PRESS
Buffet Flats: Queering Slow Food Series presents
Feast of the Pink Moon
Produced by Seth Eisen/Eye Zen Art
Hosted by Marilyn McNeal/Million Fishes Arts Collective
Saturday, April 28th, 2012 6:30pm-10pm
(Dinner @ 6:30, Show at 8pm)
Million Fishes Arts Collective-
2501 Bryant Street @ 23rd, San Francisco.
Admission: sliding scale $10-$35,
no one turned away for lack of funds
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/232919
More info: www.buffetflats.org
Buffet Flats is a dinner-salon that cross-pollinates local food and farming activists with Queer artists and performers, to queer the conversation about growing sustainable communities. We are cooking what we grow, sewing what is torn and reaping what we know to come home.
Buffet Flats is a dinner-salon that’s part wild queer cabaret and part live cooking show. Hosted by historical queer personas, our events open a dialogue on the legacy of a history that has kept queer community divided by race, gender, and class. Feast of the Pink Moon, is named after April’s full moon, when fish swim upstream to spawn and flowers paint the ground pink, a luxurious carpet to call in the spring.
Million Fishes Collective in the Mission will host our Queer Urban Farmer rap about local food and ecology while we serve up an exuberant mix of artistic risk and sensual pleasures. Food is harvested from community farms and prepared by chefs into mini-meals punctuated by fierce performance, music, and visual art.
Join us for a scintillating evening to celebrate the rite of spring, paying homage to the original Buffet Flats and feeding a new, queer generation.
Project Description
Buffet Flats provides a venue for learning about local food sources, cuisine, history and ecology by uniting Queer culture with urban farming. Each event is part edible cooking show, part wild cabaret act with visual art and keynote speakers. We engage a racially and ethnically diverse creative team to produce events that draw from diverse sectors of the Queer community and open dialogue about racial issues, both historical and contemporary. We begin by developing partnerships with local farms, artists and ecologists selected by the Eye Zen Art curatorial team. We invite participants to farms and gardens, guided by a creative team of guest co-hosts, artists and ecologists.
A work period culminates in the dinner-salons, where guests witness the result of the artistic collaborations. In preparation for each Buffet Flats salon, artists and ecologists meet and develop ideas with their communities: other chefs, ecologists, artists, performers and those they attract.
Buffet Flat events are scheduled on or near the full moon to emphasize the importance of seasonal food and the lunar cycle. Buck Moon, for example, is a Native American Algonquin term referring to the period in July when new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads. Food is harvested from community farms, then prepared by chefs into three-course mini-meals. The menus highlight the diverse culinary approaches reflected in the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of the LGBT community. Cabaret acts, visual arts and expert talks, hosted by
historic Pansy Craze and Buffet Flats personas, punctuate the courses. The settings and extended performance experience encourage guests to interact with one another in a more intimate way than standard theaters.
Buffet Flats is inspired by the Pansy Craze and Buffet Flats, two underground New York community gathering tactics that flourished in the early 20th century. The 1920s Pansy Craze was a brief movement that brought Queer performers to the stage in transgressive gender identities despite laws prohibiting them. In speakeasies across the country, Queer performers penetrated mainstream audiences with an outrageous blend of camp wit, androgyny and subversive irony. Buffet Flats originated when Harlem apartment dwellers opened their
homes to accommodate Black travelers who were refused lodging in white-owned establishments. Later, these apartments evolved into interracial speakeasies, serving up an exuberant mix of artistic risk and sensual pleasures. Diverse audiences would attend to eat, drink, sing, dance and revel in creative abandon. The Pansy Craze and Buffet Flats were concurrent, though divided by racial lines: Pansy Craze clubs catered to white audiences, and most excluded audiences of color. Jean Malin, leader of the Pansy Craze in New York and California, repeatedly attempted to integrate Pansy Craze culture, but his attempts largely failed.
Producer/co-host Seth Eisen invokes the spirit of Jean Malin and revives his efforts by involving racially and ethnically diverse performers and participants in the contemporary Buffet Flats; recent co-hosts have included m.a. brooks and The Empress Jupiter, as well as Eisen performing as host in the persona of Jean Malin. Our BF events open a dialogue about race by reexamining a history that has kept Queer community divided. For example, the m.a. brooks performance “Sugar” explored the sugar cane industry, slavery and the connection to diabetes in the Black community, reconstructing cultural memories from Black, Queer and colonized histories. The prose reading by Adriana Camarena challenged the class divide in “foodie” and slow-food communities in the Mission. Juba Kalamka’s performance “The Fruiting” portrayed Marcus Garvey and Langston Hughes contextualizing political relationships to food, place, race and the dandy aesthetic of the Harlem Renaissance.
Project Impact
Buffet Flats continues Eye Zen Art’s tradition of creating visually dynamic, interdisciplinary work with a focus on Queer history, aesthetics and sensibilities. With Buffet Flats we continue to harness and reclaim historic traditions of Queer culture to provoke community development, encourage essential dialogue, and promote social change. Buffet Flat events work toward the integration of contemporary Queer communities while raising awareness about how to grow and access local food by uniting Queer culture with urban farming. We have begun developing the blog buffetflats.org with memoir, memorabilia, recipes, resources and documentation of our events.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – SAN FRANCISCO, March 26, 2012
For press materials and hi-res photos, visit: http://www.buffetflats.org/
Eye Zen Art and the Queer Cultural Center’s Healthy Communities Program present
Buffet Flats -Queering Slow Food Series-
FEAST OF THE PINK MOON
Saturday, April 28th, 2012 6:30pm-10pm
(Dinner @ 6:30, Show at 8pm)
QUEER PERFORMANCE/DINNER-SALON- ONE NIGHT ONLY
At Million Fishes Arts Collective
2501 Bryant Street @ 23rd, San Francisco.
Admission: sliding scale $10-$35, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.
More info: www.buffetflats.org
Featuring hosts: Seth Eisen as Jean Malin- Grandfather of the 1920s Pansy Craze and
Juba Kalamka as Mr. Georg(e) Stanford Brown- Pullman Porter of the Harlem Renaissance.
Also featuring:
Annie Danger- Performer and Curious Gray Area
Dave End- Acoustic D.I.Y. Troubadour with Queer Cupcake Loving Honesty Pop
marilyn mcneal- Buffet Flats home host and hand-made multi-instrumentalist
Khalil Sullivan – of Mad Noise
Gabriel Todd and special surprise guest- Songs and Ritual Booty Shakin’
Markos Major- Queer Urban Farmer
Price Sheppy- Dark Ranger- interpreting the wonders of the night sky
Jayson “Frisk” Jaynes and guest chefs serving up delicious mini-meals from sustainable ingredients.
Buffet Flats’ FEAST OF THE PINK MOON is named after April’s full moon, when fish swim upstream to spawn and flowers paint the ground pink with Spring’s luxurious carpet.
Join us on April 28th as multi-instrumentalist and blues pianist marilyn mcneal hosts us at the homey Million Fishes Arts Collective. FEAST OF THE PINK MOON celebrates the start of spring, serving up a crazy-delicious meal with food harvested from local farms and prepared by chef Jayson “Frisk” Jaynes.
FEAST OF THE PINK MOON is hosted by historical queer personas, Seth Eisen as Jean Malin, grande-dame of the Pansy Craze and Juba Kalamka as Mr. Georg(e) Stanford Brown, Pullman Porter of the Harlem Renaissance with a fierce line-up of Bay Area talent, food and queer wisdom.
Featuring performances by Annie Danger, Dave End, Gabriel Todd and Special surprise guests. Dark Ranger, Price Sheppy interprets the wonders of the night sky while Queer Urban Farmer, Markos Major opens this scintillating evening reflecting on the rite of spring while feeding and inspiring a new, queer generation.
The contemporary Buffet Flats is a dinner-salon, that’s part queer cabaret and part live cooking show. We are a traveling speakeasy, held at homes and gardens around the Bay Area and paying homage to two underground queer gathering traditions that originated in New York in the early 20th century—Buffet Flats in Harlem, and The Pansy Craze on the lower east side, both which spread across the country.
We bring you an evening that bridges these traditions and opens a dialogue on the legacy of a history that has kept the queer community divided by race, gender, and class. The events are accessible to a wide range of queer and non-queer folk serving up and exuberant mix of artistic risk and sensual pleasures. We are cooking what we grow, sewing what is torn and reaping what we know, to come home. Please join us.
This event is made possible with generous support from The Queer Cultural Center, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, CounterPULSE, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council and THEOFFCENTER.
Bios:
Seth Eisen -Producer and Host, performs as Jean Malin, grandfather of the 1920’s Pansy Craze. In 1994 Seth developed the company Eye Zen Art as an umbrella for curating exhibits, producing performance, visual art projects and installations. His work has been featured at The Oakland Museum of California, Theater Artaud, Zeum, Yerba Buena Center, SOMARTS, Theater of Yugen, and CounterPULSE. Seth performed with Butoh companies Harupin–Ha and Ink Boat from 1994-1999 and from 2000-2010 with Keith Hennessy and Circo Zero touring in the US and Europe. Seth’s critically acclaimed solo show, Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas, sold out two San Francisco runs. Seth is an Artist-in-Residence at CounterPULSE creating a new show about the life of queer renegade Samuel Steward. Homo File will premiere in September 2012.
Juba Kalamka is an African American bisexual artist and activist recognized for his work and founding member of homohop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the micro-label Sugartruck Recordings. Kalamka has coordinated the release and promotion of five critically successful D/DC albums, the Outmusic Award winning solo debut of former Sister Spit member Rocco “Katastrophe” Kayiatos, and the distribution of the work of numerous other artists in the homohop community. Kalamka’s personal work centers on dialogues on the convergences and conflicts of race, identity, gender, sexuality and class in pop culture. He has written and illustrated several articles for pop culture magazines and journals, Kitchen Sink, ColorLines, and the now-defunct bisexual issues magazine Anything That Moves. Kalamka appears extensively in Alex Hinton’s 2005 documentary Pick Up the Mic, an active survey of the scene through documentation of homohop artists on tour and in performance at the various PeaceOUT festivals. Deep Dickollective’s fifth and final disc,On Some Other was released on Sugartruck in June, 2007. An essay/interview with Kalamka and former bandmate Tim’m West appears in hip hop writer Jeff Chang’s collection Total Chaos: the Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop (Basic Civitas Books).
marilyn mcneal is our venue host and blues pianist/performer, a San Francisco-based musician and composer who writes, records and performs original music and songs from the American old time music canon. Her compositional approach varies from simple chanting and body rhythm to working with live looping and pre-recorded audio (historic speeches, field recordings, ambient sound). She is particularly inspired by rural black folk music, which includes laments, ballads, work songs and spirituals. She plays piano, ukulele, wooden flute and spoons and makes her own folk instruments out of cardboard boxes, coffee cans, cookie tins, plastic water bottles, sticks, wire and string. The instruments are influenced by early American roots music, she says “allows me to get lost in the sound, rhythm, energy, chaos, guts and magic of American folk music.”
Annie Danger: Performer and Curious Gray Area is a multidisciplinary performing artist on the hunt for the perfect hybrid. She is a trans woman born and raised in Albuquerque, NM and rooted in the SF Bay Area twelve years strong. Deeply interested in art that pulls its own weight, Danger concocts an uncanny blend of art and activism. She tinkers with hearts and minds, using her razor wit to alter cultural archetypes and sidle profundity right up next to you before you ever see it coming. Her work is cunning in its use of humor and sweetness to put the ‘active’ back into ‘interactive art’. Danger has performed nationally and internationally in theaters, colleges, bars, galleries, and the streets. Look for Annie in The Fully Functional Cabaret this July and in Trojan X , a collaboration with Keith Hennessy this fall. Find out more at dangertattoos.com or look for Annie Danger on Facebook.
Dave End: the acoustic D.I.Y. troubadour who writes queer cupcake loving honesty pop and focuses on the details that rhyme. In the past 2 years, Dave End has released 2 albums (How to Hold Your Own Hand, Fruits Commonly Mistaken For Vegetables), toured 4,500 miles in a veggie diesel car, made a lot of stuffed animals, and written a 100 page thesis about supermarkets. Listening to Dave End’s music is like giving your younger self a hug. It makes you feel like you’re okay, not despite your struggles but because of them. His songs are musically charming and give words to thoughts and feelings you didn’t know you had! Tackling subject matters like bullying, homophobia, body image and heartbreak, Dave End could easily fall into the slippery traps of self-pity and earnestness, but he manages to keep his songs aloft with humor, bounce, and jamboree-style glee.
Gabriel Todd is a music and dance based performing artist and educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He creates solo and ensemble work merging elements of voice, original music/sound, contemporary dance, physical theater, ritual, and video. On a thematic level his work tends to address the complexity of conflicted identities in the spaces in between queerness, mixed cultural origins, family traditions, popular culture, and the personal and communal myths that surface as a means for survival. He is interested in performing and creating work in warehouses, backyards, theaters, dance clubs, bars, and in video and film. He received a BFA in Performance from Naropa University, and more recently an MFA in Dance with an emphasis in somatics and interdisciplinary performance from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has had the honor of performing in the works of Keith Hennessey (Circo Zero), Sara Shelton Mann, Kim Epifano, Michelle Stortz, Onye Ozuzu, Rennie Harris, Darrell Jones, La Alternativa, Zen Cabaret, Krista Denio, Tara Rynders, Macklin Kowal, and has collaborated musically with the New Denver Orchestra, Albert Mathias, Neal Stewart, DJ Drunken Monkey, and Loren Olds. Gabriel is currently working on a music and voice based project in San Francisco that will culminate in live performance, video/music project, and eventually a tour.
