I had to take a disco nap and screw up my sleep schedule to catch this show, and it was worth it.
Drag King Dr. Wang Newton, the host, is the warmest, funniest and sweetest! He called us all babies, which I love. I felt very welcomed by the Sacred Wounds family! The show is co-produced by Coco Ono, aka performance artist Kayla Tange, who also does Cyber Clown Girls Show and who I drew last year.
California live-streams are the very hardest, since 4am, when most of them start, is my natural bedtime and starting work then messes me ALL up, but –
Midori had an ingenious and wonderful interactive piece designed for this show.
She placed her gold-painted face on screen, then invited the audience to draw on her, using the annotation function of Zoom! I think absolutely no-one in the audience knew this function existed, but it was easy to use and everyone was almost instantly engaging with Midori’s face, drawing and stamping and writing.
I was absolutely thrilled by the way the lines criss-crossing the screen created a virtual through-line to so many of Midori’s works involving webs of rope.
I drew Midori as I saw her in the Zoom audience, her beautiful face one I know so well.
Then once I scanned the drawing (original below), I used my very limited and crude digital art skills to replicate some of the words and motifs from the performance. It was so fun to engage with one of my own drawings, such a serious matter always for me, in a spirit of play.
This to me is the essence of Midori as a sexuality educator: her ability to create a space for play.
You can see Midori’s educational work, art and writing on her Patreon (I was one of the first to join!), and enjoy her youtube here and insta here.
Drawing Butoh performers is always exciting.
I try to go loose and weird, looking for the feel of the performance more than the specific movements. Jas Lin made marvelous use of words, movement, a circular mirror, a croptop red kimono and tube socks. You can see more of their performances here on Youtube!
Ibuki Kuramochi created a new piece called Blood Bowl Sutra.
it was powerful and hypnotic. Ibuki Kuramochi is here on Insta and website here. I was astonished, when I went to Ibuki’s website, to see the cover image was very much like my drawing! I like it best when I see the performer as they want me to see them.
I am incredibly grateful to my Patreon Patrons, whose monthly financial support makes it possible for me to continue to work safely at home, documenting Queer Culture.
As usual these drawings are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) for all to share and enjoy!
In addition, I release the copyright on each drawing to the performer shown and they may use the drawings for their own profit and pleeeasssure in any way they choose.