« S.W.E.A.T. » (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics): Premiere #1

This hour features the first two episodes of S.W.E.A.T.

The first is a conversation 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

The second conversation is 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/

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.