#curated & co-programed by me

[sunset-a-story]

Character Profile: Fredericka del Sol

This week's profile is Fredericka! She's the Second of the Neptune department and in charge of Neptune's Reintegration division--which is essentially SolCorp's incarceration/re-programming wing where they reform Icarus (Sol agents who have committed crimes against Sol). It's really not wise to piss off Sol.

Freddie excerpt below the transcript!

Transcript of text

Fredericka del Sol (a.k.a. Freddie) (She/Her/Hers) Age: 35 Height: 5'6" Knack: Light Manipulator Affiliation: SolCorp Department: Neptune

Big 3: Sun=Scorpio, Moon=Taurus, Rising=Capricorn

Hobbies:

Running

Killing office plants by accident

Time at the beach

Favorites:

Color: Black

Music: Portugal. The Man; PJ Harvey

Food: Breakfast burritos

Drink: Scotch

TV: True Crime

Movie: Ten Things I Hate About You (but she doesn't want you to know how much she likes it)

Fun Facts:

Neptune's Second in command and head of Reintegration

Ambitious

Efficient

Carefully cultivated RBF

Curates her personality to radiate cold intimidation but is also a very caring friend

Will not take your shit

Fox's drinking buddy

Still very capable of fieldwork, but doesn't miss the uniform

Should really be the head of Neptune

Best friends with Penn

(Icy stare-down) (Comfy clothes for hard work)

Freddie Snippet!

(This is actually from one of my favorite scenes in the whole damn thing.)

Fredericka climbed up on the stool as Penn raised a hand to catch the bartender’s attention. “A whiskey and coke, and one plain coke, please,” he called. He sat next to Fredericka. “Why did you just order me a whiskey and coke?” she asked him, truly offended. She didn’t drink regularly, but he damn well knew her better than that. “You’re not thirsty?” She didn’t respond. He was too clean cut and sharp to pull off playing dumb. Relenting, he gave her his kindest smile. “Because if you go as hard as you want to, I’m going to have to carry you home in an hour.” The bartender handed them their drinks and Freddie sipped it with what she hoped was an impressive level of visible spite. “What if an hour is all I can stand of you?” “I think you’ll make it.” He glanced around the noisy bar. Penn still did field work, so he hadn’t lost the instinct to be constantly alert. She didn’t really miss it. “Thanks for taking me for drinks even though you don’t drink.” Fredericka didn’t say thanks or sorry for nothing. It didn’t come easy to her. Penn held up his glass. “Hey, I’m drinking.” She rolled her eyes.

Sunset taglist. Please comment to +/- I try to keep it to character profiles, release updates, and large excerpts. @words-after-midnight @thathaunteddoll @chayscribbles  @elizaellwrites @theimperiumchronicles @thatndginger @clairelsonao3 @writeintrees @hon3yquill @scribe-of-stories @kahvilahuhut @stuffaboutwriting @iced-ginger-tea

As always, art is by my partner and co-writer.

[peardian]

Have you seen my latest animation yet, "Raymond's New (Cat) Groove"? I put a lot of details into it, so I will be posting some of them here!

The first thing I want to show is the texture I used for Raymond's laptop screen in the opening zoom. I put a lot of work into this! Everything visible here was carefully curated to shoutout some of my favorite creators, games, websites, and programs. I even edited the YouTube thumbnails to fit in the Animal Crossing universe!

The first two thumbnails took a few hours to make on their own, while the last two were just quick touch-ups. I rarely paint like this, so it was a fun little exercise. The bunny and cat use designs made by fans of the respective channels, while the others are my own ideas.

Here are all of the videos and channels featured in the image, in case you want to check any out yourself! In order of appearance:

Searching for Snowy SWEET Puppy Treats!! 🦠🐶 SCIENCE of Wobbledogs!! • #10 by Seri! Pixel Biologist!

No one's around to help. by JerryTerry

Animal Crossing but it's ruined by Failboat

みっちりねこマーチ - MitchiriNeko March - Cute cat characters in a marching band! by Mitchiri MitchiriNeko

RUSH "E"eveelutions ON DRUMS! by The8BitDrummer

lil gator game by Berd

Cat Spin by me!

Chicory: A Colorful Tale - #1 - Co-Op Coloring Book! by PlayFrame

The Definitive Mimi Outfit Tier List by Fatguy703

[queermtl]

QUEER MTL THINGS TO DO: August 2023

August doesn’t mean the end of the summer in Montréal. Here, the streets are full of queer joy as Pride (or Fierté as we call it here) takes over the city! This month, Montréal is stuffed to the brim with events, parties and unique experiences painted in all the colours of the LGBTQ+ rainbow. From drag to community, circuit to underground, here’s some of our picks for the best LGBTQ+ things to do in the city. For further announcements, follow QueerMTL on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr! Got an event coming up? DM it our way!

EVENT OF THE MONTH:

🏳️‍🌈 This month, there’s so much to do we couldn’t narrow it down to just one! Montréal’s biggest annual celebration Fierté Montréal / Montréal Pride returns August 3 to 13, 2023, with a packed schedule of events, exhibitions and parties that’s sure to be one for the record books. We’ve pulled out some of our top tips throughout the guide below, but the full schedule can be found on Fierté’s website here. Running later in the month, the volunteer-driven Pervers/cité brings the Underside of Pride into the light with community-driven activities ranging from back alley parties to workshops focusing on BIPOC, trans, non-gender conforming and queer experiences. Keep tabs on their social media platforms for their evolving schedule.

EVENTS

✊The Archives gaies du Québec hosts The Aesthetic Activism of ACT UP Montréal: a history in photos and posters from June 13-August 13, 2023, spotlighting an important piece of both HIV/AIDS and Montréal’s activist history. The co-curators will be in attendance on Community Day, Saturday, August 12, 2023 to discuss the items on display in both French and English.

✨ Bijuriya and Emmötional Damage host Slaysians on Wednesday, August 2, 2023 at Cabaret Mado, featuring performances from Lia Jasmine, Joy Rider, Suri Racha, CC Channel, Komodo, Manny, Kajol and Rico Love.

✍️ HommeHomo brings Drink & Draw back to Bar Le Cocktail on Wednesday, August 2, Wednesday, August 16, and Wednesday, August 30, 2023, featuring live models and drink specials. 

✨ The official Opening Ceremony of Pride Montréal held at Jardins Gamelin on Thursday, August 3, 2023 features Cercle Indigiqueer, Kaniehke’haka elder Tealey Ka’senni:saks Normandin, Nina Segalowitz & Sierra Segalowitz-Clabaux, Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo & Marshall Kahente Diabo, Moe Clark & Weather Beings and a DJ set from LaFHomme.

🎥 Drag king extraordinaire Charli Deville presents A Night at the Movies: Fantasy Edition at the Wiggle Room on Thursday, August 3, 2023 with Lulu les Belles Mirettes, Enshantay, Charli Deville, Gigi Marx and Just Horny. 

🍑 Blending burlesque, comedy, gogo and pole dancing, Peach Club kicks off Pride at Café Cléopatra on Thursday, August 3, 2023 with appearances from Tranna Wintour, Zach Poitras, Lucy Gervais and Rachelle Elie.

📚 The Violet Hour presents In translation, a special edition of their monthly queer literary series at Stock Bar on Thursday, August 3, 2023 featuring readings in English and French from books available in both languages, featuring Jonathan Bécotte, Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, D.M. Bradford, Nicholas Dawson, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch and more.

😆 Hosted by Chiquita Mére and Sami Landri, ME JOKE-TU? brings a batch of queer comedians to the stage of Le National for a night of fun and laughs on Thursday, August 3, 2023. 

🇮🇹 The Violet Hour co-presents the exhibition Unveiling the Queer Italian-Canadian Experience, a collaboration between photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo and poet Liana Cusmano at Casa d’Italia from August 3 to 20, 2023. 

🎥 The Image+Nation LGBTQ2SQUEER Film Festival presents a special program of shorts entitled 11 Revendications=11 Court-Métrages for Pride online from August 3 to 13, 2023. 

🏳️‍⚧️ The Trans+Archive presents Our existence in South America through the decades online throughout Pride, August 3 to 13, 2023. 

🏳️‍⚧️ The TransFormative Day of Justice brings a line-up of panels and workshops to the Centre communautaire LGBTQ+ de Montréal on Friday, August 4, 2023, creating space for trans/feminist discourses and reflections. Find further information here.

🏳️‍⚧️ The Them Fatale cabaret shines a spotlight on gender non-conforming trans and non-binary cabaret artists including Gay Jesus, Jake DuPree and Nox Falls under the guidance of Rosie Bourgeoisie on Friday, August 4, 2023 at Le National.

🐶 Montréal’s puppy community comes together for the Pup Montréal 2023 Contest, taking place from August 4 to 7, 2023 at Bar Le Stud, aiming to crown the genderless title of Pup Montréal 2023. 

🎤 XOXO presents a roster of some of Montréal’s top up and coming talent including Chivengi, Kinkead, hadaxxah, SCARY and G.Mako takes the stage at Jardins Gamelin on Friday, August 4, 2023.

🏳️‍🌈 Support 2sLGBTQ+ artists and artisans at PRIDE Market hosted by MFF and L’Euguélionne at L’Euguélionne bookstore on Saturday, August 5, 2023. 

✊ Feeling alternapride? Check out Slag Pride at Bar Le Ritz PDB on Saturday, August 5, 2023. 

🏳️‍⚧️ The Trans March is one of August’s most important events, starting from Dorchester Square on Saturday, August 5, 2023 at 2:30 PM. March in solidarity with under this year’s theme Because Our Joy is Priceless and don’t miss the Trans Community Party gathering in Jardins Gamelin which follows.

