I was in Bradford recently, giving a talk about The Fattylympics for an academic/activist gathering called Just Do(ing) It, Again: The Politics of DIY and Self-Organised Culture.
It's getting close to being a year since The Fattylympics took place, and a good time to reflect on it. Although there were problems on the day, I think it offers a good example of how to make multi-layered activist events that appeal to many different kinds of people, don't cost very much, and which push the boundaries of what can be considered activism (a good thing, in my opinion, because it enables more people to engage with activism in their own ways). Not only that, but we produced this event in a context that was pretty repressive by first world standards. I think The Fattylympics is also significant because it was a joyous event, it showed that the work of social justice does not have to be a hand-wringing affair.
I made a slideshow of the audio of my talk and some images from The Fattylympics and have made it available on YouTube. There were some questions afterwards, but I did not include these as I thought it would be uncool to include people's voices without their consent. The whole thing lasts about 25 minutes. There's some swearing, beware, but also plenty of context and description about how and why we put the event together.
I want to add that the gathering where I spoke was a bit of a strange one. Although it took place in a well-respected (though inaccessible) autonomous space, it was very much an academic affair. What's more, I was really shocked by the sexism within the symposium. Two panels of white men, with tokenised women moderators, set the tone of the event. This was really alien to me! I come from a DIY community where feminism, queers, and increasingly people of colour, are central to the scene. Some of the men's work was very old, and two ethnographers, when pulled on their samples, admitted that they had very much marginalised women in their research. The feminist and queer speakers were put together at the end in a panel called 'Case Studies,' even though I mention some theory in my presentation, and even though some of the men's presentations could also have been called 'Case Studies'.
It really was vexing to witness this, and small moments, such as when one panellist got his fellow speakers a glass of beer, but not the queer woman moderator (presumably she is too ladylike to enjoy a drink?), spelled out how invisible and marginal many people's voices were on the day. I heard a lot of talk from the men about class struggle, but feminism or other theoretical frameworks, if mentioned at all, were very much added as an afterthought, or a touchstone to make the speaker appear right on.
I'm sure this kind of thing is familiar to people who have an academic interest in punk, or who spend time with straight men, but for me it was quite an unpleasant eye-opener. What's even more dismaying is that our panel of feminists and queers was the most well-attended and popular of the day. I wish what we brought had been more central to the event.
Cooper, C. (2013) Doing the Dance of Disrespect: The Fattylympics. Just Do(ing) It, Again: The Politics of DIY and Self-Organised Culture. Bradford: 1 in 12 Club/Bradford University. 11 May.
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DIY. Show all posts
Reflecting on the Fattylympics Anthem
I've been co-organising an event called the Fattylympics. This is a non-commercial, community-based afternoon of messing around in the park. It's fat activism and, because I'm always interested in mixing it up, it's about other stuff too, namely the 2012 Olympics, which is happening in, and destroying significant chunks of, my neighbourhood in East London.
One of the forms of fat activism that I enjoy very much is about creating a platform from which many different things can emerge in unexpected ways. The Chubsters is an example of this, it's supported workshops, filmshows and even stonemasonry. I like fat activism with which people can engage in their own ways, where people make their own meanings out of things. I think it's great to draw on people's talents and the things that they like to do, and are really good at. It helps build community and encourages people to think about fat stuff creatively in whatever way it intersects with their own lives, and pass it on to others.
The Fattylympics is also in this vein. It's a satirical Olympics, it will take place on a particular day in London, but I also see it as space from which people can make stuff in their own way, to make something bigger and more complex than I could ever have imagined or produced by myself.
Some of this has come about by inviting people to contribute, for example. I knew that Bad Artists Becky and Corinna would make a great job of the Fattylympics mascots, and they did by coming up with the sublime Egg'n'Spoon. Other people have volunteered things, including performances and events. One person was the musician Verity Susman, of the wonderful band Electrelane, who also has solo projects in her own name and formerly as Vera November. Verity volunteered to write the Fattylympics Anthem and this she did, using words that I wrote. I really love her music in general, so it was a great experience to make something with her.
