fb: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142385699182488

Come at 10p SHARP to watch the friendly fire femme-on-fag-on-genderqueer-on-best wrestling. Stay until 11:45 to hear the raffles be called, and stay even later to join us dancing with DJ Ben Haber [of Judy]!

What’s Work Hard / Stay Hard and why should I care?

We’ll spend a week building a roof on a barn, finishing a wheelchair-accessible outhouse, archiving oral history of collective queer folks,  and tending infrastructure at IDA, a collectively-queer-owned 140 acres of rural land that is a welcoming space for all gender nonconforming people who want to live rurally in middle TN. To raise $ for materials for this project, we are gathering folks who like dancing & friendly competition on Weds. Sept 7th in Brooklyn. Don’t you want to break up your week with something fun that also supports sustainable, intentional safer spaces for queer folks? Thought so!

Check out the video or throw us some $ if you can’t come on Wednesday here!

What am I doing there? July 31 – Aug 4 I’m visiting my chosen family in Toronto. There are biological *kids* now! Aug 2 there will be a BBQ at Cecilia’s house so please come by if you are in T.O. Otherwise I’m thinking dig yr own amithyst for $7!!!!, visiting Exile in Kensington market and packing my van for a naked beach trip!

Aug 4-8 I’ll be hanging around Montreal for Perver/cite, just, you know, giving two workshops and performing a *new* piece that incolves multi-colored spandex:

• Saturday workshop [time TBA]: Keep It In The Family, with Coral Short + more: As I build the pervert bingo we’ll be playing, I’d LOVE answers to the question “what kinds of family perversions have *you* played?”
• Sunday workshop [time TBA]: Queering Sci-Fi For the Revolution, with Jenna Peters Golden + more. What sci-fi books inspire you to stay on the team and ho do they do that?
• Sunday evening: performing at Meow Mix/Spectacle Benefit for Projet 10 with Rae Spoon & Peaches LePage, NO/HO/MO + more @ La Sala Rosa.
  

Also this trip launches The Abundance Project: a new Tumblr / multimedia project that my sweetheart and I have been scheming and writing and dreaming on for awhile. Part zine, part interviews and part online documentation via tumblr. Lots of thoughts on the high-voltage topic of scarcity and abundance through the lenses of class, art, activism, and love in liminality.

And because I’m travelling, I’ll be working on my existing Tumblr, MFA in DIY, where I’ve been documenting pictures of amazing shit I see when I get it together to leave the house for the last 2.5 years.

Terra Incognita means uncharted land; and it was used by medieval cartographers to describe what happened “off the map,” and after a weekend of many kinds of inspiration, we chose the term because it reflected our artists’ intentions to ask ourselves to seek new skills and new ways of producing which reflect the world/s we traverse and the edges we play on.

What a DIY residency entails:

• getting out of your apartment/house –> everywhere but NYC, people have guest rooms!
• having to be accountable for at least some of your actions [this ain't wanderlust]
• scheduling art production goals and setting deadlines
• scheduling art-intake time: seeing other people’s work is important!
• a healthy sense of TOSS [Taking Our Selves Seriously]

One of my favorite aspects of a DIY residency are getting to choose/collaborate on the place, time, company and activities for the residency. One person may book the space, another do the menu, another drum up creativity exercises, and another map out locations to visit. I also appreciate that all it takes to create this kind of creative space is setting clear intention. And isn’t that the root of much of our great work anyway?

**I use “DIY Residencies” as a term to define the act of supplying myself with a new place, a quiet space and focused time to work diligently on a project. I feel great that it’s an off-the-grid experience. I have applied for a very few “real” residencies, and from what I can tell the time I spend on those applications would have been equally well-spent working on writing, so if I can accomplish the goal of *producing* with less work to find the place to do it, then all is as well as I could wish for.

Baltimore’s beautiful gem Black Cherry Puppet Theater, as run by Michael, meeting Rebecca Nagle and Koala, talking with Wobfest folks and being hosted amazing by Leah and Xander, finding The Book Thing and eating the new bagel sandwich involving fried egg, mustard, humous, spinach and cream cheese.

