Moonlit Mourning and Radiant Hope in TRAИƧA

 
 

review by Chimera Mohammadi

TRAИƧA’s first song, “I. Midnight Moon Pool (Womb of the Soul),” is a sonic dream of birth, an ode to the raw creative power that defines the act of gender transition. This first glittering wave pulls us deep into the celestial sea of grief, spirituality, and hope that constitutes TRAИƧA. The album unites a dazzling array of newer Queer talent, cultural titans, and indie darlings, including Sade, André 3000, ANOHNI, Adrianne Lenker, Devendra Banhart, Perfume Genius, Sam Smith, Clairo, and many more, resulting in a stylistically diverse yet cohesive body of work. It’s divided into eight sections, each thematized by its first track. It is at once a tribute to trans musical pioneer SOPHIE, whose passing galvanized the creation of the album, a guide through grief, and an exploration of trans identity and resistance. The music spans ethereal meditations, dirges, disco-infused celebrations, rebel cries, and more, an eclectic blend that manages conversation rather than dissonance. Songs like Niecy Blues’ “It Is Over Now?” dive into open wounds that are subsequently sewn up in tracks such as Laura Jane Grace’s “Surrender Your Gender,” which demands self-actualization without concession. Songs like the cover of Low’s “Point of Disgust” by Alan Sparhawk and Perfume Genius linger in quiet moments of pain which evaporate in the sunshine of tracks like “I Feel Free” by SPARKLE DIVISION and Pepper Mashay. Throughout TRAИƧA, dual rivers of mourning and creativity converge to create a healing current of liberation that listeners can ride all the way from the Womb of the Soul to Reinvention while they dream of safer worlds. 

Dig into the album at transa.world.

Autre Magazine LEVITY ISSUE Celebration At The Historic Arzner-Morgan Residence in Los Angeles

On Saturday June 8th, Autre Magazine celebrated its Spring/Summer 2024 Levity Issue at the historic Arzner-Morgan Residence in Los Angeles, now the West Coast outpost of Half Gallery, helmed by author and art dealer Bill Powers. With a crystal clear view of Los Angeles, the Greek-Revival home built for one of Hollywood’s first openly queer filmmakers in 1930, welcomed an intimate, personally invited guest list. Cocktails were provided by Legende Rakija in partnership with Casamara Club. photographs by Oliver Kupper

Ariana Papademetropoulos "The Emerald Tablet" After Party At Jeffrey Deitch's Residence

photographs by Oliver Kupper

Devendra Banhart's The Grief I Have Caused You @ Nicodim Gallery In Los Angeles

“Nothing is more gall-bitter than suffering, nothing more honey-sweet than having suffered.” 
— Meister Eckhart

The recursive abstracted forms within Devendra Banhart’s canvases are a non-hierarchical alphabet of allegories for the diminishment and destruction of ego. Each mouth, prick, eye and ass breaks apart and reconstructs itself until they become a collective commune of equally all-important, yet weightless pieces of the tantric universe. They are a cycle of mala beads through the fingers of time.

The Grief I Have Caused You is on view through March 20 @ Nicodim Gallery 1700 S Santa Fe Avenue, #160. photographs by Lani Trock

Ring In 2017 With Autre At The Ace Hotel And Swim Club In Palm Springs For A Two Day Multidimensional Desert Ceremony

New Years Eve – presented in association with Spaceland, Mel Shimkovitz and Autre Magazine, Pie Town's Supertemporal Southwestern Sock Hop is a two-day, multidimensional desert ceremony — a catharsis of time and space and sound guided by some of our favorite modern gnostics (Devendra Banhart, YACHT, Owen Pallett, etc). Potential plot points: poodle skirts giving way to poodles wearing skirts, greasers-cum-cult leaders, doo-wop becomes electro-pop. What does any of this mean? Join us and you'll see. Welcome to the future/past/forever. A portion of the proceeds from the party will help put the finishing touches on ProjectQ's HAIRSTREAM trailer-- a mobile salon dedicated to helping LA's homeless queer youth combat bullying, develop self-esteem and find an identity for themselves. Friday December 30 and Saturday December 31 at the Ace Hotel and Swim Club in Palm Springs. Click here to purchase tickets. 