When I imagined the Anthem I thought about something that people could sing regardless of whether or not they were actually able to come to the Fattylympics. I wanted something hopeful and warm that people could hum when they needed a bit of strength. Although the Fattylympics is a big joke in many respects, I also wanted something heartfelt on the day. The Anthem is also released under a Creative Commons licence so people are actively encouraged to share and remix it. I'm hoping that people might video themselves singing it, perhaps with a group, or that they'll remix it, and that this can add to the project's archive.
We'll be singing the Anthem on the day at the Opening Ceremony. There will be a group of us singing it as a choir, though everyone is invited to join in.
Why not have a sing?
The Fattylympics Anthem
One of the forms of fat activism that I enjoy very much is about creating a platform from which many different things can emerge in unexpected ways. The Chubsters is an example of this, it's supported workshops, filmshows and even stonemasonry. I like fat activism with which people can engage in their own ways, where people make their own meanings out of things. I think it's great to draw on people's talents and the things that they like to do, and are really good at. It helps build community and encourages people to think about fat stuff creatively in whatever way it intersects with their own lives, and pass it on to others.
The Fattylympics is also in this vein. It's a satirical Olympics, it will take place on a particular day in London, but I also see it as space from which people can make stuff in their own way, to make something bigger and more complex than I could ever have imagined or produced by myself.
Some of this has come about by inviting people to contribute, for example. I knew that Bad Artists Becky and Corinna would make a great job of the Fattylympics mascots, and they did by coming up with the sublime Egg'n'Spoon. Other people have volunteered things, including performances and events. One person was the musician Verity Susman, of the wonderful band Electrelane, who also has solo projects in her own name and formerly as Vera November. Verity volunteered to write the Fattylympics Anthem and this she did, using words that I wrote. I really love her music in general, so it was a great experience to make something with her.
When I imagined the Anthem I thought about something that people could sing regardless of whether or not they were actually able to come to the Fattylympics. I wanted something hopeful and warm that people could hum when they needed a bit of strength. Although the Fattylympics is a big joke in many respects, I also wanted something heartfelt on the day. The Anthem is also released under a Creative Commons licence so people are actively encouraged to share and remix it. I'm hoping that people might video themselves singing it, perhaps with a group, or that they'll remix it, and that this can add to the project's archive.
We'll be singing the Anthem on the day at the Opening Ceremony. There will be a group of us singing it as a choir, though everyone is invited to join in.
Why not have a sing?
The Fattylympics Anthem
Fattylympics street art
Pivo has made some gorgeous images that can be printed, coloured-in, and pasted up as street art. Check 'em out, more will be uploaded soon.
My film January is screening at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Although it features me as a fat woman in the frame, January is not a film primarily about fat, it's about abuse in queer relationships. It's heavy! It came about because I've been wanting to write about this subject for some time, and I had the opportunity last year to learn about a theatrical technique called Verbatim. Verbatim entails making a recording of someone telling a story which is then acted by someone else. In January I am acting the story given to me by someone talking about how they have been abusive towards me. The effect is unnerving because the authenticity of the original recording is allowed to come through the headphones and then through my mouth. It's a way of telling stories that might be very difficult, and which maintains the anonymity of the original speaker, who might not be able to speak without that protection.
I thought Verbatim would be a good way of making a piece of work about abuse, and that I could do it very simply. My film-making aesthetic, through necessity because I am untrained, is of using very lo-fi equipment in a DIY fashion. With January it is just me and an old camcorder on a tripod. I edited the film on some free software that came on my computer. I have no distributor, I just burn and post DVDs as needed.
January has been a risky project for obvious reasons. I often think about Laurie Anderson's chorus "It's not the bullet that kills you, it's the hole," which I have reinterpreted over the years as: "It's not the abuse that kills you, it's the silence." I feel a great need to break that silence, I am doing so in various ways, and I see this as part of a feminist tradition of speaking the unspeakable. As well as being risky and heavy, the film represents hope and recovery to me, and a connection to politics and subjectivity that move me very much; it feels really good that I can make and show this film.
I hope other screenings will follow. I won't be making it available online for some time, sorry, but I will be submitting it to various festivals, and I am happy to come and show it to a group, or have a discussion about it. Drop me a line if you are interested in organising something.