Richmond’s Lamplighter gave delicious food, handsome mysterious Hank, the post show drag queens who fiercely changed on the street and who honored the glory of Sequinette’s name, and where Jenny and Jack and co. made us thrill with brunch beyond belief.

Durham, ohhh Humble Tripe, how you swayed us with your giant smiles and gorgeous music and Shawn, how your beautiful home comforted us mightily and created I Have A Crunch On You, the PTM remix.

Duke where thanks to Kadji, Haley and Victoria in the Pink Room made Heather and my lecture: Queer Girls Dreaming Away From Home even more magical than the pink leather desk and armoires surrounding us.

Asheville, where the bar booked us thinking we were strippers, people debated if I was going to hell for the Hot Pink Mass and there were five amazing souls holding it down for our show. Haley, Ezra, Zeke: thank you.

Atlanta! Bellissima! A beautiful space with amazing acoustics, and the gracings of Lady Vagina Jenkins who femmceed the event in the Best Red Leather Suit Ever plus we got to see Al Schlong in a flaming suit!. And thanks to lovely Asha who lent us the glory of her home, pointed us to the five corners and made us amazing pasta when we surely looked half dead.

New Orleans, walking into the All Ways felt like Arriving, Jordan and Nat and Michelle and Red came, and the Love-o-Rama folks were were so welcoming to us. Sequinette and Laurence were left behind in the bayou, with then Silas taking over van space.

Austin! I always feel like I’m coming home here even though it’s a new adventure every time. The Gay bi Gay Gay stage shone with pastel homomagic in the afternoon sunlight and femme atx folks, equality riders, Ida friends and the GxGG magic makers combined with local friends to make it such a magic show.

Georgetown/Southwestern where we added Leah [and lost Chicago] for the How To Build A Fire Tour, driving the hour to a school which makes queer art and skill-sharing happen for its students. I got to make a track and thrift bike helmets and wonderful Alex and Lisa and Lilly and Eli and everyone else made it a great show in a large atrium.

Waco/Equality Ride was an add on for Chicago and driving the two hours out there I wanted to rest but upon arriving and talking and listening to Mac and Jaxon and everyone — and perfomring the Hot Pink Mass for folks who survived the vengeful followers of a loving god, as I have, gave me more empathy and inspiration than a month inBrooklyn could ever.

Next I want to go to Philly for shows, Detroit for the USSF, Oakland for The Femme2010 Conference and plan more Heels on Wheels for the fall. But first, Summer 2010, let’s go for it!

xoxDLuxe

Logo by Shannon Taylor, Animal print Photos by Ally Picard. Heels On Wheels Roadshow is four Brooklyn Femmes teaming up with our local friends! Heels on Wheels is a caravan of artists from Brooklyn offering a cabaret of performance, music, drag, and shenanigans. Femme troublemakers Damien Luxe, Heather Ács, Princess Tiny & the Meats, and Sequinette Jaynesfield will wow you with gender troubles and flashy trash!

Heels on Wheels Roadshow is a flashy femme caravan from Brooklyn touring the South with a queer performance-art cabaret. Starring dazzling troublemakers Heather Ács, Damien Luxe, Princess Tiny & the Meats, and Sequinette, the show features a multi-media format of high femme drag, electro music, and piercing, poetic theatre. Expect to see Dolly Parton transformations, stilettos flying, eggs breaking and moods changing. Heels on Wheels delivers a trashy-fancy night of radical extravagance and thought-provoking glamour.

Find us on facebook!!

We’re getting in our dreamy van for this epic NYC-to-Austin trip March 26 – April 6. Our stops are:

• Sunday 3/21 – Brooklyn NY – 8pm @ Collect Pond, 45 Berry St., 8pm, $5
• Friday 3/26 – Baltimore MD – 8p and 10p @ Black Cherry Puppet Theatre, 1115 Hollins Street, 21223. 8p & 10p shows.  $5-10.
• Saturday 3/27 – Richmond VA – doors 7/ show 8p @  The Lamplighter Cafe 116 S. Addison St, Doors 7pm – Free!
• Sunday 3/28 – Durham NC @ 8pm with Humble Tripe Monkey Bottom Gallery, 609 trent drive durham with Humble Tripe $5
• Monday 3/29 – Asheville NC @ 9pm Club Hairspray, 38 N. French Broad Ave., $5
• 3/30-31 – Atlanta GA – Bellissima, 560 Amsterdam Ave, 30306. 9p $5-8.
• Thursday 4/1 – New Orleans LA – 10pm @ All Ways, 2240 St. Claude Ave., $5
• April 4 – Austin, TX @ Gay by Gay Gay Stage, East Austin
• April 6 – Waco, TX with Equality Rides!

