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PRESS RELEASE
Contacts: Sue Schaffner and Carrie Moyer : info@dykeactionmachine.com INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW...
URL: www.dykeactionmachine.com New York, NY — For every heterosexual who's ever wondered why so many lesbians insist on looking like men and for every lesbian who's sick of being asked WHEN did she first know she was queer, the illustrious public art duo, Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!) unveils the hottest place to get some straight-up answers that will fill in the blank...and then some — DAM! FAQ. DAM! FAQ, the only Macromedia Flash site on the Internet dedicated to addressing these quiz-show type queries, will have its on-line debut September 15, 1999. In conjunction with the website's premiere, 5,000 posters will be wild posted in Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn between September 15 and October 1, coinciding with the opening of the 1999-2000 gallery season. Combining the no-nonsense graphic sensibility of the open road with edgy, tongue-in-cheek writing, titillating video and a game whose big payoff is to finally put into hard numbers exactly how long the player has been gay, DAM! FAQ responds to cliché questions about lesbians with Dyke Action Machine!'s trademark irony and media savvy. Dyke Action Machine! is the nine-year old brainchild of Carrie Moyer and Sue Schaffner. Since 1991, DAM!'s culture-jamming public art campaigns have dissected mainstream advertising by inserting lesbian images into recognizably commercial contexts. DAM!'s media interventions have been sited where ever the public gets its information — the streets of New York City, the Web, interactive phone lines, even matchbook covers have all been used as targets. "The agitprop duo...armed with wheatpaste, ire and graphic talents have brought New York their perversely satirical lesbo-themed ads." (Village Voice) "The slick, hyper professional look of DAM's projects exponentially increases their effectiveness, giving a poster's juxtaposition with 'real' advertising an eerie resonance." (Bitch Magazine) DAM!'s projects have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe — including shows at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum — and have been anthologized widely. Photographer Sue Schaffner keeps a studio in West Chelsea, New York City. Under the alias "girl ray" she has maneuvered her work into a variety of publications. Most recently she is very proud of balancing a shooting schedule that consists of beauty photography for Glamour and then portraits of Middle America for Good Housekeeping...all in the same week. Her work also frequently appears in Esquire, Wired, Maxim, Entertainment Weekly and Men's Health to name a few. Designer Carrie Moyer's various commercial efforts include advertising, package and website design as well as pro bono campaigns for the Lesbian Avengers and the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization. Her paintings were included this year in exhibitions at Threadwaxing Space, Greene Naftali Gallery, and Debs & Co., all in New York City. When Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet, she precipitated a media frenzy. Since then, the antics of a few celebrity lesbian couples — Ellen and Anne Heche, Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cyphers — are reported ad nausea in gossip columns and on the E! Network. But for the Average Lesbian, without the aid of a publicist, coming out doesn't just happen once in her life, but is a daily occurrence that can be both tedious and frustrating. And, after facing those distinctly unglamorous moments when she responds to yet another uncomprehending query, a gal could use a good laugh over being asked, "Which one's the man?" The perpetual burden of always having to explain oneself becomes further exacerbated by the plethora of extremely violent, homophobic sites on the Internet which actively promote intolerance. Godhatesfags.com, the vitriolic website posted by a church group in Kansas, features a page depicting Matthew Shepherd "burning" in hell. The site amply reinscribes the fact that, despite society's gradual acceptance of gay people, much education remains to be done. Answer girls, Schaffner and Moyer aim to respond to such sites with an "infotainment" sensibility. DAM! FAQ opens with a Flash-animated, high-speed car crash in the Information Highway and then segues into some lively answers to the three featured questions: When did you know? Are you two sisters? and Which one's the man? Moyer and Schaffner, aren't waiting for their PhD in the theories of Nature vs. Nurture to come in the mail. They have an answer good and ready for all the people that ask "When did you know?" — as if you woke up one morning and a light bulb when off in your head, telling you that you were gay. At last, Dyke Action Machine! takes the awkward pause out of answering the unanswerable. DAM! has created a special scientific device to mathematically calculate how many days a person has been gay. After all, giving a cold, hard number is a lot easier than trying to remember if it all began in gym class or after you realized your husband never really turned you on. As children, how many of us stripped our Ken dolls to determine if Ken could really be the man of Barbie's dreams (or another Ken's for that matter). But in a world WITHOUT Ken...just who is the man? DAM! wants to give that mischievous child who JUST HAS TO KNOW a chance to disrobe a group of generic figures straight off the door of the nearest restroom. This "exposé" causes more questions than the sight of a Ken-Doll flashing his pseudo-anatomy. Butch Bottom, Femme Top, Trannie Boy, Lesbian Daddy...in the age of the anonymous chat room where malleable, multiple identities are the norm, what do these names mean when lesbians use them? Strip ALL the figures for a big visual payoff. Those heterosexual European women who walk arm-in-arm are making it harder and harder to look like lesbian lovers on the street these days. But, no matter how genetically different their appearance, lesbian couples are often asked by strangers "Are you two sisters?"--usually provoking gales of laughter! Taking a cue from lo-tech basement bare-all videos , DAM!'s home reel, shows two "sisters" who give new meaning to the possibility of familial bonding. Oh...behave! Similar to other public art projects which mediate popular culture, those of Gran Fury or Barbara Kruger, DAM! FAQ will slip stealthily into the visual cacophony of sleek marketing ploys and half-baked public announcements which surrounds an audience either on the street or on the web. Our project playfully challenges the viewer to stretch beyond their "hetero-centric" outlook and to get to know who we really are. For whether they are sophisticated city slickers or rubes from the back country, people keep on asking the dumbest questions and DAM! FAQ aims to entertain while answering them! DAM! FAQ has been sponsored in part by the Peter Norton Family Foundation, the Astraea National Lesbian Action Foundation, HX Magazine, Echo Communications and amazon pixels. |