January, by Charlotte Cooper, screening at the LLGFF as part of Radical Constitution, Monday 26 March 2012, 20.40, NFT3
Homosexual Death Drive: Fat Queer Old Lady Punks
I'm in a band and, even though this is a little self-referential, I want to write about it, so I will.
My band is called Homosexual Death Drive and it consists of me, my girlfriend Kay Hyatt, and a couple of occasional collaborators. Although we have both performed in bands before, neither Kay nor I would think of ourselves as musicians; we make songs with the barest minimum of skill, often just singing, or making a song using instruments, pedals and home-made gadgets that are easy to play. We have a small repertoire, did our first performance in December 2010, and hope to release a 7-inch EP on vinyl some time this year. We've played a handful of shows and no one has booed us off yet. Soon there will be some videos and digital downloads. We don't have a website, just a little corner of Facebook for now.
I don't know about Kay but I think of Homosexual Death Drive as part of a queercore tradition in punk. Our name comes from a branch of queer theory that's preoccupied with anti-social sensibilities and is somewhat nihilistic – just like us! Our songs, mostly written by me, inhabit fairly traditional punk turf: revolution, riots, burning things down, but we also sing tenderly about being alone, regret, survival. I use Homosexual Death Drive as a place where I can express unspeakable things. We try and make our performances energetic and memorable, this sounds high-minded but I try to pass on the same feelings of freedom and openness that I've felt when seeing and being inspired by other people performing. It doesn't always work, performing can often feel quite humiliating but I still feel compelled to do it because there's something good about falling on your arse in public, being okay with being the buffoon, letting people take from that what they will.
Since I was a teenager punk has been this amazing force in my life. Punk means many things to different people but for me it has to do with queerness, belligerence, impertinence, politics, rawness, immediacy, anti-authoritarianism. These are great sensibilities for girls and women to draw on. But punk can be very conformist. When I was a girl I thought punks were always thin, I never saw a fat punk anywhere, I still struggle to name many, let alone fat queer punks beyond Nomy or Beth, certainly no one like me then or now. Being a real punk was the main thing that motivated me to want to be thin. Aged 15, 16, 17 I wanted to look like Iggy Pop on the cover of Raw Power, I thought that's how it would have to be if I wanted to be recognised as a punk (this would also have meant being a man and being a drooling drug addict). I never got thin, and always looked chubby and wholesome, even when I behaved otherwise.
With Homosexual Death Drive I feel like I'm carrying on the lifetime's work of reclaiming punk for myself. Fat used to be the thing that I thought was incompatible with being punk, but it turns out that it's central, it's an asset. Often people will never have met anyone like us, they have no idea about fat activism, they see us and perhaps expect us to be comic, or fulfil a stereotype. Then we turn out to be something else, something they never expected from a pair of fat old dykes. Our bodies are a rare spectacle of public fatness unmediated by hatred, fear or prurience. We invite people to look and listen and relate. The people we play to seem hungry for people like us, they are desperate for evidence, that until now has always been slightly out of reach, that disproves the inevitability of fatphobia. It feels good to be able to deliver this in some way.
The band is still new and tentative and I don't know how it will develop. I'm happy with the way it's going and the way we mix fat, queer and punk together. That's all I'm going to say for now.
Homosexual Death Drive are playing R I O T S N O T D I E T S #5 along with Halo Halo, Bellies, and Town Bike, plus a screening of But I'm A Cheerleader from 6pm onwards, Saturday, 11 February 2012 at West Hill Hall, Compton Ave, Brighton, United Kingdom. It costs £6. Please come.
http://tinyurl.com/homodeathdrive
My band is called Homosexual Death Drive and it consists of me, my girlfriend Kay Hyatt, and a couple of occasional collaborators. Although we have both performed in bands before, neither Kay nor I would think of ourselves as musicians; we make songs with the barest minimum of skill, often just singing, or making a song using instruments, pedals and home-made gadgets that are easy to play. We have a small repertoire, did our first performance in December 2010, and hope to release a 7-inch EP on vinyl some time this year. We've played a handful of shows and no one has booed us off yet. Soon there will be some videos and digital downloads. We don't have a website, just a little corner of Facebook for now.
