Jill Flanagan and Kiam Marcelo Junio are two of my favorite artists. They intimidate and inspire me with their skill, poise, beauty, and toughness. I am honored to be performing alongside these queer icons and also love their Facebook presences* just knowing that they’re there. Kiam shot two of the first homies blog entries featuring folk punk master Davey Dynamite and Chicago rap gods Lamon Manuel+SKECH185.

We will be performing October 1 at No Nation in Wicker Park alongside a bodacious bevy of other performance/multimedia artists~ they’re also queer icons!

THE INTERVIEWS

Jill

What’s your favorite color? grey
Who is your favorite athlete? Roy Jones Jr.
What is your favorite poem and why? The Applicant by Sylvia Plath is definitely one of them, I love all of Plath’s work but particularly this poem it’s so dark and psychotic seeming with a kind of Harold Pinter absurdist feel. I also love epic poetry like Dante’s Inferno and The Faerie Queen volumes 1-3 by Edmund Spencer
What is the name of your fictional autobiography? Diary of a half-wit:the remix
How tall are you? 6’2
What is the title of the earliest work of yours you can remember? I drew a book with the help of my parents about the invasion of the muffin people when I was 7
What is the title of your most recent piece of work? newest songs: Uterine Horn, I was a woman, Pit. I was in a play recently called Asshole in Wonderland:Body As Storage Unit

What will you be performing on Saturday? Forced into Femininity

Tell me about it? Forced into Femininity is a project and a personage that has inhabited me for several years. it’s gone in many different directions. I’ve been sending people booking emails calling it marxist body horror garbage opera but it’s always changing. Maybe trying to scare people and be funny. I was going through a period where I was writing a lot of songs exploring my white privilege and class privilege. Right now I’ve been experiencing a lot of heartbreak and emotional turmoil so it’s kind of gone in a more introspective place. But also singing more directly about being a transwoman. At this point in my art making, I’ve decided I just have to make art about what I’m obsessing over and not worry too much about significance

Where is home? It could be Chicago. Or a seat on a bus rocketing through blackness

What is home? I feel like home only exists for limited periods of time. Then it becomes to confining or upsetting because of the things that have happened there. As I’m typing this I’m lying in the room in my parent’s house where my grandmother died.

Who is home? myself in the mirror

Whose home are you? various parasites

What is your favorite plant? I really like the wild dill that grows everywhere in oakland. I’m trying to learn more about plants

Who is your daddy and what does he do? My dad is Jim Flanagan and he is a retired technology supervisor who now does consulting. He was on the first wave of personal computing and used emojis before anyone else.

Who are you? I’m a tangled mess wrapped in a smile

What do you do? I try to be a good person but I end up causing more harm than good probably. I try to create space for people to make art and help people. I like creating sounds and rolling around and climbing on people

Who would you like to collaborate with? Whitney Allen is a great collaborator because she balances out my stressball nature with her calm list making and enthusiasm. Plus she’s incredibly brilliant and talented. Also I’ve been having fun making this movie about dog people with Molly Hewitt and Julia Zinn.

Where are you going? down the tubes

Where did you just come from? sickroom antics and darkrooms of netflix and anxiety

Where are you right now? Things are silent. I still have trouble sleeping. the warts on my fingers are dyed black with bike grease

Who is Vashti Bunyan? she’s a lady who rides her buggy around williamsburg collecting the levies on the wifi at different coffee shops

TELL me some impressions of the other performers? THIS IS HARD, no offense

Glam Hag and Lady Daddy: dystopian relaxation techniques with a r.a.d.a style accent

+: A children’s show host but for adults who are confused children

Marcelline: abstract and dramatic movements of objects and body delineating our constructions of race

Ryan Hunter Greenlee: an elfin master of ceremonies playing strange and inhuman games

AntiBody Corporation: pop stars from an alternate and terrifying dimension

Kiam Marcelo Junio: a flowing digitally created sprite on a projection

Why are you still performing? I can’t stop even if I wanted to and I don’t want to

What does a free world look like to you? I don’t know, I feel like it would be all femmes destroying things and headbanging.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Kiam