic lingo, this is the difference between the penis and the phallus: the soft, snail-like penis dreams that someday it will grow up to be a big strong phallus, hard all night, never tired, never failing, always ready, always in charge. Viagra or no, the cyclic realities of anatomy belie these dreams of mastery. For many men, the resulting dynamic works like this. By the time you reach an age, size, or recognisable body morph that permits you to more or less assume the position promised by Definition 1 (you have succeeded in being recognised as a man by others), the very premise of authentically inhabiting that position has already been so overwritten and co-opted by advertising

messages, fashion industry messages, pop lyrics, and the doctrines and dogmas of parenting, religious discourse, and normative psychologies that you cannot hope to experience Definition 2 as anything other than a heavily mediated hallucination. Which is why one cannot seriously write a manifesto for the modern man. Because if, in writing such a manifesto, we were to define a zone of maleness and then presume to put out some ethical imperatives that only pertain to the genuinely authorised and authentic inhabitants of that zone, we would only wind up reinforcing the supposed given-ness of its borders: in effect reinforcing the isolation, independence or categorical specialness of the very thing that needs, now more than ever, a blurring, softening, opening, or altering that would surrender the anxious need to make an impossible series of shapes overlap perfectly. With that refusal in mind, here are some codes of conduct:

A man should not question anyone else’s professed manhood.

A man should frequently imagine what it would be like to be something other than a man.

A man should not shave his genitals in a public swimming area.

A man should strive to do whatever he is doing well.

A man should not mix informal clothes with formal clothes-unless it really works.

A man should not enjoy or defend willful ignorance.

A man should not believe in a ‘god’ unless the existence of one has been proven to him beyond any reasonable doubt. A man should stay open about this either way.

A man should strive to listen as much as he talks.

A man should think carefully before following advice garnered from the programme notes of music festivals.

Lay Me Down by Sissy Nobby I need a big dick nigga that can take care of bizness Where my sissy bitches at can I get a witness uugh Dont want no short dick, he can't do shit for me but piss Me off and have me going to the next nigga I need a nigga wit 12 and 14 inches dats breaking my back and non stop Sticking and hitting, ramming my hole and blasing it till get it swole You hoes never rode dick like the kind I done rode My nigga str-8 from out the hood under cover nigga 6 figure nigga Str-8 head bussing the kind that did time in jail and got baby momas they calling me up wen they need a true dick rider.. A li’l pain never hurt no hoe, you hoes scare to get dat dick in that juicy hole wen I see a boy I let him take control I let him beat this hole cause I’m a fire pro [chorus] Lay me down on back and fuck the piss outta me

→ Be around you, by Simon of O F F Love

Sense of Essence by Andrew Butler

Essence is in the flower I see them everyday Scents wafting from the flower I long for it every day Presence is in the flower I look there everyday Look. Look. Look.

â&#x2020;? Sense of Essence Andrew Butler (Hercules and the Love Affair)

Joey Arias on Billie Holiday It was at my parent’s home that I discovered Lady Day. My parents always had such a great selection of music, but it was the Billie Holiday record that caught my attention – and the sound of her voice. It was something I never heard before; after listening to country and rock-n-roll her voice just popped out at me.

I never intended to be her but to have the same feeling.

I would listen to her sing and I wanted to sound like that. I would sit there or lay around and smoke pot and just groove on her styling. I knew that it was a calling.

Andy was so surprised and whispers in my ear, saying that I was using my new voice! He said Billie was Billie and you’re Joey and there was no need to say anything about Billie.

I eventually had become friends with her stepson Louis McKay Jr. Who would talk about Billie and show me his fathers pics of Billie lounging with friends etc.

He loved the channeling part of it... He was fascinated by dead people.

He would tell me stories and I was fascinated by her. I saw the movie Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross and needed more. As I researched I found that Billie was not a skinny girl but chubby, and discovered how she created her own myth. Her life was not a downer but a high level of artistry and happiness. As I discovered her stories I found that we were on a parallel situation. I always felt the rhythm of her voice and phrasing. This could only be done with living the life of the song.

It was during some late night parties that I would sing ‘Good Morning Heartache’. And one time at someone’s loft, Andy Warhol was there and I was asked to sing.

But I really got my big push in London. I was singing out loud and I was invited to record with Iggy Pop’s band at that time. When I was getting prepared to sing... I tried out the Billie voice and the engineer in the booth wanted to know of someone else was in there with me... I told him that it was me. That was the real start of singing with style and feeling... They gagged! And I recorded... ‘Hard Day’s Night’ by The Beatles and ‘Holiday’ from Madonna. It’s such a beautiful way to feel the words and soul of each syllable allowing you to enter the encyclopedia of dreams.

Each song has to talk to me and say something. But again you could take a boring song and just give it your life. My voice has had some hard knocks as Billie’s, and thus I had developed my closeness with Billie.