 |
| Corinna Tomrley painted this picture of Homosexual Death Drive entitled 'Showbiz'. |
Since I was a teenager punk has been this amazing force in my life. Punk means many things to different people but for me it has to do with queerness, belligerence, impertinence, politics, rawness, immediacy, anti-authoritarianism. These are great sensibilities for girls and women to draw on. But punk can be very conformist. When I was a girl I thought punks were always thin, I never saw a fat punk anywhere, I still struggle to name many, let alone fat queer punks beyond Nomy or Beth, certainly no one like me then or now. Being a real punk was the main thing that motivated me to want to be thin. Aged 15, 16, 17 I wanted to look like Iggy Pop on the cover of Raw Power, I thought that's how it would have to be if I wanted to be recognised as a punk (this would also have meant being a man and being a drooling drug addict). I never got thin, and always looked chubby and wholesome, even when I behaved otherwise.
With Homosexual Death Drive I feel like I'm carrying on the lifetime's work of reclaiming punk for myself. Fat used to be the thing that I thought was incompatible with being punk, but it turns out that it's central, it's an asset. Often people will never have met anyone like us, they have no idea about fat activism, they see us and perhaps expect us to be comic, or fulfil a stereotype. Then we turn out to be something else, something they never expected from a pair of fat old dykes. Our bodies are a rare spectacle of public fatness unmediated by hatred, fear or prurience. We invite people to look and listen and relate. The people we play to seem hungry for people like us, they are desperate for evidence, that until now has always been slightly out of reach, that disproves the inevitability of fatphobia. It feels good to be able to deliver this in some way.
The band is still new and tentative and I don't know how it will develop. I'm happy with the way it's going and the way we mix fat, queer and punk together. That's all I'm going to say for now.
Homosexual Death Drive are playing R I O T S N O T D I E T S #5 along with Halo Halo, Bellies, and Town Bike, plus a screening of But I'm A Cheerleader from 6pm onwards, Saturday, 11 February 2012 at West Hill Hall, Compton Ave, Brighton, United Kingdom. It costs £6. Please come.
http://tinyurl.com/homodeathdrive
Be Lovely and Slim in 2012
I thought I'd welcome in the most tedious, fatphobic and diet-filled month of the year with a little film I made in 2009, which premiered at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 2010. Old news! Oh well.
It's called Lovely and Slim and is based on a song that came about when I really tried hard to think of the benefits of being thin – sorry, 'slim', apparently the polite way of saying thin. When I was growing up, 'lovely and slim' was the opposite concept to 'fat and ugly'. I hope that I have subverted the former and reclaimed the latter with this little film.
Sorry about the online vid quality, I need to learn more about formats and sharing and whatnot. Oh dear!
Lovely and Slim lyrics – sing along!
It's great to be slim
You can wear tiny things
If there's a gap in the wall
You'll get through if you're small
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
You can keep in trim
You can go on a bender
And wake up still slender
It's great to be slim
Chorus:
Slim, slim, lovely and slim
It's great to be slim
When you're down at the gym
The people who see you
They all wanna be you
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
You can fit right in
When the weather is sunny
You can show off your tummy
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
It proves you're not dim
It's ever so clever
To be light as a feather
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
If you're not, you're a crim
With a low BMI
You can reach for the sky
It's great to be slim
My beautiful legs
My elegant neck
My delicate wrists
My tight upper arms
My willowy hips
My internal organs
ALL LOVELY AND SLIM
Original music composed by Simon Murphy
Original lyrics and performance by Simon Murphy, Charlotte Cooper and Kay Hyatt
It's called Lovely and Slim and is based on a song that came about when I really tried hard to think of the benefits of being thin – sorry, 'slim', apparently the polite way of saying thin. When I was growing up, 'lovely and slim' was the opposite concept to 'fat and ugly'. I hope that I have subverted the former and reclaimed the latter with this little film.
Sorry about the online vid quality, I need to learn more about formats and sharing and whatnot. Oh dear!
Lovely and Slim lyrics – sing along!
It's great to be slim
You can wear tiny things
If there's a gap in the wall
You'll get through if you're small
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
You can keep in trim
You can go on a bender
And wake up still slender
It's great to be slim
Chorus:
Slim, slim, lovely and slim
It's great to be slim
When you're down at the gym
The people who see you
They all wanna be you
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
You can fit right in
When the weather is sunny
You can show off your tummy
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
It proves you're not dim
It's ever so clever
To be light as a feather
It's great to be slim
It's great to be slim
If you're not, you're a crim
With a low BMI
You can reach for the sky
It's great to be slim
My beautiful legs
My elegant neck
My delicate wrists
My tight upper arms
My willowy hips
My internal organs
ALL LOVELY AND SLIM
Original music composed by Simon Murphy
Original lyrics and performance by Simon Murphy, Charlotte Cooper and Kay Hyatt
Call for DIY fat fatshion crafty zine contributions
Kirsty is putting together a zine, it looks really good and you should contribute, if you can.
MAKE IT WORK: A DIY fatshion craft zine
She says:
"Make It Work" has been a mantra within fatshion communities since I can remember, and I'm interested in exploring it as a radical premise of fat positive politics. [...] I want this zine to be about sharing the resources, skills and knowledge that we've gained, and for it to provide strategies for people to move forward with.
MAKE IT WORK: A DIY fatshion craft zine
She says:
"Make It Work" has been a mantra within fatshion communities since I can remember, and I'm interested in exploring it as a radical premise of fat positive politics. [...] I want this zine to be about sharing the resources, skills and knowledge that we've gained, and for it to provide strategies for people to move forward with.
The Bad Art Collective and Irrational Fat Activism
I just spent the weekend making Bad Art at the Researching Feminist Futures conference in Edinburgh. For two days I sat at a table and made stuff with three other members of The Bad Art Collective, a group we formed earlier this year, and various delegates who dropped by during the event to make some Bad Art with us. We had paper, pens, glitter, felt-tips, macaroni, lentils, pastels, scraperboards, glue and other media too, plus a lot of Blu-Tak to stick everything we made to the wall.
People have different ideas about what constitutes Bad Art. The four of us have posted some interpretations of it on the Bad Art Collective blog. At the conference people variously related to our Bad Art table as a project of irony, or a relaxing retreat from workshops or presentations where the 'real' work takes place. That's not how I see it at all. Drawing, making things, talking, cackling, working collectively, that's the space where things happen. I loved the moments at the weekend when people started to get over their insistence that they can't draw or 'aren't artistic' and contributed to the larger project. Better still was when what they produced made them laugh and want to do more. A felt-tip becomes a weapon.
Our project was called Bombarded By Images and the idea was to critique the often-heard truism that women develop terrible body image because they are constantly bombarded by images in the media. We wanted to show that we are more than capable of making an abundance of our own images, and to think about and do activism that is creative, productive, full of agency and bad attitude.
Because of our theme, and because the four of us are grounded in fat activism and Fat Studies to a greater or lesser extent, a lot of what we produced was about fat, resistance, anger, fat culture, bad feminist art about bodies, being anti-social, inexpertise, enjoying stupidity. We developed a running joke about one particular theorist, whose work has done a lot of damage, and started to direct some of our work towards that, howling with laughter at what we produced and feeling really badass and full of ideas about it.
These moments were so beautiful! Two of the collective have really struggled with this particular theorist, trying to engage with their work and feeling so angry about the damage it's caused. Drawing stupid/not so stupid pictures was a true delight, it opened up a space that was beyond rational-critical dialogue, where we didn't have to play by the rules of politeness or propriety.
It's a couple of days later now and I've been thinking about that feeling. I love fat activism that is weird, grotesque, anti-social, and I feel sad that this kind of activism is sidelined or barely acknowledged or known compared to the 'real work' of changing laws, addressing inequality, righting wrongs. Those kinds of activisms are fine, I'm glad people do them, but they don't make my heart sing, and don't speak to my politics and cultural touchstones, which are of the punk, queer, anarchist variety. I think activists should consider ethics and do what they can not to support oppressive hegemonies, and I don't think you have to be po-faced about it; I like activism that makes me laugh a lot, that is prankish and evil.
