GAYLETTER

We got an email mentioning twins and naturally we didn’t hesitate to open it. John and Paul Physioc are twin brothers turned film makers currently working on their first major project together. After spending four years on separate coasts and working on various other projects, they have joined together to shoot “a series of films across the American landscape that will cast non actors in real time blurring the lines between reality, documentary, and fiction. The films will explore American identity & masculinity in the form of folklore and myth.”

Their gofundme page features a topless photo of the tattooed Physiocs and a short trailer for the film that includes a Lana del Rey quote and a picture montage featuring a bunch of masc boys. Need they really say more? The Physiocs are planning to shoot the film later this year all across America and are asking for your support to help fund production, equipment, and post-production.

We had the opportunity to asked them some questions to learn more about their past, their present, and their film’s future.

Did you guys come out of the closet together, or did one come out before the other? Who was first? We each had our own personal complicated journey of coming out.

Have you ever ended up dating the same guys? Not really…

Have you guys always lived together, or relatively close to one another? We have been living on opposite coasts for the  the last couple of years. …

We’re tired of wearing flats when we go dancing. Thankfully, The Ailey Extension is offering a Heels Intensive this weekend, August 21st – 23rd, to teach you how to pop lock and drop in your favorite Louboutins. The classes are taught by three incredibly talented and beautiful instructors, Yanis Marshall, Danielle Polanco, and Aisha Francis. When we say incredible, we’re not kidding. These teachers get tweeted about by Beyoncé, dance with Usher and Ciara, choreograph Cirque du Soleil, and are the stars in Dancing with the Stars, to name a few of their many accolades.

Plus, if you haven’t heard of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a 2008 U.S. Congressional resolution literally declared the Company a “vital American cultural ambassador to the world.” Alvin Ailey celebrates African American experience, culture, and enrichment of modern dance. This shit is no joke, just don’t forget to bring your heels.

$30-100, ALL WEEKEND, 405 W. 55th St. New York, NY. …

Earlier this year, Mykki Blanco announced via Facebook that he had grown bored of rap music and was searching for a different artistic outlet to inspire fans. Nevertheless, he performed at our GAYLETTER Pride Ball to a packed room that was transfixed by his every turn. Though Blanco leaving music was naturally suspect, he has since launched Dogwood Music Group and announced the label’s first release, C-ORE — a compilation set for a September 18th release — introduced alongside a new short film featuring Blanco and label signees Psychoegyptian, Yves Tumor and Violence.

“C-ORE follows four vigilantes as they track down a wanted techno-junkie in the middle of developing a new way for users to experience old earth. After liberating it and trying it for them-self, they fall into a maze of nightmarish parallel realities. Now indoctrinated into C-ORE – they seek to escape the drug by traveling to the limits of their new reality.”

The film is trippy as hell, with locations ranging from a gritty nightclub, to a remote beach that is eerie in a metaphoric re-birth type way. Like most of what Blanco does, the short is non-stop high energy, infused with interesting fashion, and — save some middle scenes — storyboarded correctly.

Directed by Jude MC, the short comes at a time when what we know to be music is completely changing. FKA Twigs just put out a completely visual album, and everybody and their mom remembers when Beyoncé dropped her latest with a video for every damn song… Many musicians are entering a cross-genre world that experiments with visuals as much as it does audio. …

Louis is stuck in Upstate New York, “for one more year,” he said. He came out when he was 13, on Facebook nonetheless, “I wrote a huge paragraph because I’d just started speaking to my first boyfriend,” — who was 17 at the time — “and was meeting people who were okay with me being gay and I felt very open about liking guys for the first time,” but there’s no specific moment where he, “claimed the gayness.” After all, he was photographed in a boa, kitten heels and tutu at age two.

Louis is a millennial, so it’s not a surprise he doesn’t have a type, although he openly expresses his distaste for white guys. “Tall is nice, but it all definitely depends on the boy. Connection is key.” For an ideal date, “It’d be spending time with someone who I really care about and feeling very content with the situation I was in. I feel like I’m constantly thinking of the next best thing to happen, so that’s something I’m working on and if I could find a boy that could help me with that it would be ideal.”