Markos Major is our Queer Urban Farmer. Whether digging beds on Treasure Island, Golden Gate Park or Alemany Farm, Urban Farm Educator Markos Major has worked with youth and adults alike to build cultures of sustainability in San Francisco and beyond. Climate Action, Sidewalk Gardening, Perennial Food Production and Youth Empowerment are the foci his current work at the SF Botanical Garden and SF Department of Public Works. Markos also consults with schools and individuals interested in creating sustainable organic gardens as well as native habitat restoration. Markos is a founding member of the Rainbow Chard Alliance.
Jayson “Frisk” Jaynes is our Head Chef. He is a Queer community activist, artist, and chef. Frisk has been lead chef on all of the first Buffet Flats events, helping plan, source, and cook 3-course meals utilizing San Francisco’s farms and gardens. He is the inventor of Buffet Flats’ B.UR.P. (Busy Urban Professional) meals. He is passionate about locally-grown and sourced food, simple recipes for busy urban people that bridge the gaps between farm and table. He develops menus, recipes and alliances with farmers and culinary team members. He is also an organizer, promoter, and designer with Comfort & Joy, an arts collective dedicated to promoting queer culture, expression, self-actualization and community.
Price Sheppy: During the day you will find Price performing habitat restoration and environmental education across the Golden Gate National Parks. At night, trained as a Dark Ranger, Price interprets the wonders of the night sky for the public. Tossing off his professional hat, Price loves to explore our deeper and seemingly mystical connections to nature and the universe.
CALENDAR LISTINGS: Theatre/Art/ Performance
WHAT: Buffet Flats- Queering Slow Food Series-
FEAST OF THE PINK MOON
WHEN: Saturday, April 28, 2012, 6:30-10pm
WHERE: Million Fishes Arts Collective, 2501 Bryant Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
TICKETS: Tickets are $10-35 sliding scale.
Available on Brown Paper Tickets & a limited number at the door.
http://www.brownpapertickets.
NOTAFLOF/No one turned away for lack of funds
INFO: 415-531-7037 or buffet@eyezen.org
WEB: www.buffetflats.org
To see video clips from previous shows visit:
Markos Major, Queer Urban Farmer giving his expert talk about urban farming
and gardening in the Bay Area. Friday July 15th, 2011. Video by Mark McBeth
Please view clip from 8:20-9:38 (1:20 secs)
2. Seth Eisen as Jean Malin of grandfather of The Pansy Craze hosting the
first Buffet Flats event. Showing food that was gathered from local farms.
Friday, July 15th, 2011. Please view clip 1:24-1:36 (12 secs)
Video by Mark McBeth
http://vimeo.com/26538873
PRESS IMAGES: To download high-resolution digital images:
http://www.buffetflats.org/
Buffet Flats intends to build healthier communities through this intimate event. We are interested in creating a safe and healthy space for diverse people to investigate the ideas of nourishment, home, and sanctuary as they learn about growing and accessing local food and share diverse culinary approaches, and to work to heal the racial divide that is still so prevalent in the Queer community.
Background:
The 1920s Pansy Craze was a short-lived movement that brought Queer performers to the stage in transgressive gender identities despite laws prohibiting them. In speakeasies across the country, Queer performers broke through to mainstream audiences with an outrageous mix of camp wit, androgynous sensibility and subversive irony.
Buffet Flats originated when Harlem apartment dwellers opened their homes to accommodate black travelers who were refused lodging in white-owned establishments. Later, these apartments evolved into interracial speakeasies, serving up an exuberant mix of artistic risk with subversive tastes in sensual pleasures. Diverse audiences would attend to eat, drink, sing, dance and revel in creative abandon.
The Pansy Craze and Buffet Flats were concurrent, though largely divided along racial lines. Jean Malin was the flamboyant leader of the Pansy Craze in New York and California. Pansy Craze clubs catered primarily to white audiences, and most excluded audiences of color. Malin repeatedly attempted to racially integrate Pansy Craze culture but his attempts mostly failed. Seth Eisen will invoke the spirit of Jean Malin and revive his efforts. Celebrated lesbians such as Gladys Bentley hosted queer-themed Harlem Buffet Flats attended by both gay and straight audiences. m.a. brooks, an African American performance artist, will co-host Harvest Moon/Shine On!, as Jean LaRue, 1940s famed female impersonator from Oakland. As racially diverse hosts and curators, this performance seeks to open a dialogue on the legacy of a history that has kept queer community divided by race, gender, and class.
