An interview with M Lamar on his new show at VFD-August 6th

This week I had a chat with M Lamar an incredible mind and artist, spanning many different genres. We are so excited for him to be doing a London first performance of his new show DECONSTRUCTION AT VFD. Thursday 6th August, 7.30pm. Tickets available in advance for £7 at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/m-lamars-destruction-tickets-17793970244

HAVE YOU BEEN TO LONDON BEFORE? Hi Angela, I have been to London before in 2012. I performs at z3 different places but the most memorable was Duckie. The crowd was amazing and I had a great time singing there.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THIS NEW WORK? As a devil worshipping free black man in the blues I have been obsession with the negro spiritual since I was a kid but never really interested the Christian themes in the music. Angela Davis reminds us in her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism that christianity was forced on to black people during slavery in the United States and that the release from slavery was what allowed blues to be formed. These newly freed black people wanted to sings about everything ungodly!! Of course I am obsessed with this tradition as well but with the Spiritual I was always drawn to the revolutionary themes and end of the world themes which to me also mean revolution. I love being a part of a musical tradition with these radical transgressive themes. So this new piece The Furneral Doom Spiritual draws from the traditional spiritual as well as my own compositions that are often written in the mode of a spiritual to go deeper into what are often apocalyptic doom and end of the world pronouncements. I read this as being about the end of a white supremacist world.

YOU HAVE A VARIED ARTS AND MUSIC BACKGROUND, WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE MEDIUM AT MOMENT TO WORK WITH?

Music is at the core of my artistic practice. Weather i am doing and installation making a film or designing an object it always emerging from some idea that began musically or in some bit of text I have written as a part of a music piece.

WHERE ARE YOU HOPING TO TAKE THE SHOW THAT YOU WILL BE PERFORMING AT VFD (VOGUE FABRICS) TO AND WHY?

From an artistic stand point I want the new show to be a song of mourning for my people in terms of the continued devaluing of black life here in the United States as well as around the globe but especially here in the United States between police shootings, the prison system and education we are under constant attack at all time from all sides. I this works can provide a space to grieve as well as inspire an awake revolutionary impulses.

In literal terms I am performing it in Brighton Glasgow and Amsterdam ahead of a big performance in New York of this piece in September. I also have plans to perform a more develop and elaborate version of the piece Next year at the One Archive on the campus of USC.

CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE YOU ON ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AGAIN? I don't know. I do make a brief appearance in season 3 but doing corporate work like that written by white people isn't my main focus. I am really focused on my own work which includes long form music pieces film and exhibition.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE OR DO WHILE IN THE UK? I would love to see lots of people at my show. Also i am staying with a friend who promised to take me to some goth clubs in London. I am NEGROGOTHIC after all.

WHO WOULD BE YOUR DREAM PERSON TO WORK WITH? I love everything Stephen O' Malley of SUNN 0))) fame has ever done. From Burning Witch to KTL to the new record SUNN 0))) just did with Scot Walker I just think he is a genius!!

GIVE US SOME GOOD ADVICE ON FOLLOWING YOUR HEART WITH YOUR WORK AND WHAT ONE SHOULD ALWAYS TRY AND DO WHEN CREATING A NEW PIECE? I always try to work from the deepest parts of my soul. Even when I am making very political work I try to lead with emotion first from the darkest parts of myself. Being an artist truly requires deep self knowledge and self interrogation. As I begin work on a new project I am constantly asking myself who I am and what do I want. This is an ever evolving question an answer and one has to be open to the way the work will change the this question answer. In your struggle with your work you should be willing to surrender to the work and the process to such a degree that it changes you.You have to really know who you are and be willing to fight for what that means but in art you have to be willing always allow in the fight to become a different person!!

Switchblade chats film and gives a preview to their Pansexual Fuck Space!

This month we have Adam and Tree of Shoreditch cult film shop Today is Boring bringing their unique taste and passions to VogueFabricsDalston.  Switchblade will be with us each month, and will be ever changing. How does your knowledge of film come into your nights?

Thematic references. There are a lot of areas where the mediums of film and music overlap. Most obviously, when we have made visuals to be projected at our club nights.  After owning our film shop we now have thousands of films in our personal collection.

Who is your dream music collaborator?

That would have to be Crispin Hellion Glover.

Who are your favourite artists?

Suicide, Gene Vincent, The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Suzi Quatro, throbbing Gristle and Talking Heads.

Where does the name Swicthblade come from and why did you choose this?

Switchblade is a song by the legendary and late great: Link Wray. We chose it because its sleazy and dangerous.

What should we expect from the nights to come?

Pansexual Fuck Space!

Where would be your dream location for a gig?

A nuclear bunker.

What is the funniest and unexpected situation that has happened before at one of your nights?

