The Left Hand of Darkness
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Sci-Fi, Chixx, Cyberfeminist, Cultural studies, Arts
The Left Hand of Darkness, a group exhibition curated by Sarvia Jasso and Yasmine Dubois, borrows its title from the first feminist science fiction novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin in 1969. Set in a universe where individuals alternate between genders depending on the lunar cycle, the novel proposes an alternative social model that challenges traditional sexual dimorphism. After being transported from a heteronormative society to this new planet, the narrator states, ‘[…] my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gathenian first as a man then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own.’ During this journey, he is immersed in a world that redefines gender and sexual identities as we know them. Using the novel as a point of departure, the exhibition looks at artists who are playing with the dynamics of gender representation within a contemporary context.
Michael Bilsborough’s new mural, Within Reach, depicts an epic, polysexual bacchanal. The figures are suspended in a grid, which both supports and supplants the sensual gratification of the orgy pictured within the space. Paying particular attention to how architectural spaces orchestrate human interaction, Bilsborough’s images are much more than wistful visions of uninhibited fantasies. In Kathryn Garcia’s triptych drawing, a sprawled-out, slender figure claws at its own skin. Its idealized form embodies both masculine and feminine characteristics, while also exploring a constant shift between the two. At once ethereal and diabolical, Garcia illustrates this transitory moment with acute sensibility. Similarly, in Monica Bonvicini’s Red Dot on Parking Lot a sole figure dressed in red lays in the middle of an empty lot. The image invokes feelings of isolation and displacement, suggesting a state of flux.
Tara Mateik’s interest in Psychosexual Metamorphosis, a condition recorded in Psychopathia Sexualis, a taxonomy of sexual aberrations first published in 1886, inspired her work Case 133. The subject of this particular study called himself the Countess V and spent his days in bed acting like a lady of noble position, wearing his hair done up in a knot and breasts that were made out of rolls of bread. An audio recording from the case study is played on a turntable that simultaneously spins a zoetrope, which reveals the Countess’ animated transformation from male to female and vice versa. Matthias Vriens turns his attention to the man-made vagina and the visual construction of new forms of trans-sex. Here, celebratory sexuality, which is the undercurrent of all his photographs, is laid bare.
Matt Greene’s The Pink Room and The White Shoes investigate fantasy and the inability to manifest it in reality. Playing with notions of voyeurism within the history of painting, Greene inverts the male gaze in a way that both appropriates and challenges feminist discourse regarding the representation of women. In Sarah Lucas’ Man Versus Human Nature, a rusty bed frame is turned on its side while pantyhose and a bucket dangle from a pair of suspenders. Using these ordinary objects to question how they have become feminine and masculine signifiers, her investigation of gender roles challenges our preconceived notions.
Tracey Rose’s video, Mousie Mit Blubooi, unravels the trauma that comes with love, while Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin’s collaborative sculpture, Agenda Pusher, uses a grotesque aesthetic to explore non-traditional, dysfunctional familial structures. In both works, hierarchical roles are overthrown and replaced with absurdly chaotic scenes of everyday life. Trecartin’s video, (Tommy Chat Just Emailed Me.), exemplifies how the dispersion of information in this new technological era has shed light on multiple ways of experiencing sexuality.
In a photograph by Tobaron Waxman, the artist is the protagonist in a rapturous scene that references Chagall’s crucifixion paintings and the primordial homoerotic scene of the Holy Lance with a new Queer iconography. Peytach Eynayim, a name implicating God as site, means ‘(the place of) Open Eyes’ in Hebrew, i.e. Truth in space-time. This references the crossroads where Tamar waits for Judah in this biblical story about love, prostitution, revelation and gendered sexual agency.
