Bianca Casady, Flor Selvagem

  Bianca Casady, flor selvagem 
 Ana Duarte Carmo, em Nova Iorque

 Diego Cortez, lendário curador nova-iorquino, compara o trabalho artístico de Bianca Casady ao da escultora Louise Bourgeois. Intrigante. Fomos à galeria Cheim & Read, em Nova Iorque, onde uma das irmãs CocoRosie expõe Daisy Chain Bianca Casady é mais conhecida pela sua música do que pela sua arte visual, mas a irmã Coco, da dupla CocoRosie (com Sierra Casady), tem cada vez mais presente este caminho, paralelo à música, de colagens, desenhos e vídeos.
Daisy Chain é a primeira grande exposição individual de Bianca em Nova Iorque desde 2007. Explora metáforas de aprisionamento, social e emocional, e de feminização. As flores selvagens são a inspiração, num processo de degeneração e descontrução. "Interessa-me como o mundo está universalmente escravizado e interessa-me explorar uma série de formas de escravidão, até das nossas próprias mentes, sem termos consciência disso", diz-nos Bianca.
 Este universo é partilhado com Jesse Hazelip, artista com base em Oakland, Califórnia, com quem Bianca colabora de forma permanente, trocando desenhos pelo correio. A colaboração mais conhecida entre os dois (dupla denominada Twin Rivers) é a capa do álbum das CocoRosie Tearz for Animals, "um projecto de intercâmbio, com desenhos a partir do interior de uma prisão".
 Solidão e flores selvagens: "Os nomes vulgares das flores selvagens inspiram-me muito. Começa como poesia, uso muitos dos nomes comuns das flores silvestres - quero dizer, as designações não científicas -, muitas das minhas ideias começam por aí. Acho que no fundo sou só fascinada por ervas e flores selvagens, pela forma como conseguem crescer mesmo em áreas urbanas, como rompem pelo cimento ...". Não usa flores consideradas de classe alta, apenas as que têm nomenclatura vulgar. "Existe um sistema de castas e experimento a minha própria romantização desse sistema, usando imagens e elementos linguísticos antiquados, arcaicos e em decadência.".
 Costuma apontar o cinema como inspiração para a sua música, agora fala-nos de um livro com imagens de flores selvagens e de Notre Dame des Fleurs (1943), de Jean Genet, autor que já inspirara o tema Beautiful Boyz (2004) das CocoRosie. Em Notre Dame des Fleurs as personagens, homossexuais, vivem à margem da sociedade parisiense da época. "Este livro inspira-me há anos, e recentemente tem-me atraído mais. Nunca o li do início ao fim, mas estou sempre a usá-lo, por o vocabulário ser perfeito para o meu trabalho: muitas vezes pego numa palavra e escrevo um poema a partir daí, que depois uso como ponto de partida para um desenho."
 Diego Cortez, curador e impulsionador desta exposição, compara Bianca à escultora Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), também representada pela galeria onde Daisy Chain é exposta. "Algumas das ideias de feminismo de Louise parecem reencarnar no trabalho de Bianca, e também a forma como rompe com tabus. As ideias por trás do trabalho de Louise eram bastante radicais e acho que Bianca está na mesma categoria." Ambas foram influenciadas pelo surrealismo, que Casady abraça nas suas justaposições e colagens. Além das influências literárias, quando está em Nova Iorque Bianca diz que gosta de ir a lojas de produtos de beleza encontrar objectos e imagens que possa usar nas colagens, como o pente vermelho de "Rupert (2011).
