Greetings friends of Queer Trash. We're thrilled for our upcoming Sunday Session at MoMA PS1, (2/3/19 3-6pm) featuring Joe McPhee, Sarah Hennies, and NYRoCS. 
So QT EA talked Sarah Hennies into chatting online for a little bit. WHO KNEW that Sarah Hennies, the percussionist, is also a very fast typer. We discuss her piece "Passing" for woodwind ensemble that we'll see on Sunday and some other good stuff! 
Thank you Sarah!

​SARAH HENNIES: yo
 
EAMES: Hey!
Don’t think I’ve seen you since the QT symposium, what have you been up to?

SH: Everything imaginable. Haha. I have been performing/presenting nonstop since then
 
EA: Yeah it seems like it! Some highlights?

SH: The concert in Los Angeles for Contralto was really wonderful. That piece has been played a lot and every time has been really terrific and played by good people in nice venues, but the LA show was really special, as close to the magic of premiere as anything has come. My show in Milan at Standards was really excellent, too. Such nice people. I’m having to look at my calendar just to remember the last three months haha
 
EA: And no stopping soon, right?
 
SH: I have a couple weeks off in early March but yeah, I’m basically slammed through mid-April. After I quit my old job, I felt like I needed to say yes to everything and all of the things I’ve been doing have been really good, things I want to do- but finding out lately that I actually do have a limit haha
 
EA: I’m excited for our show on Sunday! Can you talk about “passing” for woodwind ensemble? How did it come about, and what’s your working process like?
 
SH: Yeah, it was originally written for a NYC group called Qubit Music who commissioned me to do a project of my choosing through a grant from NYSCA. I decided I want to make something with wind instruments, just solely based on the fact that I never had before.
 
EA: When was that?
 
SH: May 2018. So, it was composed in late 2017/early 2018 and then performed once at the qubit space in May- and since then the piece is now loaded with a fair amount of conceptual stuff. er rather, I had inserted that stuff at the time too. It grew beyond just “I want to write for wind instruments” pretty fast.

EA: So, is the piece we’ll see sun p different from when it was first performed?
 
SH: No, it’s pretty much the same but Julie Nathanielsz and I have since refined the dancer parts a bit and I’ve eliminated some of the percussion things I was doing before. I think in May there was still a sense that the first performance wasn’t necessarily the final version. I’ve had some time to think about what I would do differently.
 
EA: Can you elaborate on the “conceptual stuff”?

SH: So, a couple summers ago Mara and I were at an antique/junk store in Portland, or called “really good stuff” and while I was there, I found this little metal toy train/truck with two bells on it, and when you pull or roll the truck then it rings the bells. So I bought this thing not knowing why I wanted it or what I would do with it, I had already been working with a bunch of bells so I figured it would just be an addition to the collection. Then fast forward to early 2018 and I’m thinking about how to put myself and Julie into this piece (more on that in a second) and it suddenly hit me why I wanted the truck, what it reminded me off.
I had seen this documentary “Marwencol” maybe ten years ago about an artist named Mark Hogancamp who was discovered as an artist because a photographer kept seeing him walking down the road in upstate NY dragging a toy military truck next to him.
Finally one day the guy stops and asks why he’s doing that, and it turns out he had been brutally beaten, nearly to death, years earlier because he had told some frat guys while drunk in a bar that he liked to wear women’s clothes. So the guys followed him outside after closing and nearly killed him.
When his insurance stopped paying for his therapy, he developed all these methods on his own to help him, and one was pulling this truck.
If he could keep the truck in line with the stripe on the road then it would help his motor skills get better
so I decided I would just drag this toy around in the middle of my piece, since I’d already decided there would be two dance/movement parts as well.
There’s actually a really shitty Steve Carrell movie out right now that’s a biopic about Mark Hogancamp. the trailer looks truly awful and it is apparently the worst box office performance Robert Zemeckis has ever had, so that made me happy.
 
EA: Haha
 
SH:I’d like to go interview him as part of what will eventually be a “passing” film, but he’s forbidden from working on other film projects now because of this awful Zemeckis movie. But also Julie and I wound up as dancers in this piece because Julie and I had met up early last year just for fun, to try and make something together (we had worked together in Austin and she lives in Ithaca now) and the first thing she said to me was, “I’ve been thinking a lot about clothing, and I’ve been dancing under these gaudy patterned bed sheets.” And it was just immediately like, BINGO, and became part of this wind piece.
Sorry there’s no short version of this story haha
 
EA: No worries!
 
SH: The other major component of the piece is several field recordings that I made in busy public places, each one playing through a different speaker. So the idea of ‘passing’ back and forth through a space, ‘passing’ in terms of being a trans person, and so forth... there’s so many layers of meaning that it’s not clear to me what any of it actually means, which is exactly what I want.
 
EA: I want to get back to the field recording in a second but first I’m curious about why you wanted to include dance/movement

SH: I just felt like the piece needed something else. I like to insert things into pieces that don’t make sense, and also it just felt like the right thing to do. Often I’ll make decisions not really knowing why I’m doing them and figure it out later once the piece is done.
 
EA: It certainly makes sense in the context of passing through space
 
SH: Right, and that’s how the field recordings came about. Originally I had wanted to record this really busy bathroom I heard at a rest stop one day on the way to Buffalo. It was totally hilarious and weird and intense and complex. like 40 toilets all flushing, sinks running, hand dryers, people yelling. But then I ended up never actually getting that recording, so the whole thing has developed really intuitively.
 
EA: Is it fair to say that you work intuitively most of the time, or is that more specific to this piece?
 
SH: Most of the time for sure. often there’s an initial concept/idea but usually those are different by the time I’m done. The original “concept” for this piece originally was seriously just, “wind instruments” haha. Which is another type of ‘passing’ - air passing through a tube.
 
EA: Ahhh I didn’t think of that kind of passing, that’s interesting It makes passing really more rooted in time -passing- too.
 
SH: Yeah exactly. The title almost seems too perfect :)
 
EA: Haha it’s good! So where did these recordings end up coming from?

SH: Let me see if I can remember. Philly reading terminal market, union station subway in nyc, the bathroom at Niagara Falls, a diner in Ithaca. There’s two more ... uhhh … When you hear them all together it actually just sounds like you’re outside in NYC, it’s very uncanny valley. Which I hadn’t expected. Oh a trolley station in Philly. All busy public places.
 
EA: My follow up was going to be to ask if there was a specific significance to the spots, but it seems like actual location isn’t as important as the sound itself.
 
SH: No not really, initially I had wanted that bathroom recording but when I went it wasn’t busy enough to have the same effect. So it really did develop on its own, especially once you mix six of those together, it’s really hard to tell what’s what. it’s just this endless din of background noise.
 
