This Thursday, May 17, come view video art by the shape-shifting ladies of Symbols + Rituals, listen to music by 51717, and stare wistfully at all the beautiful objects and clothes at Maryam Nassir Zadeh. The event will be at the store at 123 Norfolk St., NYC, from 8 – 11 pm, with a live musical performance at 9:30.

Curator Pati Hertling is best known for her cyclical curatatorial project Evas Arche und der Feminist, started in Berlin and continuted here in New York at Gavin Brown Enterprise, and her 2009 show Modern Modern at the Chelsea Art Museum. We invited Pati to contribute as a guest blogger and she, along with photographer Emily Hope, arranged a studio visit with artist Mary Beth Edelson. The following images and text are from Pati’s experience with Marybeth.

If one were to draw up a list of the 20 most seminal women artists of the 20^th Century, Mary Beth Edelson would surely rank high up on that list.

Active as an artist and activist in New York since the early 70′s, Edelson was a founding member of important feminist collectives such as Heresies and WAC (Women’s Action Coalition), and an early and active A.I.R Gallery member. Her SoHo loft has served as a meeting place for many great women artists such as Nancy Spero, Hannah Wilke, Ana Mendieta, Lorraine O’Grady, Louise Bourgeois, and writers such as Lucy Lippard and E. Ann Kaplan.

Together with her close friend Spero, Edelson was a key player in many feminist activist events. In 1976, they organized a picketing of MoMA to demand that more women artists be shown. Edelson spearheaded the first national Conference of Women in the Visual Arts (CWVA) in 1972 held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C., and she galvanized numerous other historical feminist actions. Prior to becoming active in the feminist movement, she was active in the Civil Rights Movement.

Edelson’s early performance art was also a major influence to Ana Mendieta, who had studied under Edelson and was mentored by her when she moved to New York. It was in Edelson’s loft where Mendieta was first introduced to the group of other women artists who would become important to help establish her in New York City throughout her tragically short life.

Edelson’s work sides with an aesthetic pluralism that makes room to embrace a world view of feminist politics and community as well as dives onto platforms of esoteric levels of consciousness. But whether working in performance, collage, or painting, Edelson’s presence is hard to miss: a fascination with myths and symbols (be they from the Neolithic era, Fifties Hollywood cinema, or tabloid headlines); a body-oriented praxis, and politics; an almost iconic precision of image and gesture, and, crucially, a sense of humor that is at the same time generous and absolutely subversive.

Perhaps her best-known work is the 1972 collage Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper. Using Da Vinci’s famous painting The Last Supper, Edelson cut out all the men’s heads and replaced them with the heads of living American women artists. This work has become an iconographic image of the feminist art revolution, and was included in the major museum exhibition WACK!: The Art of the Feminist Revolution. Today it is – together with all other works from this collage series – part of MoMA’s permanent collection.

This fall, Edelson will be opening a two-part exhibition with Balice Hertling in Paris and Balice Hertling & Lewis in New York. The exhibition is titled Burn in Hell. In Paris, Edelson will be showing a work completed between 1989 and 1991 based on the sensational trial against Lorena Bobbitt, the woman who severed her husband’s penis from his body while he slept and after he allegedly raped her. The core of the Paris exhibit will be a book of images from Bobbitt’s trial with press clippings titled The Last Temptation of Lorena Bobbitt. The 81-page book, comprised of watercolors, gouache, ink, collage, printing, and statistics on domestic violence, illuminates Edelson’s interest in Bobbitt‘s case and is closely related to Edelson’s activism against domestic violence. In Edelson’s hands, Bobbitt is claimed as a complex symbolic figure, celebrated as a heroine fighting on behalf of the victims of domestic violence and at the same time venerated as Kali-Bobbitt, the many-armed Hindu goddess with a belt of knives around her waist and a will of steel.

In New York, Edelson will present a new series of wall collages with emphasis on Botticelli’s iconic Venus that incorporates both a dark and light side of the famous beauty along with a new series of collages that continues Edelson’s nearly four decades of collage production. The original wall collages from the Seventies were based on the heads of her friends and allies in the feminist art movement along with her mythic stand-by’s Baubo, Sheela-na-gig, the Egyptian Bird Goddess, and the Asyrian Snake Goddess.

We had the honor and the pleasure to visit Edelson in her Soho loft, where she holds her home and studio. During the course of one afternoon we chatted, sipped coffee and looked at the work she is selecting for her upcoming exhibitions. These are the pictures the New York based photographer Emily Hope took during our visit.