Paul Kopkau’s drawings are part of his comic series, Girlfriends. Playing with gay stereotypes that range from the party queen to the dominatrix, Kopkau shows how trying to assimilate can be both humorous and tragic. Paired with these drawings, his sculpture The Vulgar Minimalist, is a direct reference to Yves Klein’s Blue and the pitfalls of minimalism. But unlike the minimalists, who opted to work with industrial materials, Kopkau not only subverts the notion of masculinity by creating paper mache blue balls, but also by imbuing them with homosexual implications. Slava Mogutin’s photographs, which disclose and celebrate macho-on-macho eroticism, capture a queer subculture that does not identify itself with the mainstream. Mogutin defies the conventions of the male nude by documenting it in a raw style that does not fetishize his subjects, but instead makes a political statement about gay masculinity. He also comments on unconventional gender role-play and transgressive sexuality that often involves violence and kink.
Employing a conceptual approach, C.R.E.E.,P. investigates the relationship between language and the acquisition of gender identity in Perverted By Language. Appropriating the title of the 1982 album by the seminal experimental punk group The Fall, this text piece explores how language is embedded with codes that further propagate or, in this case, abolish gender categories. Continuing his exploration of social exchange as an art form, Michael Portnoy (aka the Director of Behavior) uses language to create a game of sex dice, Kimbaw the loam! (Ways to Put People, for 2 persons), which asks that the participants step outside of their comfort zone.
The Project Midtown 37 West 57th Street, 3rd Floor, NY
http://www.elproyecto.com/
Editor’s note: I think you might have to be there! 
The New Black Lace Book of Women’s Sexual Fantasies
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Chixx, Writing, Books
MITZI SZERETO is pleased to announce the publication of her groundbreaking new anthology THE NEW BLACK LACE BOOK OF WOMEN’S SEXUAL FANTASIES. This sizzling hot collection of genuine women’s fantasies commemorates the 15th anniversary of the Black Lace imprint at Virgin Books (a division of Random House).
The content of THE NEW BLACK LACE BOOK OF WOMEN’S SEXUAL FANTASIES is 100% genuine, not solicited scenarios from professional sex writers. Questionnaires were collected from thousands of women between the ages of 17 and 85. According to editor Mitzi Szereto: “It was my goal to make this book as representative of the female population as possible. I received fantasies from all across the spectrum - from the sweetly romantic to the torridly kinky, and I’ve included a broad range of them in this book. I think readers will find it a real eye opener!”
THE NEW BLACK LACE BOOK OF WOMEN’S SEXUAL FANTASIES is upbeat and entertaining, yet it also holds its own as a sociological and cultural study of contemporary female sexuality in Britain and beyond. Entertainment and enlightenment, surprise and titillation, and a whole lot of shaking up of assumptions can be found on its pages!
{Author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto has more than a dozen books to her credit, including the recently released Getting Even: Revenge Stories; the critically acclaimed Erotic Fairy Tales: A Romp Through the Classics; The World’s Best Sex Writing 2005 (non-fiction/criticism); the multi-genre Dying For It: Tales of Sex & Death; Wicked: Sexy Tales of Legendary Lovers; the popular Erotic Travel Tales anthology series; and the M. S. Valentine erotic novels. Mitzi is the pioneer of the erotic writing workshop in the UK and Europe, teaching them from the prestigious Cheltenham Festival of Literature to the Greek islands. She’s been featured in publications ranging from the Sunday Telegraph, Independent, Times, Observer, Company Magazine, Dare Magazine, First Magazine, Family Circle, Writing Magazine, Toronto Star, Scarlet Magazine, Leicester Mercury, Sheffield Telegraph, Derby Telegraph, and Forum to Bravo UK Television, Telecinco TV 5 (Madrid), BBC Radio (including the Asian Network), Newstalk Ireland, and OneWord Radio (with Paul Blezard). She’s contributed to the Times, Penthouse Magazine, Dazed and Confused, and the Erotic Review. Her work as an anthology editor has earned her the American Society of Authors and Writers’ Meritorious Achievement Award. Her anthology Erotic Travel Tales 2 is the first anthology of erotica to feature a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Originally from the USA, she now lives in England.}
Editor’s note: she’s a friend ok 
‘Cornered’ group exhibition
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Arts
WHAT: ‘Cornered’ group exhibition
WHO: The Don’t Look 2203 Collective & local artists
WHEN: Opening: Thursday 3rd of July @ 6pm, July 4-19, 2008
WHERE: Don’t Look 2203, 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill (a block
back from the corner of New Canterbury Rd and Marrickville Rd) Sydney
CONTACT: Phone: Matt on 0404 654 757, Email: dontlookgallery@gmail.com
ENTRY: Gold coin donation to assist with costs
Cornered
In a world in which we increasingly spend time wandering aimlessly throughout the retail mazes of megamalls resembling small cities, worship frequently at the fluoro alters of the suburban convenience store and look more and more to the one stop super-dooper-market shop for the lot, the 2203 collective ask ‘what has become of the humble mixed business, the milkbar, the take-away, the corner shop?’