EA: Are there going to be gaudy bed sheets?
 
SH: Naturally haha. I decided a few weeks ago I wanted to remove the vibraphone part, it just felt unnecessary to me. So she and I will strictly be moving/dancing.
 
EA: Have you performed in that way before this piece?

SH: Last time we did this yes, but then I was behind a vibraphone for the first 15 mins or so. But this is my first time only doing that, yeah. We’ve been working together a bit in a studio here, so I feel less nervous than I did a couple months ago.
 
EA: Maybe this is too specific a question, but- Do you feel like working with your body in this different way has affected other ways of working/thinking?
 
SH: Probably yeah, but I haven’t thought too deeply about it yet. certainly it fundamentally changed what this piece would have been if Julie and I had never met up. I had some failed plans to go to grad school this year for a PhD and one of the things I wanted to do was take some dance classes, because I thought it would feel good and be intellectually/artistically valuable to figure out how to use my body. I’ve always been scared of dancing, my whole life.
 
EA: Relatable. I have taken some contemporary dance classes though and it was a big game changer for me.
 
SH: I had a feeling it would be for me too, and I’m more conscious of a sort of disconnect between my brain and my body than I was when I was younger. I think that’s part of why the decision to not play percussion came about too, because I’m a little afraid of doing that, which is usually a good reason to do something.
 
EA: Afraid of dancing?

SH: Afraid of performing that way, “without a net” so to speak. You really feel on display without an instrument in front of you/in your hands.
 
EA: For sure. There’s a bit in your interview with national sawdust that stuck hard with me since I read it in fall 2017- about an earlier mode of making work that was self-destructive as a way of exerting control over your body. That sounds exactly like several years of my own performance-making. But since you’ve moved on from that way of working/thinking, I’d love to hear about what you do now to take care of yourself as you perform and develop new work.
 
SH: Well you’re catching me at kind of a dark moment haha. I’m maybe a dozen presentations into this piece “contralto” and it is really taking a lot of me, more than I realized. So I guess I still have the self-destruct gene but it’s coming from a different place.
 
EA: Relatable again. Fear as a motivating factor for movement haha.
 
SH: I feel like basically everything I do now is rooted in love, but I am honestly having a hard time dealing with presenting work like this as my job. I haven’t consciously done this, but all the new commissions I’ve done this year have had nothing to do with this topic at all. And obviously there are other things I’m interested in.
 

EA: When did you quit your job?
 
SH: Mid-May last year
 
EA: Is there something particularly taxing about Contralto?
 
SH: Yeah, I mean... the piece was conceived as a kind of representation of dysphoria as an experience. It’s not explicitly explaining that’s what it is, but it’s what guided a lot of the compositional choices. So I’m essentially constantly living inside the thing that transition is supposed to allow you to stop thinking about. It’s very very exciting and rewarding to be doing this all the time and seeing the response that it has gotten, but it’s really starting to make me feel not good.
 
EA: Wow yeah that make sense. I saw the premiere at ISSUE, and it was really stunning but I see what you mean. After these upcoming shows are you going to retire it for a while?

SH: Yeah, I think I’m going to start allowing the parts/materials to be ‘rented’ so I don’t have to be there. It would just require me to tighten up the score/instructions a little bit, but as of right now there are no performances planned beyond mid-February. I’m doing it twice in the next two weeks, though- on top of this other piece that’s even more intense lol
 
EA: Passing?
 
SH: Yeah. Crystal Penalosa saw the first performance and told me it was, “almost too real”
 
EA: Well take care of yourself!!
 
SH: Trying, haha
 
EA: Maybe the move towards movement is your body talking to you, “Pay attention to me”
 
SH: It’s definitely something I’m interested in working with more.
 
EA: Crystals performing in it Sunday, right?
 
SH: No, a bunch of other awesome people though. She was just in the audience last time.
Derek Baron, Lea Bertucci, Katie Porter, Rebekah Heller, Joshua Rubin, Michael Foster, and Ka Baird
plus me and Julie
 
EA: Whoops I should have known that. Right- Derek, I knew it was another symposium person
 
SH: Ya, totally weird/awesome group
 
EA: How do you pick performers?
 
SH: Initially I wanted an all queer ensemble but there were also some instruments I wanted like bassoon and clarinet where I just didn’t know anyone that fit that description and was available
 
EA: Understandable
 
SH: I was trying to strike a balance of low and high-register instruments too, so I’d have a wide spectrum.
 
EA: Well I’m looking forward to it!
 
SH: Yeah, same. So glad I get to do this piece again.
 
EA: Anything else we should know about the piece? We’ve covered a bunch.
 
SH: Don’t think so! that’s most but not all of my secrets :)
 
EA: :) Ok lastly any shout outs to artists/musicians you’re particularly into at the moment?
 
SH: uhhhh I’ve been working with the cellist Judith Hamann on a new solo piece and she is really wonderful. I’m excited to spend some time with Oren Ambarchi and crys cole over in Scandinavia too, we have a few shows together. Annie Lewandowski who is another Ithacan is up to a lot of great stuff right now, too. Otherwise I really just only listen to Daniel Romano and old Lucksmiths albums on repeat right now :)
 
EA: Nice! Ok well thanks so much for taking time to chat :) see you on Sunday :)
 
SH: yes, see you soon!

Interview done by Eames Armstrong on 1/28/19, slight edits for clarity. 

OK. There is a theme on qt trash talk of me posting things months after they happened but this one is ridiculous. I got Lorene Bouboushian to internet chat with me almost one full year ago, today is September 20, 2018 and the interview was on September 29, 2017. WHy have I not posted this. It was on my to-do list like every single week since we launched this site and by some self-destructive recurring thing I just didn't get to it. 

I did this interview a few days before Lorene performed at a Queer Trash event at Silent Barn (rip) link here to a video of that performance and embedded at the bottom of this page. I was also late to this interview, late to that Queer Trash event. But you know what? The interview is here now, and it's terrific. and I apologize. 

NOW Lorene will join us THIS SATURDAY at QUEER TRASH the SYMPOSIUM!! Can't wait to talk to them more!!

On this episode of Trash Talk, QT Michael interviews FOQT (friend of queer trash) Dane Rousay in advance of Dane's participation in QUEER TRASH THE SYMPOSIUM coming up so soon on September 22 at ISSUE Project Room!

​Queer Trash/Michael Foster: so, Hey Dane
This is my first interview

Dane Rousay: Congratulations
thank you!
I'm happy to be your first

MF: So, tell me about yourself

DR: My name is Dane Rousay, my pronouns are they/them (she/her on a good day). I play drum kit and a bunch of other percussive instruments. I've been improvising around the U.S. / Canada lately and currently live in San Antonio, TX!
oh MY
Pro-enough for you MICHAEL?