Director Alan Del Rio Ortiz has once again paired up with Dev Heynes from Blood Orange to create a  music video of a clandestine world most of us will never brush up against. Shot on Super 8 film, Alan worked with choreographer Lily Baldwin (the dancer in the red and black jacket) and a mix of downtown club kids and performers to create the Paris Is Burning-inspired feel. Soiled floral carpet, a muscular leg in stilettos, eyeliner glimpsed through a cosmetic mirror…the video is fantastic.

Above photo: Adam Bainbridge

In their newest video, Interiors, Mirror Mirror cast Rumi Missabu, legendary member of the 60′s psychedelic drag troupe The Cockettes, as their hermetic heroine. Dressed in a stark black dress designed by Lauren Devine,  with metallic cones extending from each of his fingers, Rumi slinks around a white abyss mouthing lyrics about reclusiveness. The effect of his articulated movements and weight of his gaze are as glamorous and empowered as they are terrifying. The video, which was shot and directed by lead singer David Riley is the first single off of Mirror Mirror’s new album, also titled Interiors,  which will be available August 16 on RVNG Intl.  Mirror Mirror will also be performing this Saturday, July 16, at Ps1. I met up with David last week, and we agreed to have him interview Rumi. The following is their discussion on Interiors, queer history and Disney films starring Goldie Hawn.

David Riley: Hi, Rumi.

Rumi Missabu: Hi, David! Yay! Very excited about Interiors. Truly a labor of love and very proud of the entire crew for making it possible.

David: Let’s talk about the Interiors video.

Rumi: I’ll say. Sure. Shoot.

David: First, let’s put your performance in context. How would you describe the Cockettes to someone who has never experienced them?

Rumi: Sylvester said it best. When you walk down the street and you see someone sitting in a mud puddle and they invite you to jump in and you do, that’s the Cockettes. The Cockettes could not have existed in a the world of established theater because ultimately, the Cockettes were sexual outlaws.

David: How were they sexual outlaws? And has that changed in the 40 years since?

Rumi: We didn’t know at the time that we were political. It was the press who politicized us. We were simply out to have a party and the shows were just an excuse to find boyfriends. Everything has changed. We thought at the time that that was how it was going to be forever. However, everything came to a crashing halt within a matter of two years.

David: I never find boyfriends at my shows. What am I doing wrong?

Rumi: You are doing nothing wrong, but the key is to mentor, mentor, mentor, which can only come with years of experience. At 63 years young, I am just now realizing that I have that capacity. My new audience is all 20-somethings. They seem to get it. It is the generation before them that have a problem with it.

David: You’ve somehow become the Cockettes ambassador and archivist. How did that happen?

Rumi: I have always been a collector of sorts. First it was maps, all kinds of maps – maps that glowed in the dark, you name it. After losing all the memorabilia that I had saved from the group, I began to collect again after the former archivist from the group, Kreemah Ritz, passed away.

(Pause)

David: Still there?

Rumi: I’m back. I had to take a wicked piss and slip into something more comfortable.

David: That’s wonderful that you have the collecting bug, or else a lot of those materials would be lost! Do you think of yourself as a queer historian? Or are you just preserving what you love?

Rumi: There is so much material still out there and I won’t be truly happy until I own it all! Yes, I guess you call me a gay historian.

David: And how many of the principal Cockettes remain? You are one of the last?

Rumi: I have a list – calling all Cockettes alive or dead. Originally we were a troupe of 13. Ten gay men, three women and an infant. Because it was so easy to become a Cockette, all you had to do was show up in drag and jump on the stage. Now as archivist, I’ve counted over 168 that appeared in at least one show or film and sadly, only a handful remain. So many were lost to heroin and AIDS. Luckily, I had an aversion to needles and have always been somewhat monogamous, so that saved my ass.

I’m curious why you selected me to perform in Interiors. Had you seen my previous work? Did someone recommend me?

David: Yes, thanks for your magnificent performance! You sort of fell in my lap.

Rumi: How’s that?

David: We were searching for drag performers in New York to play this character that I had in mind, which is to say a reclusive sort of Garbo type. And then you contacted me on Facebook out of the blue and it seemed like a perfect match. I was familiar with the Cockettes, especially from the documentary, so I was excited when you said yes!

Rumi: You could have gotten Hedda Lettuce or Sherry Vine. Recluse is right though. I rarely venture out these days.

David: Well, I love Hedda Lettuce and Sherry Vine, but I’m happy it was you. You let me really strip you down. Metaphorically speaking. Minimal costumes, make up, props… It’s really all about your performance for five minutes. Tell me about your training.

Rumi: Love Lauren for not letting me wear any of my tired old drag and using my real hair, which others love but I keep under a cap most of the time. I was born in Hollyweird and kind of grew up around show biz. I was a child actor in Disney films and in four short years after I moved to SF and became a hippy, my career went from Disney to soft-core porn (Elevator Girls).