🏳️‍🌈 To be a Lesbian and …: Inclusive Perspectives on Lesbianism at the Hyatt Place Montréal offers an open and respectful place to discuss lesbian experiences and diversity on Saturday, August 5, 2023. 

🏳️‍🌈 Stella hosts The Criminalization of Sex Work and the Daily Life of 2SLGBTQIA+ Sex Workers at the Hyatt Place Montréal aims for exchange and solidarity between community and sex workers on Saturday, August 5, 2023. Running concurrently, the Photo/Voice Project: Sex Work presented by RÉZO and Julie Deslandes Leduc compiles local sex work experiences. 

🏳️‍🌈 Labour Pride: Past, Present and Future. What Our Unions Have Done For Us explores labour unions’ role in working for recognition and advancement of LGBTQ+ people’s rights. At Hyatt Place Montréal on Saturday, August 5, 2023. 

👠 Montréal’s ballroom community comes together for A Family Affair Kiki Ball at Le Club Soda on Saturday, August 5, 2023, inspired by family representations in movies and television shows. 

🎤 If you’ve ever asked what could possibly make karaoke even better, the popular Bareoke: Strip Karaoke at Café Cléopatra on Saturday, August 5 and Saturday, August 19, 2023 is your answer!

👑 Misty Waterfalls pulls double duty on Sunday, August 6, 2023 with Le Brunch aux Folles at 13h00 and Le Souper aux Folles at 17:00, both featuring Petula Claque and Lana Dalida at Bar Social Verdun.

😆 A Very Pretentious Comedy Show #7 features Tranna Wintour, Clara Olshansky, Estelle Davis, Walter Lyng and others at Café La ligne verte on Sunday, August 6, 2023. 

📚 Literary Pride presents War of 2SLGBTQ+ Words at Théâtre La Comédie de Montréal on Monday, August 7, 2023 in which four panelists defend a literary work written by a 2SLGBTQIA author in front of a live audience, with one work eliminated every 20 minutes until only one book remains. The following evening, Glitter-ati! hosted by Barbada will present four emerging authors and their work on-stage. On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 they’ll host Diversity Spelled Out, Transpoetry / An Evening of Poetry on Thursday, August 10, 2023, and an Outdoor Book Fair on Friday, August 11, 2023.  Before each event, the Safer Literary Space creates room for authors and writers who cannot or do not want to be public about their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

😆 Very Pretentious Comedy presents a Queer Comedy Night at The Diving Bell Social Club on Monday, August 7, 2023 featuring Clara Olshansky, Eve Parker Finley and more!

💜 The Transmasc Choir of Montréal hosts the Chosen Family Conference at Hyatt Place Montréal on Tuesday, August 8, 2023 including live Q&A and resources. 

🎶 Discover a world of new talents at ImmiX, presented by ICI Musique on Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at Esplanade du Parc olympique featuring Blxck Cxsper, Cassa, Coco Belleveau, Edith Butler, Jade Above, Joe Bocan, Kanen, Klô Pelgag, Lumière, Naomi, River and Samuele. 

✍️ Join Queer Bodies for Life Drawing Community  featuring live models at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Wednesday, August 9 and Friday, August 11, 2023. 

🎶 The 14-piece chamber pop ensemble the Queer Songbook Orchestra brings their heartbreakingly gorgeous selves to the Esplanade du Parc olympique featuring Safia Nolin and Martha Wainwright on Wednesday, August 9, 2023.

🕹 Gaymers gather at Brouillon café-buvette for Remous vol. 2: Pride x Pixel for a night of gaming, music and dancing on Wednesday, August 9, 2023. 

🧺 The Québec Lesbian Network hosts the 3rd edition of the Lesbian BBQ on the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Thursday, August 10, 2023, featuring the DJs and artists of FeminiX (including JU!CE, Narcisse, Barbara Butch and BLK PRL) and the KING POUR A DAY: Drag King Performing Art Workshops. 

🐶 Hosted by Pet Play Québec, Meet the Kink Collective promotes visibility and education of the fetish world on Thursday, August 10 to 11, 2023 at the Esplanade du Parc olympique. 

✨ Celebrating Our Spirits marks a day of presentations around Two-Spirit, Indigenous LGBTQ+ and Indigiqueer identities, featuring Tealey Ka’senni:saks Normandin, Scott Wabano, Annie Pullen Sansfaçon, Jo-Marie Einish and John Sylliboy at Hyatt Place Montréal on Friday, August 11, 2023. 

🏳️‍🌈 Embrace Community Days on Friday, August 11 and Saturday, August 12, 2023 in Montréal’s Village neighbourhood, when organizations and businesses active in the LGBTQ+ community take to the streets with booths and activities down Sainte Catherine Street. 

🎶 DistinXion brings together a varied group of artists sure to leave an indelible impression including Idman, Vivek Shraya, Time Simone, Nakhane and Mýa at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Friday, August 11, 2023. 

🎶 Celebrate BIPOC 2SLGBTQIA+ performers at Xcellence, featuring DJs, musicians and unmissable performers including TEYKIRSI, Honeydrip, pony, A$H BANKS and San Farafina at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Friday, August 11, 2023. 

🎶 Fugues magazine presents SuXession at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Saturday, August 12, 2023 with a full lineup of rising stars of Montréal’s queer underground scene including Chris Cool, Artin Avaznia, Miss Chris Marlot, Mossy Mugler, Ms. Boogie, Myst Milano, sam blake, Sisi Superstar and Syana. 

👠 Mama Cuarta Mulan curates QUILT-ED, a Kiki Ball—A celebration of ACCM’s 35th anniversary inspired by the iconic AIDS quilt at Cabaret Lion d’Or on Saturday, August 12, 2023. 

🎤 Miss Meow Productions presents the Lana Del Rey Burlesque featuring Roxy Torpedo, Avecti Cutthroat, Honey Lustre, Little Galaxia, Rosie Bourgeoisie and Zyra Lee Vanity at Café Cléopatra on Saturday, August 12, 2023. 

🥞 Native Montréal is hosting a Native Montréal Pride Brunch for all Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ community members before the Pride Parade on Sunday, August 13, 2023. 

🏳️‍🌈 The Pride Parade winds down Boulevard René-Lévesque on Sunday, August 13, 2023. You won’t want to miss the moment of silence in acknowledgment at 2:30 PM of those lost to AIDS, lesbophobia, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, as well as a time to commemorate the lives of missing or murdered Indigenous women, girls, children and Two-Spirit or LGBTQIA+ people, during which you can hear a pin drop in downtown Montréal. 

🎥 REEL GAY hosts a screening of Hedwig and the Angry Inch with host Mary Fagdalene at The Diving Bell Social Club on Tuesday, August 15, 2023.

👠 Twice a month on every second Tuesday, Bring It! hosts an OTA night of ballroom and vogue with commentator and DJ. Follow their Instagram for dates and details.

🤔 Every Wednesday, Bar Champs hosts Wednesday Trivia Night at Champs with Quiz Master Brian. 

🎾 Throughout the month, Tennis Lambda hosts LIGUE DE DIMANCHE outdoor tennis on the courts at Parc Louis-Riel. Check Eventbrite for full dates and details. 

🚲 Montréal Queer Bike Polo meets on Thursdays! Find details and directions on their Instagram. 

🏐 Les Ratons-Chasseurs (Montréal’s LGBTA dodgeball group) holds regular events. Keep an eye on their Facebook for upcoming opportunities to join in and play. 

🤠 The long-running Club Bolo offers open country music dance classes every Friday evening at the Association sportive et communautaire du Centre-Sud. Find more details at their website. 

🕹Montréal Gaymers hosts regular gatherings including board game nights and gaming gatherings. Check their Facebook for what’s next!

🎤 Most Tuesdays, check out Stand Up St. Henri Open Mic at Impro Montréal, focusing on women, non-binary, queer and allied comedians.

🏃🏾Join the Out-Run run and workout club for people relating to the queer / sapphic experience. Details on their Instagram!

💃 Tango/Salsa Queer’s continue, with Salsa Queer on Saturdays from 13:30-14:30 and Tango (beginners/intermediate) on Saturdays at 12:00-13:30. Contact tango.queer@hotmail.com or call +1 (438) 930-8529 for prices and signup information.

🐦 Bird lovers should keep their eye on Queer Birders' regularly scheduled birdwatching events and excursions. Join the Facebook group and get those binoculars at the ready. 

PARTIES 🥳 Queer-pop party extraordinaire Glitterbomb takes to Jardins Gamelin on Thursday, August 3, 2023 for their special Pride edition, featuring DJ sets from Awwful and DJ Jeffany and live performances from Big Sissy, Maryze & Sam Blake, Aizysse Baga, Jaqq Strapp and others!

🥳 Ellelui presents HEATED, a not-to-be-missed evening for lesbian, queer and trans partiers at Le Club Soda on Friday, August 4, 2023, featuring performances from Pu$$yrap, Zepkin$, Ms. Baby, A$h Banks and Litney Worldwide. 

🥳 The DJs behind Balls Deep Disco and West End Gays join forces at Pleasure Dome at the Société des arts technologiques’ La Satosphère on Friday, August 4, 2023 with a night of classic queer anthems.

🥳 Jhalak Montréal and the South Asian Pride Collective present CHUTNEY: A South Asian Cabaret & Pride Party on Saturday, August 5, 2023 at Cabaret Lion d’Or. Post-showcase, the night transforms into a dance party with food and henna artists! 