MF: very professional

DR: And at this very moment I'm trying to figure out what to think of this Randy Peterson recording.

MF: I'm sure it's lovely
You tour often doing solo and collaborative performances around the US, but you also run a series out of San Antonio called Contemporary Whatever

DR: Seems like that is the way I'm leaning.
Yes! I do. Curate when I'm in town and take advantage of other folks' series when I'm not in town.

MF: So what's the community like in SATX for weirdo music / queer folx etc?
do you find that there's a crossover of the two 'scenes' or integrated?

DR: Weirdo music seems to be thriving at the moment. It is almost all done at a very DIY level (which is good/expected) but I am trying to elevate some of these performers/queer folx via Contemporary Whatever because we do have a nice venue to use and some funding as of recently. 
I would say the crossover seems to be my friend-group prior to establishing the series. A lot of the experimental performers identify as queer. There also seems to be a seperate scene developing as well that is just a ton of straight dudes who do noise (which i enjoy) but not necessarily queer-friendly.
SATX actually has a fairly large queer population (outside of just weirdo performance) but in my experience it is hard to find your “place” when you don’t really fit into some of the conventional queer boxes.. I’ll get local press occasionally and my pronouns will always present this issue for them (as if singular they is the end of the world/something Sooo revolutionary or new).

MF: In my experience touring Texas a year ago, I found a pretty remarkable overlap between queer and experimental performers that was more pronounced than most cities I've been to.
It was really surprising, how do you feel SATX compares to those other cities?

DR: SATX is definitely a little behind most of the cities you're probably thinking of. There is definitely a queer community here within the "weirdo music" scene but maybe our voices aren't as loud, ha.
I still constantly find myself in situations where I am having to out myself to people in the community (and it is a surprise).

MF: Do you feel your 'queerness' influences / defines / etc's your work as a percussionist?

DR: I’m comfortable saying that my queerness informs how I feel about and play my instrument (granted 1/2 my ‘instrument’ is like any object you can possibly hit).

MF: How so?

DR: I have mixed feelings about percussion these days, ha.

MF: omg UNPACK THAT PLZ

A few weeks ago I snagged a chat with Justin Allen, who is one of seven artists we couldn't be more thrilled to present as part of QUEER TRASH: THE SYMPOSIUM at ISSUE Project Room on September 22. 

Justin Allen is a writer and performer from Northern Virginia. He has read at the Poetry Project, Kampnagel, and Serpentine Sackler Gallery, and performed at Artists Space, Knockdown Center, and Queer Abstract.

Justin is also a fellow fellow of QT EA in QAM. 

Justin Allen: Hey!

Queer Trash/Eames Armstrong: 🙂 how are ya 

JA: Pretty good, you?

EA: I'm good, a little dizzy with too much on my plate but thats how I like it

JA: I totally get that

EA: Can't crash if I can't stop haha. Looking ahead to Queer Trash: the Symposium, I’m curious to hear how you've been thinking about the "symposium" format

JA: Totally. When I hear symposium, my mind immediately goes to someone standing at a lectern delivering information, but I'm hoping to interpret this format in a way that fits the work I'm presenting.
I'll be performing my piece Explain Totality, which I made in 2017, and will follow this with a reading of poems and non-fiction that are informed by the same research as the performance
I'm interesting in juxtaposing dance performance with reading
The performance is similarly split between performance and a reading by my recorded voice, so I want to keep this relationship going

EA: Can you talk about the research?
 
JA: For about 2 years now I've been researching both the origins of emo music, which I grew up an avid listener of, and the history of US suburbs, one of which I grew up in. I am very interested in linguistics, and I understand history, and strands of histories interweaving, as an etymology of contemporary culture and life. In this way, this research was very much inspired by a desire to understand my adolescent and present selves, and the regional and popular culture that shapes me.
From this research I found many intersections
I learned that the first band labeled emo, Rites of Spring, was from DC, where my dad was born and raised, and released their debut studio album in 1985, the year my parents got married. 

​EA: how did the label come about? I tend to think about 'early' emo as more like Weezer-sounding
 
JA: Emo is short for emotional hardcore, and described Rites of Springs hardcore sound combined with emotional, introspective lyrics.
EA: Did you folks have any relationship to dc hardcore, or other music scenes?
 
JA: They did! Emo lyricism was a contrast to the aggressive, hypermasculine energy of the scene at the time.
It came out of DC's hardcore scene

EA: oh oh I meant "your folks" like your parents
 
JA: oh!

EA: typo lol

JA: My mom grew up in Texas, but my dad was growing up in DC at the same time as many of the early hardcore scene's popular figures, but he never knew about the scene.
Which is part of why it fascinates me that I would become such an avid listener of mainstreamed emo growing up in a suburb of DC, the city where the genre was coined when my parents were in their 20s and living in a totally separate world, so to speak
I found an article in the Washington Post from the early 80s noting that the county in Northern Virginia that I grew up in had just recently begun to see an increase in the black residents, but that we had been historically unwelcome there
So this was happening in the earlier days of DC's hardcore scene, and around the time my dad had left DC for college
Eventually my parents would move into the suburbs, have me in 1992, and by 2004 I was listening to Fall Out Boy and My Chem
I'm interested in that trajectory, as well as the history of rock n roll and its black innovators, without which there would be no emo

EA: absolutely
 
JA: Chuck Berry did an interview in the 80s where he mentions that in God Save the Queen the guitar and progression sounds like his, making a connection between punk and rock n roll sounds, and hardcore punk evolved from punk rock, so I've been interested in this aesthetic narrative
This research has involved a lot of music listening which has been great

EA: Ha I think I found that interview, on The Ramones he says "A good little jump number. These guys remind me of myself when I first started, I only knew three chords too."
 
JA: Thats the one!

EA: And you also make music, right? Is that related to this body of research too?
 
JA: I do! I've been collaborating on a music project with artist Devin Kenny as part of a larger sci-fi project about life in a Post-Reparations US. For the project, we're both characters living in this world.
For this project, I've been writing emo songs about Virginia to the melody of Rae Sremmurd's song Black Beatles, which I perform to in Explain Totality
Song are to be performed a capella

EA: What's the relationship (or parallel?) with sci fi and emo, and how do you know if something is emo?
 
