Category Archives: Current Events

Sam Buttery Plays Leigh Bowery In Taboo

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In Jan­u­ary 1985 Leigh Bow­ery started the now infa­mous poly-sexual Thurs­day disco club night “Taboo”. Orig­i­nally an under­ground ven­ture, it quickly became London’s Stu­dio 54, only much wilder, extremely more fash­ion­able, and with­out the masses of celebri­ties – although these came flock­ing in later. For every­one step­ping through the doors it was a truly unfor­get­table experience.

Mark Davies wrote a book which later became a stage musi­cal with lyrics by Boy George, and music by George and Kevan Frost.

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Set in an aban­doned Lon­don ware­house, the partly imag­ined story takes place in the loca­tion of what was the city’s most fash­ion­able night­club, the now-legendary Taboo (1985–87) of the title. Boy George is fea­tured as one of the club’s reg­u­lars. The show also focuses on George’s life prior to and after achiev­ing fame.

The show pre­miered in London’s West End at the Venue The­atre on Jan­u­ary 29, 2002. Now in Sep­tem­ber 2012, Direc­tor Christo­pher Ren­shaw revived the show in a “site spe­cific” form in Brix­ton Club­house in South Lon­don. The pro­duc­tion was based on the orig­i­nal show with book by Mark Davies, but included sev­eral changes to the orig­i­nal soryline.

In this revival, Sam But­tery plays iconic 80s per­for­mance artist Leigh Bow­ery in Taboo, the story of bill-topping per­form­ers who defined a gen­er­a­tion, includ­ing Steve Strange from Vis­age, the inde­fin­able phe­nom­e­non that was Leigh Bow­ery, the one-man entre­pre­neur extra­or­di­naire Philip Sal­lon. And then of course, there’s Boy George, trav­el­ling from squat to super-stardom  from rock to rock bot­tom. The show inter­weaves some fan­tas­ti­cal facts of the 80s with a clas­sic love story of ambi­tion, pas­sion and betrayal.

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Watch below a doc­u­men­tary about the FABULOUS Leigh Bow­ery and the orig­i­nal Taboo for your enjoyment. Shown dur­ing the spring of 1986 while Leigh Bow­ery was run­ning his infa­mous night­club Taboo, this doc­u­men­tary put Leigh on the map. A witty, provoca­tive and inspir­ing film that includes a Bodymap fash­ion show, rare footage of Taboo, and inter­views with Michael Clark and Lana Pil­lay, this doc­u­men­tary also reminds us what Leigh was like before he met Lucian Freud.


The Art of Creative Coding

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Pro­gram­ming plays a huge role in the world that sur­rounds us, and though its uses are often purely func­tional, there is a grow­ing com­mu­nity of artists who use the lan­guage of code as their medium. Their work includes every­thing from com­puter gen­er­ated art to elab­o­rate inter­ac­tive instal­la­tions, all with the goal of expand­ing our sense of what is pos­si­ble with dig­i­tal tools.

To sim­plify the cod­ing process, sev­eral plat­forms and libraries have been assem­bled to allow coders to cut through the nitty-gritty of pro­gram­ming and focus on the cre­ative aspects of the project. These plat­forms all share a strong open source phi­los­o­phy that encour­ages growth and exper­i­men­ta­tion, cre­at­ing a rich com­mu­nity of artists that share their strate­gies and work with unprece­dented openness.


Christo’s Big Air Package

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Big Air Pack­age is Christo’s lat­est instal­la­tion, designed and com­pleted entirely after his wife, Jeanne-Claude passed in 2009. It is the largest of the Pack­age projects and con­sid­ered the largest indoor sculp­ture in ever cre­ated with a total vol­ume of 177,000 cubic meters (6,250,000 cubic feet) and a total weight of 5,300 kilo­grams (11,700 pounds).

The white inflated sculp­ture occu­pies almost the entire gas tank, which is one of the largest tank of its kind in the world as well. The Gas­om­e­ter Ober­hausen was orig­i­nally built in the late 1920′s to store the blast fur­nace gas, but has been decom­mis­sioned and used as a large-scale exhi­bi­tion space since 1994.

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Christo, who is con­sid­ered to be an envi­ron­men­tal artist and draws atten­tion to the land, nature and man-made objects through his instal­la­tions, is now draw­ing atten­tion to this his­toric indus­trial arti­fact. Like the gas that at one time filled the space, Big Air Pack­age occu­pies the area, but this time with light and air. Vis­i­tors to the exhibit enter through an air lock and can enjoy the peace and rel­a­tive silence inside the space. Two air fans cre­ate a con­stant pres­sure of 27 pas­cal (0.27 mil­libar) to keep the sculp­ture inflated.

