Benz Punany: a lecture
We will be delivering Benz Punany: a lecture at Quorum on the 7th May at Queen Mary's University.
Stranger Things
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Mike Driver
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Janaina Medeiros
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roma★

Origami Around

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will byers stan first human second
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

JBB: An Artblog!
art blog(derogatory)
Xuebing Du
Peter Solarz
d e v o n
Misplaced Lens Cap
KIROKAZE
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@beyourblackgirlfriend
Benz Punany: a lecture
We will be delivering Benz Punany: a lecture at Quorum on the 7th May at Queen Mary's University.
BYBG selfies from our Toilet Show at Sprint in March xx
Your Black Girlfriend is tired.
Your Dearest Wish 03
Collaboration with Katarzyna Perlak
BYBG theme song: Sade 'Soldier of Love'
BYBG
(Be Your Black Girlfriend) Hire Your Black Girlfriend for Bespoke Services
Weddings, Funerals, Dinners, Intellectual Discussions, Confessions, Dance Performances, Style Advice, Relationship Advice, DIY, Cleaning, Dog Walking, Babysitting, House Sitting, Matchmaking, Dance Lessons etc
[email protected] +447732866430 www.acontemporarystruggle.com
(Image by Katarzyna Perlak)
We <3 selfies.
The many faces of Your Black Girlfriend. BELLYFLOP FRINGE 06.10.2013 and London Topophobia 25.07.2013. Occupying a publicly accessible toilet near you...
BYBG get to work for Songs of Immigrants and Experience with Shane Solanki as his Security of the First World at RichMix (fulfilling his Black-Girlfriend-in-a-sari fantasy).
Review of BYBG as part of Artist Monologues at BELLYFLOP FRINGE
I am here for Simultaneous Artist Monologues from Antonio de la Fe, Alice Tatge, Alexandrina Hemsley & Jamila Johnson-Small. Entering the studio I take a seat with other listeners on one of the three rectangular box-like benches placed diagonally across the room, whilst some other people choose to sit on the floor or remain standing. An OHP placed in one of the corners of the room projects flowery patterns made from plywood cut outs onto the white walls. The patterns fill the space. It’s taking me a little while to settle down and adjust. Antonio’s voice focuses me. He’s reading aloud from his computer, something about the idea of Fringe. His voice and speech are reassuring and a bit unsettling as I can’t hear anything else that’s going on in the room with much clarity. I guess that this is part of the exercise.
So I come closer to Alexandrina and Jamila who are having a quiet conversation about being black, women and how they feel about becoming objects of desire. It’s hard to hear what they’re saying, and it seems hard for them to flow in conversation. Their style could not be more different to Antonio’s. Alex and Jamila are not reciting from a computer but are having a staged conversation, where they are speaking to each other and we listen in. Feels like they’re staging some sort of therapeutic or confessional exercise. For who? Them or us? Is it two black girls telling a white crowd about forms of oppression they will never be able to experience first hand or them telling us about stereotypes or modes of behaviour that we as white (heterosexual males) perpetuate? Most probably both and yet the tone is not militant, angry or even reproachful but rather tentative and shy, which makes it more interesting, less certain. What am I listening to and what are we gathering around? The more I listen the more I become involved, something opens up slowly. What has provoked this? The tone of their banter has certainly contributed to this, but I wonder if its how we’ve all gathered round to listen. What are we sharing here? Is it a shared embarrassment and shame listening to Jamila and Alexandrina’s stories or is it something else?
My attention goes to Alice. Alice is dressed in a 1930’s 1940’s style black dress, shoes and glasses and looks the most elegant of the four. She contrasts with Antonio performing as himself, and is diametrically opposed to the comic effect of Jamila and Alexandrina’s white plim soles, African tunic and straightened hair wigs. Alice is also wearing a wig and she is also reading other people’s words. Unlike Antonio she uses books to read from. Freud, Judith Butler, Italo Calvino, Beckett are some of the writers she is using to speak her monologue. She speaks more intermittently than Antonio. She breaks between recitations taking the time to slow dance with people who have come here to listen. I also dance with her. It’s pleasant to make contact with someone, and it also breaks her distant and wistful presence.
