Neal Medlyn took up residence at The Kitchen this past weekend with his badass show Wicked Clown Love. Based on the Detroit rap duo Insane Clown Posse (ICP) and their followers, known as Juggalos and Juggalettes, Medlyn performed with his two main sidekicks, Farris Craddock and Carmine Covelli, and a cast of Juggalos. This is a continuation of Medlyn’s performance work in which he takes pop music icons, such as Beyonce, Britney Spears, or Phil Collins, and creates an entire piece based on them. ICP provides ready-made mythology and rituals based on their highly developed sub-cult following. Medlyn serves it all up: lunatic clown aesthetic, Faygo showers (ICP drink of choice that’s constantly sprayed on fans and themselves), and recreating their yearly music festival gathering in the woods complete with wrestling and other debaucherous activity. Everything in the world of ICP happens in The Dark Carnival, a space in which the battle between good and evil is proselytized. It’s a space centered upon male bonding and shared knowledge of rituals. At one point in the show Medlyn creates a safe circle for any member to step up and share about anything they need to get off their chest or throw out some rhymes, but first he purifies the space with a spray can of Old Spice.

Breaking character, Medlyn diverged into stories of his early 20’s in Texas, like writing hot checks at Wal-Mart in the middle of the night while high. The structure of his work is very closely tied to that of performance artist Ann Liv Young. They both share a love for singing over other people’s songs, using those songs as a story telling means to push along a narrative, and they break into highly confessional personal monologues that implore the audience to feel a close connection to their lives.

Half the performance is based on watching Medlyn be a karaoke king in his own show. His persona is extremely convincing and he’s actually a good rapper. Whether you can get into his topic or not, the story he’s telling through ICP is one of camaraderie and the human need to connect with one another. Aggressive and nihilistic at first the story gives way to transformation and miracles. Faygo showers are given the power to turn energy from negative to positive, clearing away the past to give way to the future, that sounds like a good ol’ baptism to me. What becomes clear by the end is that the carnival is a space to encounter God, to make a choice between good and evil, and to participate in a community. Through the story telling structure of the six Joker Cards, you are lead through a personal and social battle of whether you can judge your moral behavior by the ultimate end point of entry to heaven or hell. ICP has oscillated from confirming and denying the intentionality of their “God message”. Medlyn made it very clear in one of his monologues that he wanted to talk to us about negation that night. Having vaguely encountering ICP culture in high school, Medlyn’s performance creates a safe space at which to be a second hand voyeur of his re-enactments of Juggalo behavior. I was only too thrilled at the real life Juggalos in the house.

Photograph by Paula Court

Starting today, the Abrons Art Center is hosting a ten-day long festival of contemporary performance called American Realness. Combining many different aspects of experimental performance art including dance, traditional theater, drag shows and concerts, the festival has over 46 performances of 20 productions. There is also a bookstore and a pop-up cafe to provide respite for those hunkering down for the daily marathon of performance art.

Although all of the artists look like they will prove to be amazing, especially on my radar is The Heather Lang Show by Eleanor Bauer and Vice Versa, which is being billed as a “double one-woman show,” that somehow incorporates QVC, spirituality and drag. Did I mention there is voguing? I am imagining stand up comedy meets Paris is Burning meets Jerry Springer. Let me explain, Heather Lang, by trade is a professional dancer working in tons of the top Broadway shows, who also happens to be one of funniest people I have ever met. She is super pretty but isn’t afraid to get ugly and pour milk on her face to make you laugh. I’ve seen her do this. The press release says to expect talk shows, critiques on cultural identity and of course, drag. I’d put my money on this being a pretty awesome and entertaining show.

Performances are January 5 at 10pm, January 8 at 6pm, January 11 at 11pm and January 15 at 9pm at The Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater, 466 Grand Street, NYC. Tickets are available here.

Although the Long Island-based quintet Twin Sister just released their first full-length album, In Heaven, this fall, the band has previously released two EPs (Color Your Life in 2010 and Vampires With Dreaming Kids in 2008), and they have enough unofficial material online to create at least two additional albums. The band’s five members—singer Andrea Estella, keyboardist Dev Gupta, bassist Gabel D’Amico, guitarist-singer Eric Cardona and drummer Bryan Ujueta—first met on the Long Island band circuit, where they grew up in adjacent towns. They officially formed a band in the summer of 2008, layering Andrea’s breathy vocals, which range from a suffused whisper to kittenish purring to a ghoulish rasp, with the band’s hypnotic dreamscape sounds. Since then, they have gained worldwide renown and a cult-like following.