The 2203 collective and local artists have recreated the old milk bar, incorporating sound and video installations in Don’t Look 2203 Gallery in Dulwich Hill, Sydney, NSW. Utilising maps, images of ‘disappeared’ corner shops and optical illusion, the effect is eerie, mystical even, as the dusty, antiquated corner store finds new meaning in an age where the Westfield super-mall is king.
Don’t Look 2203 collective will also be showing off their zine collection and other mixed treats in the mixed-business section. There’s no telling what you’ll find down the back, behind the potatoes, in ‘Cornered’!
The YouTube Screening Room
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Technology, Video, Innovation, Film, Arts
YouTube have launched The YouTube Screening Room, a new program that will connect short films and audiences in the world’s largest theater, not only providing filmmakers with a much-needed showcase, but also helping you find new high-quality content every two weeks.
While some of the selected films have played at film festivals around the world (like Rob Pearlstein’s “Our Time Is Up,” an Oscar-nominated short which played the Gen Art Film Festival in 2005), others will be showing to a wide audience for the first time in the The YouTube Screening Room. Translation: You’ll be able to to school your friends on the next big thing before it’s even a twinkle in most movie critics’ eyes. There will also be under the radar pieces from established indie icons that you know and love, like Miranda July.
envelop: kwodrent x farmwork
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Architecture, Experimental, Melbourne, Arts
11 July – 23 August 2008
envelop features one of Asia’s most exciting young designers, Singapore based Grace Tan. After a successful career in fashion Grace started kwodrent in 2003 as a personal project to explore fashion and design in a new light. Since then kwodrent has emerged as a critically rigorous series of works that have been featured in exhibitions and publications all over the world.
Grace’s interpretation of form in fashion, and nature creates a world of rigorous, repetitive shapes, curled and furled into elegant pieces. They are numbered in a series that has evolved each year for the past five years. In envelop, she continues to blur the lines between fashion, fine art and architecture. Still working from the simple rectangle, she has developed her earlier experiments to give us meticulously crafted large-scale fabric sculptures that sit equally well on the body, as on the wall.
Interested in promoting a dialogue through design, Grace has invited Singapore architecture firm FARMWORK to interpret the gallery space and structure in response to kwodrent; to envelop kwodrent within a new spatial experience just as kwodrent envelops the body in new ways.
RMIT Gallery
Website: www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery
Public Programs
Friday 18 July, 3 pm
Floor talk: Grace Tan and FARMWORK
Wednesday 16 July, 10 am-12 pm
State of Design: design culture lecture by architect William Lim
Storey Hall followed by a visit to the exhibition
For more information visit
www.kwodrent.com
www.work.farm.sg
Heart disease amongst woman in Australia
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Chixx, Media, Health
To help raise awareness of the ramifications of heart disease amongst woman in Australia the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute will be holding its inaugural “Young at Heart” Hi-tea on Friday July 4, 2008, commemorating the 17th Anniversary of Dr Victor Chang’s tragic passing. The event will be held at The Tearoom, Queen Victoria Building, George Street, Sydney.
Victor Chang was a pioneering cardiothoracic surgeon, humanitarian, ambassador and researcher whose life was tragically taken in 1991. He was a gifted surgeon who devoted his life to saving others.