 Bianca começou a trabalhar no conjunto de obras que integram Daisy Chain, inaugurada na galeria Cheim & Read em Nova Iorque, em Abril de 2011, continuando a temática de Grasswidow, apresentada em Milão no mesmo ano, na Galleria Patricia Armocida, e de Holy Ghost integrada na 4ª edição da Bienal de Arte Contemporânea de Moscovo, onde explorou a esquizofrenia. "Em Daisy Chain alguns dos trabalhos dão continuidade a essa ideia, com caras cortadas, lágrimas e cicatrizes. Interessava-me a alienação e a perturbação em que vivem estes marginais e prisioneiros", podemos ler numa conversa entre Bianca e Diego Cortez publicada no catálogo da exposição. Cortez é um dos curadores mais influentes no panorama artístico americano, influência que vai além das artes plásticas - actor, músico, performer, director de arte, e manager de bandas new-wave e punk, foi um dos fundadores do Mudd Club, um clube underground do final dos anos 70 que mudou para sempre a cena nocturna de Nova Iorque. Conheceu Bianca pelas CocoRosie, viu a exposição Lil Girl Slim "Cosmic Willingness" Pipe Dreamz a Revelation and the Death of Mad Vicky Lopez na galeria Deitch Projects, em 2007, e só teve de seguir o instinto. Em 1981, organizou New York, New Wave, exposição única que juntou o trabalho de inúmeros artistas, na antiga escola PS1 em Long Island City/Queens, hoje pertencente ao MoMa, entre os quais David Byrne, Keith Haring e Jean-Michel Basquiat (de quem foi agente em 1980). Depois de visitar o estúdio de Bianca há um ano, e "tocado pela profundidade do seu trabalho", seguiu-a de perto e acabou por propor aos amigos John Cheim e Howard Read, que estão à frente da galeria em Chelsea, a exposição agora inaugurada. "Acredito no trabalho de Bianca, na sua instalação, vídeo e em todo o seu trabalho visual, excelente por si só e independente da sua carreira musical ou da fama que possa ter." O curador esteve também ligado às exposições de Devendra Banhart em Modena, Miami e Nova Iorque, e estabelece a diferença: no caso do Devendra, a música e a arte estão ligadas que as artes visuais só se tornam interessantes no contexto global do artista. "No caso de Bianca acho que a sua obra plástica se destaca mesmo no contexto da arte, mesmo que ela seja mais conhecida pela música." "Eu brinco imenso com a feminização de figuras hiper-masculinizadas, como as estrelas do rap, os gangsters, com os seus penteados e lenços, que de alguma forma se relacionam com a servidão feminina e os escravos afro-americanos". É o que vemos na exposição, gangsters, transexuais, como em Prison Faeries 3 (2011), onde Bianca transforma um corpo através de colagens; em The White Gipsy uma burca sobre uma fotografia de um pai torna-o num mendigo feminino. Há ainda uma dimensão erótica: figuras masculinas com os orgãos sexuais substituídos por molhos de flores selvagens. "Mesmo o cliché racista do hiper-sexualizado homem negro, alimentado pelos media, é prejudicado pelas minhas alterações feitas com flores selvagens, que criam uma paisagem mais delicada" - a expressão Daisy Chain, que pode ter uma leitura de engenharia electrónica, designando então um esquema de cabos onde vários dispositivos são ligados em sequência ou em anel, é também usada para se referir a um acto sexual em cadeia. A exposição divide-se em duas partes: a de colagens, onde são criadas as personagens; e os desenhos a maior escala, onde aquelas são desenvolvidas e onde as técnicas de colagem acabam por se dissipar.
Dias antes da inauguração, Bianca dizia-nos que gosta de trabalhar no espaço onde exibe, passar tempo nele, relacionar-se com ele, transformá-lo em algo seu, e foi isso que aconteceu na galeria estabelecida em Chelsea desde o final dos anos 90 onde a exposição está patente até 8 de Setembro. Num vídeo e em muitas das fotografias expostas surge Biño Sauitzvy, bailarino e coreógrafo brasileiro que tem colaborado com Bianca, nomeadamente em Nightshift, peça de teatro-dança apresentada no Kampnagel Arts Centre em Hamburgo. A performance apresentada na inauguração da exposição, uma coreografia de Bianca interpretada por Biño, foi também fruto deste trabalho.
 Apesar da obra visual de Bianca poder ser avaliada de forma independente, a dissociação das CocoRosie é impossível, e ela acaba por assumir que está tudo ligado. "A única diferença entre a minha arte e as CocoRosie é não ter a minha irmã como parceira do meu trabalho visual, não há nenhuma diferença em termos da minha contribuição, pois vêm ambos do mesmo sítio."