JA: I think of them as two different projects, the sci-fi and the emo work, but I think what draws me to both is an interest in history, and finding myself in histories that have been omitted or not taught to me. Black people have been involved in--and continue to be involved in--rock n roll and the many genres that branch from it since these genres' inceptions, from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to Bad Brains, to Santigold (she used to be in this really great punk bank called Stiffed), to Brontez Purnell, to Tamar-kali and many more, but Black musicians in these genres are often written out of dominant narratives--an erasure that the Afro-punk documentary, for example, disrupts. So my emo work is about disrupting erasure on a local and first-person level, and my sci-fi, while fictional, is very much in response to the legacies I am learning about through my researching of the past.
Also worth noting, the word "mosh" is traced back to a Bad Brains show at 9:30 Club

EA: I didn't know that
There's now a J.Crew where the first 930 was
 
JA: Oh noo
H.R. of Bad Brains yelled "mash down Babylon" at a show there in a Jamaican accent, and it sounded like "mosh"

EA: innnteresttting
Can you talk a little more about moshing? really fascinating to think about it within a contemporary dance lens. Moshing, and at some point the term "slam dancing" came and went
 
JA: Yes! I have a pdf of an article that I need to find that talks about the creation of the word, and says that moshing came from slam dancing
When I was in high school choreographed hardcore dancing was popular- set moves you would do to the music
I've been interested in creating a movement vocabulary with moshing and hardcore dancing as its foundation

EA: is there anyone doing anything like that?
 
JA: The rapper Kevin Abstract has a music video where he looks to be moshing

EA: ooo and Mykki Blanco "Moshin in the Front"
 
JA: Brontez Purnell has a video performing with others to live drumming that's been a big inspiration. I'm not sure if he'd label it moshing, but the movements, while fluid, felt similar
Yes, Mykki! Mykki does wonderful things with punk aesthetics in general

EA: I guess that's not necessarily movement but there was a LOT of movement when I saw them live last month
 
JA: Yes, same when I last saw them live
I think components of moshing are present in many practices, whether the throwing of arms, the large movements at high speeds

EA: I've been thinking a lot in the last few years about how dangerous "the pit" was at certain kinds of shows maybe shaped the kind of music I like
 
JA: Yes, one big component of my thinking about mosh pits is thinking about their racial dynamics, and being one of few people of color surrounded by white men essentially enacting violence

EA: totally
 
JA: I remember being scared, feeling connected to and aware of other people of color present, and also oddly cared for. I remember people putting their arms up to protect others from being hit
For my piece, I was really interested in moshing alone, in order to think about difference within the context of mosh pits
I was also very inspired by Lorraine O'Grady's piece The First and the Last of the Modernists, and her use of the diptych to juxtapose two seemingly unrelated people, Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire, in order to highlight their connections. I wondered, how can I perform a diptych to draw connections between two genres that are seemingly unrelated, but between which there is a shared American history
Because black and white are stark contrasts, I decided to use contrasts and the diptych idea as constraints: the first half of the piece I'll move but not speak, the second half will be my voice with minimal movement.
The two songs juxtaposed I also considered a type of sonic diptych, accentuated by my movement

EA: Can you say what those songs are or do you want to keep it a surprise for our readers 🙂
 
JA: Let's keep it a surprise 🙂

EA: yas! Haha. thank you!!

<3
Interview on July 13, 2018
some edits made for clarity

The theme so far on QT TT is posting stuff really late. Oops? In the fall I did a few cool interviews with the hopes of printing them into a zine for the QT at the beginning of October. I've been meaning to post them sooner, but oh idk. I've been busy and whatever. You could say I've been in a Queer Time and Place.* haha. 

I did this interview on gchat with Jacob Wick. We talked nonhierarchical composition, time warp, and taboo emotionalism. Enjoy!!

Thursday, September 14, 2017 4:43 PM


Jacob Wick
hey howdy

Eames Armstrong 
hi hi 
how is your week goin?

JW - oh, pretty good. i'm playing a big concert next thursday and then i leave for tour the monday following, though, so a little more stress than usual

EA - how big is big?

JW - but the weather is nice and i have a dog this week so that's helping
it's in a festival here in mexico city called aural, opening for roscoe mitchell and the chicago underground duo. what's big about it for me is not so much the names, although i am really excited to see roscoe mitchell play again and really curious about what he's going to do with the chicago underground duo, but that it will be the first time i'm presenting original compositions in like 6 years

EA - oooh, cool. so two questions coming at you- what kind of work have you been doing in the last six years, and then I want to ask about how you approach composition

JW - i've been mostly improvising and/or playing other people's compositions. or not really playing at all. like i left new york in 2011 to go to grad school in the bay area and barely performed at all for about 3 years. then when i moved to mexico i suddenly began performing a lot

EA - ah, grad school. I got an MFA last year and am crazily looking at PhDs now. what did you go to school for? then composition question 

JW - haha it's not crazy, school is nice i think. i got an MFA from the social practice workshop at the california college of the arts
so i was focusing more on non-music-related scoring, i guess, like a way of putting people in situations that didn't involve composition or stage-performance
composition question: i'm more interested in music as a means to effect relations between people than as an aesthetic thing. so i use kind of a hodgepodge of compositional techniques. but my goal is usually to give or force everybody in the group to have more or less the same level of agency
i mean effect with an e btw
haha

EA - can you give an example of a situation that you composed that was particularly successful? which I think also asks what constitutes a successful work?
also feel free to be like "next question" at any point haha

JW - uhhh well right after i graduated from CCA i did a project in philadelphia called germantown city hall. i worked with a group of artists there called "The Think Tank that has yet to be named..." (meredith warner, jeremy beaudry, and katie hargrave) to make available an abandoned city hall structure in the germantown neighborhood of philadelphia into a functioning "city hall" in the manner of anarchist town halls in various new england towns in the late 19th century
it ran for a little over a month and various members of the community presented art installations, workshops, etc nearly every day. sometimes more than once a day. that felt successful because i think we achieved what we set out to do, which was to make the city hall accessible in a relatively non-hierarchical way. like to open a space of civic discourse i guess
maybe it didn't achieve anything so grandiose as a space of civic discourse but it was getting there. i'm still very proud of that project and don't mind at all that it is the only thing i have "done" so far with my MFA
i don't know what constitutes a successful work tbh. but i think it has something to do with having an intention and having the work follow that intention?

EA - yea I think its totally circumstantial 

JW - agreed

EA - if it does at all, how does this kind of thinking about creating space for discourse or non-hierarchical structures influence the work you make musically? 