Lee Black Childers pissing on a sofa..Adam Ant performing impromptu punk rock karaoke. philip Salon showing up in a nappie..

What artists should we look out for?

Tonetta

The perfect film that sits with the music of your nights would be?

Wild at Heart.

Artist Q and A. A chat with Mika Haka of Salon Mika.

This week at VogueFabricsDalston we have a great New Zealand performer who has been performing for most of his life. He now after a turn on the boards in Edinburgh and Paris is in London for a one off performance at Vogue Fabrics and a few good chats. We spoke to Mika this week pre his show at VogueFabricsDalston.

Q: What are you cultural influences?

The love child of Eartha Kitt and Grace Jones, being raised in a Maori village , sequins, drum and bass-tribal Hollywood.

Q: Tell us a bit about travelling with a show to Edinburgh and Paris?

Travelling should be an adventure. I tour now because I want to, not have to. I love the challenges and meeting of other artists who create dreams, not dramas. Lyall Hakaraia at VogueFabricsDalston is the perfect person to host my show and a place like Vogue Fabrics is a great space to experiment in.

Q: Are there any artists you have worked with recently or seen on your travels that you have enjoyed?

I have met so many artists on this trip and collaborated with photographers and artists. I am excited as to what we might create in 2015.

Q: In New Zealand you have the Mika Haka Foundation, can you tell us a bit about this?

The foundation is a charity I created to forge new artistic thought and expression. Gay, bi, transgender Maori street kids and alike congregate to create challenging work. I am also interested in original music, the dance scene and fashion, and all the emerging leaders I work with all create in these forms.

Q: What should we expect from one of your performances?

To be alive in the moment, feel a reason to connect, and laugh. In the depths of Vogue Fabrics Dalston one should release all inner demons and pretensions and be welcome to Salon Mika.

Q: What are your next plans?

I am off to New York looking at my October show there, then LA for a photoshoot with Queer KlubKidz.

We will see Mika soon, and you can see him Tuesday 2nd September at Vogue Fabrics from 7:30pm, £5.

Tina T'urner Tea Lady Interview

On Wednesday 16^th July Tina T’urner Tea Lady previews her first full length show which will show at Edinburgh Fringe in August. Before the big day we had a chat with Tina T’urner about tea, coffee and her perfect day out with the real Tina. How do you have your tea?

I make simply the best tea in town. I brew a bag of heaven for 4 mins, milk ready in the cup, then I pour it up.

No sugar. Maybe a biscuit if I’m in the mood.

How did Tina T’urner Tea Lady come about? My obsession with Tea and Tina Turner led to an obvious choice of character act. I then made parody versions of her songs and developed narrative into a full show.

What did you do before developing the Tina character? I sang and made music in various bands/ solo projects and I continue with some of them now.

You are previewing your first Tina full length show before its Edinburgh run at VogueFabricsDalston. What can the audience expect?

It’s an evening with Tina T'urner Tea Lady...she will open her heart to tell stories of her incredible life in a camp, alternative cabaret story.

Expect comedy, grotesque impersonation, crap wigs, shocking confessions, 80s hit songs including Goldenpie, shambolic performance, high energy dance, Up close and personal audience interaction and of course tea and biscuits!

If the real Tina Turner called you tomorrow and asked you to take her out in London, where’d you take her? I’d take her to Terry’s Cafe for a cuppa and eggs on toast, then to Brick Lane to buy vintage denim like the jacket she wore in the What’s Love Got To Do With It video, then dinner at The Ritz (on her) and a night of dancing and drinking wearing our double denim, fishnets and stilettos at Vogue Fabrics! Then we would eat chips on the night bus home and become best friends forever.

What’s your opinion on coffee drinkers? Do you ever drink one? Coffee is hell to me. I only hope one day coffee drinkers will see the light and embrace tea for the healing refreshment of love that it is.

The free preview of Tina T’urner Tea Lady’s full length show is at Vogue Fabrics on Wednesday 16^th July. Click here for more info.

A short interview with Drew Daniel of The Soft Pink Truth

This Saturday Drew Daniel aka Soft Pink Truth will play a live set at Galacticia, the official Matmos afterparty. We’ve asked him some question about the impending third Soft Pink Truth album, his hometown and some other stuff. Hey Drew, we're super excited to have you down at Vogue this Saturday. You are releasing the first new Soft Pink Truth album in 10 years. Tell us a bit about what you have been up to in the last decade.

I moved from SF to Baltimore, became a Shakespeare professor, worked on and published a book about Throbbing Gristle and a scholarly book on Renaissance melancholy, put out several Matmos albums and toured with Matmos relentlessly. I wasn't just chilling out, but SPT was on the back burner.

The new album consists of a collection of Black Metal covers. What made you decide to cover that particular genre?

