Glitter & Doom

Celebrate Brooklyn is back, baby! After moving to an exclusively online format last year, Celebrate Brooklyn! is back and the Bandshell in Prospect Park with a full line up of artists ready to blow the roof off of the thing. One of these artists is KAMAUU. KAMAUU's music is packed with electrifying and rambunctious melodies, while at the same time filling his lyrics with versatility and substance. Find out why he and MacKenzie go to talking about Muhammad Ali and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.You can RSVP for KAMAUU's performance on July 31st, plus check out the rest of the Celebrate Brooklyn line up at:bricartsmedia.org See you there!

Meet Damon Davis, a post-disciplinary artist from St. Louis. A prolific creator, Davis has a solo show open at Detroit MOCA right now titled Filling in the Cracks. Textured and profound, Cracks is an exploration of grief where Davis has cast concrete busts of himself, broken them open and filled the vacant space with beauty.Mackenzie and Davis talk about grief, masculinity and the role we play in the structures that bind us. Also quartz watches.Check out his work here:heartacheandpaint.com

Hi there! Glitter & Doom is off this week, so while we fish MacKenzie out from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, please enjoy one of our favorite episodes from Season 1.  Movement based performance artist, mayfield brooks spoke to us on Jan. 2020 about their love of Marsha P Johnson, their 2020 project Viewing Hours, and "improvising while Black." Today in 2021, mayfield premiered a new piece commissioned by the Abrons Art Center called Whale Fall. As an extension of that piece, an immersive installation will be up from June 12 to June 19th here in Brooklyn at the Center for Performance Research in Williamsburg.You can find more details about how to see it at cprnyc.org

It’s not often you hear the expression, “quilting world flash bang” but that’s exactly how we would describe Michael C Thorpe. An outlier in the quilting world, Thorpe has made a splash in the medium by weaving in his identity as a black man, his dreams about his family and his own manner of painting with fabric and thread. He and MacKenzie talk about the Gees Bend quilters, and how quilting makes beauty out of discarded items. Stick around for an insight into the AIDS quilt with organizer, Ted Kerr. And finally, a very special guest.

Emily Spivack, producer of Worn Stories (a Netflix series based on her book of the same name) has spent years collecting the stories people attach to their clothes. Whether it's the onesie you came home in, to the crushed velvet Mary Janes you wore to your 8th grade graduation – the clothes you put on your back soak up something about you and the moment you wore them. Emily and MacKenzie dive into their favorite stories from the series, their own pre-teen fashion journeys and, somehow, we end up at a prison in Northern Ireland.

Welcome to Glitter & Doom, a show that believes that the hardest times yield the greatest art. Join your host, MacKenzie Fegan, every other Wednesday to explore a new featured artist.

Meet new media artist, Mina Cheon and her North Korean alter ego, Kim Il Soon. While Mina Cheon is busy being a professor at Baltimore's MICA, and laying out 100,000 Chocopies to promote a unified Korea, Kim Il Soon is teaching art history to North Koreans via smuggled USB sticks and SD cards. Wait, you don't know about Chocopie? Christina Chaey from Bon Appetite is also here to tell you all about them. 즐겨!

Torrey Peters is the author of Detransition, Baby, a whipsmart novel about three women – trans and cis – trying to have a baby. One of the first novels written by a transwoman published by a Big Five publisher, Detransition, Baby imparts a textured, multi-demensional, and at times incredibly funny exploration of gender, parenthood and sex. Torrey Peters has decided to answer the questions that are tied to the stigma of detransitioning, and she does with nuance, compassion, sensitivity and grace. But what does this all have to do with the cultural implications of owning a dishwasher?

A "talking circle" is, historically, a way for a community to come together to hash out difficult issues in a respectful fashion. But in Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby's Talking Circles – a work in progress at the New York Theatre Workshop – it also speaks to the spiral of history where 102 years after a global pandemic and protests over the murders of Black people, who are in the grip of a global pandemic and are protesting the murder of Black people. Have we learned anything? Or are we just talking in circles?"

Maria Chavez never wanted to be an artist, but her life led her to become an abstract turntablist who has reinvented the playback arts by mixing broken records with broken needles. Her art is almost like listening to real-time sculptures, where the vinyl’s grooves are the topography. But how did we end up talking about owls?