If you have any questions or want to make a donation contact (02) 8382 3415 or 0409 393 686 or electronically on v.muthanna@victorchang.edu.au
Mapping the violence
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Politiks, Technology, Media
Sokwanele, a pro-democracy group based in Zimbabwe, has been using Google’s map feature to track election-related violence and direct people away from certain parts of town. They also have a blog called This is Zimbabwe where Tsvangirai recently posted a piece denying he wrote the Guardian article that appeared under his name.
Visit http://www.sokwanele.com/map/electionviolence
Focus On Ozploitation - part of MIFF
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Melbourne, Festivals, Film
Friday 25 July – Sunday 10 August , 2008
Co-presented with the Melbourne International Film Festival and curated by ACMI and Mark Hartley ACMI Cinemas is proud to present Focus On Ozploitation, a unique series of Australian films from a forgotten era in Australia’s cinematic history, in collaboration with the Melbourne International Film Festival. With lashings of gratuitous sex, violence and fuel-injected muscle car mayhem, ACMI’s latest Focus On series will expose the 70s and 80s Aussie exploitation films that broke all the taboos.
Ozploitation was born of maverick filmmakers, a relaxing of censorship laws and the desire for Australians to see themselves represented in Australian films. It describes an era in the 1970s and 80s where Australians turned to Hollywood-style exaggeration and sense of adventure to tell their stories, in a no-holds-barred way, by Australian film
makers and on Australian soil.
Ozploitation films are typically characterized by “break-neck action, schlock horror, ocker comedy and frisky sex romps” and were unashamedly loved by Australian’s and film audiences the world over, defining a liberating and new era of film making and propelling home-grown actors to notoriety internationally.
Comprising of horror, suspense thrillers, action and comedy of the most irreverent order, this retrospective offers something for everyone. Program highlights include two films by acclaimed director Brian Trenchard-Smith; the 1982 international hit Turkey Shoot, once described by Philip Adams as “pornographically violent” with “unrivalled sadism and brutality” but conversely regarded as one of the guiltiest pleasures in Australian cinema; and the 1986 action flick, Dead End Drive-In , a story where the Australian Government detains rouge teens on the site of a drive-in cinema, which inevitably becomes a destructive wasteland, allowing Trenchard-Smith to employ high speed chases, impressive stunts and explosive shoot outs.
For session times and booking info please visit www.acmi.net.au or www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au
Mu-Meson film highlights - July
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Politiks, Punk Shui, Film, Arts
The Start of World Youth Day runs for a week and so in conjunction Mu-Meson’s will be screening an array of Christian related films maybe heretical maybe blasphemous but what else would you expect from Jay Katz and Miss Death — for those who attend the Tue to Fri screenings pay for 3 get one free but you must attend from Tuesday.
Monday 14th July
God Told Me Too (1977)
A Catholic police detective (Tony Lo Bianco) searches New York City’s occult underworld for answers to a series of bizarre and seemingly unrelated killings. In a strange twist, it’s not the murderers themselves he’s after — they didn’t even try to elude the law, and all are in custody. However, each had only four words to say when confessing: “God told me to.” Comedian Andy Kaufman appears in a small role as a police officer who begins shooting in the middle of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. 16mm Annandale Hotel 7.30 Donation
Tuesday 15th July
Para(noid) Politics in the Archives
Gods Banker
An investigation of the conspiracy surrounding the Vatican. Was P2 a Masonic take over of the church? Has the Vatican Bank laundered Mafia Money? Which Popes are suspected of being murdered? What about Ratzinger’s Nazi past and his recent campaign to create more exorcists than any other Pope in the history of the Vatican. All will be revealed. Mu-Meson Archives Doors 7.30 for 8pm start $10 with supper.