It's a genre that I have strong pro and con feelings about. I love some of that music a lot, but it is also a hugely problematic genre because of its association with shitty fascist/racist politics, the murder of gay men, church burnings, and a generally atavistic politics. So it seemed like a juicy target for queer critique.

Does your academic background in English literature play into your music at all?

The music taps into a different part of my brain and is in some ways a counterbalance to that way of thinking- maybe a "forbidden fruit" that I can sneak off and do when I'm not worrying about trying to get tenure?

Your current home city of Baltimore is probably best known to queer audiences as the home of John Waters. What recommendations would you give to potential Baltimore visitors (the queerer the better)?

The mainstream gay bars in Baltimore really suck, you should ignore them and go to small dive bars. Go to a vogue ball at the Paradox but get your beauty sleep because they don't even start until 4 am. Check out the queer parties Kahlon and Glitterthighs, go to Red Emma's and flirt with sexy communists, and maybe have sex in the shower at the Downtown Athletic Club?

Before Baltimore you lived in San Francisco. How do the two compare?

One has tons of money and privilege and infrastructure and the other has very little of those things. It's night and day, totally different sides of American society- the contrast is incredibly stark. SF is full of techbro new money and fancy restaurants, Baltimore is full of gutted and abandoned buildings. But it's no surprise that Baltimore is a way better place to be an artist right now: rent is insanely cheap so it's much easier to get by and have way more time to focus on your art practice.

You recently travelled to Australia. Did you end up recording any Australia-specific sounds while you were down under?

Every day I would take a picture of a different building and then I would "Play" the pictures with an application that sonifies images- so in a sense, yes, and in a sense, no.

And have you recorded any particular sounds on your current tour with Matmos?

We're playing a ton of new pieces, it's kind of scary, but we're letting go of the old songs and doing an all new set. Fingers crossed that we aren't stoned to death on the first night of tour!

What are you listening to on repeat at the moment?

Golden Retrievers, Duke Ellington, Le1f, Sd Laika, Dissection

Galacticia with a live set from Soft Pink Truth is happening this Saturday 31st May at Vogue Fabrics. It's the official Matmos afterparty. So come pop in.

Holestar on a Decade in the Drag Biz

Holestar is putting on a show in the VogueFbricsDalston basement to look back at ten years of doing drag from Tuesday 14th May. We talked to her about her multi-faceted career and the highs and lows of making a living putting on fabulous wigs.

Your first solo show starts in earnest next week. What can we expect?

Glitter, gay love, art, domination, Prince, honesty, big wigs, East End glamour, my "hits" reworked and a fully stocked bar.

Tell us about your time in the military. What made you decide to join?

Desperation and a massive come down.

You also lived in Vienna for a while, why did you decide to move there?

Thought it'd be a good place to be a decadent artist but ended up giving birth to my drag persona, ten years ago this month to be exact.

It was also in Vienna where you started your life as a dominatrix. How did that come about?

Exploring different aspects of sex and sexuality, I started going to fetish clubs, playing with people and found I was quite good at it so decided to go pro.

Any funny stories to tell?

My most notorious story features in the show so you'll have to come and see it!

How did you get involved in the East London alternative drag scene?

Bumping into Jonny Woo at performance/electro night Studio Neon where I'd been putting clothes pegs on a man's testicles. He introduced me to the carnage where I found a bunch of gender bending, rule breaking loons and felt at home.

Are you still working on your documentary about the local performance scene?

It's still in the works. Once funding is secured, it'll be finished and sent out to show the world how bloody fabulous we all are.

What’s your fondest memory of your decade in drag?

Too many. Performing for incredible crowds in New York, Copenhagen and Budapest. The first year of alt tranny madness at NYC Downlow, Glastonbury. Being called for an encore while performing outside the Hofburg Palace for Vienna Pride. Hitler and the Pope have done turns there too. Not that that's something to brag about. 

I’m guessing your least favourite memory was the Glastonbury when you (kind of) lost a leg?

Yep, voguing onstage with Jon Sizzle and Lazy Susan, I went one way, my leg another. I just sat there staring at my knee while A Man To Pet was trying to help and Jonny Woo shouted "work with the injury Holestar". The routine was buggered so Sizzle and Su lezzed off.
I can laugh about it now but it put me out of action for eighteen bloody months.

Any closing words you would like to pass on to this and future generations?

Emulate your heroes with caution, be the best you can be. You're not the first person to put a wig on their head and you won't be the last babes so be nice. Don't demand respect, it is earned. SMILE!  If you're going to lip sync, learn the ruddy words and if you forget, twirl honey, twirl!

Sorry I'm a Lady runs from Tuesday 14th - Saturday 18th May at 8pm every night with afterparties on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th May (Holestar's POP! doubles up as the wrap party on the Saturday)

Book your tickets here.