http://ipsilon.publico.pt/artes/texto.aspx?id=307381

The Scarecrow in the Tales of a Grass Widow

CocoRosie Tales of a Grass Widow
Scarecrow: Biño Sauitzvy
Photo: Bianca Casady
Layout: Jean-Marc Ruellan

Grand Genet: Nossa Senhora das Flores

Video from the production of "Grand Genet: Our Lady of the Flowers," directed by Biño Sauitzvy. This video was broadcast on Brazilian television. Nando Messias plays the transvestite Divine.

Grand Genet: Our Lady of the Flowers

Video from the production of "Grand Genet: Our Lady of the Flowers," directed by Biño Sauitzvy. This video was broadcast on Brazilian television. Nando Messias plays the transvestite Divine.

Grand genet: Our lady of the Flowers

Video from the production of "Grand Genet: Our Lady of the Flowers," directed by Biño Sauitzvy. This video was broadcast on Brazilian television. Nando Messias plays the transvestite Divine.

Nando Messias on ‘political dressing’

Nando Messias on ‘political dressing’

A guest post by performance artist, choreographer and academic Nando Messias.

Nando Messias is a longtime friend and collaborator of BST. We asked him for his thoughts on ‘political dressing’ and the other facets of queer theory that his work covers. The post is illustrated with pictures of Nando by BST co-editor Darrell Berry.

I have a PhD in queer theory and dance-theatre performance. Queer theory, in a nutshell, is concerned with anything that might be seen to be going against the so-called ‘normal.’ That is clearly a quite wide ranging field of study as it can encompass sexual behaviour, body image, social, ethnic, racial issues and so forth.

My research is concerned specifically with gender behaviour. To be even more specific, I look at the effeminate body or, in other words, male bodies that act, behave, move, walk in ways that might be described as ‘feminine’. It is, of course, incredibly more complex than it sounds as the words ‘male,’ ‘feminine’ and ‘body’ are all nuanced and, in a way, up for grabs, as it were. That is, what we consider feminine in the West in 2012 might be different than other cultures around the world and across history might have seen as feminine.

My work then involves analysing current understandings of male femininity and the social implications that might derive from a man who wears high heels and make up but who still identifies as a man (rather than as a drag queen or as a transwoman or a transvestite or a cross-dresser…). The choreography, especially of my PhD performance piece Sissy!, comes out of observations of the effeminate body and its social interactions with others.

My work as a dancer-actor and choreographer has been hugely influenced by the work of Pina Bausch. I situate what I do within the tradition of dance-theatre and Bausch is the main figure in the world of dance-theatre.

I often work with Biño Sauitzvy, who is someone I admire profoundly artistically speaking. We did Sissy! together and also a stage version of Jean Genet’s novel Our Lady of the Flowers in which I play the transvestite Divine. Our next project is a duet in which we play Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, the creators of Butoh. In terms of my modelling work, I always try to incorporate some of the queer ideology that guides my other work. I have been featured in W magazine as part of the Theo Adams Company. That job was shot by David Sims, styled by Camilla Nickerson and the make up was done by Linda Cantello. It was one of the most amazing fashion jobs I have ever done. Lorna Luft was photographed with Theo as part of that same story. Having her on set was super special for me considering that her mother was Judy Garland, the high-priestess of gay and queer culture. I have also been featured in Candy magazine (the first ever transgender-focused style magazine), Issue One and POP.

Part of my research and my work is this idea that I am unable to disguise my effeminacy. Not only am I unable to do it but, more to the point, I am unwilling to even try so I am only interested in modelling jobs that reflect that philosophy.

I am interested in make up and garments traditionally associated with the feminine universe as an act of subversion of social norms. The term ‘feminine universe’ sounds really strange and hugely generalising to me as I read the previous sentence back. It makes it sound like there is a completely different universe out there that is totally detached from anything else. But I suppose you know what I mean. I am talking about lipstick, high heels, dresses and so on. Generally speaking, I use these not in order to make me look like a woman. I am not interested in ‘passing’ as a woman, although I have occasionally done that as well. Rather than ‘passing,’ I am more interested in reaching for the things (objects, garments, accessories, perfume, nail varnish, etc.) that have conventionally been denied me. I am interested in blurring the lines.

I would not define myself as a drag queen but would not object to being called a drag queen either. I think there is some contempt for the term ‘drag queen,’ especially within gay/queer circles that I actively want to avoid. It is somewhat analogous to what I identify in mainstream society as the contempt for the feminine. My appropriation of these signifiers is, to me, a political act.

Bette Bourne talks about political dressing. I like that term. I like that idea. I use these signifiers of femininity not only in my work but also in my daily life. I have my nails painted, I wear lipstick, I wear heels when I go out. I enjoy dressing up. I am always a lit bit shocked by how much this can push people’s buttons. Most people like clear lines. They like a man to look like a man and a woman to look like a woman, whatever that might mean. Going back to the contempt for femininity I was talking about earlier, I think it is still more easily accepted in today’s society for a woman to dress in what we traditionally associate with elements belonging to the masculine wardrobe. In other words, a woman with a gamine haircut, wearing a suit, tie and brogues is not that outrageous anymore even though, as we very well know, some suffragettes were arrested for the simple act of wearing trousers. But Yves Saint Laurent made it chic for women to wear a tuxedo back in the 70s. A man wearing a dress or heels or make up, however, is still largely ridiculed.