In the intimate setting of San Francisco homes and gardens we re/imagine the creative possibilities when we access, grow and cook local food together. We share diverse culinary approaches, food, Queer Art and wisdom, creating safe spaces for a diverse and healthy community. Cooking what we grow. Sewing what is torn. Reaping what we know.
AT BUFFET FLATS WE: RAISE awareness about how to grow and access local food. UNITE queer culture with the discourse about food and sustainability. PROVIDE a forum for learning about local food sources and sharing diverse culinary approaches. CONNECT communities of art, performance, cuisine, local history and eco literacy. LINK the flourishing performance and foodie cultures and the places they intersect. ENCOURAGE collaborations /cross-pollination between food activist and artists.
BIOS:
Seth Eisen’s work is a hybrid of visual art and live performance expanding the dialogue between various disciplines. In 1994 he developed the company Eye Zen Art as an umbrella for curating exhibits, producing performance, visual art projects and installations featured in the US and abroad. He performed with Harupin–Ha and Ink Boat (1994-1999) and with Keith Hennessy and Circo Zero touring in the US and Europe (2000-2010). Seth’s critically acclaimed solo show, Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas, sold out two San Francisco runs.
Jayson “Frisk” Jaynes is an artist, designer, and amateur chef with a passion for serving up delicious meals from sustainable ingredients. He started cooking at an early age, learning soul food at the heels of his mother and grandmother. He is interested in the intersection of slow, local food and our increasingly hectic urban lifestyles. He’s the founder of Busy Urban Professionals Can Cook (BUrPs Can Cook), which seeks to find time-saving tips and methods to bring locally grown foods to the tables of even the overworked.
Kym Hawkins is a community-based artist and art event producer whose work is concerned with arts accessibility to marginalized communities and mapping the art process to demystify art making. She received her MA in Transformative Arts focusing her studies on Community Arts at John F. Kennedy University (JFKU) in 2007. Kym designed & facilitated community art projects with the Women-in-Progress group, exhibited at the JFKU Arts & Consciousness Gallery and with Meridian Gallery’s Youth Interns, performed at Crissy Fields Center. In 2008 and 2010, Kym collaborated with Seth Eisen to produce his sold-out solo performance, Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas at Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. She is currently the production assisant for the MicroClimate Curators seasonal, one-night art events (Eidolon, Everything Must Go!, Hypnogogia, & Unseen Unsaid) at the Climate Theater.
Markos Major is a Queer Urban Farmer. Whether digging beds on Treasure Island, Golden Gate Park or Alemany Farm, Urban Farm Educator Markos Major has worked with youth and adults alike to build cultures of sustainability in San Francisco and beyond. Climate Action, Sidewalk Gardening, Perennial Food Production and Youth Empowerment are the foci his current work at the SFBotanical Garden and SFDepartment of Public Works. Markos also consults with schools and individuals interested in creating sustainable organic gardens as well as native habitat restoration. Markos is a founding member of the Rainbow Chard Alliance.
To see video clips from previous shows visit:
http://vimeo.com/26657221
Markos Major, Queer Urban Farmer giving his expert talk about urban farming and gardening in the Bay Area. Friday July 15th, 2011. Video by Mark McBeth Please view clip from 8:20-9:38 (1:20 secs) 2. Seth Eisen as Jean Malin of grandfather of The Pansy Craze hosting the first Buffet Flats event. Showing food that was gathered from local farms. Friday, July 15th, 2011. Please view clip 1:24-1:36 (12 secs) - Video by Mark McBeth
Buffet Flats High Res Photos
To download a high resolution image, click on each image. Thank you.
Buffet Flats: Harvest Moon – Jean and Jean – By Ed Wolf
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Empress Jupiter – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Susan Appe, Blue Buddha and Seth Eisen – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Adam Astraul the Naughty Bride-Groom – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Seth Eisen as Jean Malin – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Empress Jupiter and Jean Malin (Seth Eisen) – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Chefs Frisk and Forge – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Empress Jupiter and Jean Malin, Grande Dame of the Pansy Craze – By Dan Nicoletta
Buffet Flats: Red Moon – Empress Jupiter – By Dan Nicoletta
