LEX·IC·A - Jerry Blossom & Mister Junior - January 2013
Jerry Blossom & Mister Junior
Kiam Marcelo Junio a.k.a. Jerry Blossom is a familiar face to Salonathon. I first encountered Kiam via a submission to Chicago IRL and soon after experienced a plethora of inventive and vividly sharp performances discussing their Philippine heritage, naval career through the shifting lens of gender and class. Kiam continues debuting new works and series with exponential fervor. Kiam was also just awarded Chance Dances Critical Fierceness Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant. Find out more about Kiam during my recent interview with them: soundcloud.com/joevarisco/kiam-marcelo-junio-interview-a
Mister Junior is one of those forces of life that passes through a social climate and leaves it altered and renewed. Their spirit of collaboration and engagement is in a constant state of forward movement. Recently Mister Junior began an expanded tour around the country jumping in and out of Chicago in time to audition for America’s Got Talent. Details of airdate on their site soon.
LEX·IC·A is a celebration of the ways in which we communicate with one another and the knowledge we share in this process. It seeks to explore the myriad of complex and beautiful ways we share, play, love, suffer and honor one another through performance work and strive to cultivate community. LEX·IC·A is an inclusive event for anyone interested in procuring dialogue and discourse through performance. Take risks, challenge norms, resist and thrive!
- 70 Percent of Anti-LGBT Murder Victims Are People of Color
- While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned.
- Report: Immigration Status aRace Affect Domestic Workers’ Pay
- Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes.
- Marijuana Prohibition Turns 75, Blacks Three Times More Likely to be Arrested Than Whites
- According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime.
- A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health care—areas in which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.
- African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
- The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.
- [TW: Rape] Canadian police accused of abusing native women
- CNN breaks down the numbers: > Nearly nine out of 10 people “stopped and frisked” under a controversial New York Police Department policy in 2011 were African-American or Hispanic.
- The War on Drugs Is Really a War on Minorities
- Martin Luther King assassinated by US government: MLK civil trial decision
It’s on Facebook, so it’s official now.
The Mark Aguhar Memorial Grant Winner:
Kiam Marcelo Junio is a multidisciplinary artist living in Chicago, IL. He works in multiple media including photography, video, printmaking, installation, burlesque, and performance art. His research and art work centers around queer identities, the Filipino American diaspora, and post-colonialist Asian American tropes and stereotypes, and military and civilian power dynamics.
Jerry Blossom is Kiam’s alter-ego, a genderqueer Filipino male bodied femme-presenting persona, obsessed with assimilating into Western culture and beauty standards.
Kiam served seven years in the US Navy. He was born in the Philippines and has lived in the US, Japan, and Spain. He is also a registered Yoga teacher.
Congratulations also to the Critical Fierceness Grantees, Rami George and Betsy Odom!
Come join us this Saturday at Chances at the Hideout to celebrate!
The Hideout Inn, 1354 W. Wabansia, Chicago
**THIS SATURDAY NIGHT THE MARK AGUHAR MEMORIAL GRANT AND CRITICAL FIERCENESS GRANT WINNERS FOR WINTER 2012 WILL BE ANNOUNCED**
HOSTED BY VAJAQUEQUE BROWN
FEATURING DJS SWAGUERILLA AND LADY MISS NAVY PIER
5 DOLLARS
*DOORS FOR CHANCES AT MIDNIGHT*
http://chancesdances.tumblr.com/
More links:
www.iamKiam.com
OMG Jerry Blossom
IAMKIAM.COM - brand new site for the brand new year, updated with current works.
Check it out, y’all!
I’ve been working on this for the past couple days, and it’s finally ready. My old homepage was beginning to feel too cluttered and unorganized. So, ready for the new year, here is a brand-spaniking new IAMKIAM.com.
Enjoy, and comments are always appreciated.
<3 U ALL. Happy New Year!