Get A Tattoo By Douglas Gordon At The New York Art Book Fair

Gagosian Gallery presents FLASH FLASH FLASH at the New York Art Book Fair at MOMA PS1. The "flash," a stereotypical tattoo design drawn onto a piece of cardboard, and offered on the walls of tattoo parlors, occupies a particular place in industrial and graphic design--art conceived for the human body is now its own genre of drawing. This year at the New York Art Book Fair, Gagosian will install a tattoo parlor offering original, readymade flash designs commissioned from artists Devendra Banhart, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Douglas Gordon, Kim Gordon, Max Hooper Schneider, and Richard Wright. Professional tattoo artists from Brooklyn's Flyrite Tattoo will be on hand in the booth to permanently tattoo these designs onto recipients during the fair, mixing the subculture of flash art with high art. Click here to reserve your appointment. 

A Dark and Fluffy World: Read Our Interview With Galen Pehrson Before The Premiere of His Animated Film The Caged Pillows →

Watching one of Galen Pehrson’s films, like his most recent, The Caged Pillows, starring the likes of Jena Malone and James Franco, is like stepping into a psychedelic cartoon where you can’t help feeling a tinge of déjà vu – you’re not sure if it was a dream, a childhood memory, or an omen. It’s as though a mixture of real life memories and old movie scenes were plucked from your brain and rearranged into a brilliant new narrative. They’re the renderings of a world that most of us have inhabited for all our lives, but for Galen, who spent the first 12 years of his life in rural Nevada City, without access to cable TV or any other means of consuming pop culture, this world can be seen from a slightly outside perspective. Click here to read more. 

Adam Green "Aladdin" @ The Hole Gallery In New York

The Hole presents an exhibition of “Adam Green’s Aladdin”, a feature-length movie that is a “total artwork”. Immersive painted sets replete with complex painted papier-mache sculptures will be on view in the main space, while Gallery 3 will feature a ticketed screening of the movie every night at 7PM. Adam Green "Aladdin" will be on view until April 14, 2016 at The Hole, 312 Bowery, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer

First Look At Adam Green's Film "Aladdin" Starring Francesco Clemente, Natasha Lyonne, Macaulay Culkin and More

Here’s the first look at Adam Green’s Aladdin, the second feature film from musician, artist and filmmaker Adam Green. Set in the modern day world, Adam’s hyper-sensory, poetic and humorously subversive take on the classic Arabian Nights tale stars Adam as Aladdin living with his dysfunctional family in a “regular” American town ruled by a corrupt Sultan with a decadent socialite daughter. The fantasy film stars an ensemble cast featuring some of New York’s biggest arts, music and film talent, including Natasha Lyonne, Macaulay Culkin, Alia Shawkat, Francesco Clemente, Jack Dishel, Har Mar Superstar, Devendra Banhart, Bip Ling, Zoe Kravitz and more! The movie features a brand new Full Album Soundtrack composed and recorded by Adam, who will be kicking off a worldwide Aladdin Tour concurrent with the film and album's release in Spring 2016. Read our interview with Adam Green from back in 2013. 

Macho Mel: Read Our Convo With the Endlessly Fascinating Mel Shimkovitz On Trans Vampires, Meeting William Burroughs, and Making It In Hollywood →

In the following interview, we have a long chat with Mel Shimkovitz about Trans vampires, her Zelig-like position in the music, art and Hollywood worlds, and the media’s sudden shift in focus toward the lives and rights of the LGBTQ community. Click here to read the full convo. 

How Many Virgins? Summer Sacrifice @ The Ace Hotel In Los Angeles

How Many Virgins? presented their Second Summer sacrifice, an intimate evening of visual, aural, and sensual stimulation, at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. Featuring A Post-Mentalpausal Mid-Career Survey by Amy Von Harrington & Mel Shimkovitz: short films spanning ten years of new age-old epiphanies and co-defendant disfunction. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Devendra Banhart and Adam Tullie Team Up for a Collaborative Book of Drawings entitled "Unburdened by Meaning"

"Unburdened By Meaning" is a split effort between Adam Tullie and Devendra Banhart which documents selections of work created over one week, while the artists worked in parallel in Devendra's New York drawing studio. Tullie and Banhart, who are now based in Los Angeles, have known each other for over 13 years, so it only makes sense that they would collaborate together in this capacity. As the title suggests, the collection of drawings found in this book aren't held to any one concept or idea - it is simply a freewheeling, minimalistic exploration of the two artist's unique, but synergistic styles. The book also includes two essays - one by New York based artist and writer Ross Simonini, and the other by San Francisco based writer and artist Chris Fallon. The book is available now from Canadian based publishing house Anteism in a limited edition of 200 - it is also signed and numbered by the artists. 

Part One: VIP Opening of Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015

Paris Photo Los Angeles returns this year to Paramount Pictures Studios' famous sound stages and New York City backlots. Paris Photo presents a true exploration of classic and contemporary photography and moving images - and everything in between. The fair opens today and runs until Sunday, May 3rd. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper