film

WITNESS, LaToya Ruby Frazier @ICA Boston

This was a powerful show. I’m really inspired by LaToya Ruby Frazier after seeing this, knowing that she started much of this work as a teenager and is such a powerhouse at only 30. Basically, she makes me want to step up my game.

Frazier’s upbringing in Braddock, Pennsylvania, was imprinted by the drastic downsizing of the Pittsburgh-area town’s Edgar Thomson Steel Works in the early 80s that prompted many residents to flee. Homes and businesses were abandoned, infrastructure and amenities crumbled, the national crack epidemic took hold, and urban families found themselves subject to widespread vilification. … Like many, Frazier believes industrial pollution has sickened a disproportional number of Braddock residents. She suffers from lupus, her mother has cancer and a neurological disorder, and Grandma Ruby died of complications related to pancreatic cancer.

— http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/exhibit/LaToya_Ruby_Frazier/

LaToya Ruby Frazier, “Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls”, 2011

Her work is intensely personal and specifically deals with the issues her hometown faces, but it speaks to issues of working class poverty and lack of healthcare that are widespread across the country. I found it easy to see my family in her family.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Self-Portrait (United States Steel), Digital Video Transfer to DVD
Color, Sound, 3:28 Minutes[source]

liked this video piece, a self-portrait where Frazier presents herself breathing in and out deeply as footage of the Steel Mill shows gaseous emissions pouring into the air of Braddock. Compositionally, the steel mill dominates the image; it’s influence on Frazier, her home, her family, and her health is huge. I liked the relationship between this piece and the photograph of Frazier’s grandmother smoking in her living room, which were installed on opposite sides of a wall within the gallery. Both images concentrate on respiration, and breathing in these toxic chemicals. I connected with the theme of respiration and sickness in these pieces, thinking about my father’s cancer.

DETOX (Braddock U.P.M.C.), 2011, Digital Video Transfer to DVD, Color, Sound, 22:23 minutes[source]

In DETOX (U.P.M.C.), Frazier documents herself and her mother undergoing an ionic detox footbath. In such a detox, “toxins from the body are released through the pores of the feet… The water is said to change different colors as the initiated electric charge applied pulls all of the toxins from the organs.” (– http://kiffecoco.com/blog/ffecoco.com/2011/02/beauty-in-imperfection-latoya-ruby.html) I feel like it’s worth noting that in Googling that term, all of the highest results contained either the word “sham” or hoax.” The detox session is cut with footage of Frazier’s mother sitting on her bed as Frazier asks her to speak about her illness and her unsparing opinions of what is going on in Braddock. At one point, Frazier situates the camera between her legs, zooming in on the footbath, which at this point is a frothy, orange and green colored slop. From this vantage point, I felt like I was sitting in her chair. I am really interested in the way that Frazier uses personal documentary to bring attention to the corruption in Braddock and the country at large.

THE PUNK SINGER

When my older brother played Rebel Girl for me as a girl just barely entering my tweenage years and told me “maybe you should wait to listen to the rest of this album until you’re a little older,” he pretty much sealed the deal that I would become obsessed with Bikini Kill overnight.

Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the punk band Bikini Kill and dance-punk trio Le Tigre, rose to national attention as the reluctant but never shy voice of the riot grrrl movement. She became one of the most famously outspoken feminist icons, a cultural lightning rod.

Naturally, I was ready to eat this movie up. I was surprised by what a revealing portrait it ended up being and by how little I really knew about the woman whose music and activism shaped my teen years. The home movie footage of Kathleen and Adam Horowitz was especially revealing, showing what a tender, supportive relationship they have. I might be a little in love with Adrock after this.

I knew that they were married, but I had no idea that their relationship went so far back and that they were involved when Kathleen was still in Bikini Kill. It was so entertaining and charming to see their goofy home movies from that period, especially considering how mismatched their public personas seemed to so many people. It’s also jarring to see Kathleen Hanna in such a vulnerable light, especially when the film delves into her illness, given how all of the press she’s received throughout her career has created an image of her as this vicious, unstoppable force of nature.

I have a really vivid memory of being at a sleepover with some girl friends in middle school, flipping channels and landing on MTV just long enough to see Diana Ross jiggle Lil Kim’s mermaid boob, because that makes an indelible mark on your memory. We must have changed the channel as soon as they announced the who won, though, because the rest of that clip was completely new to me. Seeing that footage in the film was a really strange connection for me, since looking back now I realize I had no idea who Kathleen Hanna was in 1999, but the next year I would adopt her as a personal savior. The fact that she was present in this absurd pop cultural moment and I never realized it until now was a little surreal.

What I found most interesting about the film was the way it presented Kathleen as a musician who thinks deeply about her craft, and not just as the mouthpiece of a movement. Bikini Kill was definitely more about the political message of a group of young women barging into a hostile scene than it was about whether or not those women were trained to play their instruments, but since then Kathleen Hanna has grown tremendously as a musician. Bikini Kill’s message was so impactful that it shot Kathleen to feminist icon status, but it’s rare to read or see something that discusses her as an artist and not purely as an activist. Seeing Kathleen talk about herself as a singer and describe the way she visualizes her voice as a bullet was almost more of an intimate portrait than the home movies of her and Adam. I thought it was a smart choice to take the title of the film from a Julie Ruin song, since that was the album that Kathleen asserted herself as an artist foremost and came into her own as a musician.

“Other people can think whatever they want, but… they should have to stay out of my way.”

– Kathleen Hanna