🥳 Promising the ultimate 360 club kid experience, Unikorn’s Pride edition on Saturday, August 5, 2023 at the SAT Satosphere brings DJs Sonikku and That Kid together for a night of projections, rave and guaranteed euphoria. 

🥳 Blush celebrates their fourth anniversary at Jardins Gamelin on Sunday, August 6, 2023 with a night of dance and union for queer women and gender-nonconforming people featuring DJs Grapes, G L O W S I, La Niña Kiwi and Pituca Putica.

🥳 Barbada will get the crowds dancing with a DJ set at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Wednesday, August 9, 2023. 

🥳 LuvHaus presents LuvHaus Édition Fierté on Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at Blockhaus in Hochelaga.

🥳 Spend the day partying by the poolside at La Piscine on Saturday, August 12, 2023 at Club LaCité.

🥳 Studio ZX shows off some of Montréal’s most creative nightclub figures with Club Kids on Wednesday, August 9 and again on Sunday, August 13, 2023 at the Esplanade du Parc olympique.

🥳 Be plastic and fantastic, pink and proud at The Pink Airline with DJ Kev J on Thursday, August 10, 2023 at Newspeak. First 50 costumes get a free drink!

🥳 The party continues at After-Xcellence in SAT’s Dôme with dance party sets from DJ Karaba, Pierre Kwenders and Kid Crayola on Friday, August 11, 2023. 

🥳 MPU: Loud & Proud turns up the queer at Le Belmont on Friday, August 11, 2023, featuring appearances from Barbada, Kimmy Couture, Lady Boom Boom, Denim and DJ Pøptrt alongside DJs Fantastik and Jeffany.

🥳 The circuit takes over Bain Mathieu on Friday, August 11, 2023 when Locker Room kicks off featuring DJs Danny Verde, Leo Blanco and adult film performer Drew Dixon.

🥳 Majlisna presents Mubaadarat, a gathering of LGBTQ+ people from Arabic-speaking regions. Bring outfits and make-up and meet in the QTBIPOC Safer Space at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Saturday, August 12, 2023. 

🥳 Highlighting Montréal’s lesbian / sapphic and BIPOC talent communities, Sweet Like Honey hosts its Edition Fierté at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Saturday, August 12, 2023 with special appearances from Marlyne, MS. BABY and DJ Lax.

🥳 Queen&Queer presents their dance party for queer women at SAT’s La Satosphère on Saturday, August 12, 2023 with DJs Ticky Ty, DJ Sam and DJ AQ. 

🥳 Discoõ returns on Saturday, August 12, 2023 at the SAT featuring DJ sets from Argentina’s Ms Nina, Litney, Luisa, Empress, Jerico and Jashim.  

🥳 Distrct events presents Inferno featuring Henrique Viana, Sagi Kariv, Alain Jackinsky, Adriana the Bombshell, Paskal Daze and Cindel at Telus on Saturday, August 12, 2023 from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am!

🥳 Following the parade, the Esplanade du Parc olympique morphs into the world’s biggest dance floor for the closing T-Dance, featuring DJ K.Nox, DJ TDon and Kampire on Sunday, August 13, 2023. Up-and-coming Montréaler RÊVE will cap the festivities with a closing performance.

🥳 THIRSTY brings its closing party to Bain Mathieu on Sunday, August 13, 2023, with DJs Andrei Stan, Diskommander, K.Nox and D’Jimi.

🥳 The Afropride AfterParty fills Club Sky with afrobeats and Caribbean music from DJ Buhbuhlo, Maddy Phillips, DJ Jayson, DJ Blaster and DJ Kid on Sunday, August 13, 2023. 

DRAG

👑 Rainbow presents Le Bingo Show, dedicated to everyone’s favourite numbers and luck game, at Cabaret Mado on Thursday, August 3, 2023.

👑 The Pride Party with Barbara and friends takes over Le National on Saturday, August 5, 2023, including musical, drag and dance performances. Attendees are requested to wear their most colourful costumes for a surprise group activity to close the night. 

👑 Michel Dorion hosts the night of comedy Les succès oubliés at Bar Le Cocktail on Sunday, August 6, 2023, featuring Jean-Marc Reid, Chibouki and Érica. 

👑 Rawxy & cie brings local favourites Kiara, Kelly Torielli and Jessie Précieuse to the stage of Cabaret Mado on Monday, August 7, 2023. 

👑 A popular annual favourite, The High Heels Obstacle Race (on Sainte Catherine Street East, between Alexandre DeSève and de Champlain streets) sees Village businesses and community organizations competing in an obstacle course in the highest of heels on Monday, August 7, 2023. 

👑 A match made in queer heaven, Drag’Opéra brings together three opera singers and three drag artists presenting new renditions of opera and musical theatre at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Wednesday, August 9, 2023. 

👑 Drag goes well with dinner, and the Drag’N’Burger Show featuring Milady Nicole, Eva Moist, Mister Boogie and Lady Boom Boom at Notre-Bœuf-de-Grâce on Wednesday, August 9, 2023 is a sure match in heaven.

👑 Master of diva impersonation Jimmy Moore brings a special pride edition of Jimmy Moore personnifie Madonna: The Blond Ambition Tour to Cabaret Mado on Wednesday, August 9, 2023 and again on Saturday, August 19, 2023. 

👑 One of the biggest nights of the Pride calendar, Drag Superstars at Esplanade du Parc olympique on Thursday, August 10, 2023 includes performances from Rita Baga, Alexis Mateo, Aquaria, Drag Couenne, Envy Peru, Gisèle Lullaby, Heaven Genderfck, Heidi N Closet, Icesis Couture, Jimbo, Johnny Jones, Kerri Colby, Lady Boom Boom, Landon Cider, Marcia Marcia Marcia, Océane Aqua-Black, Vanessa van Cartier, Vanity Milan, Will Charmer and Yvie Oddly.

👑 Cabaret Mado hosts the Cabaret Queer on Thursday, August 10, 2023, featuring performances from Tracy Trash,Frigid, Scott Fordham, Miami Minx, Fabien L’amour, Bobépine and others. 

👑 Like breakfast? Into drag? You’ll love the Pride Anthem Drag Brunch with Lady Boom Boom, Kiara and Kimmy Couture on Saturday, August 12, 2023 at Resto du Village. And there’s three seatings to meet demand!

👑 Celebrate local drag with MajestiX at the Esplanade du Parc olympique on Saturday, August 12, 2023 hosted by Rock Bière and RV Metal and featuring Bambi Dextrous, BiG SiSSY, Bijuriya, Bobépine, Clay Thorris, Elle Dare, Fabien L’Amour, Foxy Lexxi Brown, HercuSleaze & The Mythos Ensemble, Jessie Précieuse, Johnny Jones, Kitty Glitter, Little Star & Mike Oxlong, Manny, Marla Deer, Miss Dupré Latour, Moxxi Hollow, Peggy Sue, Pétula Claque, Rainbow, Tracy Trash and Walter Ego. 

👑 Jimmy Moore pays on-point tribute to Taylor Swift with two Gay Pride editions of his Jimmy Moore personnifie Taylor Swift on Saturday, August 12, 2023 and Sunday, August 13, 2023 at Cabaret Mado. 

👑 Montréal’s premiere drag king night ManSpread returns for its Pride Edition on Saturday, August 19 at Bar le Cocktail on Saturday, August 19, 2023, featuring Slick Hardwood, Yikes Macaroni, Zyra Lee Vanity, Mr./Mrs. Sauga and Charli Deville. 

👑 Our favourite evil divas come to life on Saturday, August 26, 2023 when Disney Villains takes over the stage at Bar Le Cocktail. 

👑 A night of drag and striptease, Les Folies Draglesques hosted by Miami Minx brings Cervena Fox, Gigi Georgette, Heaven Genderfck and others to Cabaret Mado on Thursday, August 17, 2023.

👑 Celebrate two of Montréal’s hardest working queens at the Barbada & Kitana Birthday Bash at Cabaret Mado on Thursday, August 24, 2023. Happy birthday, ladies!

👑 Jimmy Moore continues to work, work, work, work, work it with Jimmy Moore personnifie Rihanna at Cabaret Mado on Saturday, August 26, 2023.

👑 On Friday and Saturday nights, the legendary Mado Lamotte hosts Mado Reçoit at her namesake club, Cabaret Mado. Each week, she shares the stage with a hand-picked roster of queens.

👑 Every Tuesday, Canada’s Drag Race season 3 winner Gisèle Lullaby hosts Full Gisèle at Cabaret Mado. Tickets and schedule at Cabaret Mado’s website.

👑 Bar Le Cocktail’s regular weekly events include Butterfly de nuit with Miss Butterfly every Thursday, Vendredi Fou with Michel Dorion on Fridays, Drôles de Drags with a rotating cast of queens on Saturdays and Dimanche Show with Michel Dorion on Sundays.

👑 Every Monday at the Diving Bell Social Club, Bambi Dextrous hosts Trivia Night! Be sure to  book your team table in advance.

👑 Every Thursday at Complexe Sky, check out the Jimmy Moore Drag Show at 10 PM, sure to feature eye-popping costume changes and dance moves that don’t quit. Free with club admission. 

👑 Sunday nights brings the amazingly hilarious Tracy Trash’s Le Tracy Show to Cabaret Mado.

[vulpiano]

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From the Video Hook-Ups Archive:

Interview with Bob Bicknell-Knight

Bob Bicknell-Knight is an artist and curator based in London. He is the director of contemporary art platform isthisit? and co-founder of A217gallery.

Marilyn Roxie of VIDEO HOOK-UPS: What other curatorial platforms, online or off, inspired isthisit?