I wonder what that is all about. Something to do with male and masculinity representing power and the idea of a man wanting to relinquish that power being confounding.

I personally think the increased visibility of transgender and transexual models in fashion is progress even though I think there is still much work to be done. There is a lesson to be learned from history. If we think about the reality of a different minority group, namely models of colour, than we can really see how far from acceptance we still are. The first black model to appear on the cover of Vogue was Beverley Johnson in 1974. I think British Vogue got there first even though there were rumours she was covering most of her face in order to hide her (ethnic-looking) nose and mouth… Britain has always been on the forefront of equality in many aspects, I think. But back to the reality of black models in fashion today… Only this last week there was an article on the Sunday Times that talked about Philip Treacy’s all black model cast for his latest show at London Fashion Week. It relates how non-Caucasian faces in fashion are still exceptions, how there are still very few spaces for ethnic minorities despite the likes of Beverley Johnson, Beverley Peele, Iman, Naomi, Alek Wek, Joan Smalls, Jourdan Dunn, etc. having made it somewhat more acceptable. Why is this still an issue 28 years after the first black model made history by appearing on the cover of a mainstream fashion magazine?

Perhaps things haven’t moved that far forward. The reality for transgender and transsexual models is, realistically speaking, even tougher, I should think. We have Andrej Pejic and Lea T, who are, by the way, both amazing!!! but that is it, really, in terms of recognisable faces (and names) in fashion. And even these two examples are very much confined to a specific niche of the fashion market, which is, itself, already very niche and elitist. It is very few designers who are brave enough to use these transgender and transsexual models. From the top of my head, I can only think of Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy and Jean Paul Gaultier. How long will it be before a transgender or transsexual model makes the cover of Vogue? And then after that, what will be the next taboo to be tackled?

Basically, and really generally speaking, ‘normal’ is a made-up concept. Its invention has been traced back to the 1800s and the Victorian obsession with classifying things. It is a term connected to the birth of statistics, where what the majority of us does becomes accepted as the norm. The problem than becomes what is done to those of us who fall outside the parameters of normal. This is when it starts to get complicated and we, as a society, begin to create categories of abnormality such as mental (and physical) disease and criminality, which are then associated with behaviours that prior to the invention of ‘normality’ were not necessarily seen as such.

There is another important question to be asked here: who determines what is normal and what is not normal? It is all very much associated with white male supremacy, where being white, heterosexual, masculine-looking and masculine-acting (if you’re a man), feminine-looking and feminine-acting (if you’re a woman), thin, healthy, financially-solvent, not too tall but not too short and so on and so forth. Normal changes and evolves as we change and evolve as a society. It is not a fixed concept. Queer theory evolved as a way to challenge this way of thinking, it offers an alternative way to think about these categories. In what regards sexology, for instance, why have ninetheen-century scientists decided to categorise the whole of humankind according to whom they have sex with? If with someone of the same sex as you: homosexual. If with someone of a different sex: heterosexual. Why not classify people according to how often they have sex or where they prefer to have sex or whatever other random category? It has clearly to do with Judeo-Christian values of marriage and family but also with how the state controls its subjects.

No human being falls completely within the boundaries of normal.
We all have our idiosyncracies. Human behaviour is more fluid than normal allows room for.

http://www.bigshinything.com/tag/nando-messias/

photo: Darrel Berry

Carte blanche/Courts métrages d’Antony Hickling

photo: Ophélie Soulier-Bois in Q.J., Biño Sauitzvy in Birth 3, Biño Sauitzvy in Little Gay Boy, Christ is Dead.

Carte blanche/Courts métrages d’Antony Hickling

Birth 1 2009 – 2’43’’

Inspiré par « L’homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer » de Copi, Birth (1) expose la relation destructrice et incestueuse d’une mère et d’une fille...

Birth 2 2010 – 6’

Cet opus central de la trilogie est une vidéo de performance, un manifeste qui explore la construction intime de l’identité sexuelle.

Birth 3 – La mort d’un Triptyque 2010 – 15’

Fin de la trilogie Birth. Le thème de la sexualité est toujours central. Le film explore l’abus dont devient victime le personnage principal lorsqu’il révèle son orientation sexuelle à une société hostile. Le film est théâtral dans son style et dans sa forme.

