« S.W.E.A.T. » (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics): with Kaz Falkenstrom #34

Kaz (KArizona or Karen in Arizona) Falkenstrom is a 1.5-generation Korean-Norwegian-American, raised in Virginia and transplanted to the desert Southwest in the late ’80s. Her career in the arts includes teaching, performing, and arts administration. She holds a B.S. in Architectural Design from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetry from the University of Arizona (UA).

Since 1985, Kaz has been involved in grassroots arts organizations, co-founding the Urban Artists Amalgamated and Ram Cat Gallery interdisciplinary arts movement in Richmond, VA. After moving to Tucson in 1989, she co-directed the Among Other Things… literary arts series and directed the Tucson Poetry Festival. In 1992, she was contracted to coordinate the UA Poetry Center’s 30th Anniversary Traveling Exhibit and later joined the staff as Events Coordinator. In 1993, she co-founded Kore Press, Tucson’s first feminist publishing house, and in 1996 co-founded InConcert! Tucson, which produced dozens of contemporary folk and world music concerts each year.

After several years in desktop publishing and web design, Kaz discovered taiko (Japanese ensemble drumming) in 2001. Since then, she has dedicated herself to the practice, learning to build the drums and raising funds to purchase Rhythm Industry Performance Factory, the warehouse that now provides rehearsal and teaching space for hundreds of Tucson performers. Odaiko Sonora, the taiko group she founded in 2002, has distinguished itself both administratively and artistically throughout the international taiko community.

Kaz is a leader, a connector, a collaborator, a gatherer of things lost, and a maker of something out of almost nothing.

www.tucsontaiko.org https://www.rhythmindustry.org/

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.