S.W.E.A.T.

18 HYENAZ - Foreign Bodies (pre-release) - InBetween D (BMS Mix) by Mad Kate

This month's edition of S.W.E.A.T. with Mad Kate features multidisciplinary artist Kim Ye. Kim Ye is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses performance, video, installation, text, and social engagement. Inserting herself into popular cultural forms, Ye interrogates gendered constructs shaping perceptions of power, labor, and taboo. Presenting bodies as both sites of domination and liberation, her work describes the entanglement between private desire and fantasy, and public discourse and ideology. Through shifting performance contexts, she reinterprets the forces that enforce and reproduce normativity.

In 2023-2024, Ye was a Mellon Arts Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and a California Arts Council Creative Corps Fellow. Her work has been funded by the California Arts Council (USA), The National Endowment for the Arts (USA), Foundation for Contemporary Art (USA), Mellon Foundation (USA), and The Australia Council for the Arts (Australia). Her work has been presented at The Getty, MOCA, Guggenheim Gallery, Wattis Institute, Hammer Museum, Banff Center for Arts, Material Art Fair, and Frieze Film Seoul, among others. Ye received her MFA from UCLA in 2012, and was a full-time visiting faculty in the Photography & Media program at CalArts from 2022-2025. Ye has worked professionally as a dominatrix since 2011, and has serves as Co-director of Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA since 2019).

photo: Louisa Fang

LINKS!

kimye.com

instagram.com/kimyekimyekimye

instagram.com/swopla

swoplosangeles.org

https://www.smingsming.com/products/promomme-a-sex-workers-guide-to-parenting

This month's conversation is with writer and transdisciplinary artist Awadalla. Their work spans text, performance, and visual storytelling, reimagining how life and knowledge are shaped through queer and decolonial praxis. Alongside their creative practice, Awadalla works at the intersection of mental and sexual health as a practitioner and educator. They founded Decolonizing Sexual Health, an initiative challenging dominant sexual health narratives through lived experience, pleasure, and collective care.

More information about them: https://linktr.ee/3awadalla

S.W.E.A.T. is a podcast hosted by Berlin-based electronic artist, performer, and activist Mad Kate. Known for their work between body politics and the politics of borders, Mad Kate brings their over twenty years of lived experience on stage, their own queer positionality, and their deep engagement with embodiment, relationality, and labor politics into the conversations that shape S.W.E.A.T.

The podcast explores performance and performativity of the sexualized and racialized body at work—whether as labor for survival, care, or a/Art. Through in-depth discussions with artists, organizers, activists, and all kinds of paid and unpaid workers, S.W.E.A.T. contributes to dialogues that normalize sex work as work and advocate for all labor to be respected, fairly compensated, and carried out in safe conditions.

S.W.E.A.T. airs first on Freie Radios Berlin Brandenburg via colabora dio, the second Tuesday of every month at 13:00 CET, featuring music curated by the guests. Afterwards, the interview portion is available on all major podcast platforms (apple, spotify, amazon, podcast addict, soundcloud or through rss feed).

This podcast is entirely self-produced and a labor of love. You can support its continuation on Patreon.

This month’s guest on S.W.E.A.T. is Kaz Falkenstrom—a poet, drummer, and arts activist whose work has left a lasting impact on Tucson, Arizona’s literary and cultural landscape. Kaz has played a vital role in shaping the city’s arts scene, directing the Tucson Poetry Festival, co-founding Kore Press, and creating spaces for women’s voices in publishing. In 2002, she co-founded Odaiko Sonora, dedicating much of her life to the art of taiko drumming. This conversation was recorded in person during a visit to the Sonoran Desert in January.

A queer Korean-Norwegian transplant from Virginia to Arizona, Kaz shares how the somatic practices of writing and drumming shape creative expression through movement and rhythm. This episode delves into the complexities of learning another culture’s art form, particularly her relationship to taiko as a Korean-American artist, and the fine line between appropriation, lineage, and respect. The discussion also explores the power of silence and stillness, and the balance between creating space for others and stepping forward for oneself. Finally, Kaz reflects on mastery vs. obsession, selflessness vs. selfishness, and what it truly means to dedicate oneself to a craft.

About S.W.E.A.T.

S.W.E.A.T. is a podcast with hostex Mad Kate featuring conversations with artists, activists, and thinkers about the ways our bodies are sites of resistance, labor, and transformation. We all sweat—as we care, as we work, as we fuck, as we survive, as we resist.

About Mad Kate

Hostex Mad Kate comes to this work with a deep commitment to antimilitarism, border justice and radical organizing. A Berlin-based electronic artist, performer, and activist, Mad Kate is known for their work between body politics and the politics of borders. Mad Kate brings their over twenty years of lived experience on stage as an explicit body in performance, and their deep engagement with embodiment, relationality, and labor politics into the conversations that shape S.W.E.A.T..

🎧 Listen & Subscribe:

🌍 Podcast Website: https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

🔊 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/mad-kate

📻 First airs on Freie Radios Berlin Brandenburg (FRBB) via Colaboradio, the second Tuesday of every month at 13:00 CET.

🎙️ Available on all podcast platforms and via RSS.

💜 Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/sweatpodcast

Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, and Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis is a drag queen, choreographer, moderator, and writer living and working in Berlin. She is inspired by the tensions and intersections between queer nightlife and contemporary dance and performance.

SWEAT is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-a-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform -- tasks, acts of care, and identities? Anchored in our always already racialized and sexualized bodies, our complex intersectionalities, these conversations are means of relating through work to each other. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

This months conversation is with Sudanese human rights activist and refugee rights activist Napuli Paul Langa.

Napuli Paul Langa is a human rights activist who worked for the Sudanese Organization for Nonviolence and Development (SONAD), and is active in the Refugee Movement in Berlin, Germany, who have fought to maintain their place at Orianienplatz since 2013.

We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This month's conversation is with Nadia Says (she/they), the co-founder of creative freelancer platform Your Mom's Agency and inclusivity advocacy network dif eV. Nadia is also an educator, journalist, and consultant in the fields of culture, music business, music tech, and DEI. Mostly based in Berlin, she has connections to the creative scenes of Beirut, Marseilles, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

Discover music, readings, podcasts, and videos from their universe and collaborators' on https://yourmomsagency.com, www.dif-ev.org, www.barbieturix.com/author/nadia-says, https://nbhap.com/author/nadia-says, and https://mixmag.net/feature/berlin-creative-community-palestine-protest.

And make sure to check Soli Tunes on https://yourmomsagency.bandcamp.com/album/soli-tunes. Your Mom's lends its Bandcamp platform to release a new multi-genre compilation, featuring twelve collaborations of music and visual art by over forty artists who came in solidarity to advocate for Palestinian art, be it music or tatreez embroidery. All proceeds will be donated to a Palestine-based composition and recording studio; they will announce the result of their collection in February 2025.

Discover the first six tracks from November 1st, and the next six tracks from December 6th.

Picture credit Olcan Akçay

Diesen Monat sprechen wir mit dem Autodidakten und Kunstaktivisten John Herman.

John Herman ist ein autodidaktischer Kunstaktivist, der sich nicht ausschließlich als Künstler begreift, auch wenn er Aktionskunst performt, Videoinstallationen erschafft und fotografiert.

Darüber hinaus war er als Manager für Künstler im Bereich der Globalen Musik sowie als Kurator von Weltmusik-Formaten aus dem Mittleren Osten tätig, wo er mehrere Jahre lebte.

Seine Kunst ist geprägt durch seine extremen Kriegserfahrungen aus seiner Zeit als freiwilliger Soldat an der Seite verschiedener Befreiungsbewegungen, u. a. in Afrika und im Mittleren Osten. Kernthemen seiner Kunst sind sozial-politische Kommunikation, visuelle Soziologie sowie Fragen zu "Krieg und Frieden". John Herman lebt und arbeitet in Köln.

Wir haben uns entschieden, unser Gespräch sowohl auf Englisch als auch auf Deutsch zu führen. Der Podcast in diesem Monat kann sowohl im Original als auch mit Übersetzung gehört werden.

In dieser Folge von S.W.E.A.T. führen wir ein tiefgründiges und nachdenkliches Gespräch über Krieg, bewaffneten Kampf und die persönliche Wandlung vom Kämpfer zum Künstler. Unser Gast erzählt von seinen Erfahrungen, als er in einer Zeit aufwuchs, in der bewaffneter Widerstand vor allem in Europa normal war, und wie diese prägenden Jahre seine Ansichten über Gewalt und Revolution beeinflusst haben. Er spricht über die Entwicklung seiner Überzeugungen, von der Sichtweise, dass der bewaffnete Kampf ein notwendiges Mittel zur gesellschaftlichen Befreiung ist, bis hin zur Infragestellung seiner Wirksamkeit bei der Förderung demokratischer Prozesse.

Die Diskussion verlagert sich auf seinen persönlichen Weg der physischen und psychologischen Transformation, nachdem er im Kampf an der Seite der Kurden in der Türkei ein Bein verloren hatte. Er erklärt, wie dieses lebensverändernde Ereignis ihn dazu brachte, seinen Körper und seine Psyche zu entmilitarisieren und die Kunst als Medium zu nutzen, um Traumata zu verarbeiten und komplexe Geschichten zu erzählen. Wir erforschen die Symbolik des Körpers in der Performance-Kunst, insbesondere wie er durch den Einsatz von Prothesen und körperlicher Verletzlichkeit einen kollektiven Prozess mit seinem Publikum schafft.

This months conversation is with self-taught art-activist John Herman.

John artistically explores themes of war and peace, visual sociology, and socio-political communication across a rich variety of media—from performances, to video installations, to photography—yet John Herman cryptically resists the title of “artist”.

His practice is fed by his extreme experiences of war, when he was fighting as a volunteer soldier alongside global freedom movements in Africa and the Middle East. In the Global Music market, he has worked as an artist manager, tour manager and a curator for World Music concert series focused on the Middle East, where he lived for a decade.

We chose to conduct our conversation in both English and German. The podcast this month can be heard in both original German or with a translation.

In this episode of S.W.E.A.T., we engage in a deep and reflective conversation about masculinity, performativity, war, armed struggle, and the personal transformation from militant to artist. John shares his experiences growing up during a time when armed resistance was normalized, particularly in Europe, and how those formative years influenced his views on violence and revolution. He speaks about the evolution of his beliefs, moving from seeing armed struggle as a necessary tool for societal liberation to now questioning its efficacy in fostering democratic processes.

John also discusses his personal journey of physical and psychological transformation after losing a leg in battle while fighting alongside the Kurds in Turkey. He explains how this life-changing event led him to demilitarize his body and psyche, and to use art as a medium to process trauma and communicate complex narratives. We explore the symbolism of the body in performance art, particularly how his use of prosthetics and physical vulnerability creates a collective process with his audiences.

This months conversation is with author, activist and economic anthropologist Julio Linares

Julio Linares is an economic anthropologist born in the territorios known today as Guatemala. In the last 13 years, he has been a migrant in Taiwan, the UK and Germany. Since 2018, he has served as Public Outreach for the Basic Income Earth Network. His first book “Decolonizing Money” (Pluto Press, 2025) argues for the abolition of the US Dollar as a means to transform the distribution of wealth and power in the planet, in order to bring forth a social ecological just transition. He enjoys giving and receiving massages and doing joyful anarchist resistance across social movements. He is currently based in Berlin.

We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.