As Twin Sister’s European tour was winding down, Andrea sat down before her Parisian show to speak with us about the band’s homegrown approach to making music videos, old versus new songs, her obsession with zany hairstyles and how Nickelodeon led her to her first rock experience.

Sarah Moroz: You played a cover from Italo-disco maestros La Bionda when you played your Paris concert last year. I can’t think of anything more different than your sound, and yet it was one of the most fun and electrifying covers I’ve heard. How did you decide to do that song?

Andrea Estella: I don’t know how we chose that song, actually. I think I or one of us found the video on YouTube. We really liked [it] and were like, “Oh, we could do this!”

Sarah: Are there any other covers you’d be interested in performing?

Andrea: We haven’t really been working on any in a long time. We’ve been playing longer sets now than we used to; we have more music now. We might work on another cover; I don’t know what yet, though.

Sarah: So can you talk a bit more about the new stuff?

Andrea: We’re playing songs from the album In Heaven. So, it’s kind of pushing some of the older ones out of the way, but we’re still keeping a couple—even bringing back one or two that are really old, and then trying to work out the new songs. We’ll practice them when we get home so they’ll be better developed. We started the tour playing “Kimmi in a Ricefield” and then we stopped because we felt it wasn’t ready yet, even though it’s probably fine. We’re just crazy.

Sarah: On your blog, you have work that references both Kimmi and Lady Daydream in the titles. Can you tell me more about your work as a visual artist? What is the relationship between the art you make and the songs—–do the two bleed into each other?

Andrea: They bleed. Originally with Kimmi, I made a story—a short story. It changed a little bit for the lyrics, shortened the story even more. I just made up characters. And then we made it into a video, which is another version of Kimmi. But that original was a very innocent little…like an anime character.

Sarah: Can you talk a bit more about the child-like tropes? I feel like that’s a bit of a theme. In the video for “Bad Street,” there’s a piñata and chalk drawings—there’s a playfulness.

Andrea: Even me and my boyfriend—he’s the bass player [Gabel d’Amico]—we’re really childlike. We’re always talking in baby voices (laughs), being idiots. I think we’re just a bunch of dopey kids, so it just comes through. I love cartoons and toys and kids.

Sarah: What was your first concert?

Andrea: My dad surprised me. I came home from school one day when I was like…nine—eight or nine. I don’t know if you know the show Pete and Pete? It used to be on Nickelodeon II. They’re brothers and they’re both named Pete. And there was a band at the time that was kind of popular, Luscious Jackson…?

Sarah: Yeah! “Naked Eye!”

Andrea: So they were on an episode of Pete and Pete, and I started getting into the band. I came home one day, and my dad loved to surprise me so he just put me in the car and his friend came, and we saw Luscious Jackson. I was like the youngest kid there, and I still have this tank top that has Luscious Jackson written kind of graffiti-style on it. That was my first show.

Sarah: Do you ever try to channel anyone or use other front women as inspiration for being onstage?

Andrea: I don’t think about it too much. I do like Cyndi Lauper, but I’m not really like her ’cause she’s kind of insane and she does really weird dance moves, stuff like that. I also like how Björk is onstage. She doesn’t talk very much. She just kind of dances silly, like I do, but not as weird as Cyndi Lauper.

Sarah: You have had all different types of hairstyles over the years. Even now, your hair is in this really pretty kind of crown braid. Is that part of your style in general, or is that part of your “I’m performing” style?

Andrea: Hair is like a hobby in my family. When I was in middle school or even younger, my mom let me dye my hair so I had blue hair and purple. Me and my sister would get into extensions and my brother would have to have a mohawk—we’ve always been into messing with our hair. Whenever I go home, my sister is always getting me to dye my hair.

Sarah: So do you have your eye on a next style?

Andrea: I have a tub of violet hair dye that I want to use but now I’m not so sure because this blonde, with the weather changing, is breaking. But I really want to dye it light, light lilac or violet. Sometimes I have sea foam hair and all of a sudden brown, normal; blonde. And I wear wigs. I mess around with all that stuff. I like looking different every day.

Sarah: Being from New York, does being a “New York band” mean anything to you?

Andrea: I mean, we just are a New York band. We all grew up in New York; we’re all from Long Island. We grew up going to the city as kids. We just are a New York band—it’s not like we moved there for college and met up with other kids from Arizona. My family’s in New York. It must feel different for other bands. They go there looking for whether they’re going to be a painter or model. They go there and they’re like, “Yes, I made it! I’ve been here for four or five years. I’m a New Yorker!” I’ve been going to shows since I was in high school in New York.

Sarah: But does being a New York band have a kind of connotation of creative locality? Do you feel part of a New York music community?

Andrea: I guess there are different pockets of people. My friends have always been New Yorkers because we’ve been going to shows there since we were kids. But then there are other people who go there because it’s a hip place to be and it’s this whole cool, hip scheme to play a certain bar in Williamsburg or whatever. We just play wherever. We like Silent Barn. I don’t know; it’s weird when I talk about Brooklyn… There isn’t much going on on Long Island so you just go and travel to Williamsburg. It’s more popular than it ever was. Now it’s like overload, but it’s cool. Especially from touring around the US, there are a lot of special people that need a special place to go that their hometown can’t give them.

Sarah: You made all these extra mp3s available online: demos, different versions of songs that didn’t make it on the album… It’s quite generous to share all of that. Musicians are usually very careful about what songs they release to the public. Why did you decide to put all these songs in varied stages of completion out there?

Andrea: Originally, we used to show ideas to our friends, because we weren’t a band yet. We just didn’t care. Some of them would jump on that idea and think it was really cool. Then it turned into strangers listening to it. I like some of the earlier ideas, unfinished recordings. People are evolving with music because no one really buys music anymore. It’s also cool because you put it on the website and it’s free and [people] like it. It’s better than them getting it from some rip on YouTube. It’s just nice to see early versions of finished songs too.

Sarah: What about the videos? How much do you get involved in those?

Andrea: Oh, I get in there. I’m bad at letting go. I was a visual artist before being a musician, which became more dominant. [The videos] are my way of getting visual with music, which is so fun. I did the art direction for the music videos that we have so far: “All Around,” “Bad Street” and then “Kimmi in a Ricefield.” “Kimmi in a Ricefield” was a big, nice studio. We got to work with a big, nice open space and a team. That one was a step up. It came out cool. It was a 22-hour day, and I got minor hypothermia from that video. I did the art directing but then I also had to do the acting. Luckily, I had a friend to help me with the art direction while I was acting. I sat in cold water in wet clothes on my knees all day, but it was so much fun. Music videos are so old school—when you’re little, you watch music television. It’s my favorite part. It’s like, “Oh, I can’t wait ‘til the music video comes out!” It’s really important to me.

Sarah: ”All Around and Away We Go” is a really funny video—it doesn’t visually match the sound at all.

Andrea: We were supposed to have a studio space…the guy was supposed to pick up the key, but we got locked out. We ended up going to this house on Long Island that we were living in and using it as a practice space, and we had to shoot it in the house. We didn’t have enough room to pull the camera out far enough, [so] we had to cut a lot of it. Dance scenes don’t look good unless it’s the whole body. We had to do from the knee up, which doesn’t register as much. And then we did a lot of stop-animation. It was really fun.

Sarah: The contrast of the kitschy feel with the ethereal sound is quite unexpected.

Andrea: What inspired us for that video was Teen Dream, this little pop trio. They had a one-hit wonder sort of thing. Their video is really scary, because they have a stop-motion animation of a guy coming in and he has a paper body and his head is an actual photograph and it’s moving and then he falls apart and then he comes back together—and there are clouds going by behind him and weird three-dimensional shapes. Then it goes to three girls dancing with a projection on them… The song is “Let’s Get Busy”, it’s from the ’80s.

Sarah: There’s one line I really like: “Feel the power of my many destinies.” Does it feel like you have many destinies?

Andrea: Already, when I go home I want to work on sculptures. I’m really into food, too. I don’t think music is the only thing for me. I’m a Gemini; I want to do many things. So yeah, there are many destinies for me. There’s a lot of time, so I hope to do more—maybe work on other music videos with other people, like friends who are in bands. Oberhofer, they’re also a Brooklyn band; I’d like to make their music video. They don’t have a music video yet. I’d be a lot of fun. There’s no money in that either (laughs).

Sarah: Right, well, why start now?

Andrea: (Laughs) Yeah, why? I’m going to live with my parents forever!

Image by Shawn Brackbill

As things wind down at Basel, here are some final shots of parties, the fair, and Miami itself.

Above photo: Monday, December 5: Leaving Miami 

Sunday, December 4: Art Basel Miami Beach 

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Sunday, December 4: Art Basel Miami Beach 

Sunday, December 4: She Got Her Man, Art Basel Miami Beach fair

Sunday, December 4: Lazy barbeque, Standard Hotel

Sunday, December 5: Cabaret at the Paris Paris party at the Shelbourne Hotel 

Monday, December 5: Lobby of the Shelbourne Hotel, 4 am

Maybe more interesting than what happens at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair during the day is what happens at night during the parties. Here are photos from some of those events that have taken place over the past few days.

Above photo: Friday, December 2: Gagosian Gallery party at The Standard Hotel

Thursday, December 1: The X-Patsys (Robert Longo, Barbara Sukowa and Jon Kessler) performing at The New World Symphony

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Friday, December 2: Visionaire party at The Delano Hotel 

Thursday, December 1: Le Baron Miami at The Delano Hotel, late night

Thursday, December 1: A Frank Ghery-designed building at the Performa Ten Great Years Celebration

Friday, December 2: Dzine installation launch, hosted by Andre Balazs and with Kanon Vodka at The Standard Hotel

Saturday, December 3: Jerry’s Diner, 5:30 am

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” So the idiom goes, anyway. I began to ponder the expression as I watched the real life mannequins of Perfect Prototype, Kinematik’s performance dance piece, scoot crab-like across the floor of the John Ryan Theater in Dumbo. Each of the six women was dressed monochromatically in black, with jet bobs cutting hard against their geisha-powdered faces. Their limbs wrenched robotically as they yanked prosthetic limbs from Tiffany blue bags and tried them on for size.  All the while clips from Nip/Tuck, Access Hollywood, and America’s Next Top Model reeled on an antenna TV in the background.

Was this beautiful, I asked myself—people scrambling for perfection? After all, I have eyes and I believe that as an audience member I qualified as a “beholder.” These mimes were unequivocally creepy. Aesthetically, they were less than pleasing. And what is an idiom, really? It’s just a phrase that is peculiar to a specific demographic, a string of words that has no obvious meaning. Basically, an idiom is just nonsense, charming people with its clever little mask.

Yet, this is the “wisdom” that mothers share with their daughters as they trudge through the psychological quicksand of puberty. Teenage girls look in the mirror and realize that although they’ve grown breasts, they don’t look anything like Barbie, the sham model of the “everywoman” who had been thrust into their hands before they even learned what a breast was.  Barbie, a doll who if brought to life would be anatomically impossible, has become the ideal. With her back-breaking boobs, ridiculous waist-hip and leg-to-body ratios, she’d be unable to stand-up on her own two, slivery feet. Is it any wonder then that in 2010 about 9 million women opted for the knife, needle, or laser—this number accounting for 92% of all cosmetic procedures[1]? Sure, Mom’s recycled 2-cents on beauty is sweet. But, who are we going to believe: a loving parent, or Barbie and her imitators on TV?

The latter, of course. Leggy, anime facial features, double F-cups: that’s the American dream. Beauty, it turns out, isn’t subjective; it’s a standard that is instated by pop culture. We as Americans are so used to Barbie iconoclasm that it actually makes sense to us. Of course we think it’s “normal” for women to want to be toothpicks (yet miraculously busty) and have upturned noses. Have you ever wondered, though, how it looks to an outsider?

A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting the young and über-talented Svea Schneider, who is not only a dancer but also the choreographer and the brains behind Perfect Prototype. Originally from the French border town of Landau, Germany, Schneider came to the United States in 2003 to attend class at the Broadway Dance Center, and is now officially a New Yorker thanks to an O1 Visa for People with Extraordinary Ability. Ms. Schneider has had a front row seat to the American media spectacular for over 8 years now and she has a lot to say about the intoxicating deluge of images to which we females are suggested to conform. The dance, which debuted at last year’s Jazz Choreography Enterprises’ annual showcase, is a concerned, satirical portrayal of just that.

“I can definitely say that the obsession for the perfect body aesthetic is much more developed and exaggerated in the US,” states Schneider, a woman who hails from what seems to me to be the motherland of human Aphrodites: Claudia Schiffer, Heidi Klum, Diane Kruger, among others. So, why is she finger-pointing? Is she being hypocritical? No, I decided. She’s not. It’s not that Germany and other countries don’t admire beautiful women, it’s just that they don’t necessarily glorify them. While hairstyles and clothing may be emulated, non-American women are less likely to go to extreme measures to look like a pinup. And Schneider thinks that she may know the reason.