Just now my friend sent me a link to Slavoj Žižek's rambling account of the London riots in August, stupidly titled Shoplifters of the World Unite. He's as windy as you'd expect an overly-lauded ageing white man academic to be, but I like his remarks about the irrationality of the riots as a form of protest. It made me think that, amongst its many qualities, Bad Art can also be thought of as a form of 'irrational' activism, fat or otherwise. The pictures and objects we made aren't waiting for anyone's approval, or official sanction by committee. Sometimes they make no sense to anyone else, or they grate, they don't behave or speak nicely, or engage politely with the other side. But they make sense to us and they make us happy, they're full of life and humour and intelligence, not to mention imaginative possibility and power. They resist and create simultaneously.
I feel excited by these ideas, and I expect I will come back to them. Full documentation of Bombarded By Images is coming as soon as I can make time to stick it on the Bad Art Collective blog Рyou'll just have to wait. Meanwhile, here's one of the things I made at the weekend, inspired by The Warriors, The Chubsters, The Ramones, and the Manson Family diorama that used to reside in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds! Coloured pencils forever. You might also want to have a look at Corinna Tomrley's d̩tournement of fat cartoon characters Bad Art + Fat Cartoons + Fat Activism = Life-Affirming Wonderousness.
badartcollective.blogspot.com
Facebook: Bad Art Collective
People have different ideas about what constitutes Bad Art. The four of us have posted some interpretations of it on the Bad Art Collective blog. At the conference people variously related to our Bad Art table as a project of irony, or a relaxing retreat from workshops or presentations where the 'real' work takes place. That's not how I see it at all. Drawing, making things, talking, cackling, working collectively, that's the space where things happen. I loved the moments at the weekend when people started to get over their insistence that they can't draw or 'aren't artistic' and contributed to the larger project. Better still was when what they produced made them laugh and want to do more. A felt-tip becomes a weapon.
 |
| The Bad Art Collective Researching Feminist Futures, Edinburgh, 2-3 September 2011 Photograph by Evangeline Tsao |
Because of our theme, and because the four of us are grounded in fat activism and Fat Studies to a greater or lesser extent, a lot of what we produced was about fat, resistance, anger, fat culture, bad feminist art about bodies, being anti-social, inexpertise, enjoying stupidity. We developed a running joke about one particular theorist, whose work has done a lot of damage, and started to direct some of our work towards that, howling with laughter at what we produced and feeling really badass and full of ideas about it.
These moments were so beautiful! Two of the collective have really struggled with this particular theorist, trying to engage with their work and feeling so angry about the damage it's caused. Drawing stupid/not so stupid pictures was a true delight, it opened up a space that was beyond rational-critical dialogue, where we didn't have to play by the rules of politeness or propriety.
It's a couple of days later now and I've been thinking about that feeling. I love fat activism that is weird, grotesque, anti-social, and I feel sad that this kind of activism is sidelined or barely acknowledged or known compared to the 'real work' of changing laws, addressing inequality, righting wrongs. Those kinds of activisms are fine, I'm glad people do them, but they don't make my heart sing, and don't speak to my politics and cultural touchstones, which are of the punk, queer, anarchist variety. I think activists should consider ethics and do what they can not to support oppressive hegemonies, and I don't think you have to be po-faced about it; I like activism that makes me laugh a lot, that is prankish and evil.
Just now my friend sent me a link to Slavoj Žižek's rambling account of the London riots in August, stupidly titled Shoplifters of the World Unite. He's as windy as you'd expect an overly-lauded ageing white man academic to be, but I like his remarks about the irrationality of the riots as a form of protest. It made me think that, amongst its many qualities, Bad Art can also be thought of as a form of 'irrational' activism, fat or otherwise. The pictures and objects we made aren't waiting for anyone's approval, or official sanction by committee. Sometimes they make no sense to anyone else, or they grate, they don't behave or speak nicely, or engage politely with the other side. But they make sense to us and they make us happy, they're full of life and humour and intelligence, not to mention imaginative possibility and power. They resist and create simultaneously.