Wednesday 16th July
Margenalised Movies
If the Footmen Tire you what will the Horses do (1971) Christian propaganda delivered here in it’s most bizarre form. Exploitation filmmaker Ron Ormond together with evangelist Estus W. Pirkle did a handful of movies to be shown to church-goers in the darkest areas of Tennessee. The plot of ‘If Footmen Tire You…’ is apparently America is doomed if the people don’t turn to God and Jesus again and ask for salvation for their wicked ways of living! Those unspeakable things as TV, dancing, music, drugs, cartoons, novels and drive-ins! And how is all this going to come about well God will forsake the people and the evil Cuban communists will be able to invade America. Burning Hell (1974) The Southern-accented Moses with the fake beard (”Y’all let mah people go”) - the idiot teen bouncing around on the seat of his motorcycle before crashing it and plunging into HAYull - and the silly Satan whose face was painted like the Partridge Family’s bus – you can only say that with the amateur histrionics and Ormond’s inept-as-ever direction, those who view this film may well enter heaven, for they’ve already been through “The Burning Hell.” Mu-Meson Archives Doors 7.30 for 8pm start $10 with supper.
Thursday 17th July
Christian Propaganda
It’s Film-Nite again! Those old-time Church Films you can’t resist!
Educational, inspiring,…sometimes wacky great fun for everyone! but to kick off the night we have a special live performance. Fat Fat Ho is Australia’s #1 ‘chippie’. That is, a Chinese hippie. His mission is to spread peace, love and understanding throughout the entire known universe. Please do not make fun of the way he speaks. (World Premmy-Bloody-Air).Its going to probably be a very un-pc evening, how mu-mesonarchives of us.
Mu-Meson Archives Doors 7.30 for 8pm start $10 with supper.
Friday 18th July
Demonia (1990)
Professor Malcolm Evans leads his archaeological expedition into the Valley of Temples in southeast Sicily. His companion and former student, Liza Harris, is looking forward to her very first dig. But Liza feels a strange sympathy with the valley and her recurring nightmares seems strongly tied to the nearby ruins. She is drawn to the remains of a 16th Century convent and its grisly legend of Satan worshiping nuns and crucifixion. Directed by Lucio Fulci. Mu-Meson Archives Doors 7.30 for 8pm start $10 with supper.
Saturday 26th July
Sounds of Seduction Saints & Sinners
Get out your habit, robes, and crucifix and get down to Hermann’s Bar to exorcise the after taste of World Youth Day on the dance floor. You will be able to dance to the rarest grooves with the original crew Jay Katz, Miss Death, guest DJ’s and of course Go-Go action. Put on your dancing sandals and get on down for a Go-Go frenzy. Hermann’s Bar Crn City Road and Butlins Ave, Sydney UniMu-Meson Archives at Crn Parramatta Rd & Trafalgar St Annandale, Sydney (NSW) at the end of King Furniture building up the steel staircase. Phone 02 9517-2010Annandale Hotel at 17 Parramatta Rd Annandale, Sydney (NSW). Ph 02 9550-1078
Hermann’s Bar Crn City Road and Butlins Ave, opposite main gate Sydney University, Wentworth Building, Sydney
For More extensive and detailed information please visit Mu-Meson Archives web site http://www.mumeson.org
Beware, fresh vegetables
Posted on July 2, 2008 - Filed Under Food, Books, Arts
In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book that enraptured the Americans, Michael Pollan writes that potatoes in the USA have to be put to rest for six months before being sold, in order to get rid of their toxins. We know that what we currently eat has been irradiated with caesium 137 to be conservated and that school cafeterias make omelets with dehydrated eggs. Non-pasteurized camembert cheese almost got written off the market and chickens that have been soaked in bleach could become a daily staple: the precautionary principle is not going to make our food tastier. In a world where fruit scares us, can we hold it against the organizers of this exhibition for confronting, at the museum des beaux-arts of Caen, contemporary creators to Giacometti? They rejected an installation by Michel Blazy. The latter, who loves to play with mildew and deterioration more than anything else, intended to have cotton and rice germinate under cover. The persons in charge believed it was too big a risk for Giacometti’s statues, even though the work had been commissioned by director of the Giacometti foundation herself. There was a risk the spores and bacteria would migrate and colonize the bronzes, giving them the appearance of a moss-covered trunk or of a corral barrier. Let the living beware!
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