Big Air Pack­age opened to the pub­lic on March 16th and will be open through Decem­ber of 2013. It is unclear at this time what will be done with the thou­sands of square meters of fab­ric at the end of the instal­la­tion. Christo’s work is often recy­cled at the end and we can only hope this fab­ric has a higher pur­pose then as well.


No Faggot, No Gay, No Lesbian, Welcome To JAMAICA!: Taboo Yardies

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Jamaica has a noto­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion for homo­pho­bia and vio­lence against gays. Taboo…Yardies goes beyond the head­lines to look at what life is like for Jamaica’s LGBT com­mu­nity, and the ori­gins of the country’s atti­tudes towards homo­sex­u­al­ity. Inter­views with gay and les­bian Jamaicans both on the island and in the dias­pora, as well as gay-rights activists and promi­nent Jamaicans, form the basis of this brave, impor­tant film.

‘We hope to give view­ers an oppor­tu­nity to decide for them­selves whether to view Jamaica as a homophobic/homo-intolerant cul­ture is per­cep­tion or real­ity. More impor­tantly, we hope Taboo…Yardies becomes a vehi­cle that spurs an open an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion that ulti­mately pro­motes respect and tol­er­ance for all peo­ple regard­less of sex­ual orientation.’


The Pirate Bay Leaves Sweden

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The Pirate Bay will no longer be hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party, due to mount­ing legal pres­sure from a domes­tic anti-piracy group rep­re­sent­ing the enter­tain­ment indus­try. Accord­ing to Tor­rent­F­reak, the file-sharing site will now be hosted with sup­port from the pirate par­ties in Nor­way and Spain, where it may find more favor­able legal environments.

In Octo­ber, the Pirate Bay relo­cated its oper­a­tions to the cloud as part of an effort to evade police raids and the loca­tion of its head­quar­ters remains unknown, though it has con­tin­ued to use web host­ing ser­vices pro­vided by the Swedish Pirate Party. Ear­lier this month, how­ever, the Pirate Party was threat­ened with a law­suit from Sweden’s Rights Alliance, which rep­re­sents the movie and music indus­tries. The Rights Alliance gave the pirates until Feb­ru­ary 26th to cut ties with the Pirate Bay, forc­ing the site to come up with a backup plan.

Ear­lier today, the Pirate Bay finally cut ties with its Swedish allies, and shifted its web host­ing ser­vices to Nor­way and Spain. “TPB did of course have lots of backup tran­sit lined up for ages. This is how­ever the first time we are going to show two at the same time,” The Pirate Bay’s Winona told Tor­rent­F­reak. “It will be inter­est­ing to see who is now blamed for host­ing TPB. In the end, maybe the anti-interneterians will under­stand that they can’t win a fight when they have the peo­ple against them.”

The organization’s choice of relo­ca­tion was likely informed by legal prece­dent in each coun­try. In 2010, enter­tain­ment indus­try groups failed to force a Nor­we­gian ISP to block the Pirate Bay, while Span­ish courts have thus far been reluc­tant to take action against file-sharing sites, on the grounds that link­ing to other plat­forms is not a valid basis for copy­right liability.


Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Aaron Dilloway

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WEDNESDAY 2/20/2013 10pm-4am
WIERD is proud to present a live per­for­mance by
Gen­e­sis Breyer P-Orridge and Aaron Dil­loway
With DJs Anarexia, Tesco Jane, Frankie Teardrop
Home Sweet Home 131 Chrystie St. @ Delancey NY

Aaron Dil­loway has been releas­ing and record­ing music since the age of 16. He was a mem­ber of exper­i­men­tal bands Couch, Galen and Uni­ver­sal Indi­ans. He is a for­mer gui­tarist and tape manip­u­la­tor for the exper­i­men­tal band Wolf Eyes, which he left in 2005 to live most of that year in Kath­mandu, Nepal. While his wife did her grad­u­ate work there, he roamed the streets record­ing every sound he could, many of which are used in his recent record­ings and performances.

