S.W.E.A.T.

In this month's conversation, Mad Kate speaks with activist, musician and performer LIAD LAND. They speak about the layered realities of sex work and why the ProstSchG – Gesetz law in Germany pushed migrant sex workers further underground and out of reach of the peer networks that actually kept them safe. They talk about what community care really looks like when the system, and individuals, are exhausted and broke. And they talk about how the body becomes a political site — in performance, in sex work, in watching and/or surviving genocide. Liad talks about what she’s carrying from Palestine into her music and live shows right now, how watching a genocide from Europe has felt on her body. Finally, why she’s in the process of revoking her Israeli citizenship — and encouraging other anti-Zionist Jews to do the same. LIADLAND is a musician, an artist, an activist, a perpetual migrant, a queer trash diva, a Jew from Pralestine, and a master of the margins. Her music, performances, and films de-exotify and demystify positions of so-called sexual and political deviance. In them, the body and voice are used as tools of decolonial education and resistance, as platforms to display vulnerabilities, and as means to call for a revolution, celebrate life, and mourn. Liad's art and worldview is informed by decades of political work on intersectional issues such as sex worker rights and queer and Palestinian liberation. Her debut album, Nothing to Declare and subsequent EP, Nothing to Remix, were released in 2024. Her current music and live show focuses on collective organizing and ongoing resistance with Palestine as a starting point. Broken is her upcoming single. You'll hear an excerpt at the end of the show. Photo of Liad by Oren Ziv Buy LIADLAND’s music: https://liadland.bandcamp.com/

This month's conversation with punkrocker preacher drag performer activist and promoter BLEACH. Essex raised, Berlin Based Drag performer BLEACH is a central figure in the German capitals queer underground. Creating parties, shows & festivals. Starting out in a burlesque bar in Stockholm she entertains with a fiery mix of punking, stripping & speeching. A regular host of Berlin club nights, drag shows with a loud point of view. When DJing she plays a wide range of music to keep dancers on their toes, acidy house with sparks of rock n roll punk tunes. BLEACH is front woman of BLEACH and the Bumholes https://bleach.blog/ In this episode, Mad Kate sits down with Bleach — a Berlin-based drag performer, chef, and queer artist originally from Essex — for a wide-ranging conversation about persona, performance, sexuality, and politics. They trace the evolution of Bleach's characters from Baby Chino (a homoerotic, tongue-in-cheek art persona born in Stockholm) to the fierce, unapologetically political drag queen Bleach, and explore how these alter egos have served as vehicles for processing identity, anger, and queer community. The conversation moves through social media, consent and sexual politics, the economics of drag, and ultimately arrives at the role of the artist in a world of rising fascism — concluding that drag's most radical act may simply be giving people a good time. TRACKS played: Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending (feat. Lori Baldwin)

My conversation this month is with queer and feminist cultural historian, educator, podcaster, and public speaker Ramzi Fawaz. https://www.ramzifawaz.com/ https://www.instagram.com/nerdfromthefuture/ Ramzi Fawaz is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and host of the podcast "Nerd from the Future". He is the author of two books, including The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2016) and Queer Forms (2022), both published by NYU Press. The New Mutants received the 2017 ASAP Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present. Fawaz is a contributing editor to Film Quarterly, where he writes a column titled “Imagination Unbound.” He is also a co-editor of the NYU Press book series Postmillennial Pop with Gayle Wald and Aaron Trammell. Fawaz is currently working on a new book project titled _How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World._ In it, he argues for a rethinking of humanities education as a form of collective psychedelic therapy, which uses literature, art, and media, rather than psychoactive medicines, to induce positive, long-term transformations in students’ mental wellbeing. As part of this project, He recently edited a special issue of _South Atlantic Quarterly_ on the topic of “Psychedelic Imaginaries,” which was published in April 2025. We talk about teaching as an act of love, psychedelics as tools for loosening rigid thought, and how imagination can help us live with difference instead of fearing it. Ramzi describes entering the classroom as a “radiant light,” grounded, joyful, and fully present with students. At the heart of his pedagogy is **attention as care**: treating students as people worth listening to, challenging them without shaming, and creating a "cone of trust" where risk, disagreement, and mistakes are part of learning. Ramzi shares insights from his upcoming book, **How to Think Like a Multiverse: Psychedelic Pathways to Embracing a Diverse World**, arguing that both art and psychedelic experience can soften hardened thinking and help us approach human difference with curiosity rather than fear. Together we ask: How do we practice being with people we don’t agree with? How do we act when theory fails us? How do we cultivate imagination that changes the world rather than escapes it? We mention: Hannah Arendt (enlarged mentality) Linda Zerilli (_Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom_) Judith Butler (performativity and grieveability) Lauren Berlant (cruel optimism) The movie Everything Everywhere All At Once_ The series Heated Rivalry

My conversation this month is with producer, musician, activist and creative technologist Sky Deep. Sky Deep is a Berlin-based live performer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose work fuses raw emotion, social consciousness, and technical mastery. Born in Los Angeles and shaped by the underground scenes of New York and Berlin, she merges electronic music, live instrumentation, and performance art into electrifying, genre-defying shows. A driving force in queer and POC visibility within electronic music, Sky founded Reclaim the Beats Festival and leads her label Reveller Records as a platform for community-driven experimentation. As MIDI-Music Director and core multi-instrumentalist for Peaches’ OOPS Tour (2020), she helped sculpt the tour’s radical live sound architecture — extending her artistry from club stages to global arenas. Her sonic imagination also extends into film, television, and theater: she created sound design for Shu Lea Cheang’s feature UKI, served as music supervisor for Loving Her (ZDFneo), and designs sound for productions at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and other major German theaters. Every project carries her signature spirit — joyful, unapologetic, and deeply human. https://www.skydeepofficial.com/ cover photo by Alexa Vachon

My guest this month is transdisciplinary artist Isaiah Lopaz, whose work revolves around collage, photography, text, and performance. Born in occupied Tongvaland to a working class African American family, Lopaz is a descendent of Igbo / West African / Geechee / African American / First Nations peoples. His work frequently focuses on tracing where histories often framed as disparate and distinct, overlap and converge. The past, sacred stories and practices, genealogy, and personal mythologies are merged in Lopaz’ practice to underscore intersections of time and space. Artistic research that engages African, Creole, and First Nations epistemologies, cosmologies, and methodologies are essential to his work. Lopaz’ research has been supported through stipends, fellowships, scholarships, and residencies from institutions including: The Berlin Senat for Culture and Europe, the documenta Institut, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Theater Rotterdam, the University of Bayreuth, Flutgraben, Ebenböck Haus, and Zucker Erben. Lopaz has exhibted and performed at events and institutions including the 10th Berlin Biennale, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, the Neues Museum, Kunstverein Hamburg, The HAU, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Beursschouwburg, and the 7th Afroeuropean Biennale. His work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Der Speigel, and ZDF. In the spring of 2024, Lopaz founded Black Visual Grammar, a mobile archive which engages Black perspectives on an array of themes and subjects through collage workshops which coincide with public exhibitions. https://www.isaiahlopaz.com/about Featured Artwork: "The Last Book My Father Read". Collage by Isaiah Lopaz Authors mentioned in this episode: Alexis Pauline Gumbs Natasha A. Kelly Grada Kilomba Wangechi Mutu Carrie Mae Weems Ekow Eshun We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

Fiorella Montero-Diaz is a Senior Lecturer in ethnomusicology at Keele University. She has a degree in Sound Engineering and Piano Performance from Peru, her country of birth. She later moved to the UK where she was awarded several international student excellence grants and graduated with distinction from Goldsmiths – University of London (MA in Ethnomusicology, 2008) and Royal Holloway – University of London (PhD in Music, 2014). In 2015 she was appointed as Keele’s first Lecturer in Ethnomusicology. Dr Montero-Diaz is known nationally and internationally for placing music and the arts at the centre of debates on race and class equality, anti-racist strategies, conflict transformation and the creation of new citizenships within contemporary post-conflict urban societies. Her impactful work has contributed to shaping cultural policies in Peru, and has been lauded by ministers, policymakers, and human rights and peace organisations in Latin America. Dr Fiorella Montero-Diaz has an extensive record of leadership and cross-institutional engagement. She was Director of Programmes for Music and Music Technology at Keele University (2018-2022), where she had a leading role in the creation of new UG creative programmes and development of new courses. Between 2014-2017 she was the General Administrator and Archivist of the British Forum of Ethnomusicology, during this period she built the BFE’s first historical archive. She sat on the Executive Board of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies Network. Now, she is the new Chair of the BFE, the first indigenous, queer and non native English speaker who leads this important subject association. In recognition of her contribution to advancing EDI in Higher Education, Dr Montero-Diaz was awarded the 2020 Stonewall Role Model of the Year Regional Award and the 2019 Keele Excellence Award. Dr Montero-Diaz’ research generates transformative, interdisciplinary approaches to the intersection between music, social inclusion and new citizenships. She was recently awarded as Principal Investigator a GCRF Networking Grant from the Academy of Medical Sciences for “Sounding a Queer Rebellion: LGBTI Musical Resistances in Latin America” (2020), which is building an interdisciplinary network of 13 partners in South American countries. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

