All photos courtesy of Israel Rodriguez.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Sister Spit before–and for those who haven’t, I am confident in saying you’re missing out on watching a creative force perform. The Center brought them once again back as part of the organization’s QSpeak series, where the troupe performed before an audience in the MADHaus space downtown.
They’re unabashed, frankly forward, and they bend concepts of gender, patriarchy and sexuality with an intellectual punch that that few can bring forth with such humor and charisma.
Sister Spit guru and co-founder Michelle Tea opened the show with a reading from the City Lights Publishers-approved edition of their pseudo-memoir, Sister Spit: Writing, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road. Her spitfire approach to reading–words tumbling out as fast as possible–made her memories seem dizzying. And perhaps that was the point.
“In San Francisco,” Tea speedily read, “there was no lack of poetry open mics for aspiring writers to show their stuff at, but the majority of writers hitting those stages were men. And not just men–dudes, bros, guys who set their beer cans at the altar of Charles Bukowski. Guys who ripped off their shirts and hollered their poems in homage to Henry Rollins.”
Per usual the spirit of Sister Spit, who often envelope the city they’re visiting by harnessing local authors to perform with them (and they even thrift shop: TextaQueen, an Indian-Australian artist, apparently popped many a tags here in LB), Long Beachers Myriam Gurba and Griselda Suarez both performed.
Gurba, who also performed last year and many times before with Sister Spit, brought her usual brand of perfectly dry humor and deep intellect to explore race, rape, and the many idiosyncrasies of Long Beach.
Suarez was a pleasant surprise. This Long Beach foodie, who just opened up Sliced & Diced on Anaheim and Obispo, skipped the trek onto the stage itself and opted to perform from the floor level. A proudly robust and beautiful Latina, she talked of the frightening appropriation of turkey for our holiday consumption as well as the brown-on-brown discrimination that occurs when Mexicans order food (‘Did a real Mexican make this?’ she repeatedly asked, baffled at how her food could somehow be dismissed if not cooked by un auténtico mexicano).
The aforementioned TextaQueen was one of the most cerebral of the evening, showcasing her felt-tip marker art–of which three pieces were purchased by her own country’s National Gallery–that explores imperialism, liminality, race, gender, and identity.
“I think this one is quite obvious,” she stated matter-of-factly when displaying “Colonised Desire: The Animal Within,” a piece that is currently part of the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. The piece depicts TextaQueen with blonde hair and blue eyes, dolled up in a dress while holding a Ken doll. Her hands are then strung a la marionette-style by a controlling puppetmaster in the guise of the Muppets’ Animal character.
Ali Liebegott read an excerpt from her City Lights book Cha-Ching!, an exploration of 90s New York City through the eyes of a deeply sedated heroine by the name of Theo. Her sincere voice–tinged with the slightest bit of crass–made this small clip of addiction simultaneously hilarious and depressing.
Lastly, and in one of the most astounding performances of the night, was San Francisco-based performance artist DavEnd. Weilding her accordion, this genderqueer chanteuse philosophized about encounters where people in the audience have cried over her work.
“I think art is not about how the artist feels,” DavEnd said. “I think we create art and then let others react to it so we can know how to feel about it.”
With that being said, DavEnd then went into songs from hermusical, Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical! (F.A.G.G.O.T.S.). The two songs dealt with everything from being a “big woman” to the many social issues–both funny and awkward–that go with lacking a normative gender identity.
Sister Spit has performed at Pasadena, New York, Albany, and Toronto, amongst other cities, thus far on their 2013 tour. For more information, click here.
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