“As far as plastic surgery is concerned, it is most definitely more readily available and popular in the US than I imagine anywhere else in the world,” Schneider says, continuing, “This might have to do with the fact that the big film industry and Hollywood are in the US. I find it kind of scary how alike everyone looks in Hollywood. Yes, some are blonde and some are redheads, but besides these minor differences, mostly everyone looks the same.”

That’s because everyone wants to look like a model—a prototype—eschewing individuality to blend in with the crowd, trading in the genetic for the generic. Even if that means being physically compromised or just straight-up unhealthy. At one point during the show, one of the more petite women hobbles around on a plastic leg that has been plucked from the pelvic socket of a 6-foot tall mannequin. Another mock-vomits in the corner. Is she nauseated by the charade in which she’s participating, or is she just bulimic in pursuit of the magical size 0?

Revolting? Yes, but that’s the point. It’s very much an expressionistic piece. There’s something about the women that reminds me of a post-World War I painting; it’s as if they’ve been peeled from one of George Grosz’s canvasses.  They’re fleshy automatons who have seen the future and they know the devastating capabilities of modern technology. You (women especially) pity these poor creatures because you can relate to them. On the one hand you’re deeply disturbed by what’s going in front of you, but as much as you’d like to say that it’s not an accurate portrayal of life, you can’t help but sympathize. It evokes the most primal of emotions: the need to be loved. You want to look the way the women in magazines look because the physical features of the breathing Barbie dolls are what attract others. Right?

I certainly hope that people would prefer the authentic over the artificial, but it feels like wishful thinking. I mean, there we were: three rows of individuals, most of us women, huddled in a lonely venue in the underskirt of industrial Brooklyn. Before the lights went down, Svea and her cultural comrades stripped to reveal six sweaty bodies, and six mazes of Sharpie sketches—the blueprints of plastic surgeons. As I focused on the far screen, which featured an illuminated image of the Mona Lisa fitted with the same jet bob that the dancers wore, I thought about all the stupid things that I have done in the name of so-called beauty. I thought about Mona Lisa and her infamous smirk. I thought about her mystique, the number one reason why crowds of people flood into the Louvre each and every day. They go, just to be in awe of her gaze.

Whatever happened to that kind of beauty, the one that can’t be bought, the one that can’t be explained? It can only be treasured, it seems.

Svea Schneider and Kinematik Dance Theater’s Perfect Prototype was featured in Week 3 of the 2011 Wave Rising Series. The company’s next performance will take place in the Winter of 2012.  

Above photo: Katie Weinholt

Performa, the visual art performance biennial, is descending upon the city for the first three weeks of November. In its fourth and ever growing iteration, the biennial’s diverse schedule traverses theatre, poetry, comedy, film and music, and includes truly innovative performances. Many are even free while others require an RSVP, and others, paid tickets. Our not-to-be-missed events include:

Shirin Neshat, who will be debuting the live-performance piece OverRuled. Set in a courtroom, the piece examines different types of dictatorship and theocracy within the context of the Iranian and Arab uprisings. Famed Iranian musician Mohsen Manjoo and Iranian actor Mohammad B. Ghaffari will be featured.

Taking place at the SVA theatre will be Liz Magic Laser’s I Feel Your Pain. Combining acting and cinema, she explores and deconstructs the paradigm of the American political contest as a romantic drama.

If you’re familiar with Mika Rottenberg’s work, then you’ve experienced the bizarre world she creates using physical labor to produce biproducts that have the power to transform or catapult these worlds into action. For her collaboration with Jon Kessler, the piece Seven will incorporate a “chakra juicer” that will collect the body fluids of seven New York performers, which will then be magically, using Mika’s internal logic, transformed into a “fantastical celebration” on the African savannah.

Tarek Atoui’s Visiting Tarab could turn into one of those amazing events that make you feel like you’re in on a secret and everyone else there is too. Using the largest collection of classical Arab music, he invited 16 diverse musicians to Beirut to explore the compilation. The live performance during the biennial will be collective and continuous, built of sound and music with artists such as Zenna Parkins, Anti-Pop Consortium, Uriel Barthelemi, John Butcher and DJ Spooky, who will be there working towards a state of tareb, or emotional evocations.

Skateboarding and public sculpture come together for Raphael Zarka’s two-part project: the first being a public lecture on his recent research into the geometry of skateboarding, and the second, a creation of a cycloid skateboard ramp inspired by Galileo.

