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 Italian poet, storyteller and curator Donato Laborante.

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Today's show features a conversation that my collaborator Adrienne Teicher and I had with artist Donato Laborante in the context of our ongoing project about cultures of extraction and artistic practices. We are also joined by artist Federica Dauri, who is translating for us. Adrienne and I met Donato in 2015 when we first toured to the Murgia region of Italy, about an hour inland from Bari. We played many small venues and met all of the incredible artists that Donato knows across the region. As well as being a curator, Donator is a poet, actor, performer and storyteller who galvanizes the artistic scene to create happenings and to move people to take political action in their everyday actions. After our initial visit, Adrienne and I returned again several times to the region because we were fascinated by the role of stone in the area and had met several artists who utilized stone to make musical instruments, most notably Vito Maiullari. During one of our visits, we made a journey into a marble quarry in Apricena, and were joined by several local artists. Together we spontaneously began playing percussive sounds on the wall of the quarry and recorded our impromptu performance. It was this moment that sparked our interest in the idea of extraction as metasignfier–including the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies; minerals, gas and water from the ground; sounds, words and images from sentient beings; the consensual extraction of digital content, and the “mining of the exotic” from our very identities.

Airing this conversation comes after we’ve just made a third visit to the area to deepen our knowledge of relationship to stone, sound, and time, meeting again Donato and other artists in the area. Here Donato shares with us some of his feelings about the significance of stone, of digging, and of archeology and the layers of time captured in the stone. He also talks about his relationship to work, time, patience and meditation.

More about Donato Laborante: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008775795320

More about HYENAZ extraction: https://www.hyenaz.com/extraction/

More about Vito Maiullari: https://www.facebook.com/vito.maiullari.9/

More about Federica Dauri: https://federicadauri.com/works

S.W.E.A.T. is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art. 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 Listing

Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending feat. Lori Baldwin

HYENAZ – Audibility (demo)

Chiara Civello - Io che amo solo te

Pino Daniele - Sicily

Fiorella Mannoia - I Treni A Vapore

Nada - Ma che freddo fa