S5E5 S.W.E.A.T. with Bishop Black

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. This month's conversation is with musician and educator Ivan Txaparro Ivan Txaparro is an artist, musician, designer, and researcher based in Berlin. He is the founder of Resonar Lab, a transdisciplinary collective dedicated to fostering ecosocial transformation through participatory art, music, and storytelling. His work bridges artistic practice, academic research, and activism. He performs and produces music through his project TXAP and the NAWALA ensemble, weaving together Afro-Latin rhythms, activist music from the Global South, electronic soundscapes, and political storytelling. His current research explores participatory storytelling, trickster poetics, and epistemic resistance through music and counterhistory. Through his teaching, performances, and collaborative projects across Europe and Latin America, he seeks to create resonant spaces where communities can collectively imagine and enact transformative futures. https://linktr.ee/txap We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.mad-kate.com/sweat-podcast/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This month's conversation is with Verónica Aristizábal and Ilok Inti Trujillo S.W.E.A.T. Verónica Aristizábal is a Colombian industrial designer, educator, and trans activist bridging community project management with creative, pedagogical strategies. With deep roots in grassroots organizing and mutual-care networks across Colombia and Latin America, she has served as a core facilitator and advocate within the movement for the Ley Integral Trans. Currently, through Juguetería TRANSensual, she merges tactical design, sexuality, and community empowerment to create spaces of pleasure, learning, and autonomy. Verónica is dedicated to weaving international alliances, connecting trans grassroots activism and mutual-care infrastructures between Latin America and Europe to build sustainable, cross-border networks of collective support. Ilok Inti is a travesti, non-binary, agender, autistic, and disabled person from Colombia, a popular educator, and an activist for the rights of trans and non-binary people, committed to collective building. They are a co-founder of La Juguetería TRANSensual, a collective rooted in trans, non-binary, disabled, and neurodivergent experiences, working to imagine new ways of inhabiting eroticism, exploring pleasure, and creating our own narratives around desire. Through the creation of sensory erotic toys, fanzines, workshops, and spaces for gathering, the collective seeks to transform dominant narratives about our bodies and sexualities. Through this work, desire, pleasure, and eroticism become territories of resistance, creativity, and freedom. Ilok Inti on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ilok_inti/ Verónica Aristizábal on Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/veronica__aristizabal/ La Jugueteria TRANSensual - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lajugueteriatransensual/ Ley integral trans ya - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seraleytrans/ La Jugeteria TranSensual: https://lajugueteriat.wordpress.com/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.mad-kate.com/sweat-podcast/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This months conversation is with dancer, choreographer and writer Patric da Cunha. Patric is a queer Brazilian performer and artist working between writing, dance and sound. A graduate of P.A.R.T.S., trained at EDA and the NEFCD program in Sweden, Patric develops a practice that investigates new perspectives of the body, drawing on history and identity to explore memory, rhythm, and transformation. Rooted in blackness and decolonization, their work moves through non‑linear temporalities where poetry, presence, and movement shape the body as a site of encounter between what is remembered and what is yet to come. I reached out to Patric because I was inspired by their Instagram reels about decolonizing dance. In one post Patric writes, "contemporary dance is not a neutral description but a colonial framing of the present. when we talk about contemporary dance, we see a curated set of styles defined by european instituations." Photo of Patric by Diana Tishchenko Songs played Mad Kate - My Fear of Pretending (featuring Lori Baldwin) Writers mentioned: Ailton Krenak and Nêgo Bispo

My conversation this month is with American rapper, performance artist, writer, and poet Mykki Blanco. Blanco just announced his newest album since 2022's _Stay Close to Music_ — it's called _CAFE PARADISO_, out September 4th via Transgressive Records, which includes three videos shot in and around Berlin. I had the pleasure of speaking with him from his home in Tangier, Morocco, where he recently moved after years living between Lisbon, Paris, and Switzerland. Blanco has been an outspoken voice in music since the early 2010s, when he first emerged from New York's underground scene — fighting, in his own words, to be seen as an artist first in an industry that wasn't always ready for him. He's been publicly living with HIV for a decade, using songs like "Carry On" to push back on stigma, and before he ever picked up a mic he was a poet, publishing his first book, _From the Silence of Duchamp to the Noise of Boys_. He reflected with me on performance as connection — what it means to hold a stage alone for an hour with nothing but his own instincts — and we closed out talking about the global economy, the gap between billionaires and everyone else, and what care looks like right now inside artist communities that are struggling to get by.

S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. Their guest this month is performance artist ReveRso. Out of the darkness emerged ReveRso. The creation myth of a megalomaniac marred on its own venom: a fetishistic cannibal-of-self bound in love, loss, seduction, salvation, madness, prophecy and pain. Currently based in Berlin, ReveRso has massacred crowds on stages (and in alleyways) from Europe to America, and back again. ReveRso's tour de force of delirium sites: Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Istanbul, Antwerp, Paris, Barcelona,Genève, Madrid, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York,Cologne, London, Basel -Genève,Poznán, Lugano as some of his Holy grounds. ReveRso also serves as the High Priest of the legendary SupperClub as a long-term Resident Performer, desecrating its white walls with his carnal pleasures. Live like a suicide, ReveRso is the teenage harlot strangled by the Mad Hatter, lips suckled in blood, a ghostly white palour. A junky, he must devour the public to feel the light, his rite of purification through the shadows. To Repent to the name of no other but He ☦ ReveRso. We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. photo of ReveRso by Guille Chipironet

This month's conversation is with performer Nancy Nutter. Nancy’s artistry expands through visual, performative, musical realms. She is one half of the piano cabaret duo THE DAMES, the lead vocalist of trans-femme punk band GIRLS IN YOUR AREA, and head of performance at TRACEY. She co-creates TREASON cabaret club night, and co-curates the performance stage at WHOLE FESTIVAL. Nancy teaches gender performance in various workshops, including the EMBODIED DISRUPTION series, KÖNIG, and at ARTHAUS. They are a costume maker, makeup artist, and drag star. A graphic designer, film maker, tattoo artist, and a painter. https://nancynutter.net/ photo of Nancy by Javier Alejandro Cerrada In this episode, Nancy and Mad Kate speak about parenthood, gender, drag, folk music, workers' solidarity, the aching vulnerability of performing your truest self in front of a room of strangers and the power of empathy. Nancy also shared some of their brilliant ideas on gender beyond the binary that she is outlining in her book-in-progress, working title Drag, Disruption and Descent We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

This month's conversation is with performer and director Bishop Black Bishop Black is a black British performer, who has lived in Berlin since 2011. Bishop uses movement as a language and their body to expresses themselves primarily by using as a tool, politicized through the lenses of sexuality, gender and race. They have been performing in theater since 2017, and working as a performance and burlesque artist since 2012. Having worked in the field of film in recent years, they are now mainly developing unique but interconnected performances in the theater, making use of mythology, occultism, queerness and dance as methodologies.

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

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

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