Cur­rently he runs the noise record label, record store and mailorder Han­son Records, which he began in Brighton, Michi­gan in 1994. Han­son then moved to Ann Arbor, Michi­gan for sev­eral years, before finally set­tling in Ober­lin, Ohio, after a brief return to Ann Arbor. He per­forms solo using eight track tapes and vocal sounds, and records mod­u­lar syn­the­sizer music as Spine Scav­enger. Recently, he has played with an ever-changing cast of sound artists under the name The Nevari Butch­ers. — hansonrecords.net/

Gen­e­sis Breyer P-Orridge (b. Neil Meg­son) is a musi­cian and artist whose career began in Hull, Eng­land in 1969. She was a found­ing mem­ber of the hugely influ­en­tial bands Throb­bing Gris­tle (founders of Indus­trial music) and Psy­chic TV.

In 1993, P-Orridge began the art/life project of becom­ing a sin­gle pan­drog­y­nous entity along with her (now late) wife Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. — genesisbreyerporridge.com


TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, Worldwide Premiere On Friday 8th

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Two years in the mak­ing, TPB AFK is a doc­u­men­tary about three com­puter addicts who rev­o­lu­tion­ized the world of media dis­tri­b­u­tion with their hobby home­page. How did Tiamo, a beer crazy hard­ware fanatic, Brokep a tree hug­ging eco activist and Anakata, a para­noid cyber lib­er­tar­ian, get the White House to threaten the Swedish gov­ern­ment with trade sanc­tions? TPB AFK explores what Hollywood’s most hated pirates go through on a per­sonal level.

It’s the day before the trial starts. Fredrik packs a com­puter into a rusty old Volvo. Along with his Pirate Bay co-founders, he faces $13 mil­lion in dam­age claims to Hol­ly­wood in a copy­right infringe­ment case. Fredrik is on his way to install a new com­puter in the secret server hall. This is where the world’s largest file shar­ing site is hidden.

When the hacker prodigy Got­tfrid, the inter­net activist Peter and the net­work nerd Fredrik are found guilty, they are con­fronted with the real­ity of life offline – away from key­board. But deep down in dark data cen­tres, clan­des­tine com­put­ers qui­etly con­tinue to dupli­cate files.

‘As much as I am cel­e­brat­ing the upcom­ing release of the film, it is a time of mixed emo­tions for me. When I started film­ing this project in 2008 I had no idea the launch of the film would sync with my main char­ac­ters’ prison sen­tences. They gave me access to their pri­vate lives but won’t be able to share the pre­miere with me.

Anakata is cur­rently serv­ing his prison sen­tence and Peter and Fredrik are wanted. The trial against TPB is proof that the issue around copy­right has not been solved. I hope their story will re-spark the con­ver­sa­tion around civil rights in the dig­i­tal age – beyond the so called Con­tent indus­tries. Let’s work together to find fair solu­tions to both keep the inter­net open while pro­tect­ing everyone’s rights in the dig­i­tal age.’

Please join us for the world pre­miere on Fri­day 8th and share the film as much as you can!


The Rest Is Noise — The Soundtrack To The 20th Century

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Why did the Holo­caust change the course of music for­ever? How did Amer­ica, through the CIA, become the biggest fun­der of avant-garde composers?

In 2007 Alex Ross wrote the sem­i­nal book The Rest Is Noise – lis­ten­ing to the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury. Through­out 2013 the Londo’s South­bank Cen­tre brings the book alive, with nearly 100 con­certs, per­for­mances, films, talks and debates.

‘We take you on a chrono­log­i­cal jour­ney through the most impor­tant music of the 20th cen­tury and drama­tise the century’s mas­sive polit­i­cal and social upheavals. The Lon­don Phil­har­monic Orches­tra, with over 30 con­certs, is the back­bone of this fes­ti­val, which reveals the sto­ries behind the rich, exhil­a­rat­ing and some­times con­tro­ver­sial com­po­si­tions that have changed the way we lis­ten forever.’

The Rest Is Noise views 20th-century music through the prism of his­tory with its rev­o­lu­tions and counter-revolutions, its major moral and philo­soph­i­cal upheavals around race, gen­der, faith, polit­i­cal credo and paci­fism – and its new rela­tion­ship to tech­nol­ogy and artis­tic democracy.

Over the year, The Rest Is Noise turns the spot­light on 12 parts of the cen­tury. In the first half of the fes­ti­val, from Jan­u­ary to June 2013, we move from Richard Strauss and the break­down of the old world to the influ­ence of Stalin and Hitler on music via the cos­mopoli­tan glam­our of inter-war Paris. In autumn 2013 visit the 1960s, Hol­ly­wood and Down­town New York and look at artists behind the Iron Curtain.

Through lis­ten­ing to this extra­or­di­nary, rich and eclec­tic reper­toire and hear­ing about the events that shaped its com­po­si­tion, we hope to bring a com­pletely new dimen­sion of under­stand­ing and enjoy­ment to the audience.

If you’re new to 20th-century music, then this is your time to start explor­ing. There has never been a fes­ti­val like this.


Camover: Anti-Surveillance Real Life Gaming

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Ger­man dis­si­dents are tak­ing gam­i­fi­ca­tion and apply­ing it to activism in order to protest the rise of sur­veil­lance tech­nol­ogy in the coun­try. Camover 2013 is a com­pe­ti­tion unfold­ing across the coun­try, in which teams attempt to destroy as many CCTV cam­eras as pos­si­ble. Bonus scores are given to the teams that dis­play the most cre­ativ­ity in destruc­tion. In the video invi­ta­tion below you can see ski-masked “play­ers”  tear­ing the cam­eras down with ropes, smash­ing them out with ham­mers, and black­ing them out with bil­low­ing clouds of spray paint. Teams are encour­aged to upload their con­quests to the Camover web­site.

Tthe Ger­man debate about the use of sur­veil­lance in pub­lic spaces has come to the fore in recent years. While CCTV cam­eras have been in use in the coun­try since the mid–1960s, last year’s Bonn bomb scare and a pub­lic mid­day mur­der in bustling Alexan­der­platz lead the country’s Inte­rior Min­is­ter to call for bring­ing the cam­eras out of the train sta­tions and onto the street. The Min­istry claims they have been shown to reduce crime by as much as 20 per­cent, although not all reports on the cam­eras’ effec­tive­ness as a deter­rent have been favorable.

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The moral and legal con­cerns asso­ci­ated with the will­ful destruc­tion of prop­erty in the real-world make this much more than a “game,” and the cre­ators admit that it’s a seri­ous mat­ter. Camover’s anony­mous founder: “although we call it a game, we are quite seri­ous about it: our aim is to destroy as many cam­eras as pos­si­ble and to have an influ­ence on video sur­veil­lance in our cities.”

Camover ends on Feb­ru­ary 16th, three days before the start of the Euro­pean Police Con­gress.


Subjective Character Analysis

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A few days ago we posted a mash-up arti­cle about Bob Mizer and thanks to it being men­tioned by Claire B. Pot­ter on his blog Tenured Rad­i­cal, I real­ized there was an exhi­bi­tion going on in Man­hat­tan, so I decided to go see the Bob Mizer show at Invis­i­ble Exports, a tiny gallery on Orchard Street.

Given the size of the orig­i­nal archive (about 2 mil­lion pic­tures), the size of the exhi­bi­tion (just a few pic­tures) was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing, how­ever it was still totally worth it to take the time to see some of the pic­tures they have. The one at the top is the one I liked the most.

One thing that caught my atten­tion though was the page with sym­bols below which I saw on the book Bob’s World in the gallery.

“Those famil­iar with the photo stu­dio Ath­letic Model Guild will remem­ber that many of their pub­li­ca­tions, Physique Pic­to­ri­als, included sort of horoscope-looking cryp­tic sym­bols next to many mod­els’ bios. No expla­na­tion was given within Physiqe Pic­to­r­ial for these sym­bols and should a cus­tomer inquire to their pur­pose, he was often told they were for AMG’s own record-keeping.

How­ever, if a cus­tomer con­tin­ued to be on AMG’s mail­ing list for a some time and AMG became some­what assured that the patron was not a cop, he was sent a copy of the leg­end, called “Sub­jec­tive Char­ac­ter Analy­sis”. The word­ing of the leg­end is dubi­ous and reads as some Jun­gian personality-test mumbo-jumbo which, in itself, is inter­est­ing enough. One only has to read between the lines, though, to under­stand the real mes­sage, ie: the size of the dick under those pos­ing straps, whether the model was gay or straight, what exactly he was will­ing to do for money, etc.

Most of the infor­ma­tion was based on the photographer’s inter­views while pho­tograph­ing the model as well as gos­sip pro­vided by asso­ciates and acquain­tances. (One assumes it was prob­a­bly a very SMALL world).

The rea­son­ing behind pre­sent­ing the infor­ma­tion in such an arcane and guarded way was, sim­ply, so it’s real intent couldn’t be proved in court. Remem­ber, this is a time when pos­ing straps and wrestling were as close to nudity and sex that one could legally pub­lish. As secre­tive and furtive as AMG tried to be with this infor­ma­tion, though, the firm was once closed down by author­i­ties as being a front for an escort/hustler ser­vice — purely based on the exis­tence of these Char­ac­ter Analy­sis codes.” (Taken from Monte Han­son)

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