JW - welll. right now i'm trying to compose in a way that removes me as the "leader." so everyone has equal responsibility, more or less, or equal power to move the composition along or whatever
and i think in a roundabout way it's affected my improvisations as well. like right now i'm focused pretty heavily on playing long, more or less static noisey textures
which, after thinking about it, i'm really excited about because it causes a kind of chain effect, in idea at least
like using unstable acoustic noise that dodges the human breath causes a kind of time warp that can open up a space temporally and emotionally

EA - um please go on about this time warp

JW - lol
welll
for me time is marked more by phrasing and breath, musically and in general, than by clocks
like the experience of time i mean. and if there's no breath, then one's sense of time gets kind of muddled i think. like when i listen to droney stuff or noise—eliane radigue is a master i think—i lose all sense of how much time is passing and kind of fall into a hole
and i think that can be kind of a liberating and kind of a queer place to be. like when you lose yourself a little bit, when your sense of self kind of blurs
in performance, for me at least, using these kinds of textures makes me really emotional also, but in a kind of vague way. like not happy or sad or directed, just emotional. i'm not sure if that's because of what i'm playing or because what i'm playing is extremely physically demanding, tho

EA - well it sounds as if this sort of emotional zone is something not limited to your own physical playing experience if its something you get hearing it from someone else, live or recorded

JW - true. i think it's what draws me to these kinds of music in the first place
like i'm really things that are jarring in a non-macho way

EA - non-macho sounds?

JW - yeah i don't know. i associate virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity with machismo
and there's stuff that's jarring in that vain, but i find it really dull
"jarring"

EA - I'm going to sit with that and come back to it

JW - that's cool i may or may not be talking myself into a trap there anyway

EA - lol na
I'm at the library rn reading a book "queerness in heavy metal music"
I have a lot of thoughts

JW - whoa i want to see that book
also read it

EA - so far whats so exciting to me about it is the writer comes at the question "how can you possibly queer metal" with something like "are you kidding metal has always been so gay"
which rhymes so nicely I think with how Michael and Richard and I are all kind of approaching queer trash
so maybe we can come back to machismo with a detour through queer
wonder what your take is on the name 'queer trash' -like what your thinking or relationship or associations are with it

JW - i'm into it
i don't know if i have a take on it though. i like the idea of owning trash or discarded sentiment/performance/objects/etc
and i guess i am pretty committed to resuscitating sentiment, like really intensely feeling, which is maybe trashy at some or all points

EA - ooh thats nice. emotionalism is so taboo

JW - i know right? which is silly
i mean i guess it's not, like it's easier and more efficient and whatever to not feel, but i am not so into being efficient. or maybe i'm really efficiency-minded and trying to convince myself not to be
and i can be grandiose for a second, i think the main thing that neoliberalism does is rob us of our own humanity, ie neoliberalism is driven by the abstraction of things from themselves, including people, so that we start to think of our own lives in terms of productivity as if we were machines
and while i'm all for donna haraway and cyber-whateverisms, i also reject being a machine
not that i think donna haraway and a neoliberal project are in any way connected, nor have i ever fucking read anything by donna haraway so just forget it. i have watched/listened to a bunch of her talks on youtube but i'm not sure that counts

EA - bahaha
she's a little wacky but like really trendy right now it seems

JW - shes' totally wacky, i love listening to her talk

EA - theres also something perfect about encountering her through youtube, which- i think- is a completely legit way to "read" her

JW - i like listening to philosophers/theorists talk
i listened to foucault's lectures at berkeley that are/were on ubuweb a lot a few years ago and really enjoyed it
like the way he talked, laughed, etc. but also a line where he says "we think of ourselves as subjects of desire, but when will we start thinking of ourselves as agents of pleasure" or something like that

EA - when you're performing do you think of yourself as an agent of pleasure??

JW - maybe as an ultimate goal
when i'm performing i'm mostly thinking about staying relaxed and breathing
but i like the idea of being an agent of pleasure a lot

EA - what does that make the audience?

JW - hm
i guess a potentially desirous public

EA - a sea of subs lol

JW - lolol
yaassss
no i don't know
i guess when i'm talking about being committed to feeling, but not a particular feeling, i mean i want to be an agent of, like, something
maybe not necessarily pleasure, just something

EA - that makes sense- would you say theres a kind of process of exploring or trying to locate that -something- in improvisation? 

JW - yes 100%
like i am a pretty firm believer that all sound casts affect, maybe not specific emotions, but usually something. so performed sound has more of a capacity than other media to alter a body's emotional state

EA - you mean performed as opposed to recorded?

JW - i did when i was typing it but no, i think both have that capacity
maybe performed is more direct because of the physicality of it. not only the performance but just that there are bodies with each other in a room

EA - mm yeah I was wondering about presence and sociality in relation to the time warp you mentioned earlier

JW - yeah, i mean i think melting together is an ideal aspect of the time warp sensation
but i'm not sure this kind of group sensation is impossible through recorded media
but it is definitely more easy or more available in a performance context, especially an intimate performance context where everybody is kind of huddled together anyway

EA - have you performed in other specifically queer contexts before?

JW - not really, although i would like to. i performed in queer trash last year and then shortly thereafter in a series called "queer sound ithaca" in ithaca

EA - well this has been terrific, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me
is there anything else you want to mention or throw out?

JW - ummmm no? not that i can think of
i'm excited to play and i hope to meet you there! thanks for talking with me also 

EA - for sure! thanks again see u soon 

JW - byeyeyeyeyyeye



--Interview edited just a little for typos and clarity, otherwise text style kept original


Here is another interview on Jazz Right Now if you just can't get enough!!

*Can you download this book through this link? hmu if you need access.

“We don't need to talk about music,” Genesis Breyer P-Orridge said seated on stage below swirling vivid projections of thee pyschick cross before a reverently hushed audience. S/he continued, “Transexuality is the key to the destruction of democracy.” It was the final hour of Between 0 and 1: Remixing Gender, Technology, and Music presented over three consecutive Sundays in February at MoMA PS1. In addition to the grand m-other of industrial music, weekly headliners were house music legend Honey Dijon, and DJ and interdisciplinary experimenter Terre Thaemlitz aka K-S.H.E. aka DJ Sprinkles.

​This was a year ago- I wrote this to be published somewhere and it fell through, you know how that happens. So here it is now!!

My major takeaways are:
1. House music originated by and for predominately queer folks and people of color and it is currently colonized by white European cis-men (something they are wont to do.) And this sucks, of course, but the global rise of DJ culture has elevated a lot of people to fame who truly deserve it, like Honey. The thing to do now is to never forget from where this music came. It is those in power who determine how history is remembered, and it is the responsibility of these white house-colonizers to know and uphold the truth of their legacy.
2. Pessimism is the only answer to a question of capitalism, religion, gender, and the music industry. And, pessimism can only ever be a shitty answer because it inadvertently reproduces the question being asked by being any kind of answer at all.
3. Men are the cause of, and their elimination may be the solution to, all of life's problems. It is the culture of toxic masculinity that causes and reproduces our oppressive patriarchal capitalist situation that we in the U.S. are experiencing in a newly fucked way. We are on some kind of edge, and we've been here before. This moment is either going to teeter our culture into a radical new social and political revolution or plummet us back in time destroying in a rush all the liberties fought for by the civil rights movement.
In short, I had a great time. Following is a run-down of the program. ​

Sunday, February 12, 2017
The series was kicked off with a workshop and hackathon by Code Liberation, a 501c3 non-profit organization founded in 2013 dedicated to educating “women, nonbinary, femme, and girl-identifying people to program using creativity as a pedagogical approach.” Despite shifting numbers and constant expansion of the field, the computer science industry continues to be highly male-dominated. The workshop introduced the coding language P5, a JavaScript library designed for beginner coders, particularly artists and designers. Workshop participants used P5 to build digital synths, sequence music, and turn speakers into microphones. The workshop also featured some games created by members of the organization. Games are one of Code Liberations multiple tactics for opening coding to new audiences in engaging and accessible ways. 

