After starting his Rad Queers with a short documentary on LA's the Payasos,  artist/curator/videographer Graham Kolbeins has recently posted a second video in the series.

The video tells the story of what Kolbeins calls the "fabulous and fearless performance artist/playwright Ian MacKinnon. In his one-man show Gay Hist-Orgy, MacKinnon guides the audience on an erotic journey through the hidden history of same-sex love, examining homosexuality’s impact on 'the progress of art, philosophy, culture, and politics with equal parts insight and wit."

As Joel Plaskett once said, "There are reasons that I love this town."

But I don't think he necessarily meant this.

A Halifax artist has taken to Kijiji to sell their wares. Now, this may not be newsworthy unto itself, but take a look at what they're selling.

How about now?

Yup.

The Haligonian artist is selling the meme-laden painting for $60 on Kijiji. In the meantime, the painting itself is receiving a lot of media attention on sites like Reddit and even The Huffington Post. 

I do love this town.

Graham Kolbeins, the blogger and filmmaker from Future Shipwreck and Thrash Lab fame, has waved his magic fairy wand once more and come up with a new video series and a new project.

Entitled Rad Queers, the project is a way for Kolbeins to combine his favourite things: queers and storytelling. "There are a lot of amazing queer people out there, and I wanted to use 'Rad Queers' as a sort of spotlight for them," he says via email. "I also just love meeting new people and getting to know their stories, and making documentaries is a great excuse to do that."

Kolbeins jokes that his spirit guides for Rad Queers are RuPaul and Ira Glass. "I'd been mulling over Rad Queers in the back of my mind for a while. I wanted to make something that explores the lives of queer people leading fiercely individual lives and doing good things."  

When Kolbeins was introduced to the Los Angeles group the Payasos, he knew he had found what and who he was looking for. Payasos are a group of gay Latino men who -- through sexy and imaginative events, as well as a little bit of clown makeup -- create a space that Kolbeins says "make the world a better place for future generations."

"I met with Leo (the founder of the Payasos) to see if he'd be interested in the documentary and he was absolutely gracious and inviting," he says. "I shot some preliminary footage with the group and presented it to a production company I'd been working with to see if they'd be interested in doing a single-day shoot with the group. The company was a little terrified of the subject matter, so I decided to film it myself without a crew or budget. It actually worked out great that way! Instead of rushing it into a single day, I hung out with the Payasos over several months and attended a wide variety of their events. I ended up getting a much more intimate and multi-faceted perspective on the group than if I'd come in with eight crew members and a van full of equipment."

When asked what he likes about the Payasos, Kolbeins is enthusiastic in describing the sheer amount of fun that he was able to view and experience during filming. "When you're in clown face, it's kind of hard to have a bad time! Random strangers on the street get excited to see you. I had my makeup done a couple of times and it was almost jarring how different people's reactions are towards you . . . it's a simple gesture that makes you feel almost like a superhero, and encourages communion with those around you."

We connect. It's what we do.

Whether it's in "real" life or "online" life, we, as a species, like to connect. Sometimes those connections are fleeting, nothing more than a casual flirtation or perhaps a small conversation.  But we connect with one another, in more ways than we ever did before.

For more and more of us in the western world, we establish those connections through online means. Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Grindr, blogs, etc. We allow people access to parts of our lives which were previously kept hidden or quiet, or at the very least, known only to close friends. But today, we share. We share a lot. So what happens when you share how and who you fall in love with?

So allow me to introduce you to Tanner, a recent college grad  and Matthew, a gogo dancer and club promoter.  

They're two people who recently met and with the help of filmmaker Cory Krueckeber, are looking to document their romance, in whatever fashion it may come in a film called The Go Doc Project.

Krueckeber is looking to raise funds for his projects through Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing website that allows web denizens to donate money on projects to help them come to fruition. In the case of this project: For three weeks in September and October, we'll follow the guys all over New York City with a camera - into cafes & bars, onto rooftops & dance floors & ultimately into their living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms & bedrooms. The excitement of not knowing exactly what we'll end up with is what it's all about. Following that, we'll shoot a series of interviews with them as well as with NYC nightlife luminaries.

You can find out more about this project at The Go Doc Project's Kickstarter page.

You can find almost anything on Craigslist: antiques, furniture, apartments, sex.

But what about art?

Some (so far) unknown artist has put up a website entitled Craigslist Project.  In it, he posts images of individuals he claims to be real Craigslist posters in the casual encounters section.  

The ease which the online world helps people gain access to one another - and their wants and desires - is a subject that very few artists have dealt with in a refreshing, let alone interesting way. This series of portraits range from the ho-hum ("Snugglemonster wants to ParTY") to the intense ("Uncle Seeking Nephew").

"Unhappy Married Man ISO Unhappy Married Man"

Check out the rest of the very NSFW images at CraigslistProject.com

An introduction to The Artists Speak:

I've always been a fan of visual art, especially queer visual art and art done by queer artists. Some of it is glorious and some of it is paltry and bland. But no matter what, I think it's important to discuss and share. Like Popping Culture, Love Letters to the Past and Open Letters, The Artists Speak will be a series of posts on Down East about a specific work of art or artist. If you know of any interesting art and or artists that you think should be mentioned here, let me know.

*Warning: some content may be considered NSFW*

In 1962, a group of police officers carried out a sting operation in Ohio. They filmed and photographed a number of men who were congregating and meeting to have sex with men in a local restroom, colloquially known as a T-room. Many of the men who were photographed were prosecuted for their actions. 

In 2007, William E Jones created Tearoom, a silent film running close to an hour that he made by editing together portions of the footage taken during the sting.

Tearoom has been shown around the world, from the Whitney in New York to the Pornfilmfestival in Berlin. It is a time capsule, bringing forth sexuality both open (men having sex with men in public/private spaces) and closed (sex taking place in secret due to fear of persecution/prosecution). 

Still from Tearoom, William E Jones

This work is a not-so-subtle reminder of persecution, ostracization and eroticization within the gay male experience. In an interview about the piece, Jones said:

"The authority figures who arranged this surveillance operation, who later sent the men to jail, and who controlled what this footage meant for society had an agenda, mainly the eradication of homosexuality from their fair city. My goal was to appropriate their film as something other than a pure instrument of domination, to make the film be about the men who are its subjects. I hope people can see more than oppression in TEAROOM."

You can view an excerpt of the film on Sukme, a Tumblr Blog (content NSFW).

I'm a big fan of the queer art site Future Shipwreck. They've featured some of my favourite artists, such as Christopher Schulz, creator of Pinups (NSFW), and the now infamous Seth zine. 

One of the editors/contributors, Graham Kolbeins, recently posted an homage to a lesser-known genre of Japanese comics known as bara. Unlike the better-known gay stories told in yaoi - which is written predominantly for women- bara is a form of manga where the stories told are about and for gay men. Although the images and storylines are often erotically charged, there is also, as Kolbeins notes, a sense of tenderness in between the sex.