→ Black Jupiter (Joey Arias) 2005 by Scott Ewatt

Marc and the Mambas flyer, 1982, illustration by Val Denham

Marc and the Mambas flyer, 1983, illustration by Val Denham

Marc Almond on Marc and the Mambas In 1982 feeling I was about to get swallowed up by fleeting pop stardom, feeling trapped, I decided to break out and commit a kind of commercial suicide. I created Marc and the Mambas as a vessel for my alternative musical adventures. The Mambas was to be an ever-changing musical ensemble: some regular musicians that would regularly pop up and some special guests. It would be more acoustic based with World music influences; torch song and chanson flavored; though it would still have a heart in pop and rock, and a punk attitude. All I knew for sure was that I wanted a string section. Nobody else was really doing that at the time in concerts as well as the studio. I'd recorded a cheap 12inch single under the Mambas moniker – ‘Fun City’ (a song from my art college days) and ‘Sleaze’, a soundtrack for strippers – but the first real recordings was the album Untitled, a work-in-progress notebook more than an album, featuring Matt Johnson and strings by Paul Buckmaster. I took dead studio time at Soho's Trident Studios, beneath my offices, using the same instruments and equipment used by Bowie and Bolan in the 1970’s. It was imbued with a magic. The record featured my first Jacques Brel recording (I'd loved Brel since flipping over David Bowie's single ‘Sorrow’ and finding ‘Amsterdam’, hearing Scott Walker sing ‘Jacky’ and seeing Alex Harvey performing ‘Next’ back in the early 1970s). It also featured ‘Big Louise’ by Scott Walker. Songs with piano, vocals and strings. It was the Genesis of the artist I later became. The second album was to become one of my most seminal records, but only later, not at the time. At first Torment and Toreros had scorn poured all over it. 'A florid musical mess'. I took to one Journalist with a bullwhip after he labeled it tawdry S&M. It certainly was the commercial suicide I'd been seeking. Time has been kinder and Torment has been re-evaluated and rediscovered. For me it’s one of my most important records. At the time I was listening to flamenco music, flamenco chords and dance rhythms. I loved its raw, Gypsy, unbridled passion and its aggressive sexuality; its throaty, emotional, passionate singing. I wanted some of this on Torment. The album was recorded in night sessions, much of it improvised on the spot, string parts being written and recorded without much refining and practice, lyrics scribbled down, vocals in one take, flaws were left in. It was at times akin more to jazz than rock. I became ill and run down and remember

finding Flood, who was producing the album with me, passed out exhausted on the studio sofa in the morning after I'd left him each night trying to put the musical chaos into some kind of coherence. Jim Thirlwell (Foetus) put down all the music for ‘A Million Manias’ one of the cornerstones of the record, and Robert Smith and Steve Severin wrote the music for the song ‘Torment’, (though due to an error Robert Smith got left off the credit.) The record was surrounded by chaos. Torment reflects my fragile mental state at the time. It’s about madness, anger, sadness, pain, alienation, sexuality, the aftermath of turbulent adolescence and destructive relationships. It’s about dark love, disappointment of fame and at times, listening to it now, I don't know what some of it is about at all (it all made sense at the time). It ends though in a show-tune optimism. A lot of drugs of all types were consumed in its making, needless to say. It is an album that was loved by people who felt like me, people who felt out of focus with the world in general – outsiders. It was a cry for help, 'a nervous breakdown put to vinyl'. The album is an exorcism and performing it again is another exorcism of darker times. It’s a difficult record to recreate and perform after all these years. It brings back a different life and not always good memories, but enough good ones to make performing it again though daunting, ultimately thrilling. I have performed separate songs from Torment throughout my career but I have never performed the whole album. There are certain artists that have sent me on a journey through music, artists like Bowie, Peter Hammill. I'm proud that I – and particularly Torment and Toreros – have been a part of Antony's musical journey. I perform Torment and Toreros this time for him.

Preparatory artwork for Torment and Toreros album art by Val Denham (courtesy of Marc Almond)

Marsha P. Johnson, the revolutionary trans activist, Stonewall instigator, Andy Warhol model, drag queen, prostitute, starving actress and Saint.