After a break was a screening of the film To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation (2013) by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and scholar Tavia Nyong'o. The film is based on the 1970 score of the same name by the late Pauline Oliveros;  Oliveros developed the score after reading Solanas' infamous SCUM Manifesto. Published in 1968, the year Solanas shot Andy Warhol, SCUM Manifesto calls for the total eradication of the male sex as the only possible solution to oppression under capitalism. While extreme, she makes some good points. Though an unlikely pairing on their own, Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe are united in their relationship to gender and power by way of Warhol. Oliveros' minimal response refers to these themes overtly in the title of the score, and more subtly through the interaction of the musicians performing the work that involves five pitches and long tones, striving for the balance of matched intensity among instruments. In turn, Boudry and Lorenz take their own nuanced approach to questions surrounding community and gender by pulling from their own queer artist circles in Berlin to cast the film, shot in one take. The filmmakers chose to remove the conductor to emphasize the dynamics among the performers, as a metaphor for attentiveness to the needs of others, especially within marginalized communities. 

Next up was a talk by Honey Dijon on her DJ career and experience growing up in Chicago around the origins of house music, and the New York club scene of the 1990s. She was then joined for a discussion with DJ, producer, and manager Bill Coleman along with DJ Venus X best known for the influential New York GHE20GOTH1K parties.

Dijon said when she started going to clubs as a teen in Chicago there were no genre micro-distinctions like there often are now, all that mattered was whether a track was good to dance to. After all, the term “house music” came about because the DJ would play the club's house record collection. After moving to New York, Dijon got involved in the drag scene through big events such as Wigstock, an annual festival in the East Village. Her career took off, DJing elite fashion after parties in Paris and London, at the same time that she began her gender transition. She talked about the difficulty of having to make very private decisions publicly as her celebrity increased, at a time that doesn't seem so long ago, but the public conversation around transgender issues was either non-existent or very different than the increased openness we have begun to witness today. She said, “you need muscle to be okay with making decisions.” She had to figure out a way to “share [her] truth” without having a pre-made language, without a reflection of herself in the world, so she carved a path for herself as a trans-female African American woman. 

​Dijon moved to New York “to discover herself,” and laments that the city has become so expensive and gentrified that it is no longer a place to create but now a place to consume. I just moved to Brooklyn myself, and really can't say that I fully agree with her on that, but I don't doubt that the city she moved to is massively different than it used to be. Furthermore, DJ culture itself has changed radically, there was no international DJ culture like today. Dijon emphasized that primarily European white male producers and DJ's have overtaken a sonic language that was once the voice of queer and minoritarian communities. Because the history that is remembered is really the history of those in power, it is vital that the straight, white mega DJ's get the facts right about the origin of house. But perhaps the tide is changing, and events like GHE20GOTH1K were certainly indicative of a new era. Check out this article on Resident Advisor for a fuller account of the queer past, "An alternate history of sexuality in club culture."

Sunday, February 19, 2017 
Between 0 and 1 was part of MoMA PS1's winter programming called Sunday Sessions that takes place in a large geodesic dome constructed in partnership with Volkswagen. For the first week of Between 0 and 1, the Dome was set up in a formal presentation-style with rows of folding chairs. On the second Sunday, the dome was full of piles of red rectangular cushions that invited lounging. I took a front-row spot and lay awkwardly next to a stranger. 

This second day of Between 0 and 1 was a screening of Cantos I-IV of Soulnessless by Terre Thaemlitz, four of five video segments of a much (much) larger multi-media work, followed by a discussion with Thaemlitz and Honey Dijon, moderated by interdisciplinary artist and DJ and badass Juliana Huxtable. 

​Thaemlitz talks plainly about resenting doing live shows, or lectures, but does them out of financial necessity. It is surprising and refreshing to hear. Thaemlitz is also straightforward about resisting demands to be entertaining. She introduced the multi-media work with an informative and purposefully dry spoken contextualization. Thaemlitz also resents all religion. (Are you picking up on a theme here?) He says belief is a social burden, and extends this stance in live performance by attempting to disrupt the quasi-spiritual dynamic of live music and its function as a potential site of communion between audience and performer as well as the hierarchical positions this reinforces. Gesturing to the short platform on which she stood, Thaemlitz said she'd rather perform on the floor but this is the stage height at which she and PS1 had come to a compromise. 

As a transgendered person, Thaemlitz uses both he and she pronouns, which is of course why I'm doing the same, and "transgendered" is a term that she uses, despite, or maybe because, many people take offense to the -ed on the end. Her pessimism extends to and stems in part from her transness. For Thaemlitz, optimism is a symptom of a capitalist agenda, and she criticizes the medical industry's complicity in pathologizing transgenderism while simultaneously capitalizing on expensive medical treatments. The first section of Soulessness drew on Thaemlitz' Catholic upbringing to present a trans re-interpretation of the Virgin Mary. A woman miraculously gives birth alone to a male version of herself. 

Soulessness was produced between 2008 and 2012, marketed as the longest album of all time with over thirty-two hours of audio materials. “A meditation on wage labor and the death of the album," (a description of the work as a whole and the title of the fifth canto,) the length was determined by the storage capacity of a 16GB MicroSDHC card. The release includes texts translated in ten languages, remixes, and videos.

A snarky and critical sense of humor underlies Soulessness' exhaustiveness. The video is dense with written text, veering from personal and confessional to broader social and political commentary. As a viewer, it is impossible to keep up, which is not a criticism but a fact. One section has two parallel running narratives and the sense of lost information is as much a formal quality as reflective of his determined pessimism.
I recommend taking a look at Thaemlitz's own writing! 