Bob Bicknell-Knight: There were a few spaces I was interested in and looked to before I launched isthisit?, particularly other digital galleries that showed me that this was an actual possibility. A few years ago I had a fairly naive sense of the internet and wasn’t even aware that online galleries existed. I remember looking at Chrystal Gallery, an online space that literally duplicated the white cube of the stereotypical gallery and Lawrence Lek’s Bonus Levels, particularly A Collective Tower. Made for Art Licks in 2013, this was essentially an artwork that transported 21 London based galleries into an interactive landscape. Still fairly close to simply duplicating the standard offline gallery setting, but that idea of interactivity really grabbed me. I was also seeing Delta Sorority’s online residency program unfold at the time, as well as generally looking at lots of websites that facilitate physical galleries too. In general though I think everything you see and do influences your practice and daily life in various ways, so it’s quite hard to pin these things down to specific inspirations.

VH: How have you found balancing your own personal art practice with curating online and off, and are there ways that these overlap?

BBK: I see everything that I do as one encompassing practice, if I were to split up these labels into different sections it would be impossible to navigate. So I see my curation as an extension of my art and vice versa which allows for a continuous overlap of ideas and interests. This is one of the reasons why I’ve inserted my own artwork into some of the exhibitions I’ve curated in the past, as they’re usually focused around ideas I’m currently interested and invested in. Obviously there are times where I’ll spend more time sending emails for my curation than making actual work, but I think that’s the same across the board these days. Artists have had to adapt and become their own promoters and gallerists, applying for funding and navigating that balance of actual art making with everything else that’s involved with the production of a new piece. So yes, everything overlaps and I think that’s an important way of keeping everything under control and manageable.

VH: What atmosphere and positive attributes do you think the format of an online exhibition lends to video that differs from the traditional physical gallery space with projections or darkened rooms? I have found that there is something intimidating particularly about people actually picking up the pair of headphones offered and listening to the audio accompanying a piece in a physical gallery space.

BBK: For me having a video work available to view in an online space is great. Being afforded the ability to actually spend time with a film, rather than continually worrying about the time or whether there’s a comfortable place to sit, is definitely a positive attribute of having access to video art on the internet. Watching a film in a gallery context can be a frustrating exercise sometimes, which usually translates to watching it when you get home on the internet, although there are many instances of the work being no-where to be found online; a slightly unexpected turn of events when every blockbuster film seems to have been pirated and streamed hundreds of thousands of times. I do understand the necessity for not having a video accessible online, digital editions, exclusivity, etc, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. Bearing this in mind however, when a video truly grabs you, is installed magnificently and hooked up to an incredible speaker system, truly drawing you in, it’s hard to say that it’s not the definitive watching experience.

I always think of a Jon Rafman installation; sinking into a ball pit or being trapped in a seemingly innocuous piece of office furniture. These are amazing experiences. It’s just not the same when you’re watching in bed, pausing every so often to chat to a roommate whilst simultaneously scrolling through your Facebook feed. It’s a balancing act.

In the hyper-connected world of today, constantly multi-tasking, I sometimes see an immersive video work as an excuse to simply relax into it, to put down your phone and just watch it. Who needs to check Instagram when a snake is swallowing itself in front of you? This is why VR interests me so much, you can no longer look away from the work, and it’s quite hard to take a selfie whilst consuming it.

VH: What do you see as the future of online gallery experiences, for isthisit? or more generally?

BBK: It’s unfortunate, but due to the lack of funding for the majority of online projects, isthisit? and many other spaces like it on the internet are all inherently doomed to fail, fading into the abyss where the domain name will eventually be allowed to expire. They are, and will continue to be, free cultural spaces that involve a lot of time and effort on the part of the unpaid organisers. Obviously that’s a very pessimistic point of view to have, but I feel like it’s an important aspect of these micro organisations that needs to be highlighted.

Bearing this in mind, I obviously hope to continue with isthisit? for many years to come, hopefully having a permanent physical space in the future to realise more experimental offline exhibitions, gaining sponsorships for the magazine and building a portfolio of digital artworks to sell on the shop side of the website. The increased affordability of technology like VR will definitely broaden what can be done on the internet with virtual gallery spaces, although right now there’s a widening hardware class divide that’s never going to be truly resolved. It’s a shame, but after undergoing online projects for a while, I’ve begun to realise that the internet isn’t as great as everyone wants you to think it is.

[luxurytravelcurator]

Magical morning walks along the grounds of Villa d’Este with Lago di Como as our view… BUOGIORMO !!! Lago di Como. Today private boat along the lake to explore further… Booking #VilladEste directly with me, my clients will enjoy a suite of #VIP Amenities such as and not limited to: Room upgrades + Early Check IN & Late Check OUT + Complimentary Breakfast + Food & Beverage and/or Spa Credits + Free WIFI among many others. #Italy for a week… #Milan to attend IGLTA’s Annual Convention representing @destinaretl and our exclusive portfolio w/ stay at Four Seasons Milan and Mandarin Oriental Milan. Followed by a relaxing 3-days in #LakeComo at the iconic Villa d’Este. Stay tuned for my next upcoming trips: Turkey ( DEC 9-15 ). Argentina ( DEC 23-JAN 17 2023)… and more, including 2022 FIFA Qatar World Cup Subscribe to my IG Chanel, for full access to exclusive content, curated tips and recommendations, unique experiences, vip amenities and benefits, plus much more. My mission is to transform Tourists into Travelers by experiencing unique travel experiences, moments and destinations worldwide. Luxury Travel Curator, Concierge, Blogger & Lifestyle Consultant. Over 28 years curating the world of Authentic and Sophisticated Travel, Hospitality & Lifestyle, one destination at the time. Member of the exclusive @VirtuosoLTD Luxury Network, #AmericanExpress Membership Rewards, Fine Hotels & Resorts and Pay with Points Programs. Luxury #TravelAdvisor. #Jetsetter #Globetrotter #BonVivant. Founder of @LGTNetwork Luxury #GayTravel Curator, member of @IGLTA. #Travel Hotel Restaurant & Airline reviews. Follow, read and share my travel experiences worldwide. #TravelAgent, #TravelBlogger, #WeddingPlanner #TravelBlog #LuxuryTravel #Luxury #Lifestyle #LuxuryTravelCurator #Concierge #Blogger #VirtuosoTravel #Italia #villadeste @villadestelakecomo @leadinghotelsoftheworld @lushexperiences #lagodicomo #lakecomo #cernobbio Luxury Travel Curator & Co Mobile & WhatsApp +1 (917) 754-5515 / Email info@carlosmelia.com / www.luxurytravelcuratorco.com (at Villa d'Este (Cernobbio)) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkVOanjjIYC/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[irvingbruhxiatel]

Brax and benny for the character ask game :)

Alright people, buckle up…

✫ - Unpopular headcanon I have about them

Brax: He raised the rest of the Doctor’s children, with Romana’s help, after The Doctor had to escape with Susan because of the Burn Edict. The kids call them mom and dad; sadly The Doctor’s children passed away during the first skirmishes of the Time War. This one is very personal, and niche to myself only tbh.

Benny: Her and Brax have matching ‘Best’ ‘Friends’ tattoos that they got during a drunken night out. They keep saying they’ll have them removed but secretly they love them. Benny is a drag king in her spare time, she has a double act with Brax who is a drag queen.

⇈ - A dream I had about them

Brax: I was in this large art studio, painting something… can’t remember what exactly. He walked in at one point and sat on one of the reading nooks in the windows to read his book. I incorporated him into the painting. Very fluffy dream tbh, woke up feeling stupidly smitten that day *self bonk*

Benny: I always have dreams of being Benny’s co-worker at The Collection, but where she is part of the Archaeology Department I’m part of the Art History department. We hang out to work together and go out drinking.

➷ - A potential fanfiction idea I have considered writing about with them involved

Brax: Richardson!Brax has his timeline collided with a Pike!Brax (my fancast of a fem!Brax is Rosamund Pike). Since they are both little time dwellers who can’t stay in their own timeline it was bound to happen eventually. They’re both stuck with each other and have to help the other find their way back.

Benny: Benny and an archaeologist girlfriend she had for years while she was on the run and pretending to be a professor herself. Eventually they part ways because there is more to the lover than we know/she lets on.

✎ - A drawing I have of them

Oldies but goldies.

Brax:

Benny: I made this one for @summer-field when I got my iPad and was messing around with drawing programs.

♨ - What food I associate them with

Brax: Expensive steak dinners and charcuterie boards, wine and Draconian brandy. Fresh pastries.

Benny: Waffles, trail mix, dark chocolate. Grain bowls.

☄ - What type of weather and season I associate them with

Brax: Rainy days on the cusp of the change between Autumn and Winter. Snowy midwinter days to stay inside.

Benny: Windy Autumn days when the air is cold and the leaves are falling. Fresh spring days, to go outside and read with the blooming flowers.

☻ - How they make me feel

Brax: Validated. I relate too much to him, on a deep, personal and almost spiritual level. I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself more in a character than in him. It’s actually because of Brax that I have been inspired to leave my career in law and politics behind. I'm starting my second degree in August; this time around in Art History, my true passion since I’ve been a kid. So this way I can eventually open up my own gallery/collection, or work as a curator in an art museum. Not to get narcissistic here, but he also makes me feel very smitten.

Benny: Warm and fuzzy. She brings an overwhelming sense of “I must protect her” and “I want to be her best friend” into my life. She is the scholar, adventurer and badass I’ve always wanted to be. If I live my life a little more fearlessly it’s because of asking myself ‘WWBD?’ and then do the exact opposite because Benny would probably just try to drink the problem away.

