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. This episode features Arabic teacher Muhammedu Abubakari, including his recitations. After our talk we visit Jawo Zaria Graba, a small scale cocoa farmer and Isshak Fuseini, a student, who give us a tour of forest farm near where Muhammedu teaches.

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teaching as performance, reciting Quran as dance, cocoa farming and medicinal plants

If you’ve been following SWEAT you know that the first subseries has focused on persons who I met during and through my residency in Kumasi Ghana in 2021 at perfocraZe International Artist Residency. But today’s episode features a very special person who was central to my experience outside of the residency, Muhammedu Abubakari, a teacher of Arabic and Quran, a translator, and a skilled tailor.

Muhammedu also introduced me to Jawo Zaria Graba, a cocoa farmer and Isshak Fuseini, an economics student. They took me on a tour of the forest 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.

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 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.

Track List

Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending feat. Lori Baldwin Forest Swords – Arms Out Isshak Fuseini and Muhammedu Abubakari doing the call to prayer Sampha – Take Me Inside David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours Anne Clark – Our Darkness Amiri Baraka – Rhythm Blues Basa Basa – African Disco Power (Sofrito Edit) Mad Kate | the Tide - Born Out of Sex