What is theatre? Is it a group of people watching actors on a stage? Is it a magical transportive experience that can only be experienced live? Does it need a crowd? Lines? Snarky will-call folks who can't spell your name? MacKenzie talks to Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone, the duo that make up 600 Highwaymen – a theatre company "at the intersection of theater, dance, contemporary performance, and civic encounter" to try and answer some of these questions. Their newest piece A Phone Call (a guided phone call between you [yes you!] and a total stranger) is available for attendance at the Public Theatre as part of the Under The Radar Festival 2021.

It's season three of Glitter & Doom, and this time around, we're tackling the theme of reinvention. With the concert series Celebrate Brooklyn! moved online this year, the programmers at BRIC had a decision to make: what would they do with the concert venue? They tapped artists Oasa DuVerney and Mildred Beltré, together known as the Brooklyn Hi-Art Machine, to reinvent the Prospect Park bandshell as a public art space. Using neon ribbon, they created an installation featuring the woven words "come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed," from a poem by Lucille Clifton. MacKenzie talks to Oasa, Mildred, and Clifton scholar Rachel Harding about Black sisterhood, resilience, and community.

After the Red River War in 1874, drawing was one of the few sanctioned ways that the prisoners of Fort Marion were able to keep their cultural traditions alive. Back home on the Plains, they would have commemorated a successful battle by depicting it on a buffalo hide, but in Florida, where they had been shipped off and stripped of their communities, these men drew what they knew on what they had – and for some, it was lined ledger paper. Emil Her Many Horses (curator, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian) speaks about the history, the practice and the people at Fort Marion.

In all of literature, Robinson Crusoe is certainly among the most isolated of characters. Dude was stranded on an island for 28 years. For most of that time he is entirely alone except for his pets and God, who is a notoriously bad conversationalist. But was Crusoe *lonely*? MacKenzie speaks to scholars about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and how his loneliness speaks loudly in times of pandemics and major social movements.

Black revolutionary Ojore Latulo was placed in solitary confinement for 22 years because of his political beliefs. While there, he began creating graphic collages using the only materials he had—newspapers, Elmer's glue, and his thoughts. Ojore speaks to MacKenzie about political propaganda, remaining unbroken by psychological torture, and the killing of unarmed black people by the police.

Nelly Toll was eight or nine when she painted, “A Trip With Father: A Present for Good Behavior," in 1943. At the time she painted it, Nelly hadn’t been outside in probably a year. She was Jewish, and she and her mother were in hiding in Lwów, Poland. Today, Dr. Toll is self-isolating like the rest of us, and speaks to MacKenzie about her childhood in hiding and her watercolor box.

We’re back! Welcome to the second season of Glitter & Doom, where we’ll be exploring artists in isolation. If you’re on Twitter, you might remember a meme-storm in early March after Roseanne Cash tweeted: “Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.” With the help of Andrew Dickson, author of The Globe Guide to Shakespeare, we try and figure out if Shakespeare actually *did* write King Lear while under quarantine, and which one of Lear’s daughters was the actual, literal worst.

Hey there! What's everyone been up to? Anything new? Glitter & Doom has been taking a short break but it's back for its second season and cooking up some new episodes for you to listen to while you switch from your night pajamas to your day pajamas.

What do Trump rallies, German interior décor and the Village People have to do with author, Dave Eggers? Does satire still have a role to play when reality reads like an Onion article? Dave Eggers says yes. His new book, The Captain and the Glory, follows the grim misadventures of a narcissistic, incompetent sea captain steering a cruise ship called The Glory. Before long, he and his supporters are throwing dark-skinned passengers overboard to chants of “Drown the brown!” The metaphor isn’t subtle, but then again, these aren’t subtle times.

What do microaggressions, sea captains and spam email have to do with artist, Liana Finck? As a shy person who struggled with social interactions, illustrator and cartoonist, Liana Finck made notes and drawings as a way to figure out how to fit in. “Passing for Human” is the title of one of her three books. But at a certain point, she started wondering, what if this isn’t just me? Liana would find herself in awkward situations because she was behaving in a way she wasn’t supposed to. But who decides how women are supposed to behave?