For more info on Holestar check out her website.

A chat with Victoria Sin, Canada's hottest export

Badass illustrator, founder of Victory Brand clothing, and queer babe about town, Victoria Sin tells us about her collaborations with VogueFabricsDalston, drawing genitals and her involvement in this year’s Fringe! Film Fest.

How did you get into illustration?

I moved to London from Toronto at eighteen for a place at Central Saint Martins to study fashion. A few things got in the way of that plan so I worked in restaurants for two years, drawing all the time to keep myself sane and to constantly remind myself what I wanted.

I started a blog and then I started to draw for other people, eventually I began to get paid for it and left restaurants behind to start my clothing label, Victory Brand.

What are your influences?

Everything affects my work, mostly though you’ll find a lot about gender and sexuality. Recently I’ve been obsessed with the typically feminine notion of glamour, especially when applied to drag and trans culture.

Have your drawings always been a bit challenging/ erotic?

Not always. When I started drawing I just kind of drew everything, but I found that as my drawing style became more specific so did my subject matter.

Victory Brand is doing really well, but where does the passion lie; drawing, illustrating, or both?

The passion lies in both otherwise I wouldn’t do it! Drawing is kind of the base artistic language; I don’t think I’ll ever stray too far from it. Victory Brand started as a platform for my illustration work, but as my love for fashion crept in Victory Brand became more than a line of printed T-shirts.

What has been your best achievement so far, career-wise?

Victory Brand has just launched SS13, which I am incredibly proud of, and illustration-wise, the fact that I had my first solo exhibition with XOYO when I was 20. I would also say working with Sony and Paloma Faith to redesign her website was one of my favourite commissions.

Some of my favourite work has been in collaborations, doing wall installations and artwork for Club Lesley at Dalston Superstore, or creating penis-patterned wallpaper and curtains for an art space caravan with Vogue Fabrics.

What drew you to working with Vogue Fabrics?

I started working with Vogue Fabrics after a friend asked me to put up some drawings for a night there. Lyall Hakaraia saw them and asked me to do a window installation for the Diamond Jubilee, and then with projects like penis-patterned wallpaper… how could I resist?

And what drew you to working with Fringe! Film Festival?

I’d seen Fringe! Fest and all the amazing events they’ve held over the past few years. Queer Arts are right up my alley so I jumped at the chance to get involved.

So how are you going to be involved?

I will have a pop up shop where I will show and sell prints and items from the Victory Brand collection, I’ll also be teaching the best art lesson you never had on Friday with Lesbian Cringe! and Gay School.

What’s your favourite film of all time?

It would have to be a tie between The Rocky Horror Show and Paris is Burning.

And if you could have chosen a queer film for Fringe! what would it have been?

Maybe a Paris is Burning quote along? Peh-pah-labey-jah!

You've also started dabbling in film with your Domestic Kitchen project. What was your inspiration behind this?

The inspiration to start the Domestic Kitchen video project came first from watching too much Nigella Lawson and cookery programes in general. The kicker was watching a youtube video of Amanda Lepore making ice. I guess I'm trying to acknowledge the glamour of some drag queens and trans women like Amanda, but then adopting that glamour to how women who dress similarly in our culture can be perceived, and putting that in the context of how housewives in the 50s were portrayed as domestic goddesses before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique... it's an ongoing experiment.

What do you think the importance of Queer spaces like Vogue Fabrics and Fringe! are?

These spaces are everything. They provide a platform for young artists, visibility and a sense of community, opportunities for collaboration and most importantly, a showcase for the amazing talent on tap in queer London.

What are you most looking forward to at Fringe!?

Can’t wait to teach students of the Lesbian Cringe! and Gay School how to properly draw Genitalia, and obviously Mean Girls hosted by Holestar!

Interview by Amelia Abraham.

Sitron Panopoulos on In These Great Demo

This Wednesday sees the launch of Sitron Panopoulos’ poetry collection In These Great Democracies taking over Vogue Fabrics from basement to first floor. Here Sitron gives us the lowdown about writing poems, his inspiration and what you can expect on Wednesday. How did you get into writing poetry?

When I moved to London I studied film because I had all these crazy stories in my head that I wanted to tell…

Then, too young and impatient to complete films, I decided to put those stories into songs; so I started singing in a punk band called ‘Chips’. Who wants to be a film maker when you can be a rock star hahah… I never became one either.  A couple of years ago, a friend of mine Martin Bjorck came to see me play and offered to make an album of my songs.

At the time I was going through a phase of documenting encounters that were taking place in my life: one night stands, tender moments of friendship, even the unpleasant encounters.

Some of them became songs, some of them stood on their own as written pieces.  The latter ones became poems and another friend encouraged me to make a collection of them for other people to read.

