Bubblegum Club

Tag: Bottom’s Revenge

  • TELFAR x FAKA – exploring gender fluidity through fashion and performance

    The exploration of gender fluidity or genderless garments has come to the fore over the last few years in fashion. Launched in 2005 by designer Telfar Clemens, TELFAR has positioned itself as a foundational brand for black, avant-garde design with gender fluidity as its backbone.

    During  Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week in January, Kaleidoscope presented TELFAR’s project, Nude – a live installation of TELFAR’s work in collaboration with other artists. This project stretched fashion linguistics by sharing with audiences a fashion presentation without any garments.

    Photography by Donald Gjoka

    The exhibition centres around a large nude image of designer Telfar Clemens by Rob Kulisek. Surrounding this were nude mannequins with gender signifiers removed. These were an updated version of the mannequins TELFAR presented at the 2016 Berlin Biennale, that were designed by American artist Frank Benso and manufactured by German mannequin factory Penther Formes. In addition to this, there was a film about Telfar’s apartment building in Queens, NY made by filmmaker Finn MacTaggart accompanied by musical composition by Aaron David Ross.

    FAKA were invited by Telfar to bring a performative element to the show. Having been TELFAR fans for a number of years, they were pleasantly surprised to find out that Telfar has been keeping an eye on them too. After a few email exchanges, the collaboration was solidified. “We performed both our EP’s ‘Bottoms Revenge‘ and ‘Amaqhawe‘. Our performance tied into Nude through our known exploration of gender fluidity which Telfar’s work generally explores,” Desire explained. Their performance also gave audiences a sneak peek of TELFAR’s new looks. Working together made complete sense considering FAKA’s interrogation of gender identity, and their aim to celebrate, reimagine and liberate queer bodies. FAKA continue to push their positive agenda across the globe with collaborations such as this.

    Photography by Pietro Savorelli

  • 2016 – The Year in Dread

    The dominant theme in the innumerable ‘best of 2016’ lists is disappointment, failure and despair. A year categorised by the rise of the Far Right, war, random acts of violence, hate speech, death and the ominous cracking of the polar ice caps.  In the parts of the world that weren’t already in social crisis, this was the year in which the chickens of the 07/08 financial meltdown finally came home to roost.  In South Africa, the year was characterised by sleaze as the rich and powerful continue to plunder the state, militarized campuses and a general sense of social stagnation.

    In such bleak times, music is even more important in expressing anxiety, resistance and hope.  Of course, culture is no substitute for political struggle.  (Just look at how the Clinton campaign held the delusory idea that a few celebrity endorsements would win against Trump.) But art can help us find our bearings, even if just to say how fucked up things are. So here is my highly subjective list of the releases which best captured the tone of the dystopian present.

    DJ Lag– DJ Lag EP. A few months ago, a video was leaked from the US Defence Department which predicts a future of high-tech militaries fighting low tech insurgents in the favelas, shacks and townships of the global South. This futuristic EP from KZN is the sound of the South fighting back, an off-the-shelf laser pointer taking down an imperial drone. Lag is an architect with his beats, using snatches of missing sound to ramp up the intensity.  Furthermore, this release highlights how Gqom, and its numerous offshoots, is the most significant music currently coming out of this country.

    David Bowie-  Blackstar.  Bowie did about as much as person can in one lifetime.  And rather than facing his trip to death’s undiscovered country with fear or mewling resignation, he brilliantly stage-managed his exit. The black star of the title stood in for the cosmic terror of space, the personal terror of cancer, even the brutality of ISIS.  But most importantly, it was a final artistic triumph.

    Danny Brown– Atrocity Exhibition. Many critics this year seemed overly enamoured of the saccharine positivity of Chance the Rapper’s gospel sound. Instead of singing with Jesus, Danny Brown was laughing with the Devil. Completing the trilogy which he began with XXX and Old, Brown released his masterpiece.  And for a schizophrenic,  post punk inspired trip through personal dysfunction it’s also surprisingly fun, with Brown offering all kinds of wayward life advice. My single favourite musical moment of 2016 is  when the beat drops on ‘When It Rain’, a tribute to his hometown of Detroit which oscillates between despair and nihilistic pride ‘’ whole damn city probably got a couple warrants.’’

    Radiohead- A Moon Shaped Pool. After the pleasant, but underwhelming King of Limbs, Radiohead decided to go back to doing what they do best- grand statements about the terrors of late capitalism. This beautifully orchestrated album is rooted in personal heartbreak but also glances at global warming and populist hatemongering.

    FAKA – Bottoms Revenge. This year was full of terrible things done in the name of religion. In stark contrast, FAKA offer an alternative spirituality of metamorphosis and transcendence. The entire EP is orchestrated like a ritual. Occasionally disturbing, sometimes confusing,  always revelatory.