Comedy also has a large currency in the festival and Performa Ha! will take place each Sunday, featuring artists, stand-up comedians and musicians taking a crack at conceptual art and stand-up. Reggie Watts, Hennesey Youngman, Club Nutz (Tyson and Scott Reeder), Dina Seiden, and Michael Smith are confirmed for the stage. Additionally, Performa’s film program focuses on comedy by screening Richard Pryor’s groundbreaking comedy concert film, Lenny Bruce’s second-to-last performance, and Comics on the Edge in the 1970s features Albert Brooks and Andy Kaufman.

In Athi-Patra Ruga’s piece Ilulwane, the artist reflects on New York City, his own Xhosa culture and photographs by Alvin Baltrop in form of synchronized swimming. And as the master of ceremonies, Irvin Morazan will don his Master Blaster headdress and lead singles in four rounds of The Dating Game at El Museum Del Barrio. Performa truly has it all.

Image by Sarah Moroz

Merrill Garbus, founder of the musical project tUnE-yArDs, was sporting some serious face paint when I first saw her perform. It stretched from her left eyebrow to right cheek, transforming her into a David Bowie-esque stage warrior wielding vocal gymnastics with her deep voice. She performed instrumental acrobatics in tandem, puncturing songs with raw and visceral HAs! And WAOUs! These loops and layers imbue her music with a handmade feel and can be anthemic, almost evangelical, in their delivery.

Merrill’s music reflects a variety of influences, likely a product of her rambling life path. The singer grew up on the East Coast, studied in Africa and launched her professional music career in Montreal before moving to California. Currently, she is touring the world as the opening act for Beirut. As it turns out, she is as gracious and articulate in person as she is experimental and fascinating onstage. Post-concert in Paris, I spoke with her about the trappings of language, the importance of intuition, her love of Montreal and her favorite weirdos.

Sarah Moroz: The whoops and amazing guttural sounds you make tap into something really powerful and almost primitive. How much of that is crafted, and how much of that is just what comes out of you by surprise?

Merrill Garbus: I definitely start with intuitive stuff, with as little thinking as possible. That’s where the sound exploration really helps me, because as soon as I start thinking about things too much, they feel contrived. I always wanted tUnE-yArDs to be not contrived and really honest. I had this experience of doing real theater work and then being in the indie rock world with another band, and in both of those cases there was a sense of…it tended towards pretense, I guess. With tUnE-yArDs, I always wanted it to come from a human place that anybody could understand.
Especially these days I can experiment with the looping pedal. I have facility with it that helps me be very spontaneous. The song “Bizness,” was just an experimentation thing. It just came really naturally. Words are the thing that do require some kind of crafting, but at the same time I want to have that spontaneity with words—and even a kind of Dada aesthetic to the lyrics… It’s evoking something different than the actual meaning of the words. That’s been really challenging for me lately.

Sarah: Is it easier or more liberating to perform in front of an audience that doesn’t speak English?

Merrill: It actually feels better. It feels easier that I am communicating more with the sound of words, than actual words. There’s this one lyric: “My man likes me from behind,” and people are like, “Is it hard to say those things?” I fear that people are taking lyrics too literally. So to perform in front of people who don’t understand half of the lyrics is wonderful. Maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed this European tour so much—maybe that’s part of it: feeling free from the meaning of the music, being more in the feeling of it.

Sarah: You started using a handheld voice recorder, spotlighting the haphazards of doings things spontaneously. Why this approach?

Merrill: I started with [the recorder] because it was a gift from friends of mine. I really just needed to get down song ideas and I had no money at the time and then these friends very nicely gave it to me. Immediately I was using it all the time to record things, but I was also like, “Oh, that sound!” It started changing what I was hearing, instead of just recording myself, and I was listening more. That summer and the summer after that, I was a nanny so I was with this kid. It was fascinating to be around him as he learned words and learned how to formulate language. So I was carrying this thing around, recording him. I loved the sound of that recorder and all of a sudden I was like, “Oh that’s OK, that sound, and it doesn’t mean I’m not a valid musician. It doesn’t mean I’m not a valid recording artist.” That was a big thing. I felt really frustrated as a puppeteer—and just frustrated in general. Then I started importing the files from [the recorder] into my computer and using free recording software to multi-track things with it. It was like working with Play-Doh! It helped to be around the kid; I think he was inspiring me to be naïve, in a way, and go back to this very basic “What do I want to hear?” What do I want to hear instead of creating something that other people want to hear? It was really important for that to be a formative theme for tUnE-yArDs.

