S.W.E.A.T.

This final episode of 2022 closes out the first season of S.W.E.A.T. with a personal note. I’ll be speaking about my own positioning as I come into this project—my own relationship to sex, work, extraction, art and theatrics and the personal-political intersections that I bring to the table when I speak to others in conversation.

As a special HOLIDAY BONUS, I’ll be airing the soundpiece SWEAT Kumasi that I composed after the first series of interviews that were conducted when I was an artist in resident at perforcraze International Artist Residency (-pIAR) in Kumasi, Ghana in 2021. The soundpiece contains excerpts from all of the interviews that I aired over the past year as well as some portions of other interviewees that didn’t get featured in the podcast.

Special thanks to everyone who was on the podcast this year, including crazinisT artisT aka Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, Mawuenya Amudzi, Hiroko Tsuchimoto, Onsoh, Amina Gimba, Muhammedu Abubakari, Eryka Dellenbach, and Justice aka Karyka. Special thanks to Lori Baldwin whose voice is featured in the theme music.

The soundpiece S.W.E.A.T. Kumasi features sonic contributions and quoted interviews with

Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT]

Mawuenya Bubu Amudzi

Martin Toloku

Onsoh Edward

Eryka Dellenbach

Zoë Binetti

Hiroko Tsuchimoto

Karyka

Onyekwere Justice Ugochukwu

Jawo Zaria Graba

Adwoa Kesewaa Gaisie

Isshak Fuseini

Muhammedu Abubakari

Samuel Kortey Baa

Champion Rolie

Ester Nyante

Amma

Amina Gimba

Patrick Quarm

Mixing and Mastering

Andreas Maan

@andreasmaan

2021 - 2022

Thank you perforcraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) Kumasi Ghana

www.crazinistartist.com/piar-artist-in-residency/

SWEAT is an immersive sound installation and performance intervention that features sonic contributions and auditory imprints from laboring bodies at work, as well as recorded conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art.

The sonic landscape of this work has been woven exclusively from field recordings gathered in and around Kumasi, ultilizing pIAR as first site of home and expanding outwards to synchronistic encounters, intuitively following the body at work. The conversations are less a sonic research archive than they are a means to speak across intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies. These are the sounds of sweaty bodies: labouring, dancing, fucking, sacrificing and surviving.

In focus is the auditory and audibility; which bodies can be heard and which bodies are silenced by the audible? What happens in the dark? What is felt or sensed in the quiet space between bodies, placed within and contexualized by the pounding loudness of our sweaty bodies at work?

Justice aka Karyka is a Nigerian IT student living and working in Kumasi Ghana. When we met he was running a barber shop part time and I was looking for a fresh haircut. He is a drummer at his uncle’s church, singer and aspiring actor, which are just a few of his future dreams as he takes on many part time jobs. We spoke about how he hustles to get by as a Nigerian migrant to Ghana and what he dreams of in the future. Justice became a fast friend and an integral part of the performance we made together called S.W.E.A.T. in which he activated a dress I had sewn out of the plastic bags which hold drinking water. At the time he was playfully exploring a genderqueerness through the pseudonym “Karyka”.

This interview will close out the short series conducted with people I met in and around Kumasi Ghana, when I was an artist in resident at perforcraze International Artist Residency (-pIAR) in 2021. The people who have been introduced through this series all have a unique relationship to work and to art and were willing to share their experiences with me. For this I am immensely grateful.

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.

PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com

Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81

HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/

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.

Eryka Dellenbach (b. Chicago) is an experimental filmmaker, dancer and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Tucson, Arizona. They approach film as a devotional practice, and use body-based performance and dance collaboration as a method of research, connection and mutual evolution. Their works mine relationships to power and erotics, and explore fluid consent as a generative source of form and narrative. They earned their bachelor degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and their masters in Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their movement practice has been heavily impacted through studies in the dances of resistance Butoh, flamenco and capoeira, and especially by their teachers Atsushi Takenouchi, Wendy Clinard and Contramestre Besouro Preto Manganga.

Collaboration plays a central role in their process and they have worked with artists of many mediums and lineages including Hanna Elliott (HOGG), Martin Toloku, Yunuen Rhi, Nola Sporn Smith, Sonya Belaya, Matty Davis and Christopher-Rasheem McMilan. Their work has been presented at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Communitism (GR), Alliance Française Kumasi (GHANA), crazinisT artisT studio (GHANA), Roulette Intermedium, Cucalorus, Gene Siskel Film Center, Green River Cemetery (NY), Coaxial Arts (LA), Casa Moloch (MX) and Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church. They have been an artist-in-residence at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art (Russia), perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Ghana), eX...it! international butoh dance exchange and performance festival (Germany), Earthdance (MA), Echo Luna (Ukraine) and Cucalorus (NC). They have been a legal advocate and correspondent with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, a celluloid film instructor with MONO NO AWARE (NY) and are a collaborator of the transnational collective HEKLER. They work as a freelance filmmaker, performance documentarian, interviewer and performing body.

Eryka Dellenbach erykadellenbach.com

PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com

Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81

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

Today’s episode features Muhammedu Abubakari, a teacher of Arabic and Quran, a translator, and a skilled tailor. He translates and speaks in conversation with me and Jawo Zaria Graba, a cocoa farmer and Isshak Fuseini, an economics student.

Together we toured the forest where they produce crops and shared with me their extensive knowledge of the plants and crops that were growing there – palm and the process of extraction palm oil and wine, coconut, cocoa plant, avocado, yam, as well as the medicinal qualities of the plants all coexisting there. While we were walking we also talked politics of farming, race and class.

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.

PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com

Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81

HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/

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 oaf 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.

Track List

Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending feat. Lori Baldwin

Isshak Fuseini and Muhammedu Abubakari praying

This episode features a conversation with artist Amina Gimba in 2021 at PerfocraZe International Artist Residency -p IAR in Kumasi, Ghana. Amina is a visual artist and freelance graphic designer from Northeast Nigeria who specialises in simplifying everyday experiences into provocative artistic pieces, using ink, colour pencils, crayons, tie and dye, and graphic design software.

We spoke about the power of illustration to speak across language, the possibilities for silence in our everyday communication, the joy of making queer art, and the dream of working for free.

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate.

My hope is that these conversations contribute to dialogues which recognize all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

Amina Gimba’s website: www.aminagimba.com

WHER : https://whernigeria.org/

PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com

Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81

HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/

This month features a conversation with Ghanaian painter and performer Onsoh Edward. Onsoh calls himself a plethora because of his indecisive multidisciplinary artistic attitude. He is known for photography, videography, performance, painting and sculpture. We speak about discrimination against people wearing dreadlocks, the differences between painting for money and painting for therapy, how he explores his indigenous roots through painting, and his most recent performance works as activism.

Onsoh Studio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onsoh_studio/

Onsoh Studio Website: https://onsoh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_8.html?m=1

Toile Backdrops: https://www.instagram.com/toile_backdrops/

PerfocraZe International www.crazinistartist.com

Gofund me campaign for perforcraZe international: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81

HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate.

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 episode features a conversation with Hiroko Tsuchimoto, a Japanese-born, Stockholm-based artist caring about and working with humans and more-than-human entities. Over the past ten years, she has been producing performances with audience participation both on stage and in public spaces, yet her interest is currently shifting from front-stage to rehearsals and behind-the-scenes, from egology to ecology, from production-oriented to research-based, and from watering houseplants to touching soil.

more information on Hiroko: https://www.hirokotsuchimoto.info/

PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com

S.W.E.A.T. Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics.

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 both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies.

This episode features a conversation with Mawuenya Amudzi from 2021. Mawuenya Amudzi (b. 1992) is a Ghanaian artist, administrator for perfocraZe International Artist Residency, Residency Manager at Osramba studio living and working in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana. His works explore the idea of existentialism and material aspects of objects. He works with disused materials (cathode ray tube television set and computer monitors and fabrics) repurposing them into new “alternative” lives.

Amudzi has participated in group exhibitions including Orderly Disorderly organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra-Ghana, the inaugural Lagos Biennial dubbed Living on the Edge, Spectacles Speculations, memory and amnesia and Chale Wote festival.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar

https://www.instagram.com/mawuenya_amudzi/

https://www.facebook.com/mawuenya.amudzi

https://www.instagram.com/blaxtarlines/

S.W.E.A.T. Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics.

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 both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies.

This episode is with Va Bene Elikem Fiatsi, also know as crazinisT artisT, the founder of perfocraZe International Artists Residency (pIAR). Va Bene's pronoun is sHit- she he it. sHit is a multidisciplinary “artivist." Through ritual, performance, and installation sHit employs sHits own gender fluid body as a thought-provoking tool to confront issues such as disenfranchisement, social justice, violence, objectification, internalized oppression, anti blackness, gender, queerness, sexual stigma and its consequences for marginalized groups or individuals.

https://www.crazinistartist.com/

https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar

Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics.

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 both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies.