StorePast Event
TRANSISTERS & THE GODDESSES OF ROCK: A Celebration of Chloe Dzubilo
Participant Inc
Date:
Friday, May 22, 2015 from 8:00pm–10:00pm
Price: FREE, Open to all
Visual AIDS Event
TRANSISTERS & THE GODDESSES OF ROCK brought together some of downtown's most iconic performers, including Anohni, Kembra Pfahler, Jayne County (via Skype), Gyda Gash, and Kathy Rey, among others, to discuss and celebrate the legacy and influence of Chloe Dzubilo's art and music as well as the history of transgression and gender performance in the downtown and rock music scenes.
FACEBOOK PICTURES OF THE EVENT HERE.
During the 1990s and beyond, Chloe was an icon of downtown nightlife. She wrote plays for and performed with the Blacklips Performance Cult (cofounded by Anohni) at the Pyramid club and edited the group's zine, Leif Sux. She was the lead singer and songwriter for the rock band the Transisters (with Gyda Gash, Kathy Rey, and Tracy Almazan), who played at CBGB's, Squeeze Box at Don Hill's and other trendsetting hubs of downtown culture. A longtime volunteer for the LGBT Community Center's groundbreaking Gender Identity Project, she served on its transgender HIV prevention team conducting prevention outreach in bars, nightclubs and on strolls. She spoke at national and international conferences, in video Public Service Announcements and training workshops for health care and mental health providers. Chloe was involved with the political action group the Transsexual Menace and went on to direct one of the first federally funded HIV prevention programs for transgender sex workers in 1997. She embodied many roles as a fierce AIDS & transgender activist rocker.
Through Transisters songs such as "Kaposi's Koverstick," described as "a sarcastic and morbid ode to the unslightly AIDS-related cancer and the beauty tips to be it with," Chloe infused the music of the Transisters with an activist spirit. These song and others were among the first to explicitly discuss HIV/AIDS and its ramifications, and Chloe sang their impacting lyrics with powerful first-person presence. Transisters was a four person band with Chloe on vocals, Gyda Gash on bass, Tracy Almazan on drums and Kathy Rey on guitar.
In addition to the discussion, moderated by Participant Inc's Director Lia Gangitano, T De Long will DJ the celebratory evening, and Transisters CDs will be distributed to those in attendance.
Anohni founded The Blacklips Performance Cult, an avant-garde theater troupe based in the Lower East Side’s Pyramid Club, active from 1992 to 1995. Anohni’s upcoming album called HOPELESSNESS is co-produced by herself, Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke.
Jayne Countyis an American performer, musician and actress whose career has spanned several decades. Formerly known as Wayne County, she went on to be rock's first singer of trans experience. She has been an influence on a number of musicians including David Bowie, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Pete Burns and Lou Reed. She is known for her on-stage antics and her songs "Are You Man Enough To Be A Woman” and "Fuck Off,” among others. County was previously an actress in Andy Warhol's The Factory.
Lia Gangitano founded PARTICIPANT INC, a not-for-profit art space on the Lower East Side of New York, in 2001, presenting exhibitions by Virgil Marti, Charles Atlas, Kathe Burkhart, Michel Auder, and Renée Green, among others.
Kembra Pfahler is the woman behind The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, a theatrical rock group that links a hideous monster aesthetic to a dark, hysterical feminine archetype. Named in honor of cult horror film heroine Karen Black, Pfahler’s band performs heavy-bottomed punk-metal songs amid elaborate hand-constructed sets where she engages an animalistic, fetishistic practice of acting out transgressive physical feats.
Gyda Gash (Transisters, bass) is a Musician/ Songwriter/ Original 1977 Punk Rocker/ LES denizen. She is the Bassist for JUDAS PRIESTESS: The World's Only All-Girl Tribute to the Metal Gods and The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black. She is a long-term survivor, living with HIV since 1988.
Kathy Rey (Transisters, guitar) moved to New York City in 1979 to pursue music and started the all-female rock band, “The Bloods.” In 1983 The Bloods disbanded and for the next decade Kathy Rey continued to play the downtown music scene with various bands, including“The Gift,” “Alice,” “Renegade Lost Girls,” and the first all-female Haitian band “Riske.” Kathy Rey continues to write and record music with bassist B. Love and is also a visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY.
T De Long is a singer/songwriter, rapper, audio provocateur, and visual /performance artist. De Long, aka TJ Free, has performed and exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals throughout the world. De Long has also curated music and performance-art programs and founded the "Warm-Up Series" at MoMA PS1.
This program was supported by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.
TRANSISTERS & THE GODDESSES OF ROCK is coordinated in conjunction with the publication of Visual AIDS' DUETS series, DUETS: Che Gossett & Alice O’Malley in Conversation on Chloe Dzubilo, which features a conversation between Che Gossett and Alice O'Malley about the life and legacy of Visual AIDS Artist Member Chloe Dzubilo. Che Gossett is a Black gender-queer and femme-fabulous writer and activist. Alice O'Malley is a New York-based photographer whose portraits constitute an archive of downtown's most notorious artists, performers and muses. DUETS is a series of publications that pairs artists, activists, writers, and thinkers in dialogues about their creative practices and current social issues around HIV/AIDS. DUETS: Che Gossett & Alice O'Malley in Conversation on Chloe Dzubilo features additional contributions by T De Long and JP Borum and artwork by Chloe Dzubilo.
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