In this month's "Spat Back At Ya" positionality conversation, Berlin legend Bleach has SPAT the questions back at host Mad Kate. Every couple of years, S.W.E.A.T. host Mad Kate likes to do a "positionality check-in" about where they are coming from and where they are at in their on-going research about the body in LABOUR. In this very special episode, in collaboration with BLEACH for her new Berlin based zine SPAT Mag!, Berlin drag artist, DJ and punk icon BLEACH has taken on the job of being the interviewer and Mad Kate is the interviewee. Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, dancer, performer, sxwkr and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004 after completing a Bachelor of Honors in Peace and Conflict Studies with an emphasis on Gender and Sustainability from UC Berkeley, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and Consciousness at New College in California. Thinking through an expansive definition of “queer(ing) the body” as a political process unfolding across time and space, Mad Kate integrates their political activism into performance, critiquing consumer capitalism, border regimes, migration policy, and the military-prison-industrial complex. They situate the queer body in a wide range of activist and performative contexts—from clubs, to darkrooms to theaters, from street protests and migrant shelters to protest camps—foregrounding the extractive logics of capitalism and the violent entanglements of militarism, consumerism, and border control. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. As a sound designer they are committed to the use of field recording and context-specific development of works that resist extractivist artistic practices. At the heart of all of their performative projects is the written word—whether their electronic project HYENAZ, their postpunk project Mad Kate the Tide or their solo performance work—they write first in essay form and then extract poems and lyrics from those longer written forms. BLEACH is ... Essex raised, Berlin Based Drag performer is a central figure in the German capital's queer underground, creating parties, shows & festivals. Starting out in a burlesque bar in Stockholm she entertains with a fiery mix of punking, stripping & speeching. A regular host of Berlin club nights, drag shows with a loud point of view. When DJing she plays a wide range of music to keep dancers on their toes, acidy house with sparks of rock n roll punk tunes. More about BLEACH ! spatmag.net https://bmerch.live/ https://www.instagram.com/bleach.babychino/ Cover Image by Javier Alejandro Cerrada

This month's conversation is with artist and healer Sārāh Mārtinus. Sārāh Mārtinus (she/they) is a research-informed artist and ancestral lineage healer. Her work focuses on relational kinship & contradiction (non dual, ritual) practice, decentralizing, deconditioning, and decolonizing through process-led co-emergence and intrapsychic ecologies. She writes, paints, and creates sound through centralising darkness, transformation, and intersectional shadow integrations, her multi-media practice operating as a form of processual meaning-making - locating wound within cultures of disappearances. As descendant of both migrating Sri Lankan diaspora and Irish settling colonies, Sarah came into being on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri People of Woiwurrung language group, in Kulin Nation; the Traditional Custodians of Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Her lineages weave through South Asia & Europe, outwards/inwards, reconciling in rivers of reparation, remembrance Her work is currently published through 'unbecomings', Zilberman Gallery, Berlin (October, 2025), curated by Misal Adnan Yildiz after their constellating of performance dialogues ‘When one of us remembers who we really are, all of us remember’ at Pickle Bar, Berlin (June, 2025). Sārāh offers one on one sessions and community ceremony, with ritual and witness counsel for power rebalance. www.sarahmartinus.com @sarahmartinus We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Cover Photo: Mathilda Bernmark

This month's conversation is with erotic performer and activist Chiqui Love. Chiqui Love is a burlesque and striptease artist and storyteller with over 22 years of experience. A power femme and co-founding member of two strippers’ collectives—East London Strippers Collective and Berlin Strippers Collective—she works to de-stigmatize sex work and open a dialogue around more ethical ways of providing and consuming erotic entertainment. Her approach centers on empowering workers and welcoming every gender and body shape. She is a passionate advocate for fair working conditions and for putting women at the forefront of any conversation involving bodily autonomy, pleasure, and freedom. Chiqui Love’s mission is to raise awareness—especially among women—encouraging them to enjoy their bodies unashamedly and embrace their inner bitch-ass goddess. S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This months conversation is with Sami Rhymes, an International Award-Winning Spoken Word Artist, Poet and Author from London, UK. She also works in Project Management and as a Freelance Creative. Sami had her first poem published at the age of 9 in a young writers anthology. She released her debut collection 20 Something in 2020 and has contributed poems to other publications including It Will Be: The Black Experience and the Words By anthology. From the playground to groundbreaking stages, Sami has performed and headlined at a number of public and private events & festivals in London, nationally and abroad in Malaysia and Greece. She has also won International Slams in New Zealand, Abu Dhabi and locally in the UK. She has featured on a number of local radio stations including BBC Radio London. Sami has also appeared on ITV News London S1:E3 of the BAFTA winning Sky Arts commissioned TV show Life & Rhymes and Islam Channel to name a few. 2022 saw Sami pick up “Best Female Spoken Word Poet” and also marked the release of her Debut EP Triple Threat . 2023 saw Sami take her rhymes to adverts, new stages and cities. From her first Sofar Sounds to her first Glastonbury Festival Sami continues to grow as a creative. Her next album and book are in progress with the audio “Silent Battles” set to be released first in 2025. Sami is also preparing the script for a one woman show which she will showcase in the near future. Sami uses rhyme as a means of release and therapy and through her spoken word inspires people in her community to speak up and take action. Her poetry touches on everything from identity to communities and places, relationships, mental health, injustices and day to day experiences. She also facilitates workshops, presents talks, ghostwrites and takes on commissions for bespoke requests. https://samirhymes.com/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Cover Photo: Nick Margiolas My Fear of Pretending by Mad Kate (featuring Lori Baldwin) Random Rambles by Sami Rhymes

This month's conversation with with transdisciplinary artist Liz Rosenfeld. Liz Rosenfeld is an NYC-born, Berlin-based transdisciplinary artist who works with film/video, performance, drawings and experimental writing practice. Liz addresses the sustainability of emotional and political ecologies, cruising methodologies, and past and future histories regarding the ways in which memory is queered. Their work deals with flesh as a non-binary collaborative material, specifically focusing on the potentiality of physical abundance and excess, approaching questions regarding the responsibility and privilege of taking up space and how queer ontologies are grounded in variant hypocritical desire(s). Their work has been shown internationally in film festivals, museums and galleries, and their film White Sands Crystal Foxes was nominated for Best Experimental Short Film at the Berlinale’s 2022 Teddy Awards. Liz was also one of the nominated artists for the ANTI –Contemporary Art Festival’s 2022 Shortlist Live Award, and their short films are represented by Video Data Bank and LUX Moving Image. They are currently on tour with their new book, Crossings: Creative Ecologies of Cruising, out on Rutgers University Press and co-written with Dr. Joao Florencio. Links: Liz Rosenfeld: http://www.lizrosenfeld.co/ João Florêncio & Liz Rosenfeld, Crossings: Creative Ecologies of Cruising (Rutgers University Press, 2025): https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/crossings/9781978837546/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Cover Photo: Christa Holka

This month’s conversation is with activist, writer, and engineer Ahmad Badawy. I met Ahmad at the protest encampment in front of the German parliament, where we were both calling attention to Germany’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In the middle of a bitter Berlin winter, Ahmad’s warmth and clarity stood out—his presence at the camp was not only political, but deeply personal, grounded in a long history of activism. We first connected when I shared my interest in organizing freelance workers. Ahmad responded with encouragement, sharing insights from his own experience and reminding me that movements often begin with simple, one-to-one conversations. We recorded this episode on the eve of the Unkurzbar demonstration, during which pro-Palestinian activists were forcibly separated from the rest of the march. It’s a moment that speaks volumes about the urgency of solidarity—and about Ahmad’s continued commitment to human rights. Originally from Egypt, Ahmad was deeply involved in the 2011 revolution and in grassroots labor organizing. He was imprisoned for four years in a maximum-security prison for carrying a sign at a protest that read, “No to the constitutional amendments,” opposing legislation that would have allowed President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to remain in power indefinitely. During his detention, he undertook a hunger strike to protest being held without trial. Ahmad has published widely on politics and resistance, and is a contributor to We Were There: Liberal Young Voices from the Egyptian Revolution. In this conversation, we discuss his journey from Cairo to Berlin, the political lessons he’s carried across borders, and his vision for building inclusive, intersectional movements rooted in universal human rights.

This month's edition of S.W.E.A.T. with Mad Kate features multidisciplinary artist Kim Ye. Kim Ye is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses performance, video, installation, text, and social engagement. Inserting herself into popular cultural forms, Ye interrogates gendered constructs shaping perceptions of power, labor, and taboo. Presenting bodies as both sites of domination and liberation, her work describes the entanglement between private desire and fantasy, and public discourse and ideology. Through shifting performance contexts, she reinterprets the forces that enforce and reproduce normativity. In 2023-2024, Ye was a Mellon Arts Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and a California Arts Council Creative Corps Fellow. Her work has been funded by the California Arts Council (USA), The National Endowment for the Arts (USA), Foundation for Contemporary Art (USA), Mellon Foundation (USA), and The Australia Council for the Arts (Australia). Her work has been presented at The Getty, MOCA, Guggenheim Gallery, Wattis Institute, Hammer Museum, Banff Center for Arts, Material Art Fair, and Frieze Film Seoul, among others. Ye received her MFA from UCLA in 2012, and was a full-time visiting faculty in the Photography & Media program at CalArts from 2022-2025. Ye has worked professionally as a dominatrix since 2011, and has serves as Co-director of Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA since 2019). photo: Louisa Fang LINKS! kimye.com instagram.com/kimyekimyekimye instagram.com/swopla swoplosangeles.org https://www.smingsming.com/products/promomme-a-sex-workers-guide-to-parenting

This month's conversation is with writer and transdisciplinary artist Awadalla. Their work spans text, performance, and visual storytelling, reimagining how life and knowledge are shaped through queer and decolonial praxis. Alongside their creative practice, Awadalla works at the intersection of mental and sexual health as a practitioner and educator. They founded Decolonizing Sexual Health, an initiative challenging dominant sexual health narratives through lived experience, pleasure, and collective care. More information about them: https://linktr.ee/3awadalla S.W.E.A.T. is a podcast hosted by Berlin-based electronic artist, performer, and activist Mad Kate. Known for their work between body politics and the politics of borders, Mad Kate brings their over twenty years of lived experience on stage, their own queer positionality, and their deep engagement with embodiment, relationality, and labor politics into the conversations that shape S.W.E.A.T. The podcast explores performance and performativity of the sexualized and racialized body at work—whether as labor for survival, care, or a/Art. Through in-depth discussions with artists, organizers, activists, and all kinds of paid and unpaid workers, S.W.E.A.T. contributes to dialogues that normalize sex work as work and advocate for all labor to be respected, fairly compensated, and carried out in safe conditions. S.W.E.A.T. airs first on Freie Radios Berlin Brandenburg via colabora dio, the second Tuesday of every month at 13:00 CET, featuring music curated by the guests. Afterwards, the interview portion is available on all major podcast platforms (apple, spotify, amazon, podcast addict, soundcloud or through rss feed). This podcast is entirely self-produced and a labor of love. You can support its continuation on Patreon.

This month’s guest on S.W.E.A.T. is Kaz Falkenstrom—a poet, drummer, and arts activist whose work has left a lasting impact on Tucson, Arizona’s literary and cultural landscape. Kaz has played a vital role in shaping the city’s arts scene, directing the Tucson Poetry Festival, co-founding Kore Press, and creating spaces for women’s voices in publishing. In 2002, she co-founded Odaiko Sonora, dedicating much of her life to the art of taiko drumming. This conversation was recorded in person during a visit to the Sonoran Desert in January. A queer Korean-Norwegian transplant from Virginia to Arizona, Kaz shares how the somatic practices of writing and drumming shape creative expression through movement and rhythm. This episode delves into the complexities of learning another culture’s art form, particularly her relationship to taiko as a Korean-American artist, and the fine line between appropriation, lineage, and respect. The discussion also explores the power of silence and stillness, and the balance between creating space for others and stepping forward for oneself. Finally, Kaz reflects on mastery vs. obsession, selflessness vs. selfishness, and what it truly means to dedicate oneself to a craft. About S.W.E.A.T. S.W.E.A.T. is a podcast with hostex Mad Kate featuring conversations with artists, activists, and thinkers about the ways our bodies are sites of resistance, labor, and transformation. We all sweat—as we care, as we work, as we fuck, as we survive, as we resist. About Mad Kate Hostex Mad Kate comes to this work with a deep commitment to antimilitarism, border justice and radical organizing. A Berlin-based electronic artist, performer, and activist, Mad Kate is known for their work between body politics and the politics of borders. Mad Kate brings their over twenty years of lived experience on stage as an explicit body in performance, and their deep engagement with embodiment, relationality, and labor politics into the conversations that shape S.W.E.A.T.. 🎧 Listen & Subscribe: 🌍 Podcast Website: https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ 🔊 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/mad-kate 📻 First airs on Freie Radios Berlin Brandenburg (FRBB) via Colaboradio, the second Tuesday of every month at 13:00 CET. 🎙️ Available on all podcast platforms and via RSS. 💜 Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/sweatpodcast

Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, and Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis is a drag queen, choreographer, moderator, and writer living and working in Berlin. She is inspired by the tensions and intersections between queer nightlife and contemporary dance and performance. SWEAT is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-a-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform -- tasks, acts of care, and identities? Anchored in our always already racialized and sexualized bodies, our complex intersectionalities, these conversations are means of relating through work to each other. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

This months conversation is with Sudanese human rights activist and refugee rights activist Napuli Paul Langa. Napuli Paul Langa is a human rights activist who worked for the Sudanese Organization for Nonviolence and Development (SONAD), and is active in the Refugee Movement in Berlin, Germany, who have fought to maintain their place at Orianienplatz since 2013. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This month's conversation is with Nadia Says (she/they), the co-founder of creative freelancer platform Your Mom's Agency and inclusivity advocacy network dif eV. Nadia is also an educator, journalist, and consultant in the fields of culture, music business, music tech, and DEI. Mostly based in Berlin, she has connections to the creative scenes of Beirut, Marseilles, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Discover music, readings, podcasts, and videos from their universe and collaborators' on https://yourmomsagency.com, www.dif-ev.org, www.barbieturix.com/author/nadia-says, https://nbhap.com/author/nadia-says, and https://mixmag.net/feature/berlin-creative-community-palestine-protest. And make sure to check Soli Tunes on https://yourmomsagency.bandcamp.com/album/soli-tunes. Your Mom's lends its Bandcamp platform to release a new multi-genre compilation, featuring twelve collaborations of music and visual art by over forty artists who came in solidarity to advocate for Palestinian art, be it music or tatreez embroidery. All proceeds will be donated to a Palestine-based composition and recording studio; they will announce the result of their collection in February 2025. Discover the first six tracks from November 1st, and the next six tracks from December 6th. Picture credit Olcan Akçay

Diesen Monat sprechen wir mit dem Autodidakten und Kunstaktivisten John Herman. John Herman ist ein autodidaktischer Kunstaktivist, der sich nicht ausschließlich als Künstler begreift, auch wenn er Aktionskunst performt, Videoinstallationen erschafft und fotografiert. Darüber hinaus war er als Manager für Künstler im Bereich der Globalen Musik sowie als Kurator von Weltmusik-Formaten aus dem Mittleren Osten tätig, wo er mehrere Jahre lebte. Seine Kunst ist geprägt durch seine extremen Kriegserfahrungen aus seiner Zeit als freiwilliger Soldat an der Seite verschiedener Befreiungsbewegungen, u. a. in Afrika und im Mittleren Osten. Kernthemen seiner Kunst sind sozial-politische Kommunikation, visuelle Soziologie sowie Fragen zu "Krieg und Frieden". John Herman lebt und arbeitet in Köln. Wir haben uns entschieden, unser Gespräch sowohl auf Englisch als auch auf Deutsch zu führen. Der Podcast in diesem Monat kann sowohl im Original als auch mit Übersetzung gehört werden. In dieser Folge von S.W.E.A.T. führen wir ein tiefgründiges und nachdenkliches Gespräch über Krieg, bewaffneten Kampf und die persönliche Wandlung vom Kämpfer zum Künstler. Unser Gast erzählt von seinen Erfahrungen, als er in einer Zeit aufwuchs, in der bewaffneter Widerstand vor allem in Europa normal war, und wie diese prägenden Jahre seine Ansichten über Gewalt und Revolution beeinflusst haben. Er spricht über die Entwicklung seiner Überzeugungen, von der Sichtweise, dass der bewaffnete Kampf ein notwendiges Mittel zur gesellschaftlichen Befreiung ist, bis hin zur Infragestellung seiner Wirksamkeit bei der Förderung demokratischer Prozesse. Die Diskussion verlagert sich auf seinen persönlichen Weg der physischen und psychologischen Transformation, nachdem er im Kampf an der Seite der Kurden in der Türkei ein Bein verloren hatte. Er erklärt, wie dieses lebensverändernde Ereignis ihn dazu brachte, seinen Körper und seine Psyche zu entmilitarisieren und die Kunst als Medium zu nutzen, um Traumata zu verarbeiten und komplexe Geschichten zu erzählen. Wir erforschen die Symbolik des Körpers in der Performance-Kunst, insbesondere wie er durch den Einsatz von Prothesen und körperlicher Verletzlichkeit einen kollektiven Prozess mit seinem Publikum schafft.

This months conversation is with self-taught art-activist John Herman. John artistically explores themes of war and peace, visual sociology, and socio-political communication across a rich variety of media—from performances, to video installations, to photography—yet John Herman cryptically resists the title of “artist”. His practice is fed by his extreme experiences of war, when he was fighting as a volunteer soldier alongside global freedom movements in Africa and the Middle East. In the Global Music market, he has worked as an artist manager, tour manager and a curator for World Music concert series focused on the Middle East, where he lived for a decade. We chose to conduct our conversation in both English and German. The podcast this month can be heard in both original German or with a translation. In this episode of S.W.E.A.T., we engage in a deep and reflective conversation about masculinity, performativity, war, armed struggle, and the personal transformation from militant to artist. John shares his experiences growing up during a time when armed resistance was normalized, particularly in Europe, and how those formative years influenced his views on violence and revolution. He speaks about the evolution of his beliefs, moving from seeing armed struggle as a necessary tool for societal liberation to now questioning its efficacy in fostering democratic processes. John also discusses his personal journey of physical and psychological transformation after losing a leg in battle while fighting alongside the Kurds in Turkey. He explains how this life-changing event led him to demilitarize his body and psyche, and to use art as a medium to process trauma and communicate complex narratives. We explore the symbolism of the body in performance art, particularly how his use of prosthetics and physical vulnerability creates a collective process with his audiences.

This months conversation is with author, activist and economic anthropologist Julio Linares Julio Linares is an economic anthropologist born in the territorios known today as Guatemala. In the last 13 years, he has been a migrant in Taiwan, the UK and Germany. Since 2018, he has served as Public Outreach for the Basic Income Earth Network. His first book “Decolonizing Money” (Pluto Press, 2025) argues for the abolition of the US Dollar as a means to transform the distribution of wealth and power in the planet, in order to bring forth a social ecological just transition. He enjoys giving and receiving massages and doing joyful anarchist resistance across social movements. He is currently based in Berlin. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This months conversation is with Dr. Shelley Wong, Professor Emeritus at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia in Multilingual/Multicultural Education. Her research interests include womanist, Critical Race and interfaith perspectives on justice, peace and reconciliation; dialogic inquiry, socio-cultural approaches to literacy, and critical multiculturalism. Dr. Wong is co-editor with Ilham Nasser and Lawrence N. Berlin of Examining education, media and dialogue under occupation:  The case of Palestine and Israel. Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters.  She is also co-editor with Elaisa Sánchez-Gosnell, Anne Marie Foerster-Lu, & Lori Dodson of (2018) Teachers as Allies:  Transformative Practices for Teaching DREAMers and Undocumented Students.  New York: Teachers College Press.   Dr. Wong became involved in the peace movement in high school when she joined Yalim (Daughters of Peace) at the Los Angeles Hollywood Los Feliz Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles and attended demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. She was a founding member of the Asian American Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament in New York in the 1980s.  Most recently she was a Fulbright Scholar at Birzeit University in the Occupied West Bank, Palestine.  She wrote “From the U.S. Mexican border to Palestine: A call to critical literacy and action for the Scholars Speak Out column of the Journal of Language and Literacy Education. We met up together to attend the July 24th in Washington DC, when thousands of demonstrators gathered to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the United States and his joint address made in Congress. In todays show I also took the opportunity to talk to various demonstrators about how their work dovetails with their activism and their choice to be at the protest, so youll hear various voices of resistance throughout the show. SWEAT is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-a-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform -- tasks, acts of care, and identities? Anchored in our always already racialized and sexualized bodies, our complex intersectionalities, these conversations are means of relating through work to each other. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. Music heard in this episode: Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending (featuring the voice of Lori Baldwin) HYENAZ - Resistance

This months conversation is with Demonia Yeguaza, an activist, performer, and dancer specializing in subversive, contemporary, and voguing dance. From a young age, Demonia’s path has been one of self-discovery and resilience. Through the transformative power of dance, she has navigated the complexities of identity and expression. Her artistic journey is marked by a deep commitment to understanding and embodying her true self, constructing her identity through every movement and performance. Demonia is the Mother of the House of Yeguazas, a cornerstone of the Colombian Ballroom scene and a transdisciplinary artist collective. The House of Yeguazas is a sanctuary where all bodies, processes, questions, and curiosities are embraced. Under Demonia’s leadership, this collective has become a beacon of inclusivity and artistic innovation, fostering a vibrant community that celebrates diversity and creativity. In addition to her work with the House of Yeguazas, Demonia is the director of Frente de Resistencia Marica. This organization is dedicated to advocating for the creation and implementation of safe spaces and differential public policies for the LGBTIQ+ community. Through her activism, Demonia fights for the rights and recognition of marginalized communities, using her platform to amplify their voices and demands. Demonia is particularly interested in exploring the body and movement from the perspective of gender and sexual diversity. She believes that as human beings, everyone should have the same opportunities, rights, and the possibility to live with dignity. This belief drives her to create spaces and experiences where people can reflect on body transit, the pleasure and desire to move freely, and enjoy doing so without being constrained by categories such as "right" or "wrong." As an artivist, Demonia strives to put her work in dialogue with everyday life, society, and public spaces. She believes that art should leave places of privilege, occupy other social spheres, and reach more communities. Viewing her body as her territory, raw material, and place of experiences, Demonia reflects on herself as a political subject, creating knowledge and living unique experiences that allow her to understand herself and navigate a society consumed by capitalism, homophobia, and classism. Dance and movement mold and transit Demonia's body, mind, and political-bodily ideals. Voguing and mariconeo are her political stance and a commitment to defending her preferences and sense of inhabiting the world. She envisions subversive movements, insurgent dancers, and social rebellion, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible in dance and activism. We are joined by Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Pateau who helped with translation

This months conversation is with interdisciplinary artist Tereza Silon S.W.E.A.T. Tereza Silon (ona/její, they/them, none), born 1991 in former Czechoslovakia, is an interdisciplinary artist, a performer, performance researcher, poet, experimental herbalist and a bodyworker. their work is often informed by the vegetal and (more-than-)human intimacies, by herbalist practices, vegetal lores, the need of inherent sensuousness of subjective embodiments with/in the world. they feel through feminist queer perspectives, social-natural ecologies and a desire to open spaces for generative intimacy/ies despite extractive systems we are forced to inhabit. As an (ex) activist, they question the balance between necessary care and engagement in prolonged palliative care for structures that need to go. they are currently working on setting up a temporary non-idealized social pleasure clinic for september, give bodywork, are writing a first ´substantial text´ aka are writing a book and are in a process with a performance titled ´good gardens´ exploring lore of the much maligned bella donna and power dynamics in gardening beyond the binary of ´good´and ´bad´. the art ´career´ gives them a chance to also work occasionally multiple nice but precarized and underpaid side jobs. Silon centers queer as well as folkloric approaches, grassroot origins, craving for more ´useless´ beauty enhancing the experience of awe and upholding multiplicities as a form of resistance to the hegemonic world-order. their motivation is (one day soon) the right to play – for all! the dignified work of survival is not enough for a survival alone.

This months conversation is with Fariya Mohiuddin. Fariya is the Senior Program Officer, Tax and Policy (Global) at the International Budget Partnership. Since joining IBP in 2019, she has been leading the Tax Equity initiative’s regional and global work as well as providing strategic support to the Tax Equity’s in-country work across Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. Prior to joining IBP, Fariya was the Strategic Programs Researcher at the Tax Justice Network where she her focus was on developing a human rights, feminist, and gender equality focused network of tax activists and researchers as well as research on the link between human rights and tax justice. In this role, she was an inaugural steering committee member of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice’s Global Tax and Gender Working Group and helped lead the creation of its first strategy framework; she was also the main organizer behind the Global Convening on Women’s Rights and Tax Justice in Bogota in 2017. Fariya has also worked with the International Centre for Tax and Development, the World Bank Group, the Ford Foundation, and Open Society Foundation on research projects on the political economy of accountability, citizen engagement and transparency in relation to taxation. She holds both a Bachelor’s of Arts (Economic and International Relations) and a Master’s of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto.