L’Annonciation ou The Conception of A Little Gay Boy 2011 – 15’

Rien ne semble pouvoir briser le cycle monotone du quotidien mélancolique de Maria, vivant et travaillant à Paris. Jusqu'au jour où cette prostituée anglaise, esseulée, sera élue et révélée par l'Annonciation. Première partie d'une trilogie sur la conception du « little gay boy ».

Little Gay Boy chrisT Is dead 2012 – 30’

Second volet de la trilogie « Little gay boy ». Jean-Christophe vit avec sa mère, prostituée anglaise installée à Paris. Et il rêve de devenir mannequin… Le temps d’une journée, JC est confronté à une série de rencontres et d’abus qui le transformeront à jamais. De l’innocence, il passe à l’expérience, ses rêves et lui-même se voyant détruits par tous ceux qui l’entourent. La violence des séquences est sublimée par des scènes de bondage, de performances et de danse.

Q.J. 2012 – 5’

Le film, inspiré par « La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc » de Carl Théodor Dreyer (1927), réinterprète des extraits proposant une relecture contemporaine de cette oeuvre, à partir des thèmes de la sexualité et de l’oppression.

Mardi 21 mai 2013, 19h30...

Cinémas STUDIO

2, rue des Ursulines,Tours

Festival Désir Désirs

www.desirdesirs.com

Bianca Casady - interview

This is a big summer for Bianca Casady, half of the musical duo CocoRosie, who just released a new single and video for their song “We Are On Fire.” In late April, she wrapped up her first experimental dance piece, “Nightshift,” which she performed at the Donaufestival in Krems, Austria. And this evening she will unveil her first solo show of artwork (drawings, collages, photographs and audio and video pieces) in New York City since her debut at Deitch Projects in 2007. Even as she spreads herself across numerous formats, Casady is a prolific artist, consistent in her voice.

Where have you been recently?
I just got back from a short tour in California, traveled in an RV — reminds me of the old days, wind in the hair, speeding down the highway. Most of our childhood seems like this. Besides that road trip I have been working in NYC on my art show. And before that I was in Germany and Austria directing and performing a new theatrical dance piece that I wrote called “Nightshift.” The choreographer Bino Sauitzvy, with whom I worked, will be performing at my opening.

What are you working on right now?
This morning I am working on the video component to my art show, “Daisy Chain.” It’s mostly large drawings and works on paper. Also starting to compose for a movie score.

Where can I see it — and when?
“Daisy Chain” opens at Cheim & Read in Chelsea on June 28. It will be up all summer.

Seen anything amazing lately — not your own?
Just lots of weeds and wildflowers taking over the neighborhood, breaking through the sidewalk, occupying vacant lots.

Where are you headed?
I’m headed to Europe early July to tour for a month or so with a very large band. We will be 10 people on stage at least. Some strays will trickle in along the way, I’m sure. Five of the musicians are from India, playing traditional instruments. Should be a wild ride.

What’s next on the agenda?
Movies, plays, a collaboration with Robert Wilson.

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/the-lowdown-bianca-casady/

THE ART WORLD OF COCOROSIE

SINGERS, ARTISTS AND PERFORMERS: THE DUO COCOROSIE, WITH AMERICAN SISTERS SIERRA AND BIANCA CASADY, ARE ONCE AGAIN ATTRACTING A LOT OF ATTENTION WITH THE RECENT RELEASE OF THEIR SECOND SINGLE “GRAVEDIGRESS”, WHICH, TOGETHER WITH “WE ARE ON FIRE”, PRECEDES THE RELEASE OF THEIR NEW ALBUM, “TALES OF A GRASS WIDOW”, DUE OUT ON THE 27TH OF MAY.

However, it is now generally known that the world of CocoRosie is not limited to the musical sphere. In fact, the two sisters are deeply involved in other projects, too.

In the last few days (but there will be other dates in May and July) the new theatrical production of Peter Pan premiered at the Berliner Ensemble. The work is by the American playwright Robert Wilson, who asked to work with CocoRosie. This is a dark, cruel story, utterly different to the one recounted by Disney, and much closer to the atmosphere of the original version created by James Mathew Barrie in 1902.