When someone tells you that you have privilege…
It does not mean that:
- you are a bad person
- you are hateful or bigoted
- you cannot suffer or experience pain
- you cannot also be a member of an marginalized group
- you willingly exert power over an marginalized group
It does mean that:
- you are a member of at least one dominant group
- as a member of that dominant group, you benefit - directly or indirectly - from the oppression of marginalized people, whether you like it or not
- you have unearned advantages simply from your membership in a dominant group that those belonging to marginalized groups do not
- your privilege can be invisible to you, as can the oppression of marginalized groups
- you need to check your own privilege and should not expect members of marginalized groups to educate you
Also, please understand intersectionality. You can still be white and struggle from mental illness or poverty, but so can people of color.
[http://wintugo-nasty.tumblr.com/post/20105375513/embiggen-society-recognizes-the-ways-people-are]
(rebloggable by request)
Anon asked: How is being transgender different from being transethnic? I’m sorry, this may seem like a trolling question, but I genuinely want to know.
My reply:
I’m sad that this is confusing :(
Mostly ‘cause it means that the awful transethnic people have been doing too good of a job in appropriating the term and co-opting trans narratives.
First. Transethnic was (before this recent fad) used to describe the experiences of PoC who have been adopted by white families. It is theirword. Which should also make it very clear how and why it is massivelydifferent of an experience than being transgender.
Second. Now that the term is being appropriated by a group of white people who claim to be a different race, often using language that invokes and co-opts and abuses transgender narratives, this is likely where your confusion comes from.
Simply put: race and gender do not work in similar ways. At all. They serve different purposes.
White people invented race as a means to justify stealing and murdering and colonizing PoC.
Gender is something that exists in most cultures, as close to being a universal trait of human life.
When we say that gender is socially constructed and that race is socially constructed (which is were this false equivalency comes from in the first place) we are not talking about the same thing.
Race only — now and forever — serves white supremacy. Which is why it is sooo disgusting for white people to, after stealing and murdering us for so many years, try to colonize ‘Asian’ (like in that recent reblog ). When ‘Asian’ is something white people made up in the first place to deny our humanity and occupy our countries.
Gender doesn’t work like that.
It is also interesting, no? that only white people ever claim to be transethnic but gender has always been plural and of great diversity in many cultures?
Anyway. This is my vague and disorganized explanation for why they aren’t the same thing. And never will be.
This is the most succinct explanation I’ve read on the subject thus far. Thank you.
(Source: biyuti)
Happy Holigays from Kiam Marcelo Junio and Jerry Blossom!
Nikki S. Lee
(born Lee Seung-Hee, 1970, Korea) in her Projects, in which she spent several weeks assimilating into a cultural group and has someone take her photo within the group. Her identities in these projects traverses age, race, and social classes.
pictured here: The Ohio Project, The Stripper Project, The Lesbian Project, The Tourist Project, The Hispanic Project, The Hip Hop Project.
Tseng Kwong Chi, photographer, performance artist, Keith Harring’s main photographer. Born in Hong Kong and lived in Canada and studied in Paris, died of AIDS complications in 1990.
Kwong Chi developed an artistic persona in the late 1970’s as a kind of Chinese Communist dignitary complete with the classic Mao Tse-Tung suite, dark eyeglasses and a tag stamped “SlutforArt” (first user of hashtag, perhaps?)
Many of his photographs are deliberately composed in the heroic Maoist Cultural Revolution style. His hand is stuck cavalierly in his pocket, and deliberately includes the camera’s cable release in the frame…
Actions for an Asian Immigrant
performance, 45 min. duration
Kiam Marcelo Junio, 2012
QUEER POWER!
Wes Perry, Sissy Spastik, Darling Shear, and Mister Junior
Photography by Kiam Marcelo Junio, 2012
Some of the fiercest people I know.
PLEASE REBLOG! Queer performers need more exposure!
<3
Doug Ischar
Selections from the Marginal Waters series, 1985
From Time Out Chicago:
“It was a real delight to be in an environment where people were so uninhibited,” Ischar says. “I never saw any penetration there, but you saw everything and you saw a lot of it. There was such a wide range of types and ethnicities and classes, and there was never any friction. It was really a wonderfully tranquil place. The Rocks were probably the most central and visible gay beach in North America. This was right smack on Lake Shore Drive; you couldn’t miss this place.”