Sunday, February 26, 2017
I didn't know what it would be like to see Dreamcrusher at 3pm on a Sunday, but the floor was free of any seating so I figured the organizers knew what to expect. I've seen Dreamcrusher play a bunch of times, I even brought them to do a show in outside of DC in fall 2016. Some months before I saw them open for Wolf Eyes at Brooklyn Bazaar and I almost had to leave because it was so disorienting and overwhelming. Maybe this time around my ears were a little desensitized but maybe the sound system, or sound technician, couldn't handle it. 

Dreamcrusher's crushing electronic noise appeals to the sort of volume that envelops and destroys you, you lose track of your heartbeat and the blood swishes backwards through your veins in terror. I'm a big fan. So what might have been lost in that sonic overwhelmingness that’s a key factor in their live sets was more than made up for with Luwayne Glass's interaction with the audience. Through the haze of fog machines and incense they stage-dived and ran through the audience, herding around and stirring people up, tangling bodies in microphone cable and generally causing a riotous and ecstatic sense of communal adrenaline and togetherness. They brought in Julian Cashwan Pratt of Show Me The Body for some extra screaming and violent flailing around.

Glass is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns. Near the beginning of the set they took off their shirt and wrapped tape around their chest, something like a visual performance nod to the conflicting personal desires and imposed social constructs around gendering of bodies. It seems bold to assert non-conforming gender identity while not capitulating to visual gender-fuck tropes like flamboyant drag and I commend them for their bad ass minimal approach. I heard some folks making assumptions about Glass's gender, wondering why Glass was included on the bill. Did they miss the name of this event? I should have reminded them that a person's gender never has to look the way you think it should, or shouldn't. 

Everyone needed a break and some air after Dreamcrusher, all a little dazed to go back into sunlight. The next set was Elysia Crampton. Her music is rhythmically complex and felt especially joyful after Dreamcrusher, and a densely layered optimistic counterpoint to Terre Thaemlitz the week before.     

​Crampton takes everything that interests her, anything thats useful. Chunks of samples surface or repeat into beats, tied together in spacious synth melodies. Her compositions are wild and wide reaching, traversing the americas, the urban and the organic, the ancient and the very immediate. 

She was born and grew up around L.A. and Mexico, and has always been nomadic. Its easy to relate a nomadic quality to how she produces music, which merges elements from pop with the beats of Cumbia without losing the origins of any source. Her music isn't the great mythic American melting pot that blends difference into a uniform slop, but every element shines distinctly. Hers is a deeply self-aware appropriation. 

While she performed, projections of digitally-rendered abstraction and manipulated Aztec imagery flashed behind her. The frenzy of the projections matched her forward-racing jams. Sweeping electronic moans collapse into thunder samples and video lightning spin into a 90s-looking DJ guy icon. Demonic laugh loops and throbbing industrial rhythm clear to crystalline keyboard atmospheres. 

​She ended with a shimmering piece that she introduced by saying, “my friend wrote the drums to this song.” It was a spoken-word letter to an unnamed “you,” full of sadness and radiant hope. 

Perhaps to the disappointment of some, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was not there to play music, or talk about music, but to speak about a solution to our broken democracy. Without notes or visual aids, sitting casually like we were all in h/er living room, Genesis waxed poetic on the quagmire of patriarchy and the current socio-political condition to which we have arrived, helmed now by an incompetent president, as the result of obsessive and desperate masculinity. Genesis says we are at the brink of either a total overthrow of the outdated power structures that are experiencing a dramatic conservative revival, or this is the moment we'll remember as the beginning of the end of all civil rights liberties for which we've fought throughout this and the last century, and worst is yet to come. Those who came to power through maleness are terrified at the disintegration of the insistence that masculinity is inherited or fixed. Gen says, "Transsexuals are the storm troopers of the future!" It is inevitable, (r)evolutionary change versus the hysterical protectors of the status quo; especially the old rich white guys with way too much power (s/he takes solace that they will die soon), calling on new witch hunts (for example gendered toilets) to simply distract from their own power and fascist regimes.     

From COUM Transmissions to Throbbing Gristle to Psychic TV to Pandrogyny to her increasing acclaim in the visual art world, Genesis has never ceased to evolve. Yet throughout h/er diverse legacy one thing has been consistent: the use of the cut-up. Spoken in imitation of William S. Burroughs' iconic drawl: “Let's cut it up and see what it really says.” Brion Gysin introduced the cut-up technique to Burroughs, who imparted it to Genesis. More than a tactic for generating new content, for these artists the cut-up is a method of uncovering or releasing hidden meaning embedded in language. Pandrogyny, which means “positive androgyny,” grew out of a desire by Genesis and h/er partner Lady Jaye to become one another. Genesis repeats Lady Jaye's insistence that the body is not sacred, that our bodies are ours to do what we like with them, she called it “a cheap suitcase.” In 2007 Lady Jaye passed away suddenly, “dropped her body,” as Genesis says. Now when Genesis speaks she uses “we” to refer to both h/erself and the spirit of Lady Jaye. 

​Genesis said, "I don't want to be a man or a woman, but if I had to choose, I certainly wouldn't want to be a man." If masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny got us into this mess of war-mongering, hypocrisy, and greed, well let's cut it up and see what it really says.

You never know how many programmatic outtakes lie behind an event series like this. I don't doubt that the organizers made efforts to be curatorially inclusive and intersectional, but I was disappointed to not see any transguys on stage. In all, I really enjoyed the mix of live performance and discussion and the range of genres and approaches. I'm a nerd for lectures and wish they could have continued even longer. More! More! More!

​
xo
Eames Armstrong spring 2017

Way back in November I had the pleasure of sitting down with PLACK BLAGUE at ISSUE Project Room to talk about queer music, friendly networks, and the history of BLAGUE. Plack Blague played the night before at a newly opened Bushwick venue called Elsewhere along with Adult., and the show was incredibly fucking sick. I saw a pal at the bar right after the set ended and he was like glowing and grinning and shouted at me “That was SO. MUCH. FUN!” and I think he really nailed it on the head. Needless to say I was stoked to meet Plack Blague who was generously down to chat.

Plack Blague first started about 16 years ago. At the time, and for a long time, the artist behind the project booked bands in his native Nebraska- everything from metal to punk to performance art, even pop. He started Plack Blague as a a playful side project to other bands he was in, a fun thing that was weird and flexible enough to share bills with just about anyone. “Anti-dance EBM” was the joke. He said he and his former collaborator were doing stuff like sampling Kylie Minogue beats and wrecking them until they had no rhythm. Sounds fun! In 2012 he started to focus more on the Blague, and began to develop and escalate it to what we now know and love. He started to make more structured songs, and it continues to change. The project is poppier now than the heavier noise industrial version of a few years ago.