  • FAKA – Speaking With the Gods

    Faka, the dynamic duo of Desire Marea and Fela Gucci, are proudly representing black and queer creativity with potent sound and vision. Along with their glam imagery and performance pieces, they make music which combines the brute force of Gqom with the optimistic ghost of bubblegum township pop, kwaito and gospel. Their artistic manifesto is best epitomized by the song `Izitibane zaziwe ukhuti zibuya ebukhosini’ (Let it be known, that queerness is a thing of the Gods) which they released with the accompanying statement: ‘ this is an ode to all the powerful dolls who risk their lives every day by being visible in an unsafe world. This is a celebration of those who have fearlessly embraced themselves. Because when your identity is the cause of your suffering in the world, you begin to feel the very source of your greatness in the world’.

    This hopeful message underlies the mysterious and alluring debut EP Bottoms Revenge. Adapted from a live piece of the same name, this three track Ep is thirty minutes of outrageously psychedelic `Ancestral Gqom Gospel.’ The opening ‘ Isifundo Sokuqala’ starts with a false sense of calm, until it introduces hypnotic static. The 18 minute title track is ambient odyssey through inner and outer space. Such a terse description undersells how unique their music is, but that’s because it hard to describe something so singular. If I had to pin it down, I’d describe it as sounding like releases from an alternate timeline where Brenda Fassie teamed up with post-punk synthesizer abusers Cabret Voltaire to ritually summon a benevolent matriarchal elder god.

    Appropriately, the EP is released on NON records, a collective which has been steadily building an impressive catalogue of provocative music. In such dark  times, where a racist maniac has just been elected to the most powerful political position of Earth, this expression of individualism and refusal of labels feels like a welcome act of aesthetic resistance.

  • Live from Berlin: FAKA performing Bottoms Revenge and writing love letters to black men

    2016 has been the year of FAKA. The creative duo of Desire Marea and Fela Gucci have outdone themselves and broken cultural ground with every drop and every performance this year. On the 21st of April 2016 they gave an exhilarating live performance that set the Stevenson SEX exhibit alight. While a new video for ISIFUNDO SOKUQALA – sensual with a touch of the supernatural – has them sketching an imprint on the local cultural scene. For queer culture, for trans culture, for bottoms, for women – for everyone who believes we should be able to be ourselves without fearing for our safety in our so called civilised society. Their performances enlighten and expose ignorance and their space within the current conversation around sex and gender is pioneering and so sexy. In consistently immaculate styling and composed, powerful performances they walk the line between provocation and seduction – posing challenges to the heteronormative hegemony and offering healing and inspiration to those brutalised by it. Currently at the Berlin Bienalle performing their highly anticipated piece titled ‘Bottom’s Revenge’. Their humour, vision and power transcend social censorship and reveal that seduction is a feeling, and sex is something society perverts and polices to serve patriarchy and its princes and princesses.

    They took time out of their Bienalle schedules to answer a few questions for us. Read and weep.

    When did you realize your creativity and identity could impact your environment? 

    We realised this when we realised that our own lives were actually conceptual, they were a well executed creative idea that came quite effortlessly from our need to cope with and transcend the social displacement that comes with being black and queer. Our growth as people made us realise that there are more effective ways to navigate the aesthetics, the artefacts, and all the movements that form our identities in ways that might threaten or influence the structural environment we are juxtaposed with on the daily. Seeing how this affects our everyday experience of the world opened us up to very intimate truths about our world and a lot of that informs our practice. We see art as an equally intimate way to communicate (not so) new truths, and it’s the best way to plant new ideas in the minds of people who consume it. Art has the power to influence culture and for us culture is the highest governing power

    What does the future hold for FAKA in SA and beyond? 

    We are releasing our EP Bottoms Revenge very soon. Beyond that our focus will be to create tangible structures that can reflect our ideology as artists, structures that will hopefully be able to support the upcoming legendary children. We have been fortunate to receive multiple platforms and our voice is strengthened by that. Every young black queer artist deserves that but it is not the case and we don’t want them to go as far as we have gone to be heard.

    What message do you have for other men trying to find ways to be loving and sexual outside the pervasive S.African toxic and violent masculinities? 

    Insert Fumbatha May’s “A love letter to the Black Man”.

    This performance comes at a critical time for marginalized people’s internationally, do these events inform your work at all? 

    Yes, and they always will because we exist there too.

    In a country terrorised by violence against the female, the queer, the trans and whoever else doesn’t fit into the missionary mould of god fearing christian or suited up capitalist, FAKA have come to remind us that the human body is for fun, for sex and we should all have the freedom to enjoy it without shame or fear. FAKA!