Do you have any particular writers that inspire you? Emily and Charlotte Bronte made me want to move to England.

Daphne Du Maurier was a good companion through my teenage years.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, The poet of The Soviet Revolution and H.P. Kavafi, the Greek Alexandrian poet are the two masters I always go back to.

What else inspires you? Love and complexities, camaraderie and sustainability.

Tourism… may that be class tourism, cultural tourism, relationship tourism, or geographical tourism. I am drawn to all of them, addicted to the feeling of being other.

Enlightenment and kindness, for enlightenment lies only within kindness.

Tells us a bit more about your first poetry collection In These Great Democracies. Are there any common threads running through it? What themes do the poems cover? I started writing the poems that became In These Great Democracies around time of the credit crunch. I was looking at London, feeling this immense love for the city, the kind of love you feel when you are about to lose something or someone. I was worried I would no longer be able to sustain myself living in this city and at the same time feeling grateful to have managed to live here for as long as I have, to have met all the people I had. It was about feeling grateful for all the moments I had spent with people in this city, dancing with them, sleeping with them, drinking coffee with them.  It was about realising the magic of the moment.  Realising I was extremely lucky to live in a city that enables me to be the person I want to be, in a city that offers second chances.

Have you been trying out which poems work for audiences by performing/reading them? If so, how did your first performance go? Yes, this summer has been a summer of readings, both at literary events and non-literary events.  I went anywhere they’d have me…

Up in Highgate Woods, down at the cosmopolitan dives of Dalston… it has been nerve-wrecking and great.

As you’ve already mentioned you also used to be in a few bands. Do you still make music? Yes, yes, yes!!!  This book is the twin partner of an album of songs, with the same title and themes, that is coming out shortly.  Like I said earlier; some of my written pieces became the poems, others became lyrics and songs.  All this poetry stuff has been taking a lot of time but the music is behind everything.

What can people expect at the launch night of In These Great Democracies?

There will be dancing, romancing and poetry recitals…

The plan is to have a fun evening.  Vogue Fabrics is the perfect place for the book launch to take place as some of the poems in the book have been inspired by hanging out  there or by people I have met there…  Friends, lovers (and ex-lovers!) and myself will be doing some readings.  There will be three ‘acts’ on the night, three performers in each act reading a series of poems that tell a little story.

What are you reading at the moment? Anything you want to recommend? Hmm, Jonathan Kemp’s book ‘London Triptych’ is amazing, one of those books you read and re-read every few years that you literally cannot put down,

‘Mayakovsky, Russian Poet’ by Elsa Triolet

‘The TM Technique’ by Peter Russell.

The launch of In These Great Democracies takes place this Wednesday at Vogue Fabrics.

Queers in Crisis: Brian Lobel quizzes Danai Papadimitrio about naff_athina

naff_athina and AmateurBoyz kick off Queers in Crisis this Friday with everything you love about the Greeks. QIC organiser Brian Lobel had a chat with naff_athina collaborator Danai about the idea behind the project and what you can expect this Friday, the 28th September. Tell us Londoners what a usual naff_athina event is like?

naff_athina is an art project. we organise exhibitions, lectures and parties based on the idea of androphilia. Usually it is a one week thing. We invite some artist whose work is all about the male figure. We choose some of his work, get him to bring it to Athens himself, where we accommodate him, then we get to know him and take him around the city. We do an exhibition of the pieces in a strange location like a garage or a poolroom and then we party party party.

How has the economic crisis affected your events (this could be in both small and big ways)?

naff_athina is an art guerilla project that has been running in Athens for the last year. This means that it was actually born and developed during the crisis, which affected its identity. naff_athina is about organising exhibitions, lectures and parties based on the idea of androphilia. As a guerilla project the exhibition locations vary from billiards rooms to garage spaces and ex cafe bars,  for which hiring costs are  really low. What we offer to participating artists is the chance to showcase their work in Athens, airplane tickets and Greek hospitality -whatever that means. The truth is that the crisis has been proved useful for naff_athina projects. People tend to be more open to new ideas and collaborations and have moved to a more friendly basis.

What can Londoner party goers learn from the Greeks?

London party goers will learn from us how to fall in love. How to fall in love with music, with life, with girls and boys, with drinks and dance. An Athenian party, it is a romance. A love affair, words can’t explain.

VogueFabricsDalston is a very special place with a very unique community identity – how would you characterise your usual community  -  and is it welcoming to outsiders?

Our community is easy like a Sunday afternoon. It’s that afternoon, in summer time, after you’ve been kissed by the sun when you relax in a terrace enjoying a cocktail and contemplating on the view. Our small company on the terrace is open to any outsider. Put on some airy garments, order a drink, lay your body down and you’re one of us.

How did naff_athina come to be?  And how did you start a relationship with AmateurBoyz?

naff_athina was a Vassileios idea, that he shared with 3 friends a hot and sweaty afternoon in July 2011 in Athens, a few days before going on summer vacations. naff_athina kicked off September 2011 with a big party, in collaboration with Amateurboyz. Amateur Boyz were always close friends and naff_athina supporters.

Queers in Crisis: Brian Lobel talks to Joana Girao

Queers in Crisis organiser Brian Lobel talked to Joana Girao of Lisbon’s Purex club and Add Wood Festival in the run up to this coming weekend’s events when Vogue Fabrics hosts some of the finest queer clubs straight from the epicentre of the financial crisis. How did Add Wood Festival come about? What´s the idea all about?

Add Wood Festival started somewhat spontaneously following a series of parties organized at Purex. The motto was “depressing Sundays, a night to slit your wrists open”. At that time, Sunday nights in the winter were quite an off night and these parties started bringing people out. The concept evolved from there and became what is now the current festival: Add Wood, an underground optimistic festival where anything can happen.

Following Ed Wood’s foot steps, the ultimate worst cult director of all times, we invite artists from different areas and backgrounds to create and develop projects they would never dare to present in a public venue; projects that freak out the critique and that go beyond artistic consensus. We want to challenge creators to out their obscure mediocre self, assuming that what can’t kill you, makes you stronger; another way of saying that limitations can push us beyond limits.  Displaying without prejudice the worst that one is capable of can be a considerable challenge. Ridicule, self-criticism, ugliness, strangeness, incoherence, improvisation… are weapons of dissidence.

How has Add Wood and Purex been affected by the financial crisis?

Strangely enough, the bar has never been better. People have no money to do anything, so they don’t really go on holidays, they don’t buy stuff, they just go out and drink, but also in a ‘last days in the bunker’ type of vibe, euphoria before doomsday, something like that. Purex has gone through some hard times and is now in better shape than before. Having said that, being an alternative bar owner is always a precarious endeavour. Add Wood is a festival produced with no budget, so the crisis just adds up to the already precarious environment, which suits the spirit of the festival. This year’s theme was actually dedicated to the crisis and the people behind it. It should be noted that the festival is flat out independent and currently financed with a negative budget (production and communication costs), with the magnificent good will of artists who have accepted to gracefully give out the worst they have to offer.

Do you find that your customers talk a lot about money?

The financial crisis is without a doubt a constant background in people’s lives and consequently people’s conversations. The situation is so dramatic that people choose to act with humour and self-derision, and a drop of surrealism, in face of difficulties. It’s hard to take things too seriously when nothing seems to make much sense.

What can Londoners learn from the way Lisboans party?

There are a lot of things missing in Portugal, nightlife – and party – is certainly not one of them. From John Malkovitch’s owned most famous Lisbon club to small bar joints, there are people streaming around 24/7. There is always the next party, up until the next day. From underground “bafonds” to fashionable venues; also Lisbon is small, so people tend to hop from place to place. What can Londoners learn from the way Lisboans party…? Just come and find out.

Vogue Fabrics has a very particular community – How would you describe the community of Add Wood and Purex?

Have you heard of eclectic? Think further… Purexians are essentially artists, culture buffs, and the television clique, however there is room for everyone, from the cleaning lady walking her dog to the occasional government official.  Everyone has, at least once, set foot in that bar… Purex is a family, with its collective memory and its odd figures. And quite a few – unspeakable – afterhours.

FEELINGS: Sophie Robinson asks Jennifer Cooke a few poetry related questions

FEELINGS, the literary soiree with film and music returns for its second outing at VogueFabricsDalston this Thursday. Promoter Sophie Robinson talked to poet Jennifer Cooke about her first collection, the difference of performing and reading poetry and issues of gender and sexuality in her writings. Your first collection, *not suitable for domestic sublimation, just came out from Contraband press. Tell us some more about it…

JC: The poems in the collection were written over a 6 year period, a period when I moved from Brighton to Loughborough to Leicester to London and the collection feels to me as though it reflects those places, sometimes specifically (one poem is the reproduction of an over-heard conversation on a train from Leicester to London; one, ‘Congelatine’ is specifically about Loughborough and mentions places in the town such as the canal and the social club), and sometimes less directly and more privately since certain poems remind me of the locations in which they were composed.

Overall, I’d say the poems address issues of political protest; my work context (I’m an academic, and Lecturer at Loughborough University); gender and sexuality; my hatred of discourses of self-improvement, which always appear overtly moralistic; as well as some other, more miscellaneous topics (there’s a poem or two about the financial crisis, for instance, and the final poem is about cancer).

Do you enjoy performing your work?