This months conversation is with the The Incredible Edible Akynos. The Incredible, Edible, Akynos (MF Akynos, for short) is a international burlesque performer and curator. A show-stopping entertainer who has curated, headlined, and performed in productions from New York to Europe, she is also a sex worker activist and has been performing burlesque since 2007. Akynos is the founder of the Black Sex Worker Collective, author, performance artist, and an educator in the fields of sexuality, HIV, and human rights. She has advised other non-profit organizations including Desiree Alliance, where she has spearheaded the arts track for the national conference, and the Best Practices Policy Project, where she works on UN Policy relating to women at the Commission on the Status of Women and during the Universal Periodic Review of the human rights record of the United States at the Human Rights Council. Her writings may also be found at Blackheaux.wordpress.com. Akynos describes herself thus: My official stage names are The Incredible, Edible, Akynos, Or MFA (MothaFuckin’ Akynos) It’s pronounced (Ah-Key-Nos). My tagline: “The Beast Of Burlesque” was given to me by performer friend Voodoo Onyx. I’m a New York raised stripper. Featured in nude magazines, music videos and adult websites since I was 17. I’m a MILF supreme, nappy hair having, 45” of ass, performance artist. You can find me taking it off in burlesque showcases across the globe but primarily on NYC stages. I’ve featured/headlined in showcases both locally and internationally. In 2009 I was the winner of the best soloist and judge’s choice award at the Boston Burlesque Expo. In the same year I was runner up for the Miss International Showgirl competition in Jamaica; (one day I will compete again). I’ve curated shows in my homeland of Jamaica at the infamous Hedonism II resort, NYC, Vegas, and DC. My last projects were Darkie, THICK and Dark. Nude. Storytellers. My new one-woman show “Black Pussy”, the scripted web series “Chronicles Of A Black Heaux”, and the social/whore commentary web-series “Whore Logic”, (currently on YouTube), all of which need your support and attention. A leadership and program developer/organizer I am also a member of several different sex worker ran/lead organizations where I’ve lobbied in New York State against Condoms As Evidence and helped make recommendations on human rights policies at The UN. Some of these wonderful organizations which I hope you will support are: The Desiree Alliance, The Sex Worker Film & Arts Festival, Best Practices Policy Project, SWOP-NYC, We Are Dancers and The NJ Red Umbrella Alliance; because being a ho should be every woman’s [person’s] fundamental right. And sex work is work. Don’t debate me on that. I’ll tear you down. I was a dance major in high school and had a short theater acting stint until I decided to take a long break to raise my children and deal with patriachy. I’ve performed in, competed and won many talent competitions since I was 12. These days I’m a borough famous emerging artist who holds two college degrees, working as a massage therapist and maid because something has to support my artistic habit. All the while I’m wagging my duster at you, screaming for the rights of every human to use their body and energy how they choose. Walk with me. -A https://akynos.com/about/

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. This month's conversation is with editor and curator María Inés Plaza Lazo. María Inés Plaza Lazo founded in 2018, together with Paul Sochacki, the multilingual streetnewspaper for art and society, wealth and poverty called Arts of the Working Class. Since then, she writes for the paper and allied publications, edits pieces individually and collectively, sells advertisement spots according to each issue's topics and interests, talks constantly with vendors, contributors and potential collaborators, curates exhibitions related to the overarching concerns shared in AWC, gives lectures in different universities and academies such as The New Centre, brings stacks of AWC to different cities such as LA, New York, Quito or Barcelona, and takes care of the project and the people around it as a publisher. She currently lives in and works from Düsseldorf, preferably in trains. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Tracks Played: Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending (featuring Lori Baldwin) A few things mentioned: https://artsoftheworkingclass.org/about https://www.instagram.com/arts_of_the_working_class/ https://www.neueauftraggeber.de/en/ https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/562184/art-workers-summit/ Cover Photo: Sabine Vielmo, 2022, Courtesy of The New Institute in Hamburg

This month's conversation is with artist and activist Cassie Thornton. Cassie makes a safer space for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification, has hypnotized hedge fund managers, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). Her 2020 book, The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, is available from Pluto Press. Cassie's website: https://feministeconomicsdepartment.com/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. S.W.E.A.T. podcast website: https://www.alfabus.us/sweat-podcast/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. support S.W.E.A.T.

In this new season of S.W.E.A.T. we will dive more deeply into questions around how we organize, vision and dream new strategies for work care and survival. Starting off is a very fresh conversation with two artists and activists Jara Nassar and Joshua Schwebel, recorded on the 7th of January, just one day before a demonstration in front of Berlin's Abgeordnetenhaus, where inside was being discussed the adoption of the IHRA WDA as a prerequisite for the reception of cultural funding from the Senat. Jara and Joshua work in the collective Arts and Cultural Alliance Berlin, who organized the demonstration because the IHRA WDA has notoriously been utilized to silence and cancel pro-Palestinian voices in the arts. Jara Nassar is a German-Lebanese-US-American writer, performer and anthropologist interested in boundaries and blurring them. She writes poetry, plays, and prose in German and English, interwoven with Levantine Arabic. Her writing haa been published in NEVER WAKE Anthology, Tangle and Fen, and Glitter. She is also the host of the annual memorial to Sarah Hegazi. As Drag King Angelo Dynamo he hosts the show Border Ctrl. You can follow her work on Instagram under the handle @jaramachtsachen and on her blog dasreisekind.wordpress.com. https://www.instagram.com/jaramachtsachen/ https://www.instagram.com/angelodynamo/ https://www.instagram.com/border_ctrl_show/ Joshua Schwebel is a Canadian conceptual artist based in Montreal and Berlin. Working in conceptual art and institutional critique, Schwebel has presented his work internationally and across Canada. He has held residencies in Paris, Berlin, Beijing, Gdansk, Krakow, Marseille, and Perth, Western Australia. He holds an MFA from NSCAD University (2008), and a BFA from Concordia University (2006). Schwebel’s work has been supported by both the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Joshua Schwebel's artistic practice responds to sites and situations, looking at the neoliberal infrastructures that precondition the exhibition and valorization of art. Schwebel is interested in the art exhibition complex as a productive, material, politically and financially situated context. His work augments the already-ongoing institutional performances that correlate contemporary art and capitalism. In examining the framing of art as a construct that both confers and protects value, his work reflects what we expect art to be and how these expectations veil systemic problems plaguing contemporary art including the intensely hierarchized and stratified work culture in art institutions; the instrumentalization of artists and art institutions in the gentrification of neighbourhoods; and the effects of austerity politics on cultural funding, which have effectively entrenched institutional dependence on donors and established the already-wealthy as the arbiters of taste and legitimacy in art. https://joshuaschwebel.com/home.html https://linktr.ee/arts_culture_alliance_berlin

This month's episode is with DJ and producer TMSKDJ. The masked DJ (TMSKDJ) born Micheel Nana Adwoa Agyakomah Yeboah is an electronic and African Dance Music DJ and producer based in Accra, Ghana. TMSKD pronounced as THE MASKED is one of the few disc jockeys in Ghana breaking the status quo of Djing with her versatile skill set of introducing and fusing alternative sounds to the Accra music scene often electronic and African Dance genres into her live performances. As a young and gifted DJ, mostly conservative reflecting a persona of an introvert, she uniquely came up with the masked concept in 2015 to highlight her craft as a DJ albeit the curiousness of most audiences to focus on her gender as a female rather than her eminent craft. Rising from a campus room party DJ in 2013 to one of the few DJs spearheading an alternative touch to the African music scene, TMSKDJ keeps showing an improved skill set when it comes to the turntables. TMSKD created the Eargasm EDM show and is part of the alternative pool of DJs led by DJ Benjamin Le Brave of Akwaaba Music. https://www.instagram.com/tmskdj/?hl=en https://soundcloud.com/platform/tmskdj-boiler-room-accra-oroko https://linktr.ee/tmskdj Tracks Played: My Fear of Pretending - Mad Kate featuring the voice of Lori Baldwin Cover Photograph: Hakeem&Six

