ephemeropteræ 2013/06 – Vaginal Davis, Johannes Porsch
“Terrorist drag” Vaginal Davis performs at ephemeropteræ with spoken word in queercore punk style, dazzling the audience with a straightforward denial of patriarchy and white privilege in satirical manners. Followed by artist and theoretician Johannes Porsch with a performance in two parts: Vocal. Part 1. Exterior Perspective. Essential Sounds of the English Countryside. and Vocal. Part 2. Interior Perspective. Conversation Piece., in which the artist enables sonorous connotations of atmosphere to enter into a dialogue with spatial settings, audience and performer.
– Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo. Vaginal Davis, Black Screen Images and the Notion of Freakiness
To label Vaginal Davis as “drag”, “entertainer” or “performer” would be all too reductionist and simplifying. Stemming against commercially driven constructions of “queer” identifications and normative aesthetics, Vaginal Davis stretches not only the boundaries of gender, sexuality, race, and class but also of performance art, music, punk, curating, writing, and videography. Rising from within the eclectic L.A. punk scene of the 80s, Vaginal Davis has appropriated both strategies from everyday culture and various subcultural movements. Known for her riotous queer core zines, particularly Fertile La Toyah Jackson, Vaginal Davis’ artistic practice is as checkered and multilayered as the multiple personas that she incorporates: front singer of Latin rock band Cholita! dealing with her Mexican Chicina heritage, Most High Rev’rend Saint Selicia Tate, an evangelical church woman or writer for LA Weekly and Artforum, and lecturer at institutions like Princeton and Vassar. Vaginal Davis without a doubt deserves her nickname “terrorist drag” (as identified by academic of performance studies and visual arts, José Esteban Muñoz). In her ephemeropteræ performance Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo – Vaginal Davis, Black Screen Images and the Notion of Freakiness Vaginal Davis, the revered intersexed doyenne of intermedia arts, spelled out the queer and black experience in her own inimitable style, creating new words out of thin air and crashing bull-in-a-China-shop style over notions of propriety and reality.
Vaginal Davis has shown in and curated numerous exhibitions, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; and Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin, as well as festivals including Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles; Berlin International Film Festival; and Antony Hegarty's Meltdown Festival, London. She regularly teaches and holds lectures at The Berlin University of the Arts; Malmö Art Academy, Sweden; New York University, Department of Art and Art Professions; Merz Academy in Stuttgart (among others).
To label Vaginal Davis as “drag”, “entertainer” or “performer” would be all too reductionist and simplifying. Stemming against commercially driven constructions of “queer” identifications and normative aesthetics, Vaginal Davis stretches not only the boundaries of gender, sexuality, race, and class but also of performance art, music, punk, curating, writing, and videography. Rising from within the eclectic L.A. punk scene of the 80s, Vaginal Davis has appropriated both strategies from everyday culture and various subcultural movements. Known for her riotous queer core zines, particularly Fertile La Toyah Jackson, Vaginal Davis’ artistic practice is as checkered and multilayered as the multiple personas that she incorporates: front singer of Latin rock band Cholita! dealing with her Mexican Chicina heritage, Most High Rev’rend Saint Selicia Tate, an evangelical church woman or writer for LA Weekly and Artforum, and lecturer at institutions like Princeton and Vassar. Vaginal Davis without a doubt deserves her nickname “terrorist drag” (as identified by academic of performance studies and visual arts, José Esteban Muñoz). In her ephemeropteræ performance Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo – Vaginal Davis, Black Screen Images and the Notion of Freakiness Vaginal Davis, the revered intersexed doyenne of intermedia arts, spelled out the queer and black experience in her own inimitable style, creating new words out of thin air and crashing bull-in-a-China-shop style over notions of propriety and reality.
Vaginal Davis has shown in and curated numerous exhibitions, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva; and Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin, as well as festivals including Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles; Berlin International Film Festival; and Antony Hegarty's Meltdown Festival, London. She regularly teaches and holds lectures at The Berlin University of the Arts; Malmö Art Academy, Sweden; New York University, Department of Art and Art Professions; Merz Academy in Stuttgart (among others).
– Vocal. Part 1. Exterior Perspective. Essential Sounds of the English Countryside. & Vocal. Part 2. Interior Perspective. Conversation Piece.
Johannes Porsch is an artist, curator, and writer based in Vienna. Focusing on the narrative and its mediation, he provokes a close examination of how to deal with images, text, language, and space as media. He relates to modes and conditions of the production of meaning within which he debates mediality, perception, and aesthetic experience. For ephemeropteræ 06, Porsch does not appear as an actor but is replaced by an agent in order to fully eclipse as a person. His contribution consists of two parts: Vocal. Part 1. Exterior Perspective. Essential Sounds of the English Countryside. is staged outside at the ephemeropteræ pavilion. This piece is an appropriation of sound samples, which are used as atmospheric overlays in film. The compilation comprises sonorous connotations of theme and landscape, aural and visual perspectives and duration and the performance of musical paradigms. Vocal. Part 2. Interior Perspective. Conversation Piece. is a deconstruction of an internal dialogue within the spatial setting of the TBA21–Augarten exhibition space, a text read aloud by a performer.
Johannes Porsch, born 1970 in Innsbruck, Austria, studied Architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Recent Exhibitions include Johannes Porsch at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (Solo Exhibition) and Counter-Production at Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria (Group Exhibition) 2012. He co-curated the exhibition Transitory Objects at TBA21 in Vienna in 2010.
Johannes Porsch is an artist, curator, and writer based in Vienna. Focusing on the narrative and its mediation, he provokes a close examination of how to deal with images, text, language, and space as media. He relates to modes and conditions of the production of meaning within which he debates mediality, perception, and aesthetic experience. For ephemeropteræ 06, Porsch does not appear as an actor but is replaced by an agent in order to fully eclipse as a person. His contribution consists of two parts: Vocal. Part 1. Exterior Perspective. Essential Sounds of the English Countryside. is staged outside at the ephemeropteræ pavilion. This piece is an appropriation of sound samples, which are used as atmospheric overlays in film. The compilation comprises sonorous connotations of theme and landscape, aural and visual perspectives and duration and the performance of musical paradigms. Vocal. Part 2. Interior Perspective. Conversation Piece. is a deconstruction of an internal dialogue within the spatial setting of the TBA21–Augarten exhibition space, a text read aloud by a performer.
Johannes Porsch, born 1970 in Innsbruck, Austria, studied Architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Recent Exhibitions include Johannes Porsch at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (Solo Exhibition) and Counter-Production at Generali Foundation, Vienna, Austria (Group Exhibition) 2012. He co-curated the exhibition Transitory Objects at TBA21 in Vienna in 2010.