Oh and thanks to our screenprinters, Means of Production – check them out!

Any assistance in getting us places to stay is super appreciated! More info below the cut…

BIOS
Damien “Hadassah” Luxe is a Brooklyn-based queer femme, liberationist artist, writer, creative, and activist who performs as Axon D’Luxe. Her work focuses on celebrating extremes of femininity; feminist / queer archiving and storytelling, and on building and skillsharing a new framework to both analyze and enjoy life from. D’Luxe is co-founder of New York’s Femme Family [femmefamily.com], a queer femme cultural community; she’s the co-creative director of the community events and skillshare group the Hart Collective [hartcollective.com]; and she Art Directed the award-winning $pread Magazine [spreadmagazine.org] for three years. A repatriated expat by way of Toronto, DIY tech geek and communications designer [heelsonwheelsdesign.com], and working-class gone hustling-class high femme fatale, Damien loves rhinestones and anything dramatic on wheels. Download tracks, read stories and her how-to blog: www.axondluxe.com

Heather M. Ács is a multi-media theatre performance artist, activist, educator and high-femme troublemaker. She creates nonlinear worlds layered with movement, soundscape, video, and storytelling, refracted through working class Appalachian and Mexican cultural imagery. Her gritty, glittery work has been featured in festivals, galleries, colleges, conferences, divy bars, crowded living rooms, and queer feminist spaces across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Heather has worked with Nao Bustamante, Karen Finley, Steven Soderbergh, and regularly collaborates with Silas Howard. www.heatheracs.com

Sequinette called a “Drag Impresario” by the New York TImes and a “Dolly Parton-esque beauty” by the Village Voice, Sequinette is one of the most stylized of NYC’s “Female to Female Drag Queens.”  She relies on fine couture costuming in drag performances that contain elements of burlesque.  She was crowned Miss LEZ 2008 in Murray Hill’s queer beauty pageant,  and also starred in Michelle Handelman’s Dorian in 2009. She is the co- producer of multi-media queer dance party “Love Muscle,” and also produced Coney Island’s first ever full fledged drag show, “Hollywood Bitches.”

Chicago is a solo artist who performs under as Princess Tiny and the Meats. Their debut electronic album, “Will S UR D 4 Coin” is to be released early this summer. You can check out their music at [www.myspace.com/princesstinyandthemeats]. Their music brings awareness and education to a broader audience about queer culture. Princess Tiny and the Meats also performs acoustic songs on guitar and piano in a theatrical fairy tale called “Confessions of a Love Sick Teenager”.  Chicago is an artist that is dedicated to breaking down the walls of ignorance that have saturated the music industry for what has been – up until now – way too long!

nikki forrest (montreal)  SCHOOL COLOURS FROM MEMORY 3.30 min

coral short (montreal/nyc)  QUEENS 3.55 min

coco riot (montreal) CUT 2.20 GENDER POO 1.30 min

axon dluxe (new york city) GAYBOMB 4.10 min

clark nikolai (vancouver)  GALACTIC DOCKING COMPANY 2.49 min

leah finkel / julie saragosa (toronto/berlin) SUPORNATURAL 4 min

helen reed (portland) WITCHRAVE 3.10 min

vincent chevalier (montreal) FULL DISCLOSURE 9 min

hannah jickling (portland) KNEE PORN 4 min

morgan sea (montreal) PROJECT POLARITY  4.35 min

maya suess /sepideh (new york city/ vancouver) TANTRUM PROJECT 5.21 min

anna helme and textaqueen (melbourne) M.C.G.F.C. 4.21 min

michael v. smith (vancouver) 5.4 min INVITATION

flannypack (montreal) LETS CELEBRATE REAL HEROES 6.15 min