Sarah: Your spell tUnE-yArDs with a mishmash of uppercase and lowercase letters, and onstage you wear this great face paint. It seems like you put some significant thought into creating interesting visual elements, in addition to aural ones…

Merrill: It is important to me. People are like, “What’s with the capitalization?” I think it’s an aesthetic thing more than having a great amount of meaning behind it. It’s the visual attached to it. The face paint may be a little different thing, because I think that there’s a process that I go through when I’m putting on the face paint before I go on. It’s like my first improvisation of the night. There’s some part of my brain that’s like, “Ok, this is how things are gonna be tonight” and giving myself permission to listen to the sounds I wanna hear that night, which may be way different than they were the night before. I think I need to think of sound in a visual way, so it makes sense to me to have artistic components for everything. It reflects, for me, the visual effect, the understanding of the music.

Sarah: Can you tell me a bit about living in Montreal, and being part of Sister Suvi? How was working with that band different than tUnE-yArDs?

Merrill: My feelings about Montreal run deep, because it was the first time that I really felt young, even though I was 26 when I moved there. I happened to be working at this camp the summer of 2005. I quit my puppeteering job and went to work at this camp where I met Nate Brenner, the bass player, and also my friend Patrick Gregoire. I was living at my parents’ house and I was really depressed, things were really bad. I didn’t have any reason for living, etc., etc., and then [Patrick] and I just started playing together. My mom had just given me this ukulele. So I started going up to Montreal to visit him because he was at Concordia studying music and we started a band. Patrick had this knowledge about what music could do. I didn’t have this idea that you could make a living as an artist, really at all. I thought I would be on food stamps for the rest of my life and that being an artist also meant being a reject from society. That’s really what I felt like. And he said, “Your songs are really good, and we could make money playing your songs”. We would go up to Montreal and play these shows at Café Dépanneur up on rue Bernard, and people actually came and put money in the hat and really paid attention and loved it. That show was really historic for us. And all of a sudden I thought maybe making art can actually be fun. There can be so much love in it and it can inspire love in other people. It was just the right time and the right place, and a place where the living was cheap and the people were so encouraging of what we were doing as Sister Suvi and what I was doing as tUnE-yArDs. The two began at the same time because Patrick was touring with his other band, Islands. So when he would do Islands, I would do this thing and they just both sort of grew and grew and grew.

Sarah: I read a past interview in which you stated: “I feel this stuff, so I owe it to myself to do it. Otherwise, my other option is to die.” That’s a very impassioned, powerful thing to say. What inspires you to keep up that energy; what do you draw from?

Merrill: Well, first of all, I’m glad to be reminded that I said that. Also I’m glad you didn’t say: “And I found that very overdramatic.” Though it is a dramatic thing to say. If I didn’t have this outlet, I would have gone the other way, at that point in my life. It’s funny because when you get yourself out of depression, things don’t feel as black and white anymore. But to answer your initial question—life or death—it’s like tonight, for instance. That was a hard show for me—maybe more difficult than other shows because it’s a stuffy place. It has a weight to it. It’s huge and it’s not full of tUnE-yArDs fans; it’s full of Beirut fans, so it’s just a different thing. If I wasn’t attached to this idea that it’s either this or dying, then I would get distracted by, “Oh, they don’t like me,” or “Oh, things aren’t going well,” or feeling sorry for myself instead of getting back to what feels like a more spiritual attachment to my work. I’m so fucking lucky to be a) alive and b) doing what I love as my work. It’s that kind of thing where it’s just a beautiful reminder every single day that there’s tough shit that we deal with, but it’s very minimal in the scheme of things. And it feels that I found a way live.

Sarah: You’ve said, “It’s really good for women of all ages to see other women being really weird and bizarre and loud.” Who were some of those female icons for you?

Merrill: My mom, number one. My grandma, number two, who I thought of tonight because she’d be really proud of me for playing on a stage like this, with lots of makeup on and speaking French a little bit. My mom is a piano teacher and professional pianist, but she also has incredible theatricality to her personality. I saw her be a performer a lot in her life, and my grandma too. [Also] Ani Difranco was a huge. Maybe that’s uncool to say, but that was huge for me when I was in high school to have this real violent and brazen female voice. And you know, Björk, a total weirdo in every sense of the word—again [she’s inspiring] for her art, and being accepted in this world of music and art because she’s so out there and just really doing what she feels and what she envisions. I guess Nina Simone, too, at a certain point, because of her voice. My voice is low and people are often like, “Oh, I thought you were a guy at first.” As a teenager I had a lot of gender anger, wanting to rebel against what a woman was supposed to be and yet at the same time feeling insecure about not being the woman who I felt most men were gonna be attracted to—or anybody was going to be attracted to. And Odetta, Patti Smith… There were a lot of them along the way who are really wild: Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill…the list goes.