The phrase marginal waters, a naval term referring to waters off the coast of a country that remain outside its jurisdiction, here serves as a metaphor for a marginalized subculture. Ischar’s sun-drenched images strikingly depict a community at rest during a period of unrest. In the face of a devastating epidemic and a conservative regime, the mere act of sunbathing becomes one of defiance. “Understand that from the get-go I was photographing gay men almost out of a sense of desperation because of AIDS,” Ischar says. “I was fearful AIDS would obliterate queer culture. I had this fervid conservationist mission.”
“I believe that Prides are superfluous. Because for me, we already are proud. We woke up this morning proud; we stepped out of our house this morning proud, but we don’t always go around this world powerful, and that’s what I’m here to do. I’m not here to let people know I’m proud. I’m her to remind people that I’m powerful.”
- From an interview with KOKUMO, a Chicago-based trans artist, activist, and media mogul (via Huffington Post)
Photography by Kiam Marcelo Junio
READ THE INTERVIEW! It’s very informative, well-articulated, and thought-provoking.
A few people have confused me with Ongina from RuPaul’s Drag Race.
That’s a fierce-ass compliment and I’ll eat that shit up every single time.
The Bank of Canada purged the image of an Asian-looking woman from its new $100 banknotes after focus groups raised questions about her ethnicity.
The original image intended for the reverse of the plastic polymer banknotes, which began circulating last November, showed an Asian-looking woman scientist peering into a microscope.
The image, alongside a bottle of insulin, was meant to celebrate Canada’s medical innovations.
But eight focus groups consulted about the proposed images for the new $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 banknote series were especially critical of the choice of an Asian for the largest denomination.
“Some have concerns that the researcher appears to be Asian,” says a 2009 report commissioned by the bank from The Strategic Counsel, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
“Some believe that it presents a stereotype of Asians excelling in technology and/or the sciences. Others feel that an Asian should not be the only ethnicity represented on the banknotes. Other ethnicities should also be shown.”
A few even said the yellow-brown colour of the $100 banknote reinforced the perception the woman was Asian, and “racialized” the note.
The bank immediately ordered the image redrawn, imposing a “neutral” ethnicity for the woman scientist who, now stripped of her “Asian” features, appears on the circulating note. Her light features appear to be Caucasian.
“The original image was not designed or intended to be a person of a particular ethnic origin,” bank spokesman Jeremy Harrison said in an interview, citing policy that eschews depictions of ethnic groups on banknotes.
“But obviously when we got into focus groups, there was some thought the image appeared to represent a particular ethnic group, so modifications were made.”
Harrison declined to provide a copy of the original image, produced by a design team led by Jorge Peral of the Canadian Bank Note Co.
Nor would he indicate what specific changes were made to the woman researcher’s image to give her a so-called “neutral,” non-ethnic look. He said the images were “composites” rather than depicting any specific individual.
The Strategic Counsel conducted the October 2009 focus groups in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Fredericton, at a cost of $53,000.
The Toronto groups were positive about the image of an Asian woman because “it is seen to represent diversity or multiculturalism.”
In Quebec, however, “the inclusion of an Asian without representing any other ethnicities was seen to be contentious.”
One person in Fredericton commented: “The person on it appears to be of Asian descent which doesn’t rep(resent) Canada. It is fairly ugly.”
Mu-Qing Huang, a Chinese-Canadian who has peered into microscopes for biology courses at the University of Toronto, called the bank’s decision a “huge step back.”
“The fact that an Asian woman’s features were introduced to the bill … I think itself is a huge step forward in achieving true multiculturalism in Canada,” Huang, 24, said in an interview in Ottawa.
“But the fact that the proposal was rejected represents a huge step back.”
She said the “overly sensitive” decision to remove the Asian features suggests prejudice against visible minorities persists in Canada.
“If Canada is truly multicultural and thinks that all cultural groups are equal, then any visible minority should be good enough to represent a country, including (someone with) Asian features.”
WHAT THE FUCK, CANADA?