What do killer robots, psychedelics and a woman named Susan Bennett have to do with artist, Stephanie Dinkins? When we talk about robots, the conversation is likely to be negative, if not downright dystopian. If you type “robots are” into google, the predictive text—which is itself a form of artificial intelligence—suggests “robots are taking over,” “robots are coming,” and “robots are stealing our jobs.” It also suggests, “robots are people too.” Artist Stephanie Dinkins found herself engaged in this very conversation with a robot by the name of Bina48, and it changed the trajectory of her artistic practice. Dinkins now finds herself presenting on artificial intelligence, race, and equity, often the lone artist in a room full of technologists.

What do peanut recipes, mysterious photographs and compost have to do with artist mayfield brooks?    In their upcoming performance, “Viewing Hours,” mayfield brooks embraces the tradition of artists putting their bodies on the line for the sake of their practice. Upon entry, audiences are met with the sight of mayfield lying naked and prone under 40 pounds of compost, in simulation of a wake. In this piece, brooks uses their training as a dancer, performer and urban farmer to examine the commodification, death and decay of black bodies, and to investigate the act of witnessing and profiting off of black grief. mayfield brooks recently joined MacKenzie in the studio to discuss George Washington Carver, Marsha P Johnson and improvising while black. “Viewing Hours” will be performed on January 20th at the 8th Floor in Manhattan. For more tickets and information, visit: https://bit.ly/2u6nFHX

What do Janelle Monae, Yelp reviews of plantations and Russian Dixies have to do with artist, Dread Scott? Dread Scott wants us to remember that history is not so far from our present. His work often looks to the past in order to imagine a more just future, and perhaps no project embodies that more as his recent "Slave Rebellion Reenactment." In this piece, Scott brought the Slave Rebellion of 1811 back to life in New Orleans over the course of two days back in November, and he joined MacKenzie in the studio to talk about the project, his influences and punching Nazis.

What do the Zodiac and a spiritual entity named Seth have to do with filmmaker, Caveh Zahedi? Zahedi has been making documentaries for almost three decades, and before we booked him on the show, the only things MacKenzie knew about him were gleaned through season one of his autobiographical “The Show about the Show” and a New York Times Magazine profile that came out this fall, coinciding with the launch of season two. The title of that article: “A Filmmaker Bared His Soul. It Ruined His Life.”

It's a virtual certainty that you've seen Edel Rodiguez's illustrations. A prolific artist and political cartoonist, he's gained recent notoriety for his depiction of Donald Trump's face. Always the same, featureless, except for a screaming mouth melting into a puddle; Trump painting himself into an orange corner; Trump with arms aloft holding a bloody knife in one hand, and the severed head of Lady Liberty in the other. Rodriguez’s images pull no punches, and they remind us that these are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary artistic responses. MacKenzie sat down with Edel Rodriguez to talk about everything from fascism, to Communism, to the Irish mafia.

Jami Attenberg has written seven novels, and has not wasted a single one of them on a male antihero. Her latest book, a humorous and empathetic family drama, does feature a Tony Soprano-like character as the patriarch of the family, but Attenberg puts him in a coma on the very first page. MacKenzie sat down with Attenberg on the release date of "All This Could Be Yours" to talk about toxic masculinity, #MeToo, and gender-neutral storage units.

Humans have been extracting copper from rocks since at least 5000 BCE. It's in your computer, your home and most notably, inside a lot of uteruses. Artist Marisa Morán Jahn's interest in copper began when she discovered that she had agreed to have a piece of the metal inserted in her body. That launched her into a wormhole of copper-related research, culminating in her latest interdisciplinary project, Snatchural History of Copper, which she is presenting at the upcoming Creative Time Summit here in New York. MacKenzie talks to Marisa about the nature of extraction, the #ElectroWinning properties of copper and we take you on a deep dive to find the origin of Venus of Aphrodite.

For almost 40 years, Pope.L has challenged his audience both, to look deep into the eyes of American society, and question the very nature of art. Best known for enacting provocative performances in public spaces, Pope.L addresses issues from language to gender, to race to the struggles we face in this late capitalism. His work ranges from performance to painting, video, sculpture, and theater. MacKenzie sat down with Pope.L and went in deep on his latest work at the Whitney (Choir), maneuvering a shlong-like device, and what it takes to crawl through the streets of New York.

The Anthropocene is posited to be the geological era that we are presently inhabiting, an age where the indelible mark of humanity cannot be extracted from the fossil record. In Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, filmmakers Nicholas de Pencier, Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky set out to travel the globe to document the impact humans have made on the planet. Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky join MacKenzie in the studio and talk about how humans have fundamentally changed the face of the Earth, while we dive in head first on the Nazca lines of Peru, and an ode to all the elephants we've lost to poaching.