This months episode features Palestinian documentary photographer and visual storyteller Rasha Al Jundi and Palestinian collective experimental designer, artist, architect, and performer Michael Jabareen. Rasha Al Jundi (1984) is a Palestinian documentary photographer and visual storyteller. She grew up in the UAE, after which she moved to Lebanon to pursue higher education. During her seven year stay in the country, she volunteered with the Lebanese Red Cross and worked with a local NGO coordinating rural development programs. Between 2009 and 2021, she worked with several civil society organisations, in the Near East, and Africa. Her work generally follows a social documentary pathway. Rasha is the 2022 Ian Parry grant recipient and a graduate from the International Center for Photography (ICP), New York. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rashaa_jv Website: https://www.rashajundi.com/ As a Palestinian collective experimental designer, artist, architect, and performer, Michael Jabareen focuses on the exploration and experimentation in design and artistic expression methodologies and technologies, to effectively connect and communicate with the users/audience and create a positive impact. With a diverse academic background between the creativity and technicalities of architectural engineering to the high level of experimentation in visual and experience design, and a local and international experience in multimedia artistic production since 2016, Michael has been working in the intersections between art, illustration, comics, graphic design, identity design, branding, animation, videography, multimedia production, theater, spatial design, UX/UI, and business entrepreneurship, with a focus on humanitarian and environmental causes. Michael is an award-winning artist in different competitions, including the 1st place winner of Jerusalem Festival 2022 Poster Design Competition by Yabous Cultural Centre (Jerusalem-Palestine, 2022), the 1st place winner of the Graphic Illustration Category of the 6th Mahmoud Kahil Award (Beirut-Lebanon, 2021), and an honorable mention in the “Son of Favela” 24-hour IF-Ideas Forward comics competition (Portugal, 2018), in addition to others. Michael also participated in multiple collective exhibitions in Palestine and abroad, including his 2023 latest participations in “Tadaffuq/Flow/Fluir” Exhibition at Casa Árabe (Madrid & Córdoba, Spain), “The Gift Exhibition” at Al Ma’mal Foundation (Jerusalem, Palestine), “Liberation Street, Building No.48” comics exhibition (Ramallah, Palestine), as well as his first “solo” exhibition in collaboration with the Palestinian visual storyteller Rasha Al Jundi, titled “Cold Water”, at Yabous Cultural Centre (Jerusalem, Palestine). https://www.instagram.com/michaelmjabareen/?hl=en Tracks played in this episode: - Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending featuring Lori Baldwin Cover Illustration: - Frame: “Together, we rise in spite of your history - illustrated image”. (Location: Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Feb.2023) / As part of the Cacti series. - Artists: Rasha Al Jundi & Michael Jabareen

This month's show features artist and researcher Elly Clarke. Mad Kate interviewed Elly Clarke in the context of their project with Adrienne Teicher, HYENAZ. For the past two years HYENAZ have been researching cultures of extractivism within field recording and arts in general. Elly Clarke is an artist and researcher. The focus of her multimedia-based artistic work lies on the transformation of the physical body in an increasingly digitally-mediated and experienced world, which she explores through performance, video, photography, music, curated and community-based projects. And through #Sergina, a multi-bodied drag queen who, across one body and several, performs online and offline about love, lust and loneliness in the mesh of hyper-dis/connection, gathering - and now also selling - data as she goes. In un/easy collaboration with this character, Elly is entering the final stages of her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, entitled 'Is My Body out of date? The drag of physicality in the digital age’. Earlier this year Clarke curated 'Dragging the Archive - a personal re:encounter with Franklin Furnace's cyber beginnings' in the library at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, which explored Franklin Furnace’s re/emergence as a digital platform for performance in the 1990s. Clarke's work has been presented internationally, at venues that include The Photographer's Gallery and ICA in London; mac birmingham; Milton Keynes Gallery, Galerie Wedding in Berlin; the Banff Centre, Kiama, Helsinki; and The Marlborough Theatre, Brighton. ellyclarke.com cover photo by OMER GAASH More about Elly Clarke: http://www.ellyclarke.com/ More about HYENAZ: www.hyenaz.com Tracks played Sergina - More Blur Less Border (2020) Sergina- I want your data (2020) Sergina - Turn it Off and Turn Me On (2020) Sergina - Instantaneous Culture (2012) Sergina - He Only Wants Me For My Network (2015) ((All from 2020 are from a never released EP called Datafic(a)tion)) We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ More about HYENAZ and their research on extractivism: www.hyenaz.com Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This months episode features choreographer, performer and Queer energetic healer Ambrita Sunshine who recently collaborated with Mad Kate in Berlin on "sweating together" at alpha nova & galerie futura Ambrita Sunshine is a POC Queer artist & performer, actively working on both Europe and West Africa scene. Coming through a multidisciplinary path, she trained as a dancer and choreographer creating a fusion between various disciplines that she loves and practiced for a long time, including BDSM, sexual energy awakening practices, tantra, dance, use of sound and voice. She completed a lots of studies in Energy Healing, Esoteric Traditions in West Africa, Dance Rituals & Sciamanism. Ambrita has devoted herself to research on African movement, specifically regarding the ritual dances of the Ivory Coast, achieving two master's degrees in "Traditional Dances and Esoteric Rituals of the Ivory Coast & West Africa”. Moreover, for a long time she has been working on research about state of trance. She is currently involved in both individual and group energy treatments; teaching meditation techniques and introspective spiritual journeys. She constantly combines all these various aspects of her life. Ambrita travels constantly and for the past three years has decided to be nomadic. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ambrita.sunshine IG: Ambritasunshine https://linktr.ee/ambrita.sunshine We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This months conversation is with visual artist and sculptor Chang Gao. Chang Gao is a visual artist using multiple media in her practice production, like sculpture, hologram installation and photographic languages. Her work overlapped with the field of psychology, aiming to trigger audience’s desire and bodily responses. By exploring the relations between the very personal matter of the human body and the public space, her artwork serves as an alternative method to address the pressing cultural issue in Chinese public space. She worked as a public art researcher at the Public Art Research Centre of China – China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, she is a co-founder and director at the International Laboratory of Social Innovation - China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA-ILSI). She gave a Ted Talk on May 23rd, 2016 and presented her PhD topic at Collision doctoral conference at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama twice in 2019 and 2020 and IEEE Sentimental Robotics and Automation Conference, Sharing Biological Practice Symposium RCA. She has shown her works internationally, in London galleries like London Art Biennale, Beaconsfield Gallery, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Dyson Gallery at the Royal College of Art, 508 King’s Road Gallery in London Battersea, Korean Collage of Fine Arts at Hongik University in Seoul, together with Japan Tama University and Alto University, Helsinki and many museums and galleries in China. She also held a Double Solo exhibition: Public Intimacy in March 2020 at Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art. More about Chang: www.gaochangart.net https://www.rca.ac.uk/research-innovation/research-degrees/research-students/chang-gao/ Latest show in Utrecht Netherland: COME ALIVE-the power of pleasure: https://come-alive.nl Ongoing show at CHIANCIANO Biennale in Tuscany Italy: https://biennalechianciano.org/artisti-2022/ Ongoing show They/Them/Their: Naturally No Binary at IMT Gallery London: https://imagemusictext.com/ Most recent publication: Representation: http://www.gaochangart.net/rca-book-launch_representation-communique/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Media Mentioned Audre Lorde – The Uses of the Erotic Deirdre Barrett – Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose photo by Torsten Weller

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. This episode features artist Mürüvvet Türkyılmaz, whose work delves into the themes of borders, mapping, geography, and memory. We met in the context of Tanja Ostojić's Mis(s)placed Women? collaborative art project at DEPO Gallery in Istanbul in 2022. Born in Izmir in 1968, Türkyılmaz currently resides and creates from Istanbul, Turkey. Since 1996, her artistic journey has taken her across numerous exhibitions in Turkey and abroad, where she has been invited to showcase her work. Notable among these are her participation in events such as the 8th Havana Biennial, the 15th Sydney Biennial and the 3rd Mardin Biennial. Between 2004 and 2010, Türkyılmaz held the position of instructor at Yeditepe University, where she taught courses on Turkish Art History, Visual Culture, and General Art History. Additionally, she has been at the forefront of fostering creative dialogue and collaboration among artists and individuals from diverse disciplines through her leadership of the Open Table, a platform for discussion and exchange. Over the past five years, Türkyılmaz has embarked on immersive journeys, residing and working in locations such as Istanbul, Rome, and France, which have further enriched her artistic practice. She holds an International Art Therapy Certificate from Altınbas University in Turkey and has offered art studio courses to both children and adults. More about … Mürüvvet Türkyılmaz: https://www.instagram.com/muruvvetturkyilmaz_art/?hl=en Acik Radyo: https://acikradyo.com.tr/program/acik-masa Tanja Ostojić – Mis(s)placed Women? (2009-2022) at DEPO Istanbul: https://www.depoistanbul.net/en/event/tanja-ostojic-missplaced-women-2009-2022-exhibition/ Tanja Ostojić – Mis(s)placed Women? https://misplacedwomen.wordpress.com/ We mentioned … Mahsa Amini aka Jina Amini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Mahsa_Amini Ana Mendieta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Mendieta Track List … Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending (featuring Lori Baldwin) Eat Lipstick – Afraid of Love This show is dedicated to parent artist and musician Lehua Lií Ludlow (30.06.1967 - 05.07.2023)

