My Pussy Is Still In Los Angeles (I Only Live in Berlin)

Loosely based on the books Insurgent Muse-Life and Art at the Woman’s Building by Terry Wolverton, Doin’ It In Public-Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building and From Site to Vision-The Woman’s Building in Contemporary Culture

Setting: The Historic Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store in Lafayette Park.

This site specific location has a grandeur, allure and stature that is imposing and needs no art direction or production design. The Louis XVI Room and drawing room on the 2nd Floor will transform into Wo-min House. As the audience enters Wo-min House there is no trace of Ms. Davis.  Where is she hiding?

In the drawing room the guests are treated to a pink champagne reception with fairy bubbles. Music is provided by violin and cello player.  After champagne reception guests are led into Louis XVI room where a Segaris Lesbian Seperatist High Tea Party unfolds.  Tea, dainties and exquisitely crafted finger sandwiches are served in an atmospheree of eleganza and refinement.  The cello and violin are joined with a pianist creating a chamber music  ensemble.

The famous super talented Sapphic figurine, Phranc the Jewish Lesbian Folk Singer and Cardboard Cobbler performs Phranc n Stein her tribute to Gertrude Stein. Before Phranc performs her short set the illustrious poets Michele T. Clinton and Wanda “Mad Dog” Coleman engage in a mini poetry battle.with guest hostessa the young and radiantly beautiful artist Karen Lofgren.  Then there is an intimate  prelude by intermedia opera singer Julianna Snapper.

After the tea party Ms. Vaginal Davis enters the Louis XVI room from the Coco Chanel Room-the first Chanel boutique on the west coast.  Ms. Davis is in a deluze-a-daze wearing a dazzling white gown by Paris based coutourier Rick Owens. She is accompanied by music from cello.  She stalks the room with no awareness of an audience being present.  She goes into tableaux vivant which she holds for an uncomfortable length of time, and then proceeds to an old fashion portable record player or turntable and plays with a vinyl disc of famed society dowager Elsa Maxwell.  Will she play the record or won’t she?  Vaginal Davis is completely insane so no one knows if there will be an akshunist disruption or not.

Ms. Davis or VD as VD reads text as if she is reciting from a sacred parchment.

VD as VD:  I am a wo-min, trapped in the body of a wo-min in Wo-min House.  A Negress of low birth and little means squatting, my pussy dry and fidgety like a cactus, caught in climactic disarray between the Santa Ana winds and the invert inversion layer.  I shall slurp the wealth, prestige and very marrow of this building here on the Wilshire Corridor of ye olde Los Angeleeze proper in LaFayette Park with a pittance and a proverbial bucket, thou thusly.

I am just like my mother Mary Magdelene DuPlantier the black Creole/Choctaw Indian wo-min from Louisiana who came to Los Angeleeze in 1945 during the great migration.

(improvisation on my mother working for diminutive Hollywood closet star Alan Ladd in the late 1940s and having to act as both his housekeeper and nurse applying iodine to the endowments of his male lovers as a preventive to contracting venereal disease)

Vaginal Davis the host body lives and works in Berlin-New Germany.  A new Germany that is not so new.  Ah Germany–Deutschland so wrapped up in Hegel, Heidiger, Kleist, Schiller, Immanuel Kant, and Goethe—The Germans who either want to cuddle or fist and nothing in between. Deep Dish Doctor Faustus.

Stichhaltige kunst / polarisiert sich /nach einer /noch der letzten

Versoenlichkeit absagenden, ungemilderten und ungetroesteten

Expressivitaet / auf de einen Seite, die autonome Konstruktion wird;

Auf der anderen / nach dem Ausdruckslosen der Konstruction,

Welche heraufziehende Ohnmacht / des Ausdrucks ausdrueckt.

Die Verhandlung ueber das Tabu, welches auf Subject und

Ausdruck lastet, betrifft eine Dialektik der Muendigkeit

Yes I live in Berlin but my pussy resides permanently in Los Angeles where it first emerged a millennium ago from the primordial ooze of the La Brea Tar pits.  It is in Los Angeles where I keep my detachable pussy stored in a climate controlled Bekins Storage Unit on Normandie and Pico Blvd yes in a stone bunker a stone’s throw away from the Saint Sofia Greek Orthodox Cathedral and Loyola Prep Jesuit High School.

Now who is the host and who is the parasite?

Betty Grable and June Haver starring in The Dolly Sisters-Ms. Haver, wanted to give up her career at 20th Century Fox and become a nun, she settled on an affair with Sammy Davis, Jr. before he scandalized Hollywood by having sex with Kim Novak.  Haver settled down with actor Fred McMurray of the My Three Sons TV sitcom of the 1960s.

VD as VD: The breast kitchen, the breast kitchen.  What is wrong with the breastage in the kitchen?  Nothing.  My small perky breasts, they are lovely miracles.  I have sensitive bullet nipples.Nipsy Russell’s. Eraserheads. The ariola and the entire titty cavity demand lots of attention from greedy hungry mouths.  I can’t deal with the Anti Breastage League of Nations. The Anti Breastage Authority. The Anti Breastage Principality.

I am so tired of hetero normative kitsch.  homo kitsch also exhausts me.

National Public Radio’s entertainment reporters Neda Ulaby and Lachme Singt please report to the parking lot. Your lime colored Miata stationwagon is blocking another vehicle.  Please report to the parking lot and move your car or it will be towed.

NPR Cairo correspondent Sariah Sir Hardy Nelson. Oh Sariah I am feeling very Sariah Sir Hardy at the moment.  In fact almost every day I feel more and more Sariah Sir Hardy.  Lets not forget NPR African liaison Ephabia Quest Ar-tin.  I haven’t forgotten her and I will never forget her for as long as I live.

Who has the key to the Fear Bathroom? I don’t want anyone to get locked inside the Fear Bathroom.  This is such a litigious society, and I can’t afford at this time a civil law suit launched against me, so if you insist on taking me to court please be aware that all you will get is some very inexpensive Eva Gabor wigs and Fashion Faire Cosmetics by Johnson & Johnson marketed to the Black community.

Where is the heteronormative room?  Where is the F2M room and who is hosting it?  You’re on T I know you’re on T.  You’re on T floating on T.  What has happened to all the proper butches?  They are all F2M floating on T.  Where is a buttery baracuda femme top going to find a handsome butch bottom these days if all the butches turn F2M and become gay men.  Do we really need any more gay men?

[New Bloods The Secret Life feminist punk with guitar violin, cello and drums]

Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia or in England, America or Germany.  That is understood.  But after all it is the leaders of a country that determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along into a war. Whether it’s a democracy, parliament, communist state or a fascist dictatorship.  Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell the people their way of life is being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for their lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.  It works the same way no matter what the country.

[Josephine Baker’s A Memory ]

The news often reads as if written by a hard-line surrealist.  Look at the morning’s homepage or front page headlines.  The world appears to be nothing but a series of non sequiturs, bizarre conjunctions at every turn, a bundle of isolated phenomena with no apparent meaning or connection.

Feminist art is art that raises consciousness, invites dialogue and transforms culture.  Feminist art also transforms its maker.  Art is about risk, and most risk results in failure

Failuretics Failuretics Failuretics.

If you succeed too much of the time chances are you are not attempting enough.  Concentrate on honing the work as fully as you can to your own satisfaction. Fall in love with the process. That is the part you can control. What the marketplace does with it is out of your hands. Don’t invest yourself in the values of the marketplace.

Advanced capitalism danger capitalism the ruling class the leisure class

A Touch of Class starring Glenda Jackson & George Segal 1974 directed by . . . Who directed that movie?  I saw it when it first came out at the 3rd run movie house The Embassy Theatre on Western Avenue and Third Street or was it at the old Four Star Theatre on Wilshire Blvd near Highland that is now I think an interracial mega church.

Lets think about that for a moment.

(Improvised insane rant)

It also could have been the Gordon Theatre on LaBrea at Melrose which is still there but under a different name. Yes a Touch of Class on a quadruple bill—is it quadruple when it’s four movies?

$1.50 for four movies in 1974 —A Touch of Class, That’s Entertainment, 11 Harrow House starring Charles Grodin and Candice Bergen, Hearts of the West starring Jeff Bridges and a young Blythe Danner the mother of Gwyneth Paltrow.  Gwyneth’s father the late Bruce Paltrow was the executive producer of the 1970s TV drama The White Shadow starring Ken Howard as a white basketball coach in an inner city highschool.

This was my favorite TV program as a teenager. I loved it because one of the basketball players in the show was played by high snow actor Timothy Van Patten of the famous Van Patten TV dynasty. Timothy was so gorgeous with his curly long blondine locks and high top bubble butt— Back then basketball players wore very tight dolphin shorts that left nothing to the imagination unlike these boring baggy unsexy hip-hop influenced board shorts that basketball players wear these days. I could have munched on Timothy Van Patten’s luscious garden salad for the rest of my natural and unnatural born life. What a gift to humanity the young Timothy Van Patten.  Now I’m a lesbian and I don’t have sex with men, but I would have had sex with Timothy Van Patten.

[ Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire where a young woman cuts the penis off of a boy and claims it so that her girlfriend’s father will agree to her being with his daughter]

Wo-min world and wonder.  Spirituality, ecology & art.  A model of seasonal education aligning with the cycles of nature.  Fall—the time to gather resources for the coming winter– secure a place to live and a support system.  Winter— given over to study and introspection and inner journeying.  Spring—the time for reconnecting with community.  Summer—devoted to “Wo-minfestation”—bringing forth the fruits of ones labour.

[ Mumps Waiting for the World to Catch Up featuring Lance Loud of American Family fame and Kristian Hoffman who wrote the songs of Klaus Nomi]

Amazon Ambrosia

Consciousness raising, inviting dialogue, transforming culture

Building Female Context and Environment

1+1=3

Sweat Equity

Alone we can do little

together we can do much

Mother Art, Rainbow Playground

Femina-the Feminine Planet

Daughters of Bilitis

Idea ex-change

Space to share work

Open Forum:  Sensuality

Continuous Evaluation

[Raincoats Monk Chant merged with Eric Satie Chapitres tournes en tous sens]

Asshole Kollective

Feminist Studio Workshop

Sisters of Survival

Excavations

Skill ex-change

Equal Time in Equal Space

Ariadne: Social Art Network

Sexuality and space

LAP-Lesbian Art Project

Domestic voyeurism

Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven Arlene Raven

[Trash Kit’s Paper  and Claude Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande]

The Waitresses in Ready to Order?

womanspace

Hierarchies are a patriarchal form of governance

Judy Chicago

Femme maison

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

The Furies

Pedagogy of Consensus

Grandma Prisbrey

Feminist Art Workers

Heritage remembered, invented, prophesied

Board of Lady Managers

Vesta, keeper of the flame

Lesbian Crib Death –(Improvise rant on Lesbian Crib or Bed Death)

Natalie Barney Collective

High theory-linear, male, elite

Structural sexism of most academic disciplines

Manteniendo el espiritu edited by aleida rodriguez

Woman for all season edited by wanda coleman and joanne leedom-ackerman

Michellle  T. Clinton— the jewish palm/the black fist

Patssi Valdez

Bia Lowe

Terry Wolverton  Terry Wolverton

Betye Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

Cheri gaulke this is my body

Suzanne Lacy

Faith Wilding

Sue Mayberry

Nancy Buchanan

Diane Gamboa

Proximity:  as a critique exploring rather than repudiating the sections of late capitalism through specific bodies that force the spectator’s own narcissistic self containment to account (through its reversibility) for the “other” of the artists as the artist accounts for her interpreters by performing specific bodies that force the interpreter to acknowledge her implication in determining the meanings of the artist/work of art.

[Judy Garlands You’ll Never Walk Alone from Greatest Performances]

I left the house wearing a heliotrope vintage Chloé mohair sweater from the Stella McCartney salad days, slate gray stretchy jeans from Uniqlo, YSL leopard frame sunglasses and matte silver Marc Jacobs lace-up biker boots with a fuzzy shearling lining.  Then I went back home after 15 minutes and changed into complicated Diesel jeans, mudslide brown and turquoise Pumas, a dayglo pink T-shirt with Annette Funicello on the front from the 1965 Disney film The Monkey’s Uncle, an army green Y-3 dunce cap and broken Cutler & Gross aviators.  For daytime glamour I always wear Hell-in-Bed Lorna Luft OrangeRed MAC lipstick.

At night, I went to my last pre-Christmas party of the season. I wore my all-time favorite designer, Desi Monster Santiago. This dress is cut very short—from coont to caint, in black silk satin, with a low back covered in bronze-gold Swarovski crystals. I wore it with my guisch high black patton leather Alexander McQueen boots with six-inch heels.

I had a wig fitting with Barry at Bitz-n-Pieces. I’ve been going to him since the ’80s, when I wore more gimmicky wigs. Now my wigs are more natural — some are made of my own hair. At my wig fitting I wore chartreuse lace McQueen leggings and an Ecuadorian coffee colored and deconstructed long-sleeve sweater dress that I bought in Slovenia. With it, I pulled on Vivienne Westwood camel canvas boots that have beige bondage straps and a low square heel and topped it off with a capucine felt hat. Over all that I put on a dark gray, wool Leigh Bowery coat cut long in the front micro mini in the back.

I had a meeting at the Hôtel Americano about Fashion Week events. I built my look around a full-length bell sleeve Gaultier dress that’s super comfortable in an uncomfortable manner. It’s made of a stretchy nude mesh fabric, with bold clusters of printed faces outlined in onyx. I wore cropped nude leggings underneath and semi transparent  knee-high pleather boots, laser-cut to look like lace. (I call this my “semi-drag” look, when I go to dinners, corporate events and academic functions.) I accented the entire ensemble with a vintage black wide-brimmed agape hat and pheasant feather.

For Christmas I was invited to a friends house in the country.  During drinks I slipped into an electric blue jumpsuit with a plunging V-neck and big guild pockets. Think horndoggy mechanic meets retarded harem scarem princess. My main accessory was a kitchen towel that I used as a sweat rag.  During the big Christmas feast, I changed into a short pepper-hooded cotton jersey dress from Lee’s Mardi Gras, that features a bold Keith Haring print in neutered caucasion and blood purine, with gangrene stained custom-made leggings that have a diamond-shaped pattern and ripped holes laced with satin ribbon: delicate but so hard core they are nardcore.

Later that night, I returned to the city for a Christmas party. I laced on a corset I got as a birthday present from Ryan Gosling before he was famous. It’s Chinese-inspired, with nutmeg sequined fabric and orion chopsticks at the cleavage. Hanging from the chopsticks are jet marine bead tassels. This definitely gives a I Hate Christmas snow-queen vibe. I wore it with a Reem Alasadi mid-day baby blue listerine jacket, Pamela Mann bondage tights and Fred Slatten suede roquefort platform pumps. I wore my signature “messy scary curl” wig, which is big, extra long, rust colored and lovesexy. This kind of look I call full on draghag: extra large and in-charge of art directing not only my life but everyone else’s.

The next day some of my English friends were having a Boxing Day party. On top of ocra fishnets, I wore a slate satin Dolce & Gabbana girdle one-piece that is cut across the thigh, a push-up bra that zips up the back that is an old favorite of mine. My coat was a below-the-knee, black brushed wool Yohji Yamamoto from the ’80s, and my shoes were spicy beef curtain high negro suede Sergio Rossi boots with a Belgium stiletto heel. I decided to add a small dinge Piers Atkinson pillbox hat with netting that covers just my eyes and a bit of nose, and a small Frito Bandito mustache that sits above my lip. It brought out my masculine side!

[Fagbash’s Whore’s Blues,  Bladder’s Tough Enough to Turn LA  Around, Hairlip’s Meet. Youth Brigade’s Sink With California and Eric Satie’s  Gymnopedie] .

Tableau

“Memory Song” with chamber ensemble.  VD as VD leaves Wo-min House in an awkward flurry talking to herself.