A stranded dreamer, a bored typist and a defiant transqueerian space captain attempt to rediscover joy in a fantastical #StopAsianHate music video propelled by dance and animation. Outrageously underrepresented in the UK arts, 87% of the creative team were East and/or Southeast Asian or South Asian. Over half were LGBTIQA+, with nearly a third identifying as trans/non-binary/genderqueer. The team included neurodivergent and disabled artists. From the pain of coronaracism and a lifetime of bigotry and invisibility comes this beautiful, fantastical, outspoken, and epic voyage of truth - infusing vivid dance solos, dreamy piano and quirky animated interjections! The track was written by The Mollusc Dimension, a "transqueerian" British Chinese artist and directed by Darius Shu and the artist. Inspired by #StopAsianHate campaigns, solidarity placards by community members and allies also make an appearance, as do paper-mâché "cishet norms" and K-pop-inspired intensity.

Asians Have Feelings Too

, directed by Giada Bossi, the protagonist levitates from the bedroom to the club in a surreal narrative. The song’s house beat initially mimics a muffled heartbeat before the stillness erupts into a joyous club track just as the scene shifts to the dancefloor.


The video ends back in the bedroom after an explosive psychedelic sequence that leaves the viewer wondering whether what transpired was a dream or reality.


 is taken from Milan-based L I M’s debut album GLOWING, which tells the artist’s personal story of self-discovery, and was written after a long period of “work, healing and transformation ”. The album was written alongside L I M’s longtime friend and collaborator Stefano Riva. “We worked for two years and a half about this glittering revelation, we choose to unfold the journey of discovery, my identity and the collective experience linked to it,” L I M writes “I decided to fully embrace my identity and body and to everyone who can relate to this process I send you all my unconditionally love and support.”


The video was directed by Giada Bossi, an Italian director whose approach "combines storytelling with an aesthetic approach to documentary and narrative. It is an ode to transformation, a current “coming of age” story about
self-discovery and embracement, about body and identity, talking about L I M and many others going through the same path,” Giada Bossi says of the video’s concept. “Dreams and reality merge, in a journey that has to face others: it is just through the support of people around, that the protagonist dives into himself to embrace his essence.” GLOWING is released on February 18, 2022 on La Tempesta Dischi. Follow L I M on Instagram and find his music on Spotify. Find Giada Bossi at Instagram.

BUBU

explores mental health and trauma, gender, access to healthcare and the intergenerational impacts of racism, colonialism and other socioeconomic inequalities.

The film includes a dance collaboration with French artist Jule Lanoix, interviews with psychiatrist/film-maker Khaldoon Ahmed, musician and writer Blue Maignien, and artist, DJ, teacher and musician Chooc Ly Tan.

Hyperacusis (Part 2)

 is a retro, dreamlike montage that tells the story of a man ﬂipping TV channels, othered by the world he is shown, who is visited by fragmented, monochrome visions of himself, free and full of joy.

Lifestyle

 is a chaotically choreographed allegory of the trans body existing through apocalypse and rebirth which takes place in a hand-made site waiting to be activated. Through an open call, I gathered a group of trans, non-binary and gender-queer performers and began workshopping movements to embody the non-linear narratives of transness, death, and a never-ending loop of apocalypses.

This project consists of a world built from multiple elements that come together sporadically. The written part is made up of prose split up into 5 segments and scattered throughout the performance. The physical part is a haptic habitat made up of a bendy pillar and curly gate post joined in an arch from which a silk banner hangs, stating:

Once this world is over, we can all go home


And a sprawling mess of astroturf, floor tiles, moss, tubes and branches spills onto the floor. A rope ladder in tatters appears into the space via a semi-spontaneous performance.

The performance stems from a culmination of text and objects, gently guided by prompts and a ChoreoGraph. I made this up (I made it all up) and the graph gives hints as to when each portion of text should be inserted into the performance, and the level of energy that will be given to it.

Influences include: Holly Blakey’s choreography in Cowpuncher My Ass, Charlie Josephine’s play I, Joan, the music of Caroline Polachek, Alex Margo Arden & Caspar Heinemann’s The Farmyard installation, Dykegeist by Eve Stainton, and the awkward masculinity afforded to me by early 00’s metal music.

foaming at the throat once more, a crescendo of noise and 

whose fault is this? that i would end up some lonely murderer

a beast of labyrinth, the goo expelled from unholy orifice, the product of a blood-stained pitchfork

the original script says: this is not about you

what happens when tales tucked up begin to unfurl

Once this world is over, we can all go home

home being the middle rung of a rope ladder

being a constant sprouting of sequels and this time around,

exorcising what once stuck, resisting squash and slouch

part x of I’m not counting anymore because I’m too busy melding / coalescing

returning through each finale so much so that structure does not hold me

unfettered! at best! what glory, I undress

to thrash and thrive outside of this line

to wield my half-finishedness like a battle-axe o’erhead

and scream out from under, songs that secrete

once this world is over, we can all go home

an improbable fruition of necromancy, who came about as soon as Sunday Lunch was mentioned

adjust accordingly, shake old dirt and wood splinters off my clothes

and to what we supposedly owe the word ‘mother’, as it has been called:

this creature bearing a creature baring teeth

the back of my head that would not be known to her or him

after peeling and planting and ripping and sliding

this body is archaic, sacred even, in infancy and novelty

this body was dug up from earth on high and shines anew

this body has not succumb to the tumbling track from here to there

no instead this body is building its own ground

the intention being something along the lines of

when i asked to be cut open and sewn anew?

i went looking for serenity and am granted so

in this body as a book I can decipher no matter which way it goes

cut cut cut me up! and fuck fuck fuck me up!

cut! cut! cut me up! and fuck! fuck! fuck me up!

where here to ‘cut’ is to ceremoniously drain:

a water balloon on a hot summer pavement, an abscess in an unkempt horseshoe, a pod of sap trapped under the tree bark

Outro, Forever

begins as a seduction song that turns from exaltation to brooding and insidious following the transformation of a blonde woman into a rage fuelled, lip-syncing, six-pack tricking, pearl-dripping, bald creature. 

Moving through themes of gender and power, Sissy Fatigue looks at what it might mean to remove femininity, what lies beneath, and the liberating potential of transgression.

Film by: WET MESS @wet_mess , Oscar Oldershaw @oscaroldershaw , Joseph Campbell @jscramble , Jackie Pratt & Gonnerheous Reese @lambdog1066

Sissy Fatigue 

explores ‘channeling’, time travel, and remix. It sources from numerous archives to explore the ‘techno somatic’: healing practices of sound moving through body and body through sound. This channel special homage to ‘tektonik’, a dance style popular in the early/mid 2000’s, as a parallel to the evolution of Techno, a genre grounded in Black culture (the Detroit music scene in the 80’s) before taking on subsequent, globalized iterations.

Nick Cave’s Soundsuits (PBS NewsHour) | Youtube

Nick Cave: Forothermore (Guggenheim) | Youtube

Cybergoth Dance Party (gNarLy cEe) | Youtube

Tecktonik Dance Moves Compilation (David Vidal) | Youtube

Tecktonik vs. Shuffle Girls (juan oroszco) | Youtube

Yelle - A Cause Des Garcons (Chanson Française) | Youtube

Rapper HAITI BABY freestyle on Real 92.3 LA | Instagram

DJ Edan mixing Blue Note record | Instagram

Personal footage screen recorded on iPhone 13 and sourced from Facebook Archives (2009, 2012)

TECH[TON]IK

Video, sound, painting, costume, tapestry weaving, writing and installation at Chrom Gallery Dalston, London

A boy, a void and a storm cloud enter a room.

(If you can call it a boy, this shape, seeing as it doesn't really possess any edges - only the loud ambiguity of a thing growing into itself.)

About 50 years of melted snow came from me then, spelling

lost relevance as it bore thro’ the trees, see

I cannot tell if I am riding the horse or

(If you can call it a void, this place, given that the doormat asks that you wipe your feet and the walls are lovingly yet haphazardly adorned with motivational greeting cards. All the while aware of some waiting room smell, and the rude inconsideration of time.)

Something as strange as puberty, slipped thro’ the trees

I, the ghostly bowling ball, have always been waiting

something as stubborn as a name, dissolved

and when Boy walked into my mouth he died

as he lay on my dirt he ceased wishing me away

in the gap so you can breathe with the bind

(If you can call it a storm cloud, this one, when it seems as though it recharges on its own power and can't look at itself in the mirror. The rhythm goes like this ~~~~ and the lightning comes in whenever.)

A young man from Texas called it Mountain Madness, upon Icelandic moss

I didn’t ask for any of this, there are no handles here.

Strange sibling the shoes no longer fit, and glorious wonder I name thee fear.

A storm has no agenda, only intention to erupt

A form only craves to be unbound once it has seen how the lightning has struck.

O’ sibling, the magnitude of it all, a job simply being done.

The aftermath: split hairs of crises / certain epiphanies when young.

I break the ground below you, moss into abstract splatter

I ripped through the clouds for you, to show you how you matter.

(If you can call it a room, this midwinter picnic, complete with Greek statues and a life-long plush carpet - perfect for wrestling.)


There is enough room if they all sit inside one another, and repeat this over and over until they are the humming noise at the back of a radiator. Impossible to repeat and unlikely to stop, not necessarily in the bad way either. Together, they exist in the hanging, the limbo of an air-conditioned airport that will take any currency and call you anything you like. No one is made to feel silly here, but they still do, like all of us who are unsure and humming.

Together, it makes quite a pleasant tune.

The Boy, The Void and The Storm Cloud

The Flaming Creatures is an Avant Grade Art film by artist Jack Smith. The film was made during the the era of the New York Underground Film movement that brought us art film artist like Andy Warhol and the Kuchar Brothers both which inspired John Waters.
The weird plotless film features male and female nudity and the police often raided showing in the sixties. The film evokes a non-narrative orgy in its parade of flaccid penises, bouncing breasts, and at various intervals depictions of both violent assault and celebratory pleasure.
Smith shot the movie on old army surplus film that was about 15 years old. 

The Flaming Creatures

Volana (Moon in Malagasy) is a Black Transmasculine person who parties excessively to avoid feeling their emotional and physical pain. One night, when they are about to join their friends, they get stuck in another dimension where they are overwhelmed to meet TIA, a gorgeous and flamboyant Spirit. Their encounter makes them experience a whirlpool of emotions and an interdimensional healing dance.

Volana's Eclipse

I made this video just after my top surgery and it was the first time I had taken off my compression vest for that amount of time, with my collaborator who is currently raising funds for their top surgery. 

 was the last thing I made under that name and touches on the feelings and life of being trans masc.

Categories

Dance