A Spot of T-Original Plumbing Program

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aspot June 24
Original Plumbing Productions Presents:
A Spot of T
African American Art & Culture Complex
8pm
Tickets: $12-$20
Buy Tickets on-line:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/111554
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Join the boys of Original Plumbing Magazine, Amos Mac and Rocco Katastrophe, along with some of their favorite transmale artists and performers. This groundbreaking all transmale cabaret will include hilarious and compelling films by Chris Vargas, a dynamic performance by Mr Coney Island himself, Glenn Marla, adorably sweet art slideshow by Ketch Wehrwolf, a colorful and cutting edge slideshow by Amos Mac, poppy, booty shaking smart songs and emceeing by Katastrophe and much, much more. This evening will be fun, and entertaining while calling bullshit on questions of authenticity and blowing the doors off of preconceived notions of what it takes to make a man.  You don’t want to miss this one of a kind exploration of masculinity through art.    

Biographies

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Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos. Photo: Amos Mac

Amos Mac is a photographer, writer and independent publisher. His photographic portraits of diverse members of the queer community in America has been showcased in galleries internationally and published widely from the pages of Maximum Rock N Roll, Cutter photozine, and Descry magazine, to controversial portraits and interviews featured on BUTT magazine’s blog. He is the editor in chief of Original Plumbing, the first magazine dedicated to the culture of FTM transsexuals.

Rocco Kayiatos, aka Katastrophe, is a San Francisco based rapper and producer.  He’s a seasoned vet on the mic and got his start competing in poetry slams in 1997. Combining his love of music and language, he started rapping and making beats in 2002. He uses his poetic grasp of language to weave dense tales of lives lived outside the mainstreams of education, gender, and culture. He was crowned Producer of the Year by Out Music Awards for his debute album Let’s Fuck, Then Talk About My Problems.  Kayiatos has since released a second album entitled Fault, Lies and Faultlines and his third and best full length release, The Worst Amazing was released in October 2009 on 307 Knox Records.  He has toured the US and Europe several times and continues to travel to support his releases.  He is a feature in the documentary films Poetic License and Pick up the Mic.  His video for the song “The Life” was on MTV networks LOGO top ten click list for 12 weeks.  His music has helped soundtrack The Showtime Network’s The L Word, as well as several short films.  Kayiatos is the subject of a forthcoming biopic called The State of Katastrophe.  He is also the co-editor of Original Plumbing, the first magazine dedicated to the culture of FTM transsexuals.

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Film Stills

Chris Vargas is committed to countering the earnestness of trannies–past, present, and future. He is currently earning his MFA from UC Berkeley, where he is devising brilliant ways to infuse film and video with radical, queer, and transfeminist content. Along with Eric Stanley he is the co-director of the movie Homotopia (2006), as well as its forthcoming sequel, Criminal Queers (2010). With Greg Youmans, he makes a dysfunctional and comic sitcom loosely based on their real life-relationship, called “Falling In Love… with Chris and Greg.” For additional info, see www.chrisevargas.com.

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Berlin Reed

Berlin Reed is the butcher, chef and writer behind the The Ethical Butcher. His practice is driven by  personal relationships with small local farmers, a deep love of food, respect for the animals we eat and the environment on which we depend. He is based in Portland, OR and also writes personal  essays for publication.

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Glenn Maria

Glenn Marla is a Brooklyn-based performance artist, dancer, writer, tranny superstar and beauty pageant queen (Miss LES 2006 and the reigning Mr. Coney Island). The Portland Phoenix calls Glenn Marla’s work, “performance art that pushes the envelope without pushing the audience away,” Time Out New York Calls Glenn a “downtown prophet” and The New York Times calls Glenn “an obese transvestite in tights.” Glenn Marla is a firm believer that if you don’t fit in anywhere you can fit in everywhere; this mindset has stretched his own concept of performance and the minds of his audiences. He has performed at galleries, theaters big and small, club, bar and burlesque venues, colleges and universities, and all over the U.S. Glenn was last seen playing a Poppy Flower in Taylor Mac’s epic extravaganza “The Lily’s Revenge.” Glenn was also featured in Justin Bond’s ” Lustre” at P.S. 122 and Abrons Arts Center. His Lustre dance theatre piece was captured in documentarian Joe Jefferies Drag Show Video Vierte, documenting the past 50 years of drag in New York City and is currently archived at Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts. Glenn’s year-long performance project “New York City’s Hottest Fat Go-Go Boy” explored fat, gender and sex, as he danced all over the city becoming a fixture in New York City nightlife. Glenn is thrilled to be bringing his gritty, parkly, visual  and theatrical daring to San Francisco. www.glennmarla.com

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Ketch Wehr

Ketch Wehr is a feral fairy transfeminist artist with a focus on the politics of entitlement as well as human consumption of animals and animal imagery as metaphor and meat.  Raised amongst rescue animals and born with a wolfpack in his heart, Ketch is a 25-year old illustrator and artist with a love for the feral.  Since moving to Philadelphia, he has ripped through the maladies of the service industry with his webzine, Bitter Bleachbeast, become a member of the infamous artists’ collective Space 1026, and been a major designer and organizer for the Queer fundraising superparty, The Next Big Thing. His five solo shows in 2009 considered various issues of human perception of non-human animals, the consumption of images of animals as a form of self-serving metaphor, and the commodification of living things based on overpopulation or scarcity.  Ketch is currently working on his new body of work considering monstrosity and liminal identity.

This event received a Creating Queer Community Commission from Queer Cultural Center funded through the San Francisco Foundation.