mingjia🌸明佳

🐌 Excited to perform our own Mingjia Chen’s @ming_rat_thing piece for upper voices, “Comic Con,” on our December run of shows! Enjoy Ming’s video art with her illustrations, backstory on the piece and a musical excerpt. Dec 2 - Montreal, QC @ Musée des beaux-arts, Bourgie Hall @mbamtl Dec 3 - Stowe, VT @ Spruce Peak @sprucepeakarts Dec 5 - Bath, ME @ Chocolate Church @chocolatechurcharts Dec 7 - Florence, MA @ BOMBYX @bombyx.live For the 4 higher voices doubling on synthesizers and percussion, COMIC CON subverts sacredness by redirecting our gaze towards the profane, the tacky, the negligible, and the perverse: the “low.” In a string of candy-colored vignettes, Chen builds a collage bursting with pop culture references ranging from B-list celebrity interviews, to Japanese game shows, to anthropomorphic children’s stories. Wrapped within these circus scenes is an exploration of fantasy and performance as political tools for both hope and nihilism. Ultimately, COMIC CON investigates survival strategies deployed by the sinners and the freaks historically shunned by conventional places of worship. The cathedral becomes the comic convention, or the bedroom, or the tumblr thread; the holy text is the infinite loop of fetishizing self-reference in modern digital media. Campy, surreal, and tender, COMIC CON is both a critique and a celebration of the messy attempt in creating our most deeply desired realities and selves.

Out Today — star, star by Mingjia! “star, star is an abbreviation and nickname of the title track, **-*, which is a reference to elgar’s enigma variations that is far too nerdy to explain here. it is also a play on the nursery rhyme “star light, star bright”. in that way, it is a naming of desire; it is willing a potential future truth into present existence. it is an echo of itself. in audio mixing we call that a delay–carrying a sound from the present into a future where it should not organically belong in order to help the music tell its story. in tarot, the star signifies hope for the future. hope is not a significant concept for someone who has everything they need. i think that’s just gratitude. or presence. hope is for people who lack, people who need–people who are stuck: in a soul-numbing job, in a heart-breaking relationship, in an unfinished piece of music… on the album cover there are two bright stars. one is crowded around by a swarm of mingjia’s, while the other is neglected. if hope is believing in a better future, then is the opposite of this… believing in the good of the present? acceptance? gratitude? these days i am trying to keep at least a little light from both stars in my view.” Link in bio!

march 19 we r doing our first ~official~ performance of @mearao ’s stunning butt-kick hockets!!!! @acrolinnea & i have been working on these for like 2 years & we r very very very pumped!!!!! here is us fumbling happily there will also a set of ming & string songs w the usual suspects @karl.mccomas.reichl @_canasta as well as sets from @loganhone and @leah.happiness !!!! tickets bio u kno~

LA’s fav chihuahua @tv.chi (tied with @rita_chihuahuacita ofc) is needing some medical procedures… specifically an echocardiogram for his little heart, which costs 900USD, and also some tooth extractions… the cost of which will likely be… high :( pls consider giving something to alex (TV’s mom) via venmo at @ alex_hatzakis !!! canadian friends, if you’d like to contribute you can e-transfer me at my outlook . com email and i’ll send it along! TV really feels like the mascot of a whole community!!!!! he brings joy to countless people’s lives, but alex is pretty much soley responsible for paying his expenses. let’s all show up for him and alex the way they show up for us <3 if everyone who’s ever held tv at a party gave $10, the echocardiogram fee would be covered immediately!!! thank u so much ebryone <3

signs of life 🌱

all of u for years telling me not to cut my own bangs--yall been gatekeeping some shit fr ✂️✂️✂️✂️🔪🔪🔪🔪

recorded an album last week <3 @rita_chihuahuacita was there and naturally ran the show. still recovering from the maximalist hullaballoo of the last record so this one's mostly just the three of us live off the floor >:} very muchly thanks to @_k_pasta_ @_canasta @bobbykamalino @melissazlai & the peeps at @altamirasound & my friends who came to listen & hang & reminded me to be unafraid get redy 2 b blessed by this record soon i been playing these gd songs for too fking long lol can't wait to retire them after this jk unless (also pls lmk of any labels that u suspect might want this bad boy 😈)

@mearao 's hockets for two voices!! in one week!!!! wintery sunset photo by isabelle statchtenko! cropped & ruined by us! MAY 1! new show added in providence!! 2 sets! hockets and songs! thanks @badabingrecords @symposiumbooks MAY 3! long play festival in brooklyn!!! thank u @heavy_trip @bangonacan c o m e o u t i f u d a r e > : )

WE FORGOT: LA HOUSE SHOW HAPPENING FEB 20 INQUIRE WITHIN

** CORRECTION: SD on the 28th, LA on the 29th!! it is the new year and the world is flipping itself inside out and pls come say hi on the road many of these projects are particularly meaningful to me and have been in the works for a long time and i’d love to share them with u 💞deets on slides tix in bio lmk if u’d like to come but don’t have $$$

a year in mahjong and karaoke

teeth does europe and i am madly in love there are brilliant teachers of kindness and care in my life and here are some exceptionally good ones and here is the biggest snail i’ve ever held in my hand and i have never pooped so bad or slept so little and trains are portals between universes where u can hold many more things all in one frame and more public singing and dancing please starting now and there is beauty and violence everywhere and let’s race from the station 3 2 1 go pls tell me about everything i want to hold yr gaze for a long time i will miss every second i keep rolling the moments over and over like a translucent green boogie under the sun between yr fingies roll it round and around and around over and over and over and over and