Antonius-Tín Bui

Image courtesy of the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston; Photo by Amanda Powers

Image courtesy of the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston; Photo by Amanda Powers

“Lazy Susan: An Experimental Drag Lecture” was an interactive two-part performance piece hosted by Laband Art Gallery on November 13, 2019.

Performers:

Skirt Cocaine @skirtcocaine

Meta Worldpiss @metaworldpiss

Lea Salonganisa @lea_salonganisa

Bytch Nastee @bytchnastee

Miss Shu Mai @missshumain

Lady Tiger Balm @ladytigerbalm

Manifestx @buimonster

The first component comprised of a discussion in the round that used the questions below as a launching point for an immersive conversation. We finished getting into our looks as the lecture progressed, providing audience members a behind the scenes peek into our transformations. Viewers were also invited to get their makeup done by us throughout the hour long discussion.

-How do you personally define drag?

-How has the recent mainstreaming of drag and queer culture affected your art?

-What are some problems you see in the APIA and drag communities?

-How has your APIA identity influenced your drag?

-There is a lot of cultural appropriation within the drag community. How do you deal with this issue?

-Asian Pacific Islander American futurism has been on my mind. What do you think that looks/smells/tastes/feels like?

-What do you wish you saw more of coming from APIA artists, cultural makers, etc.?

-How can universities and other educational institutions better themselves?

Every drag artist performed their own unique number for the second component of the experimental lecture.

HCCC is pleased to present Queer(ing) the Wheel, an original performance showcase organized by current resident artist Antonius-Tin Bui and interdisciplinary artist Tonya Huynh.

This site-specific performance pays homage to the late Playhouse Theater (housed in the building next door to HCCC), one of the largest theaters-in-the-round in the nation in the early 1950s. On February 21st, the 68th anniversary of the Playhouse’s opening night, Bui and Huynh will transform HCCC’s parking lot into a temporary space in which audience members and performers will interact through “vehicles-in-the-round,” arranged to explore the personal narratives of each artist.

For many queer artists, especially in Houston, the car is a living archive of existence, representing a place of safety and refuge, a place to change, to hook-up, to cruise, to transition, to escape, to curate experiences, and to be authentic. By creating a vehicular theater-in-the-round, Bui and Huynh invite the audience to engage in the experiences of seven artists, while referencing the intimate style of the pioneering Playhouse Theater, which successfully broke down barriers between actors and audiences.

The performance will feature performances by Antonius Bui (performance and craft), Emilý Æyer (sound and performance), S Rodriguez (sound and interactive performance, queer sci-fi literature), Devin Kenny(multidisciplinary sculpture), Junior Fernandez (photography), Post Modern Sleaze (performance), and Duke Diesel (performance).

The event falls on the opening night of Experimental Action (ExA), Houston’s biennial international performance art festival, in which Bui will also perform. Experimental Action is a three-day festival that facilitates and shines a spotlight on experimental performance, showcasing both local and international artists and exposing Houston audiences to innovative performance art. ExA will take place February 21-23.

Supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts!

installation at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft

Duke Diesel

DJ Domtop

Kumquat

Artist’s portrait

Sara Balabanlilar & S Rodriguez

Homecoming Group Shot

The day featured five performance artists: Michelle Sui, Mariadela Belle Alvarez, Raven Lu, Jose Richard Aviles, and Brinda Iyer whose work ranged from interactive dance to conversations between the artists and their viewers.

Michelle Sui

Mariadela Belle Alvares

Raven Lu

Jose Richard Aviles

Brinda Iyer

“Artificial Hells: Litany for the Damned”, a queer mass

*Welcome Song: “I’m Coming Out” by Bernard Edwards & Nile Rodgers

*First Reading: “A Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde

read by Mia Diaz

*Second Reading: “When the World as We Knew It Ended” by Joy Harjo

read by Raymond CangKimVo

*Gospel: “Prayer” By Francisco X. Alarcón

Translated by Francisco Aragón

*Homily: Lalo Moreno

*Prayer of the Faithful

*Wrapping of the Junípero Serra Statue on LMU’s Campus in order to demand change

Excerpt from the Los Angeles Time’s “Stanford is removing Junipero Serra’s name from parts of campus” article

Serra, who was canonized by the pope in 2015, created the mission system that “pervasively mistreated and abused California’s Native Americans. His founding and leadership of that system was at the time and remains today a central and inextricable part of his public persona.”

Forced labor supported the missions, critics point out, and Spanish troops garrisoned near some missions were blamed for spreading syphilis and other diseases that devastated local communities.

Native American students and staff and tribal leaders in Northern California told the committee that the impacts of the missions were long lasting and harmful: Generations as recent as their parents and grandparents had been sent to boarding schools to force assimilation. Those in the school community spoke “of visceral feelings of harm, trauma, emotional damage, and damage to their mental health” from seeing Serra’s name around campus, according to the committee’s report last month. They said the university also has failed “to acknowledge the history of the land that it occupies and the groups from whom the lands were taken.”

drawing by Linda Shi

Queer(ing) the Canon is a series of free figure drawing sessions for the public to practice seeing, appreciating, interacting with, and drawing queer bodies. Hosted by the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, this series actively combats the hetero-patriarchal canon of art by centering the bodies and experiences of queer folx, as opposed to the bodies that have been historically valued (i.e, straight, white, male). Queer(ing) the Canon creates body-positive spaces, meaning we welcome models of all genders, body types, abilities, and racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Details:

Cost: In an effort to be inclusive as possible, the sessions will be completely free to the public.

Duration: Each drawing session will last 3 hours. You are free to come and leave at any time.

Model Compensation: Models will be paid $30/hr, minimum half hour slots. If you are a performer of any sorts (drag, burlesque, etc.) and come in your look, we are able to pay $40/hr to compensate for makeup and preparation time.

Materials: Please bring your own drawing materials and surfaces. Some free drawing materials will be provided on a first come first serve basis.

***Those who touch or photograph the models without prior permission will be asked to leave immediately.

Co-organized by S Rodriguez and Antonius-Tín Bui.

Special thanks to every model who made/makes the queer figure drawing sessions possible!

A Collective Intervention: Creating Space for Memory Work at the Wall for Refugees

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory." -Viet Thanh Nguyen

One of the most visible and public ways that the US has remembered its involvement in the Vietnam War is through the somber, black, wall erected on the Washington Mall in our nation's capital. The names of US veterans who died during the conflict are engraved into the Wall, while reflecting back the faces of visitors in its polished black marble. The Wall has been hailed as a profound site of healing for those that visit, often leaving items there dedicated to fallen loved ones or to let go of traumatic experiences.

There are no Vietnamese names on the Wall. Framed in the nationalist context of the Washington Mall, this memorial conveniently "forgets" the Vietnamese (both civilians and veterans alike) and "remembers" American veterans as the primary victims of war. Yen Le Espiritu writes that "without creating an opening for a Vietnamese perspective of the war, these dramatic and public commemorations of the Vietnam War refuse to remember Vietnam as a historical site, Vietnamese people as genuine subjects, and the Vietnam War as having any kind of integrity of its own."

This project calls for a collective intervention at the Wall by Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and other refugee community members still affected today by the legacy of American militarism and imperialism in Southeast Asia, allowing the community to reclaim their past experiences, history, and memories, on our own terms. This project envisions a nationwide, coordinated, mass dedication of items at the Wall by refugee community members on the upcoming April 30 anniversary in 2020 (45 years after US military withdrawal from Vietnam). However, this proposal asks for seed money for smaller-scale dedications organized by members of the progressive Vietnamese American organization VietUnity, to take place on April 30, 2019 (The first one took place on April 30, 2018). Items would be created, found, collected, by VietUnity members and their local networks throughout the year, then placed at the Wall on April 30, 2019 by several VietUnity representatives.

Since its opening in 1982, national park rangers have collected all items left at the Wall, which are catalogued and stored in a national archive. During a visit to the archive in 2015, with the help of archive staff, I found that only six items had been left by members of the refugee community, out of thousands. There has been both an explicit (the names of your dead are not here) and implicit (this space is not for you, don't leave your items here) exclusion of refugee voices from this national memorial.

The coordinated, mass dedication of items from the refugee community at the Wall on April 30, 2020 would act as a physical and symbolic disruption of the US nation state's memory project that justifies US militarism and imperialism in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world through the "forgetting" of its victims, both in the past and present. This intervention centers refugee experiences in ways that refugee community members will determine for themselves, as a collectively curated archive of objects and memories, rather than one designed by state institutions or policy-makers. The open nature of the collective archive insists that the refugee community is not a monolith; that there are complex disjunctures, contradictions, and intersections in our identities and in the ways that we remember the conflict and its continuing legacies felt in our everyday lives today. This project carves out space for a public, nationally recognized memorial formed from the collective engagement of diverse voices in the refugee community rather than one determined by the policies of any single institution.

-Kim Tran

Thank you VietUnity members for allowing me to collaborate with ya’ll on this project.