David: I love Elevator Girls. Especially the part where you’re all in a Marxist meeting… And every time you say Marx all the other girls cheer. Also, which Disney films? Where can I see little Rumi?

Rumi: Family Band, which was also Goldie Hawn’s first film. Lovely gal. Blackbeard’s Ghost starred Peter Ustinov, who I had enjoyed in Billy Budd. Luminous was Salvador Dali’s favorite film and actually is quite dreadful.

David: You and the Cockettes were really inspired by Hollywood golden age glamor.

Rumi: Yes, we all loved the old movie musicals. The costumes, the glamor, the glitz and the glitter. The Cockettes ransacked the city for glitter and applied it to everything – our beards, our sets, our costumes. Christ, we even pooped glitter!

David: You cornered the market. The Cockettes were very theatrical. Why did that appeal to you so much? For me the Cockettes have a beautiful, dreamlike, childlike, innocent quality.

Rumi: California innocence for sure, but also campy and bitchy. Lots of fighting within the group all jockeying for the best spot in the shows. But never as nihilistic as the New York Warhol queens that I ended up counting as friends when I lived in New York from 1971-1974.

David: How else were you and the Warhol queens different? Was there a philosophical difference?

Rumi: Those girls – Holly, Jackie and Candy – were serious, while we were just out to have a party and get laid. And back then there were no hippies in NY. Nobody did acid there and they couldn’t figure out why we were so happy. But when I watch Jackie Curtis and Wayne County performing in Vain Victory at the same exact time we were doing our little shows, the similarities are uncanny. It’s just the drugs that were different, and of course the East coast vs. West coast rivalry back then which to me is nonsense. I thrive performing in New York these days and prefer it to here. It seems so much more vital, rewarding and genuine.

David: Can you think of one particular actress who influenced you more than any others?

Rumi: It’s a toss up between Jeanne Moreau and Anna Magnani.

David: Jeanne Moreau and Anna Magnani! Those are two great actresses that I guess you could describe as “earthy.” Not Hollywood at all. Why those two?

Rumi: That’s exactly why I fled. Hollywood is so fucking phony.  If I had chosen to stay and have a career there, I most likely would have sold out and been doing TV commercials for Boniva for brittle bones instead of something as cool and avant as “Interiors.”

David: Let’s talk some more about your performance. What I love is that you can seem so glamorous and dignified one moment, and then comical or grotesque the next. It was such a pleasure to film you and watch all these different personalities passing through you.

Rumi: I’m flattered, especially with the grotesque part.

David: Ha, ha!  For example when you were saying the line “You think I’m a monster” and you look like a monster! I think that’s brave acting. The Jeanne Moreau in you? What was going through your head?

Rumi: Yes, I’m just a sieve for a myriad of influences and personalities including Quasimodo in hunchback. I tend to channel everyone I adore, mix it all up in a sort of cosmic stew and throw it out there.

David: We must have done twenty takes! I think with only one or two breaks. Please don’t report me.

Rumi: Twenty takes? That’s nothing. In Elevator Girls, the director shot the guns up the asshole scene over two days and at least 50 takes just to see me squirm.

David: That’s dedication.

Rumi: Yuck! I just swallowed a bug in my lemonade.

David: Bugs are full of protein.

Rumi: Yeah. So is semen. It’s still gross.

David: Ha, ha. Can we go back to something you said earlier about hope and dreams? What are your hopes and dreams at this point? Now that you’re already a trans wizard legend.

Rumi: I always ask my performers and friends what are their hopes and dreams. If I am aware of them, there is a good possibility I can prove helpful in making them happen and often do. The wizard in me? You betcha. My personal hopes and dream involve leaving a legacy of work for future generations to enjoy, thus my love of film, and when I’m gone, but not forgotten, I want to be buried above ground, not cremated, in a marble crypt with an eternal flame like JFK and fresh roses everyday like Marilyn and the words, “He was some kind of woman,” etched in the marble.

David: That could be pricey.

Rumi: At that juncture, I don’t care what the expense. You can’t take it with you.

David: And what’s in the immediate future for Rumi Missabu?

Rumi: Excited about my fall tour in New York and an engagement at Lincoln Center. Not too shabby. Although they want me to reprise my old moldy hit Stranger in Paradise for the umpteenth time with Scrumbly on the grand piano.  They only want to talk about the past. I prefer the present and especially the future.

David: Any parting advice? Your views on gay marriage?