Saint Marsha (Marsha P Johnson), photograph by Rick Shupper

Photograph by Jimmy Camicia

Kembra Pfahler This is the first time my band has ever played in London. My band is comprised of original guitarist Samoa, Gyda Gash on bass and Mivhae on wildwood drums. Alice Moy, original girl of Karen Black is here as well. Usually we activate our set with costumes and props of our design and making with girls of Karen Black from New York. Lately when we have been traveling we have been including new girls – indigenous to the towns we are visiting – to participate in the show. New friends from London will be in this piece. People may imagine that we are a group of sequestered elite artists from the New York art world. The idea that there is an ‘art world’ separate from you all, or an ‘art world’ that requires a special key to enter is dead. The whole world is changing and we are a part of that change. There are a million art worlds, a million scenes, and we are… from this one particular scene... here to share with you some of the ideas and inspirations; these friendships that have developed. You are a part of this world too, as an audience.

having to change what we do. We've been able to perform Karen Black concerts in all types of places: museums, galleries, nightclubs, rock clubs and schools. We have remained artists all of these years because we love doing what we do, sharing these stories in songs, transforming ourselves into sometimes magnificent looking things on stage. For yours and our enjoyment. We serve our muse in the spirit of Availabism: making the best use of what is available. I prepared a speech for Meltdown as well. To share with you some of my philosophies and art practices: Anti- Naturalism and Availabism. – Kembra Pfahler, Creator of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black

Karen black was founded in 1990 because we wanted to have a soundtrack for the performance work we were doing, Samoa and I. At the time in New York the common flavour was noise and grunge and we wanted to dress it up with a contrarian music gesture. A simple meat and potatoes rock and roll that would be a nice foundation for our sort of transgressive imagery. We weren’t popular when we started. Music magazines chided us for being arty. Record labels told me I could get a record deal if I looked prettier and didn’t wear my signature Karen Black look. Metal labels said that if we were satanic we could get a deal cashing in on that angle. We have been able to survive on a DIY diet without

→ River of Blood (2009), Scott Ewalt

Anal bead dress, drawing by Kembra Pfahler â&#x2020;&#x2019; Wall of Vagina, performed by Kembra Pfahler and the Girls of Karen Black, photographed by Rosalie Knox

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How Can we be together How… can we be together How can we be together. And so I evoke The Black feminist Audre Lorde The Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde Differences She wrote Must not be merely tolerated But seen As a font of polarities Between which Our creativity Can spark like a dialectic to the imagination to hope to the future

You never know what will come out of a hole – Vaginal Davis

– Angela Davis (adapted by Vaginal Davies from a speech Angela Davis gave during Occupy Wall Street in 2011)

Vaginal Davis, photograph by Marietta Kesting

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Vaginal Davis in Zackary Drucker's film She Gone Rouge, 2012, Luis De Jesus Gallery

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Will, photographed by Lou Reed. Taken from Lou Reed's forthcoming book Ryhmes

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Mistress Dread

Junior Dad

I’m built like you are I have a dress and a train Your snake cold lips Make a harsh straight line That echoes through my brain

Would you come to me If I was half drowning An arm above the last wave

You’re perfect Let me lift a glass high Let me follow in your footsteps Let me follow in your sigh Let me follow in your sigh I’m a woman who likes men But this is something else I’ve never felt such stirrings I feel like I Was someone else I wish you’d tie me up and beat me Crush me like a kick A bleeding strap across my back Some blood that you could kiss Oh kiss away, oh kiss away I wish there was a strap of blood that you could kiss away I wish there was a strap of blood That you could kiss away Tie me with a scarf and jewels Put a bloody gag to my teeth I beg you to degrade me Is there waste that I could eat I am a secret lover I am your little girl Please spit into my mouth I’m forever in your swirl You’re heartless and I love that You have no use of me But I open the sticks, sticky legs I bear And then insert a fist, an arm Some lost appendage Please open me I beg You are my Goliath You are my Goliath And I am Mistress Dread Oh I am Mistress Dread Oh I am Mistress Dread Open and release me I love you in my head

Would you come to me Would you pull me up Would the effort really hurt you Is it unfair to ask you To help pull me up The window broke the silence of the matches The smoke effortlessly floating Pull me up Would you be my lord and savior Pull me up by my hair Now would you kiss me, on my lips Burning fever burning on my forehead The brain that once was listening now Shoots out its tiresome message Won’t you pull me up Scalding, my dead father Has the motor and he’s driving towards An island of lost souls Sunny, a monkey then to monkey I will teach you meanness, fear and blindness No social redeeming kindness Or — oh, state of grace Would you pull me up Would you drop the mental bullet Would you pull me by the arm up Would you still kiss my lips Hiccup, the dream is over Get the coffee, turn the lights on Say hello to junior dad The greatest disappointment Age withered him and changed him Into junior dad Psychic savagery The greatest disappointment The greatest disappointment Age withered him and changed him Into junior dad

Oh kiss away kiss away Kiss away kiss away All I ask my baby Kiss away

Lyrics taken from the album Lulu, by Lou Reed and Metallica

All I ask my baby Kiss away

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Claywoman By Michael Cavadias

Claywoman, photograph by Matthu Placek

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‘It's a wonder that this fragile contraption is here, that it can see these worlds and feel them and then go away. 500 million years or just one year – it's still almost nothing, but it's everything. It's all there will be for the thing that is the thing in the contraption that knows it where it is. After 500 million years I still have no idea what is happening. I don't think "what is happening" has any idea what is happening. It's just happening. All we can do is listen to the gears moving.

Can you hear it? It doesn't care if you can hear it. It doesn't know that you wonder if it cares. But you care, and that's what matters. You matter. It can't know how beautiful it is, but you can. I would say I would miss knowing how beautiful it was but I won't even know I ever saw it, and that still breaks my heart. It breaks my heart now, but later I will be part of it and it doesn't know there ever was someone sitting in here talking about her heart breaking.’

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Stills from TURNING by Charles Atlas: â&#x2020;?Antony and Johanna Constantine Connie Fleming, Eliza Douglas

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Stills from TURNING by Charles Atlas: Joey Gabriel, Dr Julia Yasuda, Ph.D.

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'Imagine global co-operation for a global problem. Imagine corals as the barometer of climate change. Imagine we are the pivot point. Imagine rekindling Venus. My intent is to leave the audience with a sense of wonder for the complexity of the coral community and a deep-felt longing to see it survive.' Stills from Coral : Rekindling Venus by Lynette Wallworth, a film created especially to be shown in planetariums. coralrekindlingvenus.com

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â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Lynette Wallworth

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Notes on Freedom Rides ‘In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country’ – Dick Gregory ‘America… just a nation of 200-million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable’ – Hunter S Thompson ‘I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally’. – WC Fields ‘I carry a knife now because I read in a white magazine that all in America black people carry knives. So I rushed out and bought me one’ – Redd Foxx ‘Y'know, music is a beautiful thing. When I'm reincarnated, I'm gonna come back as a musical note! That way can't nobody capture me. They can use the hell out of me but ain't nothin' too much they can do to me. They can mess me up. They can play the wrong note. They can play a C, but they can't really destroy a C. All it is, is a tone. So I'm gonna come back as a note!’ – Rahsaan Roland Kirk Yes Rahsaan – whether you believe that there is a god who created us or that we are just here to eventually become worm food, music is the most wonderful and powerful thing ever created. It ended the war in Vietnam and strengthened the Civil Rights movement. It also fueled the Third Reich but that is another tale…

A poem from Charles Mingus which opens our concert: ‘This mule ain’t from Moscow. This mule ain’t from the South. But this mule's had some learnin' , Mostly mouth-to-mouth. This mule could be called stubborn, and lazy, but in a clever sorta’ way This mule could be workin’, waitin’ and learnin’ and plannin’ For a sacred kind of day – A day when burnin’ sticks and crosses is not mere child’s play, But a madman in his most incandescent bloom Whose lover’s soul is imperfection, in its most lustrous groom. So stand, fast young Romeo Soothe in contemplation Thy burning whole and aching thigh Your stubbornness is ever-living And cruel anxiety is about to die. Freedom for your daddy Freedom for your momma Freedom for your brothers and sisters But no freedom for me. Freedom for your daddy’s daddy Freedom for your momma’s momma Freedom for your brothers and sisters But no freedom for me. Freedom for your daddy’s daddy Freedom for your momma’s momma Freedom for your brothers and sisters But no freedom for me.

This is the third time that the Freedom Rides concert will be presented – the music represents the great side of the human spirit – and a slice of American art at its best from a very turbulent time when America was not at its best… and what the power of music did, and can do. – Hal Willner

Hal Willner, photograph by Lou Reed

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Video still from Disintegration Loop 1.1 ÂŠ 2001 by William Basinski

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DISINTEGRATION LOOP 1.1 William Basinski, arr. Maxim Moston Tutti hum F, dying away as music starts

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SCORE IN C

Disintegration Loop 1.1, arr. by Maxim Moston

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Notes for Disintegration Loop 2, by Maxim Moston

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Video still from Disintegration Loop 1.1 ÂŠ 2001 by William Basinski

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PERFUME GENIUS

6 SEPTEMBER • LONDON UNION CHAPEL

DEXYS

11 SEPTEMBER • CAMBRIDGE CORN EXCHANGE 20 SEPTEMBER • BRIGHTON DOME 25 SEPTEMBER • OXFORD NEW THEATRE

RICHARD HAWLEY

3 OCTOBER • LONDON O2 ACADEMY BRIXTON

COLD SPECKS

10 OCTOBER • LONDON UNION CHAPEL

BENJAMIN FRANCIS LEFTWICH 24 OCTOBER • LONDON KOKO

BAT FOR LASHES

29 OCTOBER • LONDON HMV FORUM

THE WALKMEN

1 NOVEMBER • LONDON HMV FORUM

BEN KWELLER

8 NOVEMBER • LONDON ELECTRIC BALLROOM

LAMBCHOP

9 NOVEMBER • LONDON CADOGAN HALL

THE MILK

29 NOVEMBER • LONDON O2 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE