S.W.E.A.T. - PODCAST WITH MAD KATE
October 2023
S.W.E.A.T. >>sex/uality. work. extraction. art. theatr/ics.<< is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-A-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, 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? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our always already sexualized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies.
This month's show features artist and researcher Elly Clarke. Mad Kate interviewed Elly Clarke in the context of their project with Adrienne Teicher, HYENAZ. For the past two years HYENAZ have been researching cultures of extractivism within field recording and arts in general.
Elly Clarke is an artist and researcher. The focus of her multimedia-based artistic work lies on the transformation of the physical body in an increasingly digitally-mediated and experienced world, which she explores through performance, video, photography, music, curated and community-based projects. And through #Sergina, a multi-bodied drag queen who, across one body and several, performs online and offline about love, lust and loneliness in the mesh of hyper-dis/connection, gathering - and now also selling - data as she goes. In un/easy collaboration with this character, Elly is entering the final stages of her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, entitled 'Is My Body out of date? The drag of physicality in the digital age’. Earlier this year Clarke curated 'Dragging the Archive - a personal re:encounter with Franklin Furnace's cyber beginnings' in the library at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, which explored Franklin Furnace’s re/emergence as a digital platform for performance in the 1990s. Clarke's work has been presented internationally, at venues that include The Photographer's Gallery and ICA in London; mac birmingham; Milton Keynes Gallery, Galerie Wedding in Berlin; the Banff Centre, Kiama, Helsinki; and The Marlborough Theatre, Brighton. ellyclarke.com
cover photo by OMER GAASH
More about Elly Clarke: http://www.ellyclarke.com/
More about HYENAZ: www.hyenaz.com
Tracks played
Sergina - More Blur Less Border (2020)
Sergina- I want your data (2020)
Sergina - Turn it Off and Turn Me On (2020)
Sergina - Instantaneous Culture (2012)
Sergina - He Only Wants Me For My Network (2015)
(All from 2020 are from a never beyond Soundcloud released EP called Datafic(a)tion)
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/ More about HYENAZ and their research on extractivism: www.hyenaz.com
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.