#performace

Ulrike Rosenbach | Bindenmaske, 1972

In the early 1970s, when Bindenmaske was created, the structure of Ulrike Rosenbach's (*1943 in Bad Salzdetfurth) video works was still deliberately simple. In them, the artist usually performs a very simple action, facing the camera head-on, shot in an interior setting, and filmed in black and white. Wrapping her own head is a recurring motif in these early video works. While in Madonnas of the Flowers (1975), the artist conceals herself behind a gauze veil, surrounded by a halo of rays, in the somewhat earlier Mon petit chou (1973) she covers herself with cabbage leaves (an allusion to the French folk myth that children are born from cabbage heads, and the related endearment mon petit chou [my little cabbage]), and in Bindenmaske (1972) – slowly and attentively – with a gauze bandage.

Glod waved a finger at the guitar.

"It's that thing," he said. "It's too dangerous!"

"I can handle it!"

"Yes, but where's it going to end?"

"It's not how you finish that matters," said Buddy. "It's how you go."

"That sounds elvish to me--"

Work is done

I'm home on the couch with a cup of tea

I'm ready to start the reading

• today show - part 1

Long before RuPaul’s Drag Race, there were already well-known drag and gender-fluid artists on the East Coast. In the early 1960s, Jack Smith launched the career of Mario Montez, whose later Warhol Superstardom was eclipsed by the trans trio of Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, and Holly Woodlawn. In Baltimore, John Waters collaborated with Divine. But the Chicano community of East Los Angeles had its own icon, who was bringing forth a more outrageous and under-recognized form of gender-based performance in the form of Robert Legorreta. 

Legorreta began performing in public in 1966, but debuted as the character “Cyclona” in the 1969 play Caca-Roaches Have No Friends. Cyclona would develop a style of drag that was not about passing as female or traditional glamour. His performances, including a guerrilla-style wedding at Cal State Los Angeles in 1971, shocked audiences. A primal, glitter-fueled scream was unleashed with Cyclona, giving birth to generations of queer Chicano artists across Southern California who challenge gender and representations of the body.

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