Rumi: Gay marriage is not for me, after having only recently  discovered I have the capacity to love more than one person at any given time. I prayed to god to send me a man and I must be doing something right because he sent ten men. I had to send one of them away because I was tired. Tell the kids to be sure to continue to attend my events because I fuck with minds and fuck them well and they will never know what hit them and won’t be sorry and be screaming for more.

David: That sounds promising… Thank you so much Rumi!

Rumi: Thank you, David. Always a pleasure.

3,348 Hours of Sunshine, an exhibition featuring the work of eight LA artists – Dan Finsel, Sanya Kantarovsky, Alex Klein, D’Ette Nogle, Chadwick Rantanen, David Snyder, Miller Updegraff, and Aaron Wrinkle – opens today, March 19 from 3-7pm at Clifton Benevento, 515 Broadway, NY. The exhibition runs through April 23.

Above image: video still from Alex Klein ‘Person to Person’, 2010.

To touch without touching, according to physics, is the only sort of touching we know. On February 28 and March 3, The Wallis Gallery and Rassa Montaser present Nothing Ever Touches a poetic miming of this paradox, curated by Ross McNicol. The exhibition, which is divided into two parts, features the work of Eloise Fornieles, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Olympia Scarry, Amelia Newton Whitelaw.

Nothing Ever Touches is on view February 28 from 6-9 pm at The Standard, 848 Washington St., NY, in the High Line Room on the 3rd floor, and March 3 from 2-9 pm at Chiles Matar, 208 Bowery, 2nd and 3rd floors, NY.

Above image: Sinew (detail), Juliana Cerqueira Leite (Courtesy Allan Nederpelt Gallery)

Artist and curator Tony Cox presents a playful and crude showing of work by Joe Roberts and Derrick Snodgrass at the Fuse Gallery, 93 2nd Ave. # A, NYC. The show opens tonight, January 8, and runs through January 25.

Artbook and MoMA Ps1 recently launched the much anticipated Interviews, Volume 2 by famed interviewer Hans Ulrich Obrist. With its sleek silver microphones starkly set against white, the cover looks like the art world cousin of Phaidon’s Silver Spoon cookbook. Both have minimalist covers that belie their extensive, almost encyclopedic content. His interview project, which began in 1993, has infamously been coined as a “protest against forgetting.” The new volume contains 70 interviews, with subjects ranging from Alejandro Jodorowsky to Merce Cunningham.

At the launch event to herald the new book at Ps1, a series of speakers sung Obrist’s praises. Most notably, Klaus Biesenbach, the director at Ps1, who enthusiastically recounted serendipitously meeting the interviewer on a late night train to Berlin over a decade ago. Marina Abramovic, who was not present, but beamed in via video, with a deadpan adjective listing of some of Obrist’s qualities. “Curious” and “Medicated” made her list.

The collection of interviews is a probing and intimate glimpse into the minds of some of today’s most forward and influential thinkers in the world of art, architecture, philosophy and film.

Click “Read More” for Marina Abromovic’s video portrait of Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Alan Del Rio Ortiz recently directed a light enfused Super 8 video called Automobile for Gospel Music that has me missing summer. Camera Obscura’s Trayanne Campbell sings some of the vocals. I got to know Alan while working with him for Thisartist.tv last June, and I really admire his precision in capturing whimsy – like pinning a butterfly without damaging the wings. Click “Read More” for the video.

This zealot has a new cause and is out to convert you. I recently began working with an organization called The Art of Elysium that brings creative types into the pediatric center of local hospitals to set up workshops, and yesterday morning I hosted my first one: a monster workshop. With the help of Rachel Glickman, Art of Elysium’s New York program coordinator, and Dossier creative director, Alec Friedman, we put together a Jim Henson-inspired craft morning of googly eyes and saturated colors. Art of Elysium has been around in LA for twelve years now, and the LA creative community is hugely involved. In New York, however, it’s only in it’s second year, and is in desperate need of volunteers – like you! Most of the children in the pediatric ward are battling serious medical conditions like cancer and AIDS, and much of their life revolves around medicine, IVs, operations and all things health related. It’s not a very pleasant experience for anyone, but especially not for a child. So this is where you come in, or actually swoop in, with glitter and feathers and fun. You can help create a morning where these kids are able to forget about their heavy medical concerns and are just able to play. You can decorate skateboards, you can host a tie dye station, you can knit stars. What’s wonderful about Art of Elysium is they are pretty much open to any idea, as long as it’s safe and age appropriate. I would love for you to get involved. You can either host your own workshop, or if you feel shy, you’re welcome to come help out with my next one.  Please contact Rachel Glickman at RGlickman@theartofelysium.org or myself at caris.reid@gmail.com to get involved.