The weeks that were: Feb 15th-28th
Gino, the resident dog at MDS Gallery, is obsessed with this piece
Working on…
I have a couple of extra events in the works whilst the Things Men Have Said To Me Instead Of Hello exhibition is still on, so I’m working on getting everything ready for those. The first is a workshop on Saturday 7th March where people can exorcise some of the awful things men have said to them. Mel (my gallerist) is running it, but I’ll be there and we’ll be having lots of creative, cathartic, feminist fun.
Then on Sunday 8th March we’re hosting a live Q&A with Elisabeth Gehrke and I where we’ll be talking about the work and this whole project in detail, along with the history of feminist art and art as resistance.
Other than that I’ve mostly been filming a bunch of YouTube videos - I’m really keen to build up my subscriber base over there and I’m having a great time with filming and editing and playing. If you haven’t subscribed to my channel over there yet, you can do that here.
Finally, I am still very much enjoying my betwixt-project liminal space, and creating many lovely things of little consequence.
Thinking about…
The nature of belonging. We went to a Winter Pride 90s party last weekend and danced our arses off with a bunch of other queerdos (many of them - like us - actual 90s vintage i.e. middle-aged). The DJ was amazing and played every big gay 90s banger you can think of. All the divas - Britney, Whitney, Mariah, Janet, etc etc - were represented. I knew every word to every song (as did everyone else in the room) and as we sang our little hearts out and bopped our socks off in unison, it struck me - it felt like coming home. Even though this is Denmark and chatting to strangers is strictly verboten, there was a sense of community, togetherness, and solidarity in the room which transcended language or cultural difference. It seems a bit silly to say this, but it felt profound.
Reading…
Mad Honey by Jennifer Finney Boylan & Jodi Picoult
Ooh I really enjoyed this. It’s no secret that I love a good murder (I find them very comforting), and this one subverts more than a few tropes in the most delicious way. I also found out what ‘mad honey’ is from this book and that sent me down a really fun rabbit hole. If you don’t already know, it’s honey made from the nectar of rhododendrons which is both poisonous and narcotic! Fascinating.
Watching…
This is a really weird one, because it’s not a particularly good film, but it is also a work of genius and we haven’t stopped quoting from it and referencing it since we watched it. It’s loosely supposed to be a sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but other than some character names, the cast, and being set in the same cinematic universe, there’s not much to connect the two films. It’s incredibly prescient given that it was made in 1981!