This conversation features artist Montserrat Gardó Castillo and is led by Mad Kate and Adrienne Teicher in the context of their work on cultures of extraction. They talk about collaboration, the naked body, and rules of engagement. Montserrat Gardó Castillo is a performance artist. She studied dance at the Institut del Teatre/Barcelona and at the Folkwang UdK/Essen as well as journalism at the URL/Barcelona. She is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Humanities and Contemporary Art at the UOC/Barcelona. After working with VA Wölfl/NEUER TANZ (2009 to 2017), she started creating her own work together with Petr Hastik and supported by FFT Düsseldorf and Urbane Künste Ruhr, amongst others. Besides, she collaborates with artists such as Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, Heiner Goebbels, Alexander Giesche, Tino Sehgal, Alexandra Pirici, La Fleur, SEE! and Costa Compagnie. She was nominated twice for the Förderpreis für Darstellende Kunst in Düsseldorf and received the Ground Support Prize of the NRW Kultursekretariat. In the 2021-22 season she has been curating the series: “Politics of Invitation” at FFT Düsseldorf together with Monika Gintersdorfer and Annick Choco; and for the last two years she has been working on the topic of brutalism, with works online and two site-specific performances in NRW. More about Montse: https://montseandpetr.com/ https://www.fft-duesseldorf.de/komplizinnen/montserrat-gardo-castillo Politics of Invitation: https://www.fft-duesseldorf.de/reihen-festivals/politics-of-invitation we mentioned: The Celestial Wheel, a book by Ursula K. Le Guin Europa, a film by Lars von Trier we played: Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending (featuring Lori Baldwin)

This month features professor, writer and dancer Thomas F. DeFrantz in conversation with HYENAZ (myself + Adrienne Teicher) in the context of our project on art and cultures of extraction. Together we talk about time, Black aesthetics, NOWness and the processes of building creative encounters. Thomas F. DeFrantz teaches at Northwestern University and directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology; the group explores emerging technology in live performance applications. He believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming. Thomas' creative projects include Queer Theory! An Academic Travesty commissioned by the Theater Offensive of Boston and the Flynn Center for the Arts; fastDANCEpast, created for the Detroit Institute for the Arts; reVERSE-gesture-reVIEW commissioned by the Nasher Museum in response to the work of Kara Walker, January, 2017. Books: Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance (with Kathy Perkins, Sandra Richards, and Renee Alexander Craft, 2018), Choreography and Corporeality: Relay in Motion (with Philipa Rothfield, 2016), Black Performance Theory: An Anthology of Critical Readings (with Anita Gonzalez, 2014), Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance (2002), and Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (2004). Thomas convenes the Black Performance Theory working group as well as the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, a growing consortium of 325 researchers committed to exploring Black dance practices in writing. Recent teaching: University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; ImPulsTanz; New Waves Institute; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, University of Nice. Has chaired Program in Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT; the concentration in Physical Imagination at MIT; the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke; and served as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars. DeFrantz acted as a consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture, contributing concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the museum in 2016. Visit the website at https://slippage.org More about HYENAZ Extraction: https://www.hyenaz.com/extraction/

This episode features performance artist, writer and director Lori Baldwin who shares some of her pandemic hustles and her latest work with OONA about the visibility of women*s art and labour. Today's conversation features performance artist, writer and director Lori Baldwin, whose thought-provoking work is based in the desire for connection and disruption. She designs performances and experiences intended to call spectators to action by questioning aspects of their immediate surroundings. Through theatre, live art and film, Lori's approach weaves lightness and provocation together in order to challenge commonly held ideas about power, gender, endings, eroticism, and death. In her collaborative creative processes, she seeks to build affirming spaces based on a non-judgmental, collective approach towards composition and devising. Her artistic strategy is to invite a critical look into the world we live in while creating an interactive experience that gently provokes audience participation and thoughtful engagement. Lori and I speak about the "value" of work and the tricky presence of the physical sexualized body in art. We also talk about German pandemic relief, how she managed to hustle her performances during the few windows of opportunity when most live gigs were brought to a halt, and we talked about her collaboration with performance artist OONA, their guerilla-style performances Milking the Artist at Art Basel Miami and A Heist A Nude and Butter at The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York. More about Lori Baldwin: https://www.iamloribaldwin.com/ «S.W.E.A.T.» (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics): with Lori Baldwin S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

S.W.E.A.T. (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics) with Donato Laborante S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. This episode features Italian poet, storyteller and curator Donato Laborante. Today's show features a conversation that my collaborator Adrienne Teicher and I had with artist Donato Laborante in the context of our ongoing project about cultures of extraction and artistic practices. We are also joined by artist Federica Dauri, who is translating for us. Adrienne and I met Donato in 2015 when we first toured to the Murgia region of Italy, about an hour inland from Bari. We played many small venues and met all of the incredible artists that Donato knows across the region. As well as being a curator, Donator is a poet, actor, performer and storyteller who galvanizes the artistic scene to create happenings and to move people to take political action in their everyday actions. After our initial visit, Adrienne and I returned again several times to the region because we were fascinated by the role of stone in the area and had met several artists who utilized stone to make musical instruments, most notably Vito Maiullari. During one of our visits, we made a journey into a marble quarry in Apricena, and were joined by several local artists. Together we spontaneously began playing percussive sounds on the wall of the quarry and recorded our impromptu performance. It was this moment that sparked our interest in the idea of extraction as metasignfier–including the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies; minerals, gas and water from the ground; sounds, words and images from sentient beings; the consensual extraction of digital content, and the “mining of the exotic” from our very identities. Airing this conversation comes after we’ve just made a third visit to the area to deepen our knowledge of relationship to stone, sound, and time, meeting again Donato and other artists in the area. Here Donato shares with us some of his feelings about the significance of stone, of digging, and of archeology and the layers of time captured in the stone. He also talks about his relationship to work, time, patience and meditation. More about Donato Laborante: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008775795320 More about HYENAZ extraction: https://www.hyenaz.com/extraction/ More about Vito Maiullari: https://www.facebook.com/vito.maiullari.9/ More about Federica Dauri: https://federicadauri.com/works

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. In this episode, HYENAZ (Adrienne Teicher and Mad Kate) speak to Professor Imre Szeman, in regards to their project Art and Extractivism. They speak about defining extractivism, the role of the artist in using the term, the use and limitation of regarding everything as animate, and greenwashing. Imre Szeman is the inaugural Director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability and Professor of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. From 2021-2022, he was the Climate Critic for the Green Party of Canada. He is co-founder of the Petrocultures Research Group, which explores the socio-cultural dimensions of energy use and its implications for energy transition and climate change, and the leader of After Oil, a collective which has produced After Oil (West Virginia University Press, 2016) and Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). He is author (most recently) of On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy (WVUP, 2019) and is working on The Future of the Sun, a book detailing corporate and state control of the transition to renewables. More about Imre: https://www.imreszeman.ca/ More about HYENAZ https://www.hyenaz.com We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This episode features excerpts from three different interviews with interdisciplinary artist Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau. They share thoughts on funding, performativity and code switching before, during and after the pandemic. S.W.E.A.T. Starting a new year and new season of S.W.E.A.T., this episode goes back to the very beginning with the first interview on the topic conducted in 2019 with Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau, an interdisciplinary artist living and working between Germany and Colombia. Later, during a collaborative 2020 HYENAZ project called "Perimeter," Simon(e) shares thoughts about their intersectionalities and how this effects how they are read in different contexts. Finally and most recently in 2023, they share thoughts post-pandemic about German arts funding during Covid and how it has affected them and their practice. Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau is a German-Colombian interdisciplinary artist. Their works are located between cinema, video installations and performance, dealing with queer decoloniality. Simon(e) studied Media Art at the KHM Cologne and Film at the EICTV Cuba. Simon(e)’s short films Aribada and Mila Caos have both premiered at Cannes Directors Fortnight and toured worldwide international film festivals such as New York film festival, BFI London, Rotterdam, Guanajuato film festival etc. Aribada won several international awards and prizes, including the Emerging Talent Prize at kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and a nomination for the Queer Palm in Cannes 2022. Simon(e)'s first feature film the Whisper of the Jaguar premiered at Documenta14 and won the award for Best Director at the International Cartagena Film Festival. Simon(e)’s performance works, and video installations have premiered at Wexner Center of the Arts, Haus der Kulturen der Welt HKW, Kasseler Dokfest Monitoring, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Cinemateca de Bogotá, as well as the 11th Berlin Biennale. More about Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau: http://www.lapaetau.com/ More about HYENAZ Perimeter audio-visual work: https://www.hyenaz.com/perimeter/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. More about Mad Kate and the podcast: https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. cover photo by Ricardo León Jatem