Initially, the director had asked Antony Hegarty – with whom he had collaborated on the extraordinary work, “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” – to write the music for this new work. Following Hegarty’s refusal, he chose CocoRosie, attracted not only by their outstanding ability to make music but also, and above all, by their strong visual sense. It seems self-evident that Wilson – who had worked with people like Rufus Wainwright and Lou Reed – did not choose them by chance. Bianca Casady, in fact, is not new to the world of art. A few months ago she was involved in choreographing and staging the ballet “Nightshift”, the fruit of her collaboration with the choreographer Biño Sauitzvy and the dancer Leiomy Maldonado fromNew York. In this work, for the first time, Bianca explored narrative in the form of dance, incarnating it into a sort of dark Cinderella fairy tale, in order to discover the humanity in the untouchable and to explore the world of life on the margins of society.

Also a few months ago, Bianca’s solo exhibition, “Daisy Chain”, was held at the Cheim & Reid Gallery, New York, and included drawings, collages, photographs, audio and video works, in which the artist explored the portrayal of male prisoners playing feminine roles. Then, later this year there will be the launch, with artist Anne Sherwood, of a literary and arts publication: “Girls Against God”. Linked to this project, is the movement, “Future Feminists”, with Antony Hegarty, of Antonyand the Johnsons, and the performers Kembra Pfahler and Johanna Constantine.

The aim of the group is, as they put it, to “free society and protect the planet from the corrosive effects of patriarchal belief systems”. It seems that all the songs from “Tales of a Grass Widow” will be in line with the group’s mission. And it doesn’t end there. If you want to hear them live, CocoRosie will be back in Italy in June with their unmistakeable mix of folk, electronics, hip hop and opera, stopping off at the Magazzini Generali in Milan on the 14^th of June; in Rome, at Villa Ada, on the 15^th and on the following day; and at the Soliera Festival of Visual Arts in the province of Modena.

http://redmilkmagazine.com/2013/04/24/the-art-world-of-cocorosie/

CocoRosie

What were you listening to while making this album? What images and sounds inspired it?We toured with a band from India called The Rajasthan Roots. We recorded some bits of songs on the side of the road which later made it onto the record. We are inspired by eastern music of all kinds. We have been listening to Koto music recently. I find it haunting and unpredictable, at least to my ears. I recently worked on a dance/video project with dancer Biño Sauitzvy  to a piece of Koto music I found, we shot everything outside in the winter light.

What drew you aesthetically to work with Valgeir Sigurðsson? What is it like to work alongside him?We find a kind of kinship with his harmonious relationship to technology and nature. This we explore together in the studio.

Obviously the two of you have vastly different sounds that converge in all of these songs. What prompts each of you to approach music like this and how do you combine these elements during the songwriting process?We experiment a lot. There is a lot of playing around, being silly, and then suddenly it gets very serious. We never know when we will hit that point though. We take turns, send the other one into the kitchen, we are terrible gluttons, especially for tea parties. We drink so much tea when we are working, it’s really a drug. Creating music is always a searching for us, a kind of hunt, but we never know what it is we are hunting, we hunt with out eyes closed, smelling in the darkness.

There’s an overwhelming sense of sadness in a lot of your music. What specifically compels you to tackle such difficult, sometimes traumatic issues? What experiences from your past draw you to this subject matter?Pain can be a source of beauty, and of course the pain transforms when it’s let out of its hiding place and it’s allowed to take new shapes in sound and word. I feel the pain in our music is in the state of transformation when it’s being recorded. What you hear is not a silenced pain, ashamed of itself, but one which is curious about the light, pushing toward the surface, beginning to flower before our very eyes. It feels healing.

The song “Gravediggress” has a long story and mythology behind it. Are all the songs on the album accompanied by such tales and do you craft these larger stories while writing the songs?This album in particular is more narrative. There are poetic songs from the previous album, which I find impossible to talk about, windy poetry I can’t explain. This new body of songs were being written over some time in the form of stories, not necessarily stories with a beginning, middle and end, but still stories where you could identify the character and the landscape or realm in which she dwelt.

What distinguishes this new album from the rest of your work? Why is it important now?This record is far more dedicated to the human condition; it is compassionate and reaches some moments of hope. We look towards the earth, away from the sky and we search for solutions and utopic projections for the future.

How do you balance funneling artistic visions through endeavors like visual works and fashion as opposed to music? What drives you to seek these other avenues?In art for instance, visual art, I feel like I can delve into very different issues which language and music cannot handle. The subject of race has become so stifled by language and I tend to deal a lot with race in my visual art. In visual art there is a world of symbols which you cannot write about or sing about, at least not so blatantly although we do sing about symbols. We love crossing over into different worlds when we work, going from one artistic platform to the next teaching us many things and we discover more about the content of the work.