I remain standing. I look around to see that other people have also shifted. Antonio is now sitting towards the back of the room reading from his computer. Jamila and Alexandrina have moved to another corner to continue their conversation. Alice continues her rounds and routines speaking sometimes in English and sometimes in Italian. The room seems different now; other conversations have started here and there. Things have shifted a little. Maybe I’m not trying so hard to listen, as the room has been filled with words and voices. The stilted set up of the beginning has dissipated, things have settled. As the bell chimes to mark the end of the event, a little part of me thinks that the content of these monologues and staged conversations were not the most important part of the event. After all, what I’m left with is a trace of voice, some memories of wigs and recitations. However another part of me would like to think that something was momentarily shared, transmitted and re-assembled thanks to the simultaneity of their speech. We made something of it, sometimes at odds with it, but it did stick.
John Pinder is a performance maker, producer and educator based in London. He worked as part of inter-disciplinary collective Present Attempt (2008-2012) and is currently working on a cycle of performance works called In Eldersfield with Kings of England.
Published on BELLYFLOP Magazine
(Image by Katarzyna Perlak)
Reclamation and The Project of Subversion
We aspire to this because we are the underdog and the prize and the gift-giver at the same time. Women. We are powerless and imbued with power. Neither serves us. So we seek agency:
verb
[with object]
undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution):an attempt to subvert democratic government
We need agency in order to speak. To be heard perhaps we need something else. A new language. So we re-interpret, re-define, undo and rebuild in order to reclaim or cultivate what has been damaged or lost, i.e. said agency. But we know the aesthetic of reclamation – black people shouting “nigger”, naked hairy women jiggling their breasts – it has become something established, and so we need another aesthetic, because really, you cannot ever get back what you once lost. The thing we desire to reclaim is gone. We need an aesthetic of moving on because if we keep thinking in terms of loss, we will always be the victim.
BELLYFLOP FRINGE Cabaret at Dance Umbrella (part one)
(Image credit Katarzyna Perlak)
I was participating in a performance research project called BYBG (Be Your Black Girlfriend) last night at a dance festival. Part of the festival was the FRINGE cabaret and in the cabaret was a succession of several female duos, including BYBG. Watching the show I thought, "We are all [we women working in/with/through dance] obsessed with sex". Not sexual acts necessarily but alluding to them, responding with our actions to the desire of some invisible (or present but as yet unspoken and unidentified) other. I felt as though I must be giddy with nymphomania, a victim of a kind of Stockholm Syndrome where a patriarchal society that pushes hetero-normativity has been my captor for so many years that I loved it, I loved him and now continue to serve him. (Like a bitch before she loses her shit and bites of the face of her owner's child in a moment of uncontrollable 'madness'?) These thoughts upset me: am I obsessed with sex? Am I largely concerned with the intention of becoming sexually desirable to others? Is there anything more to my work? to me?
Some 'dudebro' thought calling John Scalzi a feminist was an insult. Uh oh!
Great article by Brittney Cooper after that Harriet Tubman sex tape - "At best, Simmons is utterly clueless about the realities of black female victimization during slavery; at worst, he’s a willfully ignorant misogynist who delights in minimizing the pain of slavery and rape for black women. This is one of the problems with the resurgence of black nationalist politics that inevitably follows the unjust killing of black boys like Trayvon Martin. With a scarily consistent frequency, black women’s political histories and needs are not only minimized but utterly discounted in service of a narrative of black male racial victimhood."
And then the afternoon came along and we 'kept it loose' - dkuksalon:
We were thrilled to be a part of Daniel Kelly's Salon at Ancient and Modern Gallery, London. We chatting to visitors about all sorts: black lovers, racial profiling, HIV, getting 'a look', television soaps in Ghana... thanks to all at dkuksalon