His adaptability to working in a big range of contexts is still a crucial part of the project. He tours a lot, and he's played in on all kinds of bills in all kinds of settings. He's shared big stages with big names, like Charlie XCX recently. We talked about the pros and cons of big and little shows- how of course it is professionally and financially more advantageous to play big venues and stadiums with a huge audience and a great sound system, but- the interaction with the audience just really isn't the same as a little DIY spot where he said, “everyone's partying and they're sweaty and they're literally falling on you, which gives me so much more energy.” Club Rectum in Chicago is a spot he likes to play, “where everyone is just having the best time ever.” He talked too about playing shows where the audience is totally not into it- and while that can be shitty there's a bit of pleasure in freaking people out. “It's sort of like YES I love playing this show because I love watching you be grossed out and I love watching you walk away and I love watching you hate it. BUT you're still taking pictures of me so I don’t know what your deal is!” He's played with bands like Powerman 5000- (a band I don't think I've thought about since trying to find their CD at the mall after hearing them on the radio when I was a wee one.) and let's just say that the audience who comes out to that isn't always as into it as say, the folks who go see him play at The Eagle in San Francisco, a longstanding and notorious leather bar. Plack Blague is a chameleon- he said “though I'm like an aggressive industrial artist, I can still be poppy enough to perform with people that play major venues, it's just crazy how that works.”

Unsurprisingly, Plack Blague's influences are hugely varied. He said he's all over the place, he listens to Madonna, he listens to Atlanta trap, he's got a ton of 80s vinyl.

When Raws (Plack Blague) was growing up a lil gay boy in a very small Nebraska town of four hundred people, he didn't think that there was anyone else like him. There was no social media then- but he had Pet Shop Boys! Listening to them helped him to understand himself better. Pet Shop Boys continue to be a huge influence on Plack Blague, especially with the role that his partner Butch Dick plays in the project. I loved Butch Dick on stage, he was this stoney daddy with aviators standing behind the table of gear, a terrific counter point to PB dancing all over the stage. “He's sort of my body guard slash Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys, Chris Lowe has this very somber I don't talk, I don't move sort of thing.” Butch Dick's presence is total attitude, it's fabulous! Pet Shop Boys are the masters, Raws said, of the electronic pop queer world, “and I just LOVE the music so much! I love the records!”

More locally, Raws cites homies in Detroit-based Adult. as another major influence. They had known one another for eleven or so years, but just reconnected a few years ago at Folsom Street Fair and have been tight ever since. Folsom Street Fair, btw, is “the world's biggest leather event” in San Francisco. And it was best friends at first sight when Plack Blague met Hide from Chicago. The lead singer Heather Gable and Raws hit it off immediately, he said she's a “leather goddess” whose powerfully confident sexuality has been a big influence on him. Adult., Plack Blague, and Hide make up this midwest power trifecta of mutual support and influence.

Limp Wrist is a big influence too, not shocking! A piece had come out a few days before in Pitchfork that we'd both read, “Queercore Veteran Scott Moore on How Gay Punk Has Changed.” We shared appreciation for the solid opening sentences, “That a scene sharing its name with a slang term term for male prostitutes could be homophobic has long been one of the dumbest things about punk. Men could dress up in fetish gear, spit on each together, wrap their sweaty bodies around each other in the mosh pit—but god forbid they kiss.” Queers to the front! Bands like Limp Wrist are so important because they unapologetically make space for the queer kids who are more often alienated and sidelined than included, in punk and in general. It's a goal of Plack Blague to emanate confidence, to encourage folks to be themselves, to not accept someone's else's idea of what's right or wrong, and to be open minded, understanding, and build a strong and supportive relationships. “We’re a huge community and we all need each other.”

So I had to ask, “so... why do you wear a mask?” If, the spirit is about unapologetic gay realness, is it maybe a bit contradictory? In short, not at all. There's the queer leather history of course, it's a traditional attire that signals what its about very clearly. It's also a character and a persona, on stage he said he feels like a completely different person, “that's where I feel my best.” The whole looq makes a distinct break between the ordinary world and the world-making zone of performance. He referenced one of his tracks “Destroy the Identity” which is more or less about enjoying everything about people rather than privileging looks alone. Plack Blauge is all about the look while also really not being just about the look at the same time, a very queer instance of a productive contradiction. It's playful, it's imaginative recreation of the self. Also it looks sexy. It's corny to say but I see it as like a super hero. Like ok we on the inside of the storyline know who he is, Raws wasn't wearing a mask when we met (even though it would have been kind of hot if he did) but from the outside it's about a totally different sort of identity- not an individual, but an idea, and its an idea that anyone can don. He said that often folks are really shocked to meet him, like “that's you? You're so nice!” And he seriously is so nice. It's an intense persona.

Speaking of leather, how can we not talk about Rob Halford for a minute? The leather god of metal himself? Not too long before we met, Plack Blague posted a bunch of pictures of the legend wearing Blague and Butch Dick merch. I freaked out, which is no doubt the smallest echo of what it must have been like for them. It was just fucking cool of Halford to show his support like that. Right around then I happened to be reading “Queerness in Heavy Metal Music: Metal Bent.” The fact that Rob Halford more or less invented the metal look which came directly from the gay leather scene is really one of my favorite things to talk about. It's mind blowing to me that Halford didn't come out publicly until 1998, when he was singing “Hell Bent for Leather” in 1978. An awful, awful lot in queer politics has changed in the last forty years! and still a long way to go

Look out for a remix album of Plack Blague's killer 2017 album Night Trax this spring. In logical keeping with his inclination for connecting and collaborating with all kinds of people all over the place, the remix album features work by artists from all over the world. “There’s an eclectic group of 13 different artists ranging from industrial to techno to noise to acid. Some highlights are mixes from Statiqbloom, Sweat Boys, Lana Del Rabies, Cult Play, The Viirus and lots more weird shit.”* The CD is coming out on Minneapolis noise label Phage Tapes, and the cassette will come out on Ormolycka who did the Night Trax vinyl.

I just checked in with Plack Blague to see what's been going on since we met so I'll end with that-
“I’ve been currently working on new music in Detroit this spring and it’s been the most creative process of making Plack Blague sonically more professional and next level. It’s been an interesting journey of creating new music and working with producers helping me sound better than ever.”

“I recently did a slew of Midwest shows opening for ADULT. and Hide. Had a sold out show in Milwaukee, packed house in Minneapolis. I also performed at a crazy bondage rave in Detroit from the crew at Alexvndra and Freakish Pleasures. It was a multi level, multi room of bondage, blood play, asphyxiation bondage, leather, heavy beats and Plack Blague!”*

Thanks for reading and many many thanks to PLACK BLAGUE!!!


xo Eames
​
All quotes are taken from an interview conducted on 11/3/2017 at ISSUE Project Room
*except these which came in an email on 3/9/2018