When Louis travels to Manhattan, he is either downtown with friends or uptown with family. “I did a lot of important growing up while staying in Spanish Harlem with my uncle — that’s where I’d always hang out. It’s got so much culture and such a great vibe to it.” You’ll only catch him on dating apps when he is trying to gauge the “gayness of an area.” …

“What do gay people do when they’re not having sex?”

On the Domestic Front: Scenes from Everyday Queer Life answers that age-old question. Opening August 14th at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, this collection of prints, paintings, and photographs explores both the uniqueness and universality of everyday queer life. Split into four distinct parts, Home, Work, Play, and Fantasy, the exhibit chronicles the shifting landscape of the LGBTQI movement. “The queer fight has shifted from our right to be different toward the right to be “normal” and unremarkable.  Queer genre imagery is a weapon in our battle to secure what we might call the radicality of the ordinary.”

The selection of work comes from the Museum’s private collection, offering an opportunity to see work that has, in some cases, never been displayed publicly. Some of the featured artists include Saul Bolasni, Joan E. Biren, Del LaGrace Volcano, and Caleb Cole. It might just sound like photos of queer people doing regular things, but 3 critical questions revamp the imagery: “Do we perform these activities in distinctive “queer” style(s)? Do we represent them artistically in a distinctive way? And, do we look at such images differently?” From the age-old to the hyper-relevant, this exhibit has answers for everyone.

Below is a preview of the show — All images courtesy of Leslie+Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art:

FREE, Opening Reception 6:00-8:00PM, Leslie + Lohman Museum, 26 Wooster St. …

We’ve all got our own queer fantasies. Surprisingly enough, not all of them are about TD Bank flying the rainbow flag. OHWOW Gallery’s current exhibition, Queer Fantasies, explores the voices and histories that deviate from these increasingly normative and commodified discourses. It opened on July 11th and it goes down this week, on August 15th. But if you’re hoping for ‘alternative fetish,’ you’re missing the point. “The artist in the exhibition come from different backgrounds and do not all depict explicitly gay subject matter in their work; they explore various existing histories through queer representation.”

Curated by critic and art historian Willam J. Simmons, the exhibit challenges stereotypical depictions of “the queer lifestyle” through a range of media from installations, to sculpture, to painting, film and photography. The group of artists spans across generation, gender, and background, coming together to create “a critical tool for the reformulation of normative art histories.” Hmm… sounds dense. Essentially, there’s some intellectual art happening here that’s finally telling stories that aren’t about upper-middle-class white people and the AIDS crisis. Lean in, there’s a lot to hear. So, if you are in LA, you still have a few days to check it out.

11:00AM-6:00PM, OHWOW Gallery, 937 N. Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA. …

I can’t help but remember my shaking hand inching into my best friend’s sleeping bag, advancing with terror and ecstasy. Matt Lambert’s most recent “autobiographical archive,” KEIM, stands on that threshold that separates man and boy, firmly grounded in the contradictions that define “coming of age.” It is soft and hard, confident and self-conscious. Although entirely white, his collection of Berlin boys herein feels quintessentially real; Lambert captures an intimacy that strikes at the trembling heart of exploration, vulnerability, and sex. “It’s sex as a way to kill the boredom, the pain, the angst, the good times and the bad. It’s the normalisation of sex; normcore as opposed to hardcore. It’s the daily, repetitive ritualisation aided by the app or laptop where Grindr or camboys take you into an anonymous, anodyne, often synthetic world.”

The book contains a zine within the larger narrative, VITIUM CONTRA NATURAM, a momentary departure into the dark, insatiable hunger that boils beneath Lambert’s lighter images. Imagine “Wild child” inscribed on the head of a hard dick. There’s literally a picture of that. The book itself feels curious, pulling you in and pushing you back, teasing your limits. “Keim is a special kind of secret. It’s a book wrapped in whispers, gossip, innuendo, rumor, myth, mystique, mystery.”

We had the pleasure of asking Lambert a couple of questions about his process. Check it out:

How long have you been working on this book? How did it begin? …