I feel excited by these ideas, and I expect I will come back to them. Full documentation of Bombarded By Images is coming as soon as I can make time to stick it on the Bad Art Collective blog Рyou'll just have to wait. Meanwhile, here's one of the things I made at the weekend, inspired by The Warriors, The Chubsters, The Ramones, and the Manson Family diorama that used to reside in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds! Coloured pencils forever. You might also want to have a look at Corinna Tomrley's d̩tournement of fat cartoon characters Bad Art + Fat Cartoons + Fat Activism = Life-Affirming Wonderousness.
badartcollective.blogspot.com
Facebook: Bad Art Collective
Timeline paper zines all gone, free digital download is here
The original paper version of A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline has sold out. 250 copies were distributed by my tender hands in less than three weeks. It's so exciting to me that people want this stuff!
You're out of luck if you want one of the originals now, unless you can snaffle up one of the few remaining that will be sold at Zinefest in London by Ricochet Ricochet; at NOLOSE at the beginning of July; perhaps leftovers at Re/Dress NYC, and at Plump It Up in Toronto.
But don't cry if you missed out. Copies have been circulated at around 60 zine libraries, archives and autonomous spaces worldwide where you can visit and, in some cases, borrow a copy. It's also been released under a Creative Commons licence, which means that anyone can reprint copies. On top of that, I've written a fancypants essay about it which will hopefully be published later this year. The timeline lives! If you're around northern Germany, you might want to consider a trip to Bildwechsel to see the original timeline.
That's not all! I've saved the best until last. There's now a digital download of the zine available for free and for sharing. Go to it! Treat yourself to the audio download as well, whilst you're at it, you don't have to have a visual impairment or autism to enjoy it (but it helps).
You're out of luck if you want one of the originals now, unless you can snaffle up one of the few remaining that will be sold at Zinefest in London by Ricochet Ricochet; at NOLOSE at the beginning of July; perhaps leftovers at Re/Dress NYC, and at Plump It Up in Toronto.
But don't cry if you missed out. Copies have been circulated at around 60 zine libraries, archives and autonomous spaces worldwide where you can visit and, in some cases, borrow a copy. It's also been released under a Creative Commons licence, which means that anyone can reprint copies. On top of that, I've written a fancypants essay about it which will hopefully be published later this year. The timeline lives! If you're around northern Germany, you might want to consider a trip to Bildwechsel to see the original timeline.
That's not all! I've saved the best until last. There's now a digital download of the zine available for free and for sharing. Go to it! Treat yourself to the audio download as well, whilst you're at it, you don't have to have a visual impairment or autism to enjoy it (but it helps).
Diet Songs: Ayds
I'm stuck on the name, I can't get past the name. A weight loss product called Ayds which, when you say it aloud, sounds like AIDS. I associate dieting so strongly with drawn-looking emptied out bodies that when I hear Ayds I think of the wasting suffered by people with AIDS, and that famous photograph of David Kirby dying amidst his devastated folks. This is probably not the association that the makers of Ayds wanted to promote in the product's heyday, but it's certainly the association that led to Ayds' demise.
Just saying the name invokes a handful of feelings: schadenfreude, a longing for other similar diet crap to bite the dust, sadness and rage about HIV/AIDS, bemusement. Ayds is so exposed by its name and obvious quackery, if it can happen to that product, why not Slim Fast, LighterLife and the rest of them? Why must it fall to an unfortunate coincidence?
Would Ayds be a viable brand nowadays? I'm inclined to think that it would. I think the obesity epidemicTM has made many people more desperate than ever to try and lose weight. Associations with illness don't seem to matter, I know someone who was congratulated on her weight loss after a couple of months suffering amoebic dysentery. How does the stigma of AIDS or terminal illness compare to fat stigma? Would people be willing to be associated with one in place of the other? I really don't know.
We recorded this pretty straight because, really, what else are you going to do with gold like this? Simon's spidery track sounds like a virus in your blood.
Diet Songs: Ayds by Charlotte Cooper + Simon Murphy (.mp3, 840kb)
Diet Songs
New Project: Diet Songs
Nimble
Slim-Fast
Tab
Diet Pepsi
Nutrasweet
Diet Coke
Ryvita
Ayds
Special K
A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline - audio zine is here!