We're back with episode #2 and this week we are talking about borders. Filmmakers Emelie Mahdavian and Su Kim join MacKenzie in the studio to talk about their latest film, Midnight Traveler. Midnight Traveler is a documentary where Afghan director Hassan Fazili is forced to flee the country when the Taliban puts a bounty on his head. We go in deep about the difference between an asylum seeker and a refugee, check out how easy it is to move data over government lines, and check in with our friend, the cinereous vulture.

It's our first episode and we've pulled out all the stops. Prolific writer and novelist, Walter Mosley is in the studio and he and MacKenzie talk about writing black male heroes, freedom of speech and his cousin Alberta. Further in the episode we pay an auditory visit to Etheridge Knight (courtesy of the Lakawana Valley Digital Archives and the Scranton Public Library), we talk to a free speech attorney and give Nathaniel Hawthorne a well deserved 3-star rating.

Brooklyn is known for its small batch artisanal products, from hand-macramed hanging succulent planters to mayonnaise artfully blended with eggs from the freest of free-range chickens. And then, there's small batch artisanal erotica. MacKenzie speaks to a publisher and an author of racy lesbian love stories.

The play currently mounted at the Theater for a New Audience has been getting lots of attention. It won playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury a Pulitzer Prize. It's been playing for packed audiences, extended and extended again and all upcoming performances are nearly sold out. To talk about her role in the play is award-winning actor, Heather Alisha Sims.

Lisa Garbus’ two-part documentary, Who Killed Garrett Phillips?, outlines the series of events that led to a murder, a wrongful arrest and the police cover-up that almost took a man’s life. In the studio is his lawyer, Mani TK.

Earlier this month registered sex offender former Dalton teacher and incredibly wealthy degenerate Jeffrey Epstein was rearrested back in 2008. He was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. This time the accusation was sex trafficking. But what exactly is sex trafficking and why is it such a rampant problem in the United States? We are joined by Aya Psaki, the Policy and Advocacy Manager at Womankind and Abigail Swenstein, Staff Attorney with the Exploitation Intervention Project at the Legal Aid Society.

The U.S. women's soccer team is the best in the world by a lot. And the men's team also exists. You would think the players on one of these teams will be paid a lot more than the other. Well you'd be right but not in the way that makes sense. Here to discuss gender pay equity in sports are Natalie Weiner, a staff writer at SB Nation and Lauren Betters, an attorney and the Director of Programs and Policy at the Gender Equality Law Center.

This year, Oklahoma! galloped back into broadway and straight back into our hearts. Tony Award Winner and Producer, Caleb Hammons joins MacKenzie to talk about the gritty reboot and serving chilli on stage.

Break-ups are rough, ask anyone. That stability you once felt, that comfort you once had, that reliable plus one, all gone in one fell swoop. But what about the aftermath? What’s the right way to break up? Are you really going to eat that clam pasta for breakfast? Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya’s column “For Your Consideration" on Autostraddle.com really wants you to consider it...among other things. Also, stick around for MacKenzie’s very own installment of "For Your Consideration."

Okay ladies, now let's get information...about Beyonce's place in the canon of black feminism. Author, Kevin Allred is in the studio to talk about his new book, Ain't I a Diva? Beyoncé and the Power of Pop Culture Pedagogy. Plus, Beyonce's Lemonade featured a Nigerian body-painter who tapped into the traditions of the Yoruba. We'll talk to local body-painter, Andy Golub, in advance of the sixth annual Body Painting Day. *

It’s summer here in Brooklyn, and you know what that means: time to put your phone down, your beach umbrella up and get your read on. Today on the show we are talking to author Helen Phillips about her new book The Need, breastfeeding, existential doubt, viscera, and howling elk. Then, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-owner of Greenlight Books stops by to give us very specific summer reads recommendations.

Fifteen cyclists have been killed by motorists this year - a 50% increase over last year's totals. Vision Zero, a top-down approach to street safety, was supposed to make conditions better, but are they actually getting worse? MacKenzie talks to the editor-in-chief of StreetsBlog, and a safe-streets advocate about Mayor De Blasio's signature "accomplishment," and what the city can do to make sure the roadways are increasingly bike and pedestrian friendly.

Did you ever witness an event and say to yourself, “this is going to be a pivotal couple of minutes. History will remember this. Let’s take some pictures.” If you answered yes, you’re a psychic and a liar. We talk to The Museum of the City of New York's lead curator, Sara Seidman, who talks about the Stonewall and the photographic legacy of Fred W. McDarrah. And then, what happens when you mix Neon Coven, Julie Cooper, glitter, dancing, and a 19th Century poet? Oscar at the Crown is what.

Coming up, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, and Emma Stone join us to talk about Asian American representation in comedy.

We avoided the L-pocalypse, but now we have a BQEmergency on our hands. Carlo Scissura, head of the BQE panel, joins MacKenzie to talk about much-needed fixes for what might be the most loathed stretch of roadway in the country. And then, a new documentary highlights the city’s extremely dedicated cat-lovers who care for our feline friends living in the streets. Hear from directors Steven Lawrence and Rob Fruchtman and cat rescuer Latonya “Sassee” Walker about the film, and see how well they fare in a Cats: The Musical personality quiz.

City Limits' executive editor Jarrett Murphy joins MacKenzie to talk about the unprecedented legislative session in Albany, where the newly minted Democratic majority passed a slew of transformative laws. And then they're joined by a police reform advocate who says, despite the progressive victories, the Blue Wave fell well short of addressing the Blue Wall of Silence and other viable legislation aimed at creating a more transparent criminal justice system.

If you’re young and queer, you know that intergenerational relationships with your queer elders are sometimes hard to come by. For one, many gay people of a certain generation were deep in the closet their whole lives, many others were wiped out by the AIDS epidemic, not to mention that trans women of color are less likely to make it to an advanced age. So, in our final episode of Pride Month, MacKenzie sits down with Christina Cauterucci, Staff Writer at Slate, to talk about her latest interviews with LGBTQ old folks.

Buckle up, because we're talking fashion. We rip the seams on how fashion's four-lines-a year fuck-it-lets-do-it-live warp speed style is combining with misguided efforts to take inspiration from other cultures. But is appropriation more complicated than the discourse gives it credit for? We try to find the beauty in cultural appropriation with Refinery 29's Connie Wang.

Since the days of the Brothers Grimm, princesses and queens have featured prominently in children's stories. Just look at Disney, which has built an entire empire on the back of (often problematic, traditionally gendered) femininity. Yet, some folks in Gerritsen Beach Brooklyn were protesting a children's story hour at the local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library where volunteers in costume as queens read books to young children. Their problem, the volunteers were drag queens. Co-founder of the Drag Queen Story Hour, Jonathan Hamilt, joins MacKenzie, and he'd rather not dwell on the negativity. And then The Crew discusses unfortunate things people do as 16-year-olds and Harvard's decision to rescind the admission of Parkland High School grad Kyle Kashuv for racist comments he made online.

What happens when a film role you play as a child defines you before you've defined yourself? We talk to Brian Falduto, who played 'Fancy Pants' on Richard Linklater's "School of Rock," about navigating his gay identity at the age of 11. And then, the Crew talks about flicks portraying youth that defined their youths.

Sibling bonds are both rekindled and tested in the feature debut from Diana Peralta. Rita (Sasha Merci) and Carolina (Darlene Demorizi), two high-spirited sisters raised in New York, travel to the Dominican Republic to reunite with their estranged brother Dante (Héctor Aníbal) and to clean out their grandparents’ old home before it is sold and knocked down. We're joined by director, Diana Peralta.

"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters," Ernest Hemingway wrote in the Sun Also Rises. When penning that line, he might have been thinking of his friend, the celebrated American matador Sidney Franklin. Hemingway once wrote of Franklin, "He is a better, more scientific, more intelligent, and more finished matador than all but about six of the full matadors in Spain today." Franklin was born Sidney Frumkin in Brooklyn in 1903, the son of an Orthodox Jewish cop. Against his father's wishes, he took an interest in the arts, distanced himself from Judaism, had relationships with men throughout his life, and took up bullfighting. His story has recently resurfaced, thanks to Center for Jewish History in NYC, and their director of archive and library service, Rachel Miller, tells us about it. We also meet two honorees recognized by the Borough President for their contributions to the Brooklyn LGBTQ+ community.