This final episode of 2022 closes out the first season of S.W.E.A.T. with a personal note. I’ll be speaking about my own positioning as I come into this project—my own relationship to sex, work, extraction, art and theatrics and the personal-political intersections that I bring to the table when I speak to others in conversation. As a special HOLIDAY BONUS, I’ll be airing the soundpiece SWEAT Kumasi that I composed after the first series of interviews that were conducted when I was an artist in resident at perforcraze International Artist Residency (-pIAR) in Kumasi, Ghana in 2021. The soundpiece contains excerpts from all of the interviews that I aired over the past year as well as some portions of other interviewees that didn’t get featured in the podcast. Special thanks to everyone who was on the podcast this year, including crazinisT artisT aka Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, Mawuenya Amudzi, Hiroko Tsuchimoto, Onsoh, Amina Gimba, Muhammedu Abubakari, Eryka Dellenbach, and Justice aka Karyka. Special thanks to Lori Baldwin whose voice is featured in the theme music. The soundpiece S.W.E.A.T. Kumasi features sonic contributions and quoted interviews with Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT] Mawuenya Bubu Amudzi Martin Toloku Onsoh Edward Eryka Dellenbach Zoë Binetti Hiroko Tsuchimoto Karyka Onyekwere Justice Ugochukwu Jawo Zaria Graba Adwoa Kesewaa Gaisie Isshak Fuseini Muhammedu Abubakari Samuel Kortey Baa Champion Rolie Ester Nyante Amma Amina Gimba Patrick Quarm Mixing and Mastering Andreas Maan @andreasmaan 2021 - 2022 Thank you perforcraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) Kumasi Ghana www.crazinistartist.com/piar-artist-in-residency/ SWEAT is an immersive sound installation and performance intervention that features sonic contributions and auditory imprints from laboring bodies at work, as well as recorded conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art. The sonic landscape of this work has been woven exclusively from field recordings gathered in and around Kumasi, ultilizing pIAR as first site of home and expanding outwards to synchronistic encounters, intuitively following the body at work. The conversations are less a sonic research archive than they are a means to speak across intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies. These are the sounds of sweaty bodies: labouring, dancing, fucking, sacrificing and surviving. In focus is the auditory and audibility; which bodies can be heard and which bodies are silenced by the audible? What happens in the dark? What is felt or sensed in the quiet space between bodies, placed within and contexualized by the pounding loudness of our sweaty bodies at work?

Justice aka Karyka is a Nigerian IT student living and working in Kumasi Ghana. When we met he was running a barber shop part time and I was looking for a fresh haircut. He is a drummer at his uncle’s church, singer and aspiring actor, which are just a few of his future dreams as he takes on many part time jobs. We spoke about how he hustles to get by as a Nigerian migrant to Ghana and what he dreams of in the future. Justice became a fast friend and an integral part of the performance we made together called S.W.E.A.T. in which he activated a dress I had sewn out of the plastic bags which hold drinking water. At the time he was playfully exploring a genderqueerness through the pseudonym “Karyka”. This interview will close out the short series conducted with people I met in and around Kumasi Ghana, when I was an artist in resident at perforcraze International Artist Residency (-pIAR) in 2021. The people who have been introduced through this series all have a unique relationship to work and to art and were willing to share their experiences with me. For this I am immensely grateful. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81 HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/ You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

Eryka Dellenbach (b. Chicago) is an experimental filmmaker, dancer and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Tucson, Arizona. They approach film as a devotional practice, and use body-based performance and dance collaboration as a method of research, connection and mutual evolution. Their works mine relationships to power and erotics, and explore fluid consent as a generative source of form and narrative. They earned their bachelor degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and their masters in Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their movement practice has been heavily impacted through studies in the dances of resistance Butoh, flamenco and capoeira, and especially by their teachers Atsushi Takenouchi, Wendy Clinard and Contramestre Besouro Preto Manganga. Collaboration plays a central role in their process and they have worked with artists of many mediums and lineages including Hanna Elliott (HOGG), Martin Toloku, Yunuen Rhi, Nola Sporn Smith, Sonya Belaya, Matty Davis and Christopher-Rasheem McMilan. Their work has been presented at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Communitism (GR), Alliance Française Kumasi (GHANA), crazinisT artisT studio (GHANA), Roulette Intermedium, Cucalorus, Gene Siskel Film Center, Green River Cemetery (NY), Coaxial Arts (LA), Casa Moloch (MX) and Movement Research at the Judson Memorial Church. They have been an artist-in-residence at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art (Russia), perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Ghana), eX...it! international butoh dance exchange and performance festival (Germany), Earthdance (MA), Echo Luna (Ukraine) and Cucalorus (NC). They have been a legal advocate and correspondent with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, a celluloid film instructor with MONO NO AWARE (NY) and are a collaborator of the transnational collective HEKLER. They work as a freelance filmmaker, performance documentarian, interviewer and performing body. Eryka Dellenbach erykadellenbach.com PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81 You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Today’s episode features Muhammedu Abubakari, a teacher of Arabic and Quran, a translator, and a skilled tailor. He translates and speaks in conversation with me and Jawo Zaria Graba, a cocoa farmer and Isshak Fuseini, an economics student. Together we toured the forest where they produce crops and shared with me their extensive knowledge of the plants and crops that were growing there – palm and the process of extraction palm oil and wine, coconut, cocoa plant, avocado, yam, as well as the medicinal qualities of the plants all coexisting there. While we were walking we also talked politics of farming, race and class. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81 HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework oaf that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Track List Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending feat. Lori Baldwin Isshak Fuseini and Muhammedu Abubakari praying

This episode features a conversation with artist Amina Gimba in 2021 at PerfocraZe International Artist Residency -p IAR in Kumasi, Ghana. Amina is a visual artist and freelance graphic designer from Northeast Nigeria who specialises in simplifying everyday experiences into provocative artistic pieces, using ink, colour pencils, crayons, tie and dye, and graphic design software. We spoke about the power of illustration to speak across language, the possibilities for silence in our everyday communication, the joy of making queer art, and the dream of working for free. S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. My hope is that these conversations contribute to dialogues which recognize all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. Amina Gimba’s website: www.aminagimba.com WHER : https://whernigeria.org/ PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com Gofundme Campaign for -p IAR: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81 HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/

This month features a conversation with Ghanaian painter and performer Onsoh Edward. Onsoh calls himself a plethora because of his indecisive multidisciplinary artistic attitude. He is known for photography, videography, performance, painting and sculpture. We speak about discrimination against people wearing dreadlocks, the differences between painting for money and painting for therapy, how he explores his indigenous roots through painting, and his most recent performance works as activism. Onsoh Studio Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onsoh_studio/ Onsoh Studio Website: https://onsoh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_8.html?m=1 Toile Backdrops: https://www.instagram.com/toile_backdrops/ PerfocraZe International www.crazinistartist.com Gofund me campaign for perforcraZe international: https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar?qid=cedd48679846198a99f2d784f362af81 HYENAZ Reading Group: https://www.hyenaz.com/art-and-extractivism-reading-group/ S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This episode features a conversation with Hiroko Tsuchimoto, a Japanese-born, Stockholm-based artist caring about and working with humans and more-than-human entities. Over the past ten years, she has been producing performances with audience participation both on stage and in public spaces, yet her interest is currently shifting from front-stage to rehearsals and behind-the-scenes, from egology to ecology, from production-oriented to research-based, and from watering houseplants to touching soil. more information on Hiroko: https://www.hirokotsuchimoto.info/ PerfocraZe International Artist Residency www.crazinistartist.com S.W.E.A.T. Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics. SWEAT is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-a-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies.

This episode features a conversation with Mawuenya Amudzi from 2021. Mawuenya Amudzi (b. 1992) is a Ghanaian artist, administrator for perfocraZe International Artist Residency, Residency Manager at Osramba studio living and working in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana. His works explore the idea of existentialism and material aspects of objects. He works with disused materials (cathode ray tube television set and computer monitors and fabrics) repurposing them into new “alternative” lives. Amudzi has participated in group exhibitions including Orderly Disorderly organized by blaxTARLINES KUMASI in Accra-Ghana, the inaugural Lagos Biennial dubbed Living on the Edge, Spectacles Speculations, memory and amnesia and Chale Wote festival. https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar https://www.instagram.com/mawuenya_amudzi/ https://www.facebook.com/mawuenya.amudzi https://www.instagram.com/blaxtarlines/ S.W.E.A.T. Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics. SWEAT is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-a-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies.

This episode is with Va Bene Elikem Fiatsi, also know as crazinisT artisT, the founder of perfocraZe International Artists Residency (pIAR). Va Bene's pronoun is sHit- she he it. sHit is a multidisciplinary “artivist." Through ritual, performance, and installation sHit employs sHits own gender fluid body as a thought-provoking tool to confront issues such as disenfranchisement, social justice, violence, objectification, internalized oppression, anti blackness, gender, queerness, sexual stigma and its consequences for marginalized groups or individuals. https://www.crazinistartist.com/ https://www.gofundme.com/f/xx48d3-save-piar Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics. SWEAT is a series of conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual and sexualized body at work—where work is broadly defined as the labour of survival, the labour of care, creativity, and capital-a-Art. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? My hope is that these conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring in common space: as sexualized bodies, as working bodies, as artistic bodies and as performative bodies.