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| It's like Listen With Mutha |
A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline - audio version (.mp3, approx 52 mins, 24mb)
Audio version? Yep, that's me reading and describing the zine. It's an attempt to make a paper zine available to people in different formats, to make it more accessible. I was inspired to have a go at making an audio version by Judy Freespirit, who worked for a while recording audio books for people with visual impairments. This is the first time I've done this, feedback is welcome.
You can download the audio version of the zine for free and listen to it by itself, it takes about 50 minutes, or use the recording to augment your reading of the paper zine. You don't have to be visually impaired to listen to it.
You can still buy the paper zine too! Here's how.
Feel free to share the .mp3 and thanks to Simon Murphy for helping me.
The audio version of A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline by Charlotte Cooper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This means people can copy, download and share this zine with others as long as they credit me, Charlotte Cooper, but they can’t change the zine in any way or use it commercially. Permissions beyond the scope of this license, for example translations, may be available at http://www.obesitytimebomb.blogspot.com. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.
A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline zine is now available to buy!
How to buy the zine.
The zine (a kind of homemade magazine) is a discussion of queer and trans fat activist histories, and about how people might undertake the crucial work of making, documenting and disseminating stories and accounts. People are profoundly separated from those who came before them if this work doesn't take place.
A Queer and Trans Fat Activist Timeline documents a workshop which produced an object which was then archived. The zine itself will also be lodged at a number of archives and libraries around the world, but there are some left over for people to have for themselves.
It's hard to know what to say about this project because I've been working with it closely for about a year, and because it has become much more than each individual part; it's no longer just a workshop, or just an object or just a zine. It's also a project that has taken me from California to Germany, I've presented the timeline to different people and there have been some wonderful discussions of it. It's been the focus of an artist's residency and has helped shift the way I think of my own work as a cultural producer. I've talked about it on the radio and it's become a donation to an archive in the hope that other people might make something of it in the future. I'm writing a paper about it. No doubt it will go on and morph into other things too, but for now here's the zine.
I have some secret hopes for the timeline now that it is a zine:
- People will become excited about queer trans fat activism – the timeline documents many accounts that have never been shared elsewhere
- People will become excited about the richness of fat activism as a movement with historical links that go back at least several decades and crosses international borders
- Queer and trans people will get on board with fat activism more
- Fat activists will get on board with queer and trans stuff more
- People will document their own activism
- People will consider things like place and time and context when they produce accounts of their own activism
- People will think about cultural imperialism when they construct and disseminate accounts of what they do
- That archivists and librarians will make more of an effort to make the ways that queer and trans and fat move through each other more explicit and available
- I hope that it will blow people's minds.
I'll stop talking about this for now, no doubt I'll come back to it later at some point.
Amy's friend tackles the Screaming C
The Screaming C is one of the key Chubster symbols. It was designed by Chubsters Yeti and Big Blu at a Nolose in New Jersey in 2004. It's a letter C with blood dripping teeth, a wild eye, and a mouth full of attack.
It gives me a funny feeling inside when people go crafty with Chubster imagery. Tom O'Tottenham's Chubster stonemasonry often springs to mind, as does Chanko Nabe's needlework. Anyway, look what Amy Onigiri's friend made (the friend who must surely have a name only I don't know it yet).
Amy says:
It gives me a funny feeling inside when people go crafty with Chubster imagery. Tom O'Tottenham's Chubster stonemasonry often springs to mind, as does Chanko Nabe's needlework. Anyway, look what Amy Onigiri's friend made (the friend who must surely have a name only I don't know it yet).
Amy says:
My friend made me this great Chubster hoodie so I wanted to send you a picture but I couldn't get the camera on my new phone to work so I had to wait for hers. Anyway, somehow this hoodie is really badasss. Like I see people reading it and they start to say something and they stop like "Naaah, I better not." It's kind of hilarious. It makes me feel totally gangster even though I am, obviously, not. I cant figure out if it's the hoodie or the Chubster part of it or the combo. I love it.
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