JC: Yes. It’s different every time, which is intriguing, from my point of view. Even when I don’t give what I think is a good reading, it’s interesting as to why. And sometimes I give good readings for no reason intrinsic to the poems themselves but through the dynamics of the context. For instance, I also launched this book in New York recently, and I felt the reading went really well, but that’s in part because my delivery was so different to the American poets reading that night, who mostly gave very measured, restrained and quiet readings of their poetry, so it was the contrast that worked for me.

How do you think hearing the work in performance differs from reading it on the page?

JC: It can completely change someone’s experience of the work. Occasionally there are poems I’ve seen on the page where I’ve been fairly ambivalent in my response but when I’ve heard it performed, it can take on a new dimension, and I can find elements in the work that I hadn’t been able to appreciate before. Then again, some people are terrible readers of their poetry. There is a ‘poetry voice’ I loathe, a kind of lilting, soft, Anglican intonation which I find immensely irritating since it often flattens everything into a pattern, with a  tendency for the intonation to rise at the end of the line until the end of a stanza, when it falls. It’s aurally predictable. And reminds me of contexts in which I was bored as a child and could nothing about it (e.g. church sermons, school assemblies).

Would you describe your poetry as political? How (or how not)?

JC: Yes, insofar as it is sometimes ‘about’ political events or issues, such as ‘Snapped Songs of Velleitie’ which was about the Student Protests of 2010-11, or ‘Steel Girdered Her Musical’ which imagines a revolution. There’s a poem, ‘Drinking It In’, which is in part about the representation of drinking in the press, and how the response of the media to public drunkenness is very gendered and classist. But does my poetry intervene in the political realm in any significant way? I can’t see that it does or hope that it will, except, potentially, as part of a wider arts movement which attempts to eschew mainstream or popular assessments of what is of cultural value.

FEELINGS is a queer-friendly and queerly orientated event. Much of your work engages with issues around gender and sexuality. Could you talk some more about the dynamics of this in your poetry?

JC: For me this is a question primarily about lived experience, not really about poetry, although I think that poetry has a specific way of being able to represent experience which is different to narrative fiction. Anyone who makes non-normative choices ends up inevitably having to explain themselves to others at one point or another. Audre Lorde, the poet and activist, talks about how mainstream society makes the responsibility for awareness of (racial, sexual, socio-economic) difference and discrimination fall upon the one who is already aware, because they are the ones experiencing it, to educate those who are not – and who often don’t want to know what it is like not to be them. As if people who suffer and put up with discrimination and incomprehension don’t have enough on their plates already. In relation to art forms, it is really difficult for narrative fiction to escape the function of having a ‘moral’ (however oblique) or of telling redemptive stories that make us feel better. Even novels that are trying not to do this are still in communication with the same strictures through the very process of trying to break away from them. Poetry is different. Because it can be fragmented, it is useful for expressing experiences of lived contradiction, of ambivalence, of difficulty and it is a place where explanations don’t need to be given. Which can be very refreshing.

‘Steel Girdered Her Musical’ is one of my favourite bits of the book. Tell us more about it…

JC: It’s a series of 12 poems which were created in conjunction with a composer, Adam Robinson, who made all the music from musical music and from various kinds of pop rhythms (sometimes slowed down to such a speed you’d never recognise them). We will be putting out a CD to go with the book at some point. The poems stage the possible impossibility of a revolution starting at South Mimms Service Station, which is on a junction between the M25 and the A1 (M) as you head north out of London. The poem’s evolutionary female leader (the kittenista) is born from a bloody egg on the plastic tables in the service station and the poem continues from there, veering in and out of information about the history and contexts of protest, the history of South Mimms service station (incredibly, there is such a history), and also the poems try to pose some of the contradictions I find most politically pressing and sticky.

Which poets have influenced your writing? How and why?

JC: The list is long, and perhaps not very interesting to anyone but me. Even though I know this is a conventional question, it is one I find very personal and also one where it is almost impossible not to lie. The poet I might name today as a big influence may not seem so to me tomorrow. I love poetry which makes me passionately want to write poetry (what a grand narcissist I am!). But I also love any writing that plays with language, so a book like Alice in Wonderland is of probably equal importance as any poet’s work.

Is poetry important? Why/why not?

JC: Yes! Of course! The arts generally are important. Who would want to live in a world without music, painting, poetry or sculpture? The very strangeness of the fact that art forms can move us to tears or alter our whole conception of a space or an experience: this is  extremely valuable.

Jennifer Cooke will be reading at FEELINGS on the 12th July, along with poets Alan Hay, Connie Scozzaro, Joe Luna and Nat Raha. There will also be short films from Warren Garland and The Everyday Cosmonaut, and a sad disco DJed by John Lee Bird.

Jennifer’s book, *not suitable for domestic sublimation, can be purchased from the Contraband website

A Fag Hag is a Gays Best Friend

This Thursday sees a whole host of gorgeous gal pals roll into VogueFabricsDalston to hang out with their gay best friends for new night Fag Hag. It’s all about that girl you just can’t be without when talking about boys and stuff. So we put a few questions to promoters Peewee and Paul. Apart from hanging out with their girls their especially looking forward to sip on a few Joan Collins’ during Happy Hour from 8pm-10pm. Tell us why you decided to put on a night for gays and their best gal pals?

Without sounding too ‘young enterprise’ about it… we found it hard to find a night where gays and girls have a dancefloor to share. Some gays don’t have that many friends who are boys and sometimes surround themselves in a cloud of clunge… so this is a night that allows them to come with their hag and dance off those cobwebs!

What qualities make a girl a good companion for the discerning homosexual?

Sense of humour is probably the most important quality. Gays love a good time and a girl who is up for a laugh is an ideal GBF for life. Apart from that ability to shop, drink and talk about boys are pluses.

And who is your fag hag? Tell us a bit more about her. Any stories you want to share?

Peewee – As FAG HAG we have a LOT of hags to choose from. My particular favourite is Tara – she’s obsessive about Baked Beans & chintzy shoes. She also has a very quick brain that ticks – she will usually blurt some fabulously waspish comment before I manage to even think of it. We need each other, I will always be there to tuck in her Primark label away from prying eyes during Fashion Week, and she can apply a little bit of Laura Mercier under my eyes when I’m looking a little bit grey.

Paul – Mine would have to be my friend Charlotte. We think along exactly the same lines and have the same sense of humour. We met whilst struggling through our boring degrees at Uni and I would spend hours distracting her from her dissertation. One of my favourite stories is one particularly hungover afternoon in Dalston which involved a plastic bag, an alleyway and then a Macdonalds toilet…that’s all I am saying…

If you had to pick one fag hag icon, who would you want to come down to the Vogue Fabrics basement and sip on a cocktail with you, and why?

Carol McGiffen from Loose Women. She once signed my nipple with a biro at a do in Soho. I brought it up with her about 3 years later when I came across her slightly sloshed on red wine in a pub in Camden – she had minimal memory of it. OBSESSED! Carol – see this article as your invitation! WE LOVE YOU!

And what’s in store for future Fag Hags?

Broken heels and unexpected belters for one! We also are looking to extend our range of cocktails… we are currently working on a signature cocktail for August 2nd called ‘Birds of a Feather’ which is inspired by Dorian from next door. I am working on Lesley Joseph to come and cut the ribbon on it.

Join the Fag Hag Facebook page

Feelings // A few questions for Sophie Robinson

We’re opening the doors at VogueFabricsDalston this Thursday evening for our very first literary event, Feelings. To give you a little idea of what to expect we’ve had a chat with Sophie Robinson about what you can expect on the night. What is the idea behind Feelings?

I wanted to bring more poetry to East London.  It’s what I do most of the time, and there’s some great stuff happening.  A lot of experimental writing really resonates with what’s going on in the performance art and music scenes, which have a lot more presence in this area at the moment.  I also wanted to give a platform to emerging poets and filmmakers: a place to do a short reading/screening, showcase new work to a friendlyish crowd and get feedback.  Finally(!) I wanted do these things in a fun, relaxed, queer-friendly space, which is why I’m so excited to be launching the event at Vogue.

Can you tell us a bit more about the performers on the night?

Frances Kruk, Samuel Solomon, Luke Roberts and Linus Slug are a diverse bunch of poets.  I’d say that all of their work could be said to engage with the body in quite visceral ways.  All the poets that are performing are pretty energetic, passionate and political writers, too.

DJ Dr. Kemp will be in charge of the downbeat disco after.  Expect to be glued to the dance floor and expect to be in tears. Above all, expect him to play The Smiths.

You’re also showing a couple of films. What are they about?

Abigail Child and Andrew Kerton are both experimental filmmakers, and both work with collage and archive footage to some extent.  They’ll both be screening recent, short films, and both engage with issues around gender and sexuality quite directly.

What’s your favourite poet and what’s the latest book you read that you can really recommend?

My favourite poet is Frank O’Hara, an amazing queer New York School poet, who wrote in the 1950s and 60s.  His poem ‘Having a Coke With You’ is, I think, the most beautiful love poem ever written.

The latest excellent books I’ve read are both by young British poets.  Luke Roberts’ False Flags (from which he’ll be reading on Thursday) and Francesca Lisette’s Teens have both recently been published by Mountain Press, and are electrifying reads, as well as beautiful objects.

Feelings starts at 7pm on Thursday 14th June and it’s £3 at the door. Bargain!