You are adamant about feminism and the rights of women. What do you perceive is the biggest threat to the freedom of women worldwide? Do you view yourself as a voice of change when you target these issues?Right now I am just asking a lot of questions. I know that feminism needs to be free to be modular and constantly transforming and certainly one of the biggest threats to feminism is women truing on each other within the dogmas of feminism.  The question of “universal feminism” seems to be the big issue right now. Many people are saying you can’t set a standard of women’s right’s which is the same everywhere, we have to tailor it to each specific cultural atmosphere. It feels paradoxical to lower our standards of treatment towards women depending on the place. Women should be able to drive! Everywhere! If a woman is not allowed to drive, is she not a prisoner?

Some of your songs address the issues of parenthood and the abandonment of children. How did your parents shape your existence?That’s a long question and answer which we are looking at most of the time. At a certain age we like to imagine that we were not shaped by our parents and their mental ailments, but alas, we have run into the inevitable doom of the contours of trauma. It’s a rich place to draw from if you can brave it. We believe wholeheartedly in self-healing at a very aggressive level. I dance like my father. I have my mother’s feet and lust for working. They have given us a wide spectrum of qualities both dark and light. The creative sanctuary that we were forced to retreat to is now our best tool and it clearly serves our work.

Is there a genre of music that doesn’t appeal to either of you? Or one that you wouldn’t attempt to work within?That’s easy ROCK. But funnily enough, the Blues Rock that we were subjected to loudly for many hours has made its way deep into our sense of rhythm and writing.

What has Native American culture meant to your music? Have you seen the influence of it change over this past decade?We went to many Pow Wows and sang a lot with drums at home. This has to be in there somewhere.

If you went back to high school and graduated, what superlatives would each of you win and why?I hate school, it’s a nightmare. When I first learned that I could just walk my little body out the front door and down the street, there was no turning back. It felt like working in a bank. I never worked in a bank but it has the same atmosphere. Now hearing about girls that get shot trying to stand up for their right to go to school, I feel a bit ashamed, perhaps I took my education for granted, or maybe I just wasn’t mean to go to school.

You have addressed your sexuality publicly before. How important is sexuality in both of your lives? Do you see differences in acceptance in sexuality in other countries vs. the United States?More and more I am just dealing with being a woman. The sex part isn’t that interesting to discuss. I had several gender crisis’, and looking back it feels all due to misogynist expectations of what femininity is suppose to look like. Right now I am learning to own and express the feminine.

What do you think of the current political climate towards gay marriage and rights?Religion is the problem in the center of so many social issues. People should marry whom ever they want. Personally I don’t really like the idea of marriage, I guess because it’s so heavily steeped in religion.

You place a high premium on visual presentation. What has recently inspired you the most visually and how have you incorporated it into performance and appearance?Scarecrows! And yes. Walking in nature at the right time of day always takes my breath away. The sky is the most stunning painting, the gradual and sudden fade of hues, I write about it constantly as pedestrian as it may sound, it sparks something in me every time.

If you could go back and change one thing about this album, what would it be and why?I haven’t thought about that. I guess that’s a good thing.

You brought up a thought-provoking question via twitter that I have wondered before: How does one separate femininity and feminism?This question came from an interview I did where a journalist said “I prefer the femininity in your record rather than the feminism.”  Not only did this statement reek of misogyny but it felt like a huge contradiction and illustrated a confused society on the subject of feminism. I have been searching for clues on how to restore femininity into feminism. It’s practically the same word. Also something I wondered, if feminism is not feminine than what is it? Masculine?

If you could impart wisdom upon a future generation of women, what would you tell them? How do you view the world changing for women in the near future?That’s heavy. I do not know. I hope all women can wake up and get out of the sleepy syndrome of servitude volunteer. We do not regret that which we have never had. Freedom. Women, you cannot trust your own instincts which have been bread within the confines of slavery.

Where do you see yourselves in five years?Moving, working, dancing with children.

A Look at Bianca Casady’s “Daisy Chain”

Three tall black garbage bags at the entrance of the Cheim & Read gallery are full of dying plants, their once lush, green stems withered and dried to a crisp, their once blooming yellow flowers now brown and crunchy like old potato chips. I can’t help but notice the resemblance they bear to the drawings, collages, and multimedia installations on view—brown, scratchy lines etched into clean white backdrops, watercolors purposely limp after bleeding dry with time, found objects and photographs blending each other into a new state of disrepair. Together they form the images of sexualized, deconstructed and reconstructed prison life that make up Bianca Casady’s somewhat darkly titled “Daisy Chain” exhibition, on view until September 8.

The artist, who is also one half of the neo-folk duo CocoRosie, was inspired by “common wild flowers and weeds, things that bloom out of brokenness, un-nurtured, unwanted, looked down upon, villainized,” she said in an email. “The book Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genetprovided a vocabulary for this work, a highly sexualized, utopic depiction of prison life.”

A tribal tattoo turns the torso of a black man wearing a do-rag into a body of thorns, a blue-green watercolor rose covering his heart, its helplessly fallen petals covering his pelvis.

One young black man in a do-rag masturbates under a bright yet dripping and mournful watercolor rainbow while one more man prepares to enter another, a scene somehow made darker by the addition of glittery butterfly and flower stickers.

A dissembled dresser, its drawers repurposed into display tables with new, foreign legs, display the broken leavings of characters we will never meet—belonging to an abused Cinderella are a broken mirror, a distended yellow braid, a rotted and corpselike shoe; the dirty wreckage of a red rubber nose, a graying and disintegrated pair of men’s briefs, and a bone crudely etched with the word ‘NAPSACK’ belonging to a decomposing clown.

Watercolored and collaged men stand with their hands poised in self-pleasure, only to have their fists instead full of florals, withered and weed-like, or lush and blooming. Some of them are drawn with long, blonde braids or lipstick, or outfitted with photographs of burqas and corsets, purposely affixed with crude glues and tapes that magnify their absurd yet unsettling nature. “I use collage mainly as a tool to recontextualize characters,” Casady said, “making innocent the criminal, and deviant the saint.”

“Mostly I was transforming images,” she continues. “Transforming gender, race, replacing phallus with flower. Also there was a continuous reprocessing and destroying of certain images which I reworked throughout the last year, certain faces which play a large narrative role underwent major surgeries and morphed all along the way, also passing from one medium to the next, as well as one era to the next.”

Part of this transformation is Casady’s repeated theme of ‘Harmless Monsters,’ the idea that we’ve actually created our own ‘monsters.’ “Some monsters have been molded for thousands of years and they become invisible and you can’t even address the problem without using some kind of subversive persuasion,” she says. With “Daisy Chain,” though, Casady draws our attention to the mess our societal neglect has made in “some terrible struggle for power,” as she says, not just within the prison system but within race and gender.

“Daisy Chain” is Casady’s first New York exhibition in five years. She has also exhibited at galleries and festivals in Milan, Tokyo, and Marrakech, as well as Art Basel. Of her work with CocoRosie, Casady says “it’s all the same stuff. Our new songs embody the same ideas. The two worlds, though not separate, feed each other.” This is especially evident with CocoRosie’s song “Jesus Loves Me”, from 2004’s La Maison de Mon Rêve, a commentary on hopelessness which is done in the style of old spirituals, accent and all. Similarly, in “Daisy Chain,” the following lyrics appear, etched on browned paper toward the beginning of the exhibition: “We’re all in line/4 the daisy chain/Jingle jangle/We’re all doin’ time/On the inside of our minds.” The hopelessness carries over; we still have no solution.

CocoRosie’s Predictably Arcane in Visual for “We Are on Fire”

Perennial weird sisters of experimental pop, CocoRosie, put out the single for their Dave Sitek-produced track “We Are on Fire” earlier this week, and now we’re seeing a visual for it. It’s safe to say that any CocoRosie video is going to aim to be more than a little dark and otherworldly, since that’s pretty much the group’s whole pedigree, and this clip definitely doesn’t flout that. The Emma Freeman-directed video mostly features slo-mo shots of figures contorting in the air in slow motion, throwing around flour and such, and just seeming appropriately esoteric; of course, they throw in a shot of CocoRosie sister Sierra Casady being burned at the stake ’cause, you know, this is still a CocoRosie video, and the whole thing is bookended by a mysterious figure reappearing and disappearing on a beach. No one would claim that a high-definition video in slow motion is reinventing the wheel, but it’s a still a lovely visual all the same.

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C.O.L.O.

C.O.L.O.
Performance de Biño Sauitzvy
Avec Biño Sauitzvy et Thomas Laroppe
Dessein by Gaspard Yurkievich, Jean Marc Ruellan et Guido Voss.
Paris, Mai 2013.