Sarah: In terms of process, there is Owen Pallett, who also loops sounds and really builds songs from scratch. Do you know other musicians who use this technique? How did you decide that kind of DIY live process was for you?

Merrill: I don’t know enough loopers. Owen and I know each other, though I’ve never seen him play live, which is a total shame. But I don’t many other people, perhaps on purpose, who use that. White Hinterland is a band that we know. They’re friends of ours who have been using looping a lot and creating a certain layering. We had this wonderful opportunity to play with The Roots when we did a TV show in the States. They’re huge heroes of mine. I really look forward to collaborating with hip-hop artists more because I think it is a philosophy of looping and listening for sounds, and using those sounds to build a piece of art. That’s definitely an oversimplification of hip-hop, but that’s a big part of it. It’s a collage [and] I’m interested in collages of sound that reflect the present tense, To me, hip-hop is one of the only genres that does that effectively—and powerfully. I love Erykah Badu and I would love to collaborate with her. I realize that might never happen but I respect her so much. Again, she’s weird in the way that she’s just doing what she hears and feels, and she’s not paying attention to what anybody else thinks about. As a result, she’s doing really groundbreaking stuff and that’s where I want to be: on the growing edge of music.

Sarah: As you tour, are you able to be creative, given that you have to dedicate so much energy to the shows? Or do you need to carve out separate time for creativity?

Merrill: A little bit of both. I’m trying to write this new song on the road and it’s a real struggle. But then again, these days it’s a struggle at home too because there’s my laptop and my laptop is filled with business. What I’m trying to do is give myself some real time off in the next little bit, where I can get back to that sort of naïve place—not thinking about the effect. You can’t write songs thinking about how it’s going to affect your income for the next five years. I experiment a lot during sound checks with the looping pedal, and then I’m improvising that loop. That’s been really nice but that crafting part that comes after it is really hard and requires some serious sitting with a piece, sitting with myself. That’s what there’s not a lot of room for afterward—and there’s a lot of creativity that happens onstage too. If we have over an hour, it can really be this sort of sculpted thing.

Sarah: I had read that you’d like to bring attention to the African musicians you so love. What do you have planned?

Merrill: I was thinking about that just today, actually. The problem with doing interviews is that there’s a lot more talk than action! I’m talking about stuff, but then I’m on tour so my energy is divided between the music business and making music, and there’s not room for much else. But today I was thinking about what that is. I am so glad that there are these bands like Khaira Arby, this singer from Mali who I got to play with. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, because of their association with Graceland, have been touring in the States a bunch. But it’s becoming part of “indie rock,” touring circuits for these bands to come through and that’s totally amazing. Those are the bands that we have access to. It would be wonderful to open for them or collaborate with them.

When I was in Kenya, I befriended and was very much saved by a bunch of hip-hop musicians in Nairobi. They just don’t have access to the resources that we do, [but] they actually do have pretty good music videos up there. Something that I thought about was having some kind of tUnE-yArDs focused radio station, where we could feature their music and potentially release their music at some point. Again, these are huge ideas that are hard to make happen, but that would be ideal. It’s the idea of making more active the sharing of music that’s already there. Certainly they’re listening to our music, and we’re listening to theirs. That’s already happening. To open the resources that we have in the Western world—especially now that we have successful indie bands here referencing African music and making a lot of money on it, comparatively to most African musicians. There’s always this danger with Africa, even for myself, that it becomes romanticized. It probably is a very hard place to travel in, logistically, but I would also love to tour in Africa and be able to document that. It would be more to learn what’s going on there and learn about the music there. And, these days, how climate change affects people who are living on what they’re growing. I feel that I was privileged enough to be able to go there and learn the Swahili language and I want to use those things for good—idealistic as that might sound.

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.

Should you be seeking some audiovisual inspiration, look no further than this awe-inspiring video Spike Jonze shot at a party and posted to his Opening Ceremony blog featuring a brilliant collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and Los Angeles-based dancer Lil Buck. According to Jonze, “Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck’s own creation and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” The performance was part of a benefit to bring art back into schools and definitely serves as a stunning example of the power and importance of art inside and outside of the classroom.