╬ - What I think their moral alignment is

Brax: Depends on the Brax tbh, but I mostly place him in Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good.

Benny: Lawful Good or Neutral Good. Chaotic Stupid as well.

Send me a character!

[jacobsclass]

 

Emily Sundblad, born in 1977 in Dalsjöfors, Sweden, currently resides and creates in New York. She received her BFA from Parsons the New School for Design in New York in 2003, before attending the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, which she completed in the spring of 2006. She also works as an artist, performer, curator, and co-founder of Reena Spaulings Fine Art. In her bodies of work, Sundblad weaves together references to advertisements, souvenirs, floral arrangements, and songs. Recent exhibitions of her work have been showcased at prestigious venues such as Galerie Neu in Berlin and House of Gaga in Mexico City.

Description of Sundblad's Work:

Sundblad's creations take viewers into a world where reality and imagination collide, causing an otherworldly feeling. Her compositions defy traditional spatial logic, having viewers explore dreamlike landscapes. One of the most striking aspects of her work is the use of florals, which give her pieces vibrancy and life. Additionally, Sundblad's manipulation of color combinations further enhances the atmosphere of her art, drawing the viewer's attention.

What Interests Me:

Personally, I'm fascinated by Sundblad's ability to create visual narratives that are different from conventional art. Her work challenges viewers to reconsider their perceptions of space and reality, offering a glimpse into an alternate universe. Furthermore, the use of everyday references like advertisements and souvenirs adds layers of complexity to her pieces, prompting reflection on themes such as nostalgia and childhood

Discussion Questions:

Sundblad frequently incorporates references to advertisements, souvenirs, and songs in her work. How does she use these elements to engage with broader societal themes, such as nostalgia or memory?

The use of florals and vivid color combinations is a signature aspect of Sundblad's artistry. How does she use these elements to evoke specific emotions or atmospheres within her pieces?

[3thurs]

Third Thursday events and exhibitions for March 21

The next Third Thursday — the monthly evening of art in Athens, Georgia — is scheduled for Thursday, March 21, from 6 to 9 p.m. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. This schedule and each venue’s location and hours of operation are available at 3thurs.org.

Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia

Yoga in the Galleries, 6 p.m. — This free yoga class surrounded by works of art in the galleries is led by instructors from Five Points Yoga and open to both beginner and experienced yogis. Sanitized mats are provided. Space is limited and spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis; tickets are available at the front desk starting at 5:15 p.m.

On view:

“Kei Ito: Staring at the Face of the Sun” — Photography that examines the intergenerational trauma of nuclear disaster and the possibilities of healing and reconciliation. 

“Richard Prince: Tell Me Everything” — Featuring artist Richard Prince’s most recent suite of works, based on the joke archives of influential 20th-century American comedian Milton Berle.

“Nancy Baker Cahill: Through Lines” — Baker Cahill’s first solo museum show expands upon her background in traditional media and redefines the possibilities of drawing in contemporary art through augmented reality.

“Decade of Tradition: Highlights from the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Collection” — Selections from Larry and Brenda Thompson’s gift of works by African American artists.

“Power and Piety in 17th-Century Spanish Art” — Works by premiere Spanish baroque painters such as Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Murillo, Pedro Orrente and others, on loan from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery.

Permanent Collection: A wide range of the museum’s permanent collection is always on view, featuring painting, sculpture, works on paper and decorative arts from the Renaissance to contemporary periods.

The museum’s days of operation are Tuesday – Sunday. Reserve a free ticket and see our policies at https://georgiamuseum.org/visit/.

ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art

ATHICA@675 Pulaski St., Suite 1200:

“Confluence 2: CCSD High School Student Pop-Up Exhibition” — High school student artists in the Clarke County School District; part of National Youth Art Month.

ATHICA@CINÉ Gallery:

“New Works by Christina Habibi” — Dynamic acrylic and oil paintings.

Lyndon House Arts Center

ARTWORK: Workshops for Artists and Creatives: Public Art & Art Grant Resources, 5:30 – 7 p.m. — The ARTWORK workshop series is presented in partnership with the Lyndon House Arts Center and Invest Athens (Athens-Clarke County Economic Development) and designed for Athens-based artists and creative professionals. The third workshop in the series will cover Public Art Resources, presented by Tatiana Veneruso. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for networking; the program will begin at 6 p.m.

On view:

“49th Juried Exhibition” — This year’s juror is Jen Sudul Edwards, chief curator and curator of contemporary art at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Soft Trap: A New Installation by Katie Ford” — Ford is the first artist to present work as part of a new annual series at the Arts Center using the lobby case as an installation space for a single work of art. Ford is a mixed-media artist and master of fine arts candidate at the University of Georgia. Since 2019 she has co-directed Reciprocal Works, a creative platform facilitating zine exchanges and workshops.

“Tell Me A Story: Works by Jasmine Best” — Best, a current master of fine arts candidate at UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art, uses her memories and manipulations of them to create dialogues about the Black female identity. She explores the folk story traditions of the Black South through tangible and traditional mediums such as fabric and yarn combined with digital sewing.

The Athenaeum

Closed for a private event.

The Classic Center

Classic 1: “Spotlight” — Featuring the work of three painters, William Ballard, Jaci Davis and Ella Hopkins. William Ballard is interested in color and its effects on our mood and perception, Jaci Davis' powerful portrait based works address identity and Ella Hopkins paints intriguing landscapes and interior spaces.

Classic 2: “The Fables” — Athens artist Kristin Roberts illustrates Aesop's Fables with detailed works that are both whimsical and dangerous.

tiny ATH gallery

“Lip Series by LeeAnn Peppers” — LeeAnn Peppers is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist and performer living and working in Athens, Georgia. Homebound, with employment dangling by a thread, she cut lips out of magazine ads, then gave them new bodies before turning them into an animated short. 

—

Third Thursday was established in 2012 to encourage attendance at Athens’ established art venues through coordination and co-promotion by the organizing entities. 

Contact: Michael Lachowski, Georgia Museum of Art, mlachow@uga.edu.

[aaroncutler]

Sessão Mutual Films: Nossa própria imagem, um espelho de beleza: Os filmes de Camille Billops e James Hatch [Mutual Films Session: Our Own Image, A Mirror of Beauty: The Films of Camille Billops and James Hatch]

March 11: The link above leads to Portuguese-language information about the 22nd edition of the Mutual Films Session, co-curated and organized by me and Mariana Shellard, whose screenings will take place between March 12th and 31st at the São Paulo-based unit of the Instituto Moreira Salles and on March 23rd and 30th at the newly opened screening room of the Instituto's unit in Poços de Caldas.

The event provides Brazil-based audiences with the country's first-ever retrospective of the films of Camille Billops (1933-2019) and James Hatch (1928-2020), a team of American artists and archivists that made brilliantly self-reflexive documentaries, several of which are focused on members of Billops's family, who come to represent different aspects of African-American life. The films investigate with profundity, wit, and humor an American condition of cracked interiors covered up by smooth surfaces, with the eternal hope of creating a less hypocritical and more open world.

The series's three programs will present newly digitized copies of all six of the films made by Billops and Hatch (who, among other things, founded the Hatch-Billops Collection, currently stored at Emory University and one of the largest extant archives devoted to African-American art and culture). Five of the films have been remastered in 2K, an initiative undertaken by their longtime distributor, the New York-based Third World Newsreel. The sixth - the couple's remarkable early portrait film of one of Billops's cousins called Suzanne, Suzanne - has been restored in 4K by the nonprofit entity IndieCollect.

The filmic works of Billops and Hatch received much positive feedback during the directors' lifetimes, but their reception has experienced a renaissance during the past few years thanks in good part to the availability of these new copies. Among critical texts that have recently been published, a piece by Yasmina Price written in conjunction with a streaming series of the couple's films on The Criterion Channel is particularly full. Contemporary researchers are fortunate to be able to have access to multiple interviews that Billops gave, including a long conversation from 1996 with bell hooks (included in hooks's book Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies, whose Brazilian edition was published late last year by Editora Elefante) and a 1992 talk with Ameena Meer for BOMB Magazine that we were fortunate to be able to translate into Portuguese for our website.

The series's opening screening in São Paulo on March 12th will include a public post-screening conversation about Billops and Hatch's films with Aline Motta, an important contemporary Brazilian artist whose multidisciplinary works contain points of resonance with the couples' projects. The series is dedicated to the memory of the German filmmaker and activist Renate Sami, and it could also easily be dedicated to the memory of Philip Shellard, a quiet and generous recently deceased cinephile whose accomplishments include being Mariana's father and a figure of unrelenting support.

[loneproductionssimonebennett]

1 en 1 is 1

Collaborate and co-create with diverse artists in 1en1is1. From abstract paintings to songwriting, it's about bridging cultures and embracing new perspectives. The selection, curated by Anne Verhoijsen & Jos Houwelingen, CBK Zuidoost, and the Sandberg Institute, pairs artists of different generations for collaborations. I was paired with the amazing Machteld Aardse. Join us at Arti et Amicitiae from May 17th to June 16th, 2024, with a special program for Amsterdam Art Week on June 1st." Me and Machteld will talk about the collaboration on 1st of June 2024

2:30pm. 1 and 1 is 1. Artist Duo Talks with Richtje Reinsma and Emily Kocken. Three artist duos in conversation about working together: what happened, did the collaboration come to fruition, did a work of art emerge?

Did you let go of your ego, did resistance grow? Never together again or forever? Participants: Maze de Boer and Jacob Grilli, Machteld Aardse and Simone Bennett Maikel Deekman and Paula Karklina.

[undrgrnd-nft]

SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR AND I DON'T FEEL ANY DIFFERENT

Written By NFTjoe Originally posted on UNDRGRND.IO

JANUARY 2ND, 2024

TL;DR: marketplace, DAO, token launch, venue, book, revenue sharing, gamified curation, incentivized engagement, soon.

I’ve been writing this post for over a year. 

The circumstances have changed but the sentiment is the same. 

This time last year I was set to launch the UNDRGRND Marketplace and begin onboarding artists featured in the publication. The day before the beta launch the developer decided he wanted to renegotiate the contract. The developer was from a previous relationship with my co-founders who gave me a job and handled the business side of UNDRGRND. I was not involved in the negotiations or project management of the site. I left the tech and business to them, they were my bosses, and they could handle it. The renegotiation devolved into legal recourse; lawyers were contacted but deemed too costly considering all the money that had already been put into the development of the site. 

So there we were on January 1, 2023, a publication, community, and gallery that I had spent two years developing and a marketplace that would never be seen by the public.  The beginning stages of the bear market were already showing. I assumed the bear market would be my time to shine: a new marketplace with gamified curation and incentivized engagement, supported by a publication and gallery, with the financial support of a DAO to purchase work.

It would have been exactly what we all needed. 

That’s my skill set. Many of my friends and followers have creative skill sets I’m in awe of, but my ability to see a need, and work to create a solution to fill that role, is how I fit here, with every talented individual.

I expected to be a life raft and found myself treading water alongside everyone else.

I began scrambling. I have bills and responsibilities like everyone else. I needed to find a way to keep this going while also preparing for the possibility it would end. I put aside writing, editing podcasts, social media posts, recruiting artists, and buying art. I began working on materials for accelerator programs, foundation applications, and grant requests. I made pitch deck after pitch deck, a business plan mapping out the next ten years, and submitted it, everywhere. 

One of the slides in a version of my pitch deck uses OpenSea as a metaphor. Many artists came to this space seeing the large sales numbers, total volumes, and market caps and thought it would lead to financial success. So many minted their first NFTs, tweeted, and waited, only to be met with a resounding thud of nothingness. 

I had the same experience submitting my deck and plans asking for funding. Nothing. 

From an early pitch deck circa March 2021

(If you’re reading this as an artist, musician, or creative and it sounds familiar, you’re in the right place).

I pitched to a few VCs, incubator programs, and foundations and felt close a few times, only to find more nothing and a lack of responses. 

My former bosses hustled and found success in other projects allowing them to continue their operations but it meant I lost what little support I had as it took their focus away from UNDRGRND. 

I was alone. 

I was stressed.

Depressed. 

I wasn’t sure if the thing I’d poured everything into would continue or if it would have to fade away into the background while I went back to teaching. So I took control of UNDRGRND and gave myself a year. 

So now I was in charge of everything which amounted to essentially nothing. 

I’ve been doing this for three years: building, writing, recruiting, searching (digging), planning, developing ideas, watching others succeed, and waiting for my time. 

But what do I have?

Experience? Knowledge? Passion? An Idea? 

Audience ≠ Community

Waiting on others does not work. Depending on higher-ups to do what is right for the community, for all of us, not just the top collectors or artists, does not work. I see influencers make millions while producing nothing, scammers suck money out of projects, and everyday people's true colors come out once they find success. How is this any different from the real world or web2?

Maybe that’s not fair though. Maybe that wasn’t their dream or why they came to crypto, web3, or whatever the fuck you want to call all of this. 

Why did I come here? I came for social change. The idea is that web3 promises a more equitable and sustainable future for those left behind by real-world elite one-percenters. The mentality that we were coming together as a group of individuals to begin to build better hooked me. For decades (centuries?) we’ve been kept out of the discussions with the decision makers of what better looks like. Or worse yet, we were included and they’re still not listening. 

Before the price speculation, the hype cycles, the influencers, the cliches, or the shill threads, crypto was a revolt, counterculture. Bitcoin was an underground movement in retaliation to the financial collapse of 2008.  Then DeFi promised the possibility of being your own bank. NFTs brought ownership to your creations.

So why have we brought the same broken web2 capitalistic models that many of us came to this space to reform?

It’s what is familiar. 

It’s how we survived in the past.

In one of my favorite essays, Brain Dead-Megaphone, George Saunders criticizes the state of media consumption and our focus on the loud, the hyperbolic and how individuals get sucked up in that machine, “A young friend who writes content for the news page of an online media giant, e-mails me: “I just wrote this news headline for my job: ‘Anna Nicole’s Lost Diary: “I Hate Sex.”’ If anyone wonders why Americans aren’t informed with real news it’s because of sell-out corporate goons like me who will do anything to never deliver a pizza again.”

Even those with good intentions fall prey to the same capitalistic ideals to ensure profitability, sustainability, and our basic survival.  We can say this is about the art, music, or the creative process all we want but the harsh reality is that it is also about the money. I’m not immune to this, I got roped into this because I thought I could make money writing. If we accept that truth then we will agree that the distribution of the wealth, the recognition, and the power remains unbalanced. 

I came into this space because I saw the opportunity for creatives to retain ownership of their art, and their creative spirit while finding financial freedom so that they could sustain themselves from their creations. I envisioned a world where appreciators, fans, and collectors could invest in unknowns to help support them and would be rewarded down the road when they become mainstream. I envisioned a sustainable, stable ecosystem where artists carved the path toward a more progressive equitable future. 

I thought this was how things could change.

I came to build bottom up.

But many say community when they mean audience. 

Bonfire of the Humanities

Art is a humanity. 

Whether we’re talking about visual art, music, written or spoken word, or film it all teaches us and communicates to others what it means to be human; why we’re here and why we’re alive. It’s about what we think and feel. So let's talk about that.

If we take the time to talk about this, to talk about what you create, the money will follow. There is value in humanity and the money attached to it simply acknowledges that value. 

The artist puts their humanity into their work. People acknowledge it by paying for it. You can’t give away your humanity for free. It comes at a cost. 

A part of you is given to that person when they buy your work. So let’s tell them what they are going to buy. Let’s tell them why it should matter to them. Why you have value. Why you’re willing to part with this piece of you. 

So why are so many of us willing to accept a pittance in return for that humanity? Why do so many of us beg to be seen as people of value to influencers, collectors, or gated communities? If the majority of us (and even the decision-makers for larger organizations) agree that community is what drives the value, why are we accepting the same old hierarchy of things?

We’re negotiating with our unintentional captors, hoping their humanity recognizes our own.

It’s familiar and we’re responsible for accepting it.

Web3 is supposed to be the technological solution to cultural and societal problems. Look at most white papers and there will be ideas of reformation, empowerment, and disruption. Many tech-oriented, buzzwordy, incubator programs look for “disruptors” when those disruptors simply replace and become our new captors. Uber disrupted transportation and became the same taxi service. Netflix disrupted film and cable industries to become the film and cable divisions run by the same producers and executives from the old guard. Spotify, Apple, Google, pick any industry and you will find upstarts that sought to change the dynamics at play only to eventually become exactly what they claim they sought to change.

We know that really good art can also become very valuable in the future…if the right people see it and say the right things about it. How many artists, bands, or movies would be loved if only more people knew they existed? If true art is honest then we deserve to be honest with ourselves.  How the art market is currently structured does not benefit us all. Rather than democratizing the art market, we’ve recreated the same hierarchy system of galleries and museums. The intended disruption settles into familiar old ways.

It’s not. We’re doing the same thing the traditional art market has done for years.

Why does this happen? The answer to all your questions is money. 

How do you disrupt archaic oppressive socio-economic norms for good? 

How do you avoid becoming what you seek to destroy?

Sell-Out, With Me

Throughout any submission process for funding, you have to answer what your project is, what it does, and what it means for the audience. The most common question is, What Problem Are You Fixing? When you hear the word underground regarding art, music, or film, odds are you understand what that means. Underground is a ubiquitous term used throughout our existence.  

OK fine, here’s a definition of underground:

(often initial capital letter) a movement or group existing outside the establishment and usually reflecting unorthodox, avant-garde, or radical views.

I see UNDRGRND as a revolt against the greed and current economic model of the creative industries, the same way the mp3 and Napster took down a broken record industry model. Lately, it seems more and more people are beginning to understand who holds the power.

The other night I saw a Tom Hanks interview discussing the role film and artists play in social change. So how radical are my views if Tom Hanks agrees with me? Especially when the cryptocurrency industry was founded on those radical views.

Pronoia is the belief the universe is conspiring for your benefit. This felt like that and why I ran to the tv to take a picture with my phone like a grandpa.

Maybe the definition of underground needs an update. Maybe it means something as simple as genuine. Genuine creation. Genuine appreciation. Genuine movement towards change.

Every artist is an underground artist until they’re not.

Bitcoin started as an underground movement and now we’re on the cusp of a Bitcoin ETF. Mainstream adoption is inevitable and necessary. Usually, when something becomes mainstream, people like you, but especially curmudgeons like me, will feel it lost something. Whether you call that something lost edge, integrity, or authenticity it all boils down to that dreaded label: selling out.

What if you didn’t have to sell out though?

Why can’t independent mean successful? Why can’t equality be lucrative? Why can’t we achieve a redistribution of wealth to the deserving? Why can’t we reward ethical behavior? Or reward interactions that add to the conversation, rather than a hot take? What if album artwork was valuable? What if a small zine was profitable? What if we didn’t rely on donations or the generosity of the community?

What if you could keep your creative integrity AND be financially successful? 

Curators > Algorithms 

A reason Napster was successful in the late 90s was because the independent artist had a shot. Music blogs began to pop up all over the internet. It was how many of us discovered new music and began to shape our taste. Previously ignored by major labels, genres that never made it to the radio or even a recording studio suddenly began to gain traction. The community around Napster thrived because of the sharing and the dialogue occurring. It connected us with friends, helped us make new friends, and expanded our realm of what was possible. We shared music but we also shared ourselves.

We still do.

The idea of sharing data is just as important as what data is being shared. Biometrics, location mapping, and purchasing habits help AI learn our taste in music, movies, and art (could the rise of AI increase our need for human curation and validation? A topic for another time). If you have this information you can then begin to predict what art, or music will become popular next. We’ve given this information away, for free, to tech firms so that we can be marketed to, and sold an ad, or product we don’t need but loosely relates to our interest resulting in trillions in profit. 

And we’re beginning to do the same now without realizing how important it is.

Our opinions matter, especially to us, and we think it should matter to others. It’s why we read the opinions of others, discuss our own, and grow from them – one of my favorite movies (and books), High Fidelity, captures this perfectly. The whole movie captures a lot of my personality, and my formerly hard-lined beliefs surrounding music, art, and film. But, now that I’m older, softened, it’s the ending, with John Cusak focusing on his partner’s taste to make a mixtape full of things she likes, that I think communicates how our likes and dislikes shape our lives. A perfect metaphor for relationships and what it takes to maintain a healthy loving relationship.Play

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These things define us.

It’s why we vote on things that we like: music, movies, art. It’s why we enjoy discussing top 5 lists (and why UNDRGRND DIGS features five artists). Sometimes we lack the proper articulation of our feelings, thoughts, or ideals and turn to these art forms to help us communicate them to others (e.g. a mixtape). We can use our money to validate those people who help us shape our worldviews, personalities, and emotions (it’s why UNDRGRND purchases work from the artists featured in UNDRGRND DIGS). 

Art can save the soul and foundations on which crypto was based.

Art can and does the same for blockchains.

Einstein Never Said That

Before the next bull run, the next wave of users before the masses return we need to ensure we don’t repeat the mistakes made in 2021. We need something to do away with shill threads, engagement farming, and the hype machine that only produces FOMO. We need better, genuine “influencers” that don’t spam your DMs to offer promotions. We need to do away with the hollow cliches with no change in behavior (The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result).

We need to redefine community. An actual community shares in the means of production and the compensation. Our community, as a whole, does the first but misses out on the latter. How often do artists make a sale here to turn around and pump their earnings back into the ecosystem? How many curators are also artists? How many “failed” musicians know a great song when they hear it and share it with others? How many film students have the knowledge and ability to discern what makes a film good and enjoy discussing it with others? How many people who studied literature can write about these topics and communicate their taste in art, music, or movies to others? 

These individuals drive the transactions all blockchains seek. They make the markets, set the trends, celebrate discoveries, and drive the value to the creative experience. They deserve to be compensated as such. 

You deserve compensation for your community building.

Where the F*ck is this Going?

It was during a pitch to one of those institutional investors that it occurred to me that they were antithetical to what I was building. Why would any investor want to fund something that fundamentally disagrees with their ROI models?

I was in a shill thread and I was pitching old-world crypto influencers. 

I was offering the opportunity to the wrong people. I should have been offering it to you. 

I never wanted to do it this way. My role is to help others, not others to help me. That’s not how I operate. I wanted a finished product. I wanted to hand it to you all on a silver platter and say here, enjoy. But the personal greed and focus on short-term monetary gains I despise, were exactly what delayed this operation. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so motivated to do things differently.

I’m not good at asking for help. However, the hardest lesson I’ve learned this past year: I can’t do this on my own. 

That’s kind of the point of the community. You’re not supposed to do it on your own. The work and the benefits are shared. 

This was the only way this ever could have happened. 

With all of you.

The idea is simple: a marketplace built with gamified curation putting the power of influence in the hands of the community members, it’s called DIG IT. It incentivizes the discovery of and promotion of undervalued creators; it incentivizes curation. Rather than the power remaining in the hands of one or a board of curators, it must be given back to the community. Artists tired of always selling and promoting themselves will have a home alongside individuals motivated to seek out the undiscovered. The notion that only a select few know what art is, or what should be discussed, is a fallacy. We all have selective tastes and if we can back up our claims, it is true. That’s the beauty of subjectivity.

DIG IT works with a token, DIG COIN/$DIG, with distribution, focusing on engagement with the content, rewarding quality conversation, and those who support artists, musicians, and filmmakers. With staking rewards offered to onboard communities of the self-proclaimed degens or potential collectors previously wary of their taste in art. 

I never wanted to build just another marketplace. That doesn’t serve my purpose. It doesn’t serve anyone. There’s enough that currently exists that UNDRGRND will continue to support. There is enough room for all of us to exist. If we all are supposed to make it in this space then that means we all need to make it. If we want to be better than the old dynamics we left the real world to reform here then that means being different. So a large percentage of revenue will go back to the community members who support the creation of the marketplace. 

This will all operate under the newly formed DAO, which will hire writers, video editors, community managers, social media managers, and all other types of employees to fulfill a multitude of needs. Members will play a role in shaping the direction of the UNDRGRND Publication, decide on purchases for the UNDRGRND collection, UNDRGRND drops, and the shows that occur at the UNDRGRND Venue.

This month, I’ll provide the details, dates, how to get involved, and other announcements amidst articles and podcast episodes.

Until then, keep your ear to the ground. 

UNDRGRND.

— NFTjoe, Founder

[jcmarchi]

Alex Ratner, CEO & Co-Founder of Snorkel AI – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/alex-ratner-ceo-co-founder-of-snorkel-ai-interview-series/

Alex Ratner, CEO & Co-Founder of Snorkel AI – Interview Series

Alex Ratner is the CEO & Co-Founder of Snorkel AI, a company born out of the Stanford AI lab.

Snorkel AI makes AI development fast and practical by transforming manual AI development processes into programmatic solutions. Snorkel AI enables enterprises to develop AI that works for their unique workloads using their proprietary data and knowledge 10-100x faster.

What initially attracted you to computer science?

There are two very exciting aspects of computer science when you’re young. One, you get to learn as fast as you want from tinkering and building, given the instant feedback, rather than having to wait for a teacher. Two, you get to building a lot without having to ask anyone for permission!

I got into programming when I was a young kid for these reasons. I also loved the precision it required. I enjoyed the process of abstracting complex processes and routines, and then encoding them in a modular way.

Later, as an adult, I made my way back into computer science professionally via a job in consulting where I was tasked with writing scripts to do some basic analyses of the patent corpus. I was fascinated by how much human knowledge—anything anyone had ever deemed patentable—was readily available, yet so inaccessible because it was so hard to do even the simplest analysis over complex technical text and multi-modal data.

This is what led me back down the rabbit hole, and eventually back to grad school at Stanford, focusing on NLP, which is the area of using ML/AI on natural language.

You first started and led the Snorkel open-source project while at Stanford, could you walk us through the journey of these early days?

Back then we were, like many in the industry, focused on developing new algorithms and—i.e. all the “fancy” machine learning stuff that people in the community did research and published papers on.

However, we were always very committed to grounding this in real-world problems—mostly with doctors and scientists at Stanford. But every time we pitched a new model or algorithm, the response became “sure, we’d try that, but we’d need all this labeled training data we don’t have time to create!” 

We were seeing that the big unspoken problem was around the process of labeling and curating that training data—so we shifted all of our focus to that, which is how the Snorkel project and the idea of “data-centric AI” started.

Snorkel has a data-centric AI approach, could you define what this means and how it differs from model-centric AI development?

Data-centric AI means focusing on building better data to build better models.

This stands in contrast to—but works hand-in-hand with—model-centric AI. In model-centric AI, data scientists or researchers assume the data is static and pour their energy into adjusting model architectures and parameters to achieve better results.

Researchers still do great work in model-centric AI, but off-the-shelf models and auto ML techniques have improved so much that model choice has become commoditized at production time. When that’s the case, the best way to improve these models is to supply them with more and better data.

What are the core principles of a data-centric AI approach?

The core principle of data-centric AI is simple: better data builds better models. 

In our academic work, we’ve called this “data programming.” The idea is that if you feed a robust enough model enough examples of inputs and expected outputs, the model learns how to duplicate those patterns.

This presents a bigger challenge than you might expect. The vast majority of data has no labels—or, at least, no useful labels for your application. Labeling that data by hand requires tedium, time, and human effort.

Having a labeled data set also does not guarantee quality. Human error creeps in everywhere.  Each incorrect example in your ground truth will degrade the performance of the final model. No amount of parameter tuning can paper over that reality. Researchers have even found incorrectly-labeled records in foundational open source data sets.

Could you elaborate on what it means for Data-Centric AI to be programmatic?

Manually labeling data presents serious challenges. Doing so requires a lot of human hours, and sometimes those human hours can be expensive. Medical documents, for example, can only be labeled by doctors.

In addition, manual labeling sprints often amount to single-use projects. Labelers annotate the data according to a rigid schema. If a business’ needs shift and call for a different set of labels, labelers must start again from scratch.

Programmatic approaches to data-centric AI minimize both of these problems. Snorkel AI’s programmatic labeling system incorporates diverse signals—from legacy models to existing labels to external knowledge bases—to develop probabilistic labels at scale. Our primary source of signal comes from subject matter experts who collaborate with data scientists to build labeling functions. These encode their expert judgment into scalable rules, allowing the effort invested into one decision to impact dozens or hundreds of data points.

This framework is also flexible. Instead of starting from scratch when business needs change, users add, remove, and adjust labeling functions to apply new labels in hours instead of days.

How does this data-centric approach enable rapid scaling of unlabeled data?

Our programmatic approach to data-centric AI enables rapid scaling of unlabeled data by amplifying the impact of each choice. Once subject matter experts establish an initial, small set of ground truth, they begin collaborating with data scientists for rapid iteration. They define a few labeling functions, train a quick model, analyze the impact of their labeling functions, and then add, remove, or tweak labeling functions as needed.

Each cycle improves model performance until it meets or exceeds the project’s goals. This can reduce months of data labeling work to just hours. On one Snorkel research project, two of our researchers labeled 20,000 documents in a single day—a volume that could have taken manual labelers ten weeks or longer.

Snorkel offers multiple AI solutions including Snorkel Flow, Snorkel GenGlow and Snorkel Foundry. What are the differences between these offerings?

The Snorkel AI suite enables users to create labeling functions (e.g., looking for keywords or patterns in documents) to programmatically label millions of data points in minutes, rather than manually tagging one data point at a time.

It compresses the time required for companies to translate proprietary data into production-ready models and begin extracting value from them. Snorkel AI allows enterprises to scale human-in-the-loop approaches by efficiently incorporating human judgment and subject-matter expert knowledge.

This leads to more transparent and explainable AI, equipping enterprises to manage bias and deliver responsible outcomes.

Getting down to the nuts and bolts, Snorkels AI enables Fortune 500 enterprises to:

Develop high-quality labeled data to train models or enhance RAG;

Customize LLMs with fine-tuning;

Distill LLMs into specialized models that are much smaller and cheaper to operate;

Build domain and task- specific LLMs with pre-training.

You’ve written some groundbreaking papers, in your opinion which is your most important paper?

One of the key papers was the original one on data programming (labeling training data programmatically) and on the one for Snorkel.

What is your vision for the future of Snorkel?

I see Snorkel becoming a trusted partner for all large enterprises that are serious about AI.

Snorkel Flow should become a ubiquitous tool for data science teams at large enterprises—whether they’re fine-tuning custom large language models for their organizations, building image classification models, or building simple, deployable logistic regression models.

Regardless of what kind of models a business needs, they will need high-quality labeled data to train it.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Snorkel AI,

[leedsvegboxuk]

Discovering Freshness: Organic Veg Boxes Near Me

In a world that's increasingly conscious of health, sustainability, and the environment, the demand for organic produce is on the rise. Consumers are seeking ways to access fresh, locally-sourced, and organic vegetables conveniently. One solution that has gained significant popularity is organic vegetable boxes, delivered right to your doorstep. Let's explore the charm of these vibrant veg boxes and how you can find them near you.

The Appeal of Organic Veg Boxes1. Freshness at Your Doorstep:

Organic vegetable boxes, often referred to as veg boxes or produce boxes, are carefully curated assortments of seasonal, Organic Veg Boxes Near Me. These veggies are freshly harvested, ensuring optimal taste, nutrition, and sustainability.

2. Supporting Local Farmers:

Many organic veg box services prioritize sourcing produce from local farmers. By subscribing to these boxes, you are supporting local agricultural communities and contributing to sustainable, small-scale farming practices.

3. Variety and Seasonality:

One of the key benefits of organic veg boxes is the variety of produce you receive. The content of the box is usually based on what's in season, allowing you to enjoy the flavors of each season while promoting a diverse diet.

4. Health and Environmental Benefits:

Organic vegetables are grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, making them healthier options for you and the environment. By choosing organic, you reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals and support farming practices that prioritize sustainability.

Finding Organic Veg Boxes Near You1. Local Farmers' Markets:

Visit your local farmers' market and inquire about organic veg box options.Organic Vegetables Leeds Many vendors offer subscription-based services where you can receive a weekly or bi-weekly box of fresh, organic produce.

2. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Programs:

CSA programs connect consumers directly with local farmers. Members receive a regular share of the harvest, often in the form of a veg box. Search online or ask around in your community to find CSA programs near you.

3. Online Organic Grocery Stores:

Numerous online platforms specialize in delivering organic produce. Explore these platforms and check if they offer veg box subscriptions. You can often customize the contents based on your preferences.

4. Health Food Stores and Co-ops:

Health food stores and cooperative markets sometimes have their own veg box programs or can direct you to local options. Visit these stores or give them a call to inquire about available organic veg box subscriptions.

5. Local Farms and Growers:

Research local farms in your area and contact them directly to inquire about their veg box options. Many farms now offer home delivery or convenient pick-up locations for their organic produce boxes.

Conclusion

Embracing a healthier lifestyle and contributing to sustainable farming practices is easily achievable with the accessibility of organic veg boxes. These vibrant boxes packed with fresh, organic produce not only nourish your body but also support local farmers and the environment. Take the step towards a greener, healthier you by exploring the organic veg box options near you. 

[inprogresstoday]

SAINT PAUL GEM & HISTORY - PHOTOGRAPHS BY TJ LOR

OPENING RECEPTION

IN PROGRESS / SAINT PAUL / CIRCA 2023

This exhibit was co-curated with IP artists Mary Richardson and TJ Lor for presentation at Studio 213. The team worked to select and present the following works. Images will be displayed through August 2023 and is available to view upon request.

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND 5-8PM

213 Front Avenue . Saint Paul MN. 55117

TJ will be present to answer questions and provide a personalized tour of her work at this time at In Progress’s studio 213 A light meal will also be provided.

ARTIST STATEMENT

What people will see in this exhibit are hidden gems of St. Paul & the rich history of Minnesota for Hmong Americans. I've lived in Minnesota my whole life and don't know the rich history of being Hmong. But this will be the beginning of a lifetime to self discovery & understanding the true and very rich history of my people. 

I'd like to thank Nia Madison for always being my #1 supporter and my best friend, Charles for being my last minute model. and my family for pushing me to be the best that I can be, even though it came with tough love. I'd like to thank Ka & KaYing for bringing lost knowledge into the U.S. It was a healing experience. I'd like to thank In Progress for teaching me what I know and all the mentors that helped me along my journey to success. Last but least, I'd like to thank myself for being here today to experience something great.

BIOGRAPHY

TJ is a Hmong American artist. Born in Minneapolis, raised in Saint Paul. TJ started with music when she got involved with IP then moved onto photography and has continued since. Through trial and error with photography, she has progressed with her craft for the past three years.

TJ’s craft is more candid shots rather than posed shots, she’s more into covering events and musicians. TJ is slowly learning more about photography and expanding to more than just candid’s and events. She’s learning more about lighting and poses, it is a challenge, but she’s learning. TJ hopes to become a professional photographer full-time and much more.

Artwork is available for sale. Please reach out directly to TJ at: https://jualvisuals.myportfolio.com/contact

Stay up to date with TJ by visiting the following sites:

JUAL Visuals Website

JUAL Visuals on Facebook

In Progress is a 2023 recipient of a Creative Support Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.  This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the  Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.  Additional supporters for this exhibit series  include:  The F.R. Bigelow Foundation, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, The Saint Paul Cultural Star Program and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.

[luxurytravelcurator]

Last 2-weeks of bookings from 2022 on to 2023. This lovely 2-Bedrooms Family Suite at the Brown’s Hotel #London #UK by Rocco Forte. Grandparents plus niece/nephew 7-nights pre/post their Disney #Cruise from #Copenhagen #Denmark and along #Scandinavia. Of course paired with unique and authentic experiences and tours. Booking #BrownsHotel by #RoccoForte directly with me, my clients will enjoy a suite of #VIP Amenities such as and not limited to: Room upgrades + Early Check IN & Late Check OUT + Complimentary Breakfast + Food & Beverage and/or Spa Credits + Free WIFI among many others. Subscribe to my IG Chanel, for full access to exclusive content, curated tips and recommendations, unique experiences, vip amenities and benefits, plus much more. My mission is to transform Tourists into Travelers by experiencing unique travel experiences, moments and destinations worldwide. Luxury Travel Curator, Concierge, Blogger & Lifestyle Consultant. Over 28 years curating the world of Authentic and Sophisticated Travel, Hospitality & Lifestyle, one destination at the time. Member of the exclusive @VirtuosoLTD Luxury Network, #AmericanExpress Membership Rewards, Fine Hotels & Resorts and Pay with Points Programs. Luxury #TravelAdvisor. #Jetsetter #Globetrotter #BonVivant. Founder of @LGTNetwork Luxury #GayTravel Curator, member of @IGLTA. #Travel #Hotel #Restaurant & #Airline reviews. Follow, read and share my travel experiences worldwide. #TravelAgent, #TravelBlogger, #WeddingPlanner #TravelBlog #LuxuryTravel #Luxury #Lifestyle #LuxuryTravelCurator #Concierge #Blogger #VirtuosoTravel @browns_hotel @roccofortehotels Luxury Travel Curator & Co Mobile & WhatsApp +1 (917) 754-5515 / Email info@carlosmelia.com / www.luxurytravelcuratorco.com (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmZBPztur3K/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cousijn]

Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me.

This fall the exibition Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me. by fabulous artist and filmmaker Janis Rafa will open at Eye. Expect tail wagging and seductive gloominess. I am co-curating the show and curating the public program. You are cordially invited to the opening on October 14! 🐾

→ Janis Rafa – Feed me. Cheat me. Eat me.

Janis Rafa, Lacerate (2020), still.