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| Buy Local wall text, all images courtesy of the author |
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| Detail of a Susan Fang piece |
In 2007, I was in a band called Cheeky with 3 friends. Angela Boylan was our drummer. She was (and is) my favorite drummer to play with, but Angie had sort of secretly been writing songs on guitar on her own for years. She had a stockpile of songs she was waiting to play with a band.Read the full piece and download the album (if you haven't yet) at If You Make It.
Not long after I learned of Angie's secret songs, Little Lungs started practicing. Aside from being our sister/brother band, Little Lungs were some of my closest friends. So I was really excited for it.
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| Cover art courtesy Tenement |
When the time came to start the show, Screaming Females squeezed onto the relatively small stage at Maxwell’s, just to the right of a blank sheet on the wall, which served as a projection screen. “We’re Screaming Females!” Paternoster squeaked out, and as the lights went down, she introduced the first artist: Tiffany Cheng, who illustrated the song “Wild,” off of the band’s latest LP,Castle Talk. The work projected onto the sheet ranged from photograph-based and stop-motion animations to felt pen drawings, grotesque and beautiful all at once. The artwork suited the music — dark, jubilant, fun, neurotic — visual and audio codes that we forget to interpret because we’re so busy enjoying it.read the full article here.
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| photo by Bashira Webb |
With an emphatic nod to Queen Latifah, co-curators Alexandria Lust and Lehna Huie challenged the ghettoizing of Black women’s history in their exhibit, Ladies First. Through subtitle alone, Lust and Huie made their mission known: to expand the celebration of Black women’s empowerment and expression past the borders of Black History Month.
Ladies First, which opened Thursday, February 3rd at the Brecht Forum, was a multimedia art show with an exhaustive list of participants. On what seemed to be the coldest night of the winter, I walked down West Street against the icy wind blowing off the Hudson and into the Brecht Forum. The art show spilled from a central room in the Brecht to the walls in the front lobby, and curved around the hallways. As I walked in, people were preparing hors d’oeuvres and drinks, and the two curators were sprinting from one room to another tying up loose ends. The buzz of opening night nerves and oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-we-just-pulled-this-off energy was unmistakable.
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| photo courtesy of Dragana Drobnjak |
In sync with Sarah Lawrence’s recent call for papers for 2011’s Women’s History Conference, I am syndicating my review of the plenary panel from this year’s The Message is in the Music: Hip Hop Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Latina Music & More with RE/VISIONIST (it is also currently published in this year’s Women’s History newsletter). Specifically Ngo and Nguyen’s papers, in the context of the Conference at large, really inspired me to pursue my thesis work on masculinities in punk rock. Watching other scholars dare to take on pop culture subjects like music gave me hope and certainty that cultural production is worthy of an historical treatment.
This article is also timely as it preempts the publication of International Girl Gang Underground, a compilation zine about the way riot grrrl has influenced punk feminist cultural production over the past twenty years. Nguyen’s early iteration of her paper, “Aesthetics, Access, Intimacy” or “Race, Riot Grrrl, Bad Feelings” will be included in the zine, nestled in among scene reports and personal stories from all over the world.
Nguyen’s comment about “quitting punk” illustrated the way many marginalized people feel within white dominated movements. Women, people of color, and queer folks alike have written extensively about how punk rock can be completely isolating to them. On the other hand, with its do-it-yourself ethos, punk rock offers the tools for positive things like grassroots organizing and creative self-expression. The potential for social change within punk and riot grrrl creates a tension: the simultaneous acceptance of marginalized folks within the subculture versus its constant re-creation of social hierarchies.
Critical Intersections was cosponsored by Barnard Center for Research on Women and the New York Women's Foundation, its core focus on the inextricable link between reproductive justice and women's economic security. With a sampling of seventeen New York City organizations, the conference provided a wide array of interpretations of “reproductive and economic justice,” with that definition as a point of intersection for multiple struggles: economic, gender-based, racial, and community-specific.
Musically, Patience Fury appeals to my Black Sabbath fan sensibilities as well as fulfilling a lot of what I want out of good punk rock. Ideologically, it is rare that a metal band has a direct relationship to a feminist scene, or feminist politics, and Trophy Wife embodies that relationship. Otto and Foglizzo face each other when playing shows, building off of each other’s energy and connecting in a way that perhaps only two people can. They share personal stories with political ramifications and engage the audience in the conversation. As this is Foglizzo’s first band, Trophy Wife exemplifies creative openness that a DIY approach to music makes possible.Read the full review here.
Jin & Jam #1
Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture