The Rumor Mill: Did Ben Shields and Glenn Belverio really get lost for hours in Kinderdijk?
Dear Former Frequent Flyers,
Jet-setting, you say? Whaaat? Well, before the extent of the pandemic was officially acknowledged in the U.S. in March, I flew to the Netherlands in late January, and then Chicago in mid-February. I haven't been on a plane since, but I have such joyful memories from those two trips (plus a bonus train trip to Hudson in September) which, frankly, feel only like a dream now.
In late January, I flew to the design-y city of Rotterdam to attend their International Film Festival. The backstory: In 2019, my distributor in Chicago, Video Data Bank, digitized and preserved most of the episodes of my drag queen activist TV series from the '90s, The Brenda and Glennda Show and Glennda and Friends.
As a way of introducing our partnership to the film festival world, they edited my 1991 video Seize Control of the Taj Mahal to 14 minutes and submitted it for a program of work called "Bright Future," which consisted of previously un-screened shorts that were now represented by various distributors. What a thrill to have Glennda, Brenda and friends back on the big screen again! My friend Ben Shields flew over from Tel Aviv (or was it Jerusalem?) to attend the screening and enjoy the city of Rotterdam and its environs with me.
"In this episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, Brenda and Glennda lead a group of drag queens on a trip to Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. Intended to be a drag queen gambling getaway, the trip turns into a moment of protest."—IFFR
To view full screen, follow this link:
Seize Control of the Taj Mahal - excerpt from a 1991 episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show from Glenn Belverio on Vimeo.
KINO was one of the many screening venues at the festival and was where my video and the other shorts in Bright Future were shown—to a packed house!
My step-and-repeat moment in KINO's lobby. Photo: Ben Shields
I'm happy to report that Seize Control of the Taj Mahal was received very well, with peels of laughter and a hearty round of applause. It was lovely to meet some fans of the work in KINO's rather convivial bar after the screening. Another memorable work shown was a short film by Jack Smith, Song for Rent from 1969. It was also a lovely surprise to meet some fine folks from my other distributor, LUX in London.
Before the screening, Ben and I wandered around the city center. I can't quite remember where we are here....it was an eerily deserted mid-century modern office lobby, I think. We felt like we were in an Antonioni film. We met up with Video Data Bank's Distribution Manager, Zach Vanes, who took this photo.
Zach introduced and explained my Glennda video archives to the audience at KINO, including the one being screened: "This video from 1991 was filmed at a casino in Atlantic City owned by someone you may have heard of...[dramatic pause]...Donald Trump!"
Because we're fans of Brutalism, Ben and I also made a point of visiting de Bijenkorf, Marcel Breuer's cement honeycomb department store from 1957 which I dubbed "a Brutalist Bloomingdale's."
And of course, no visit to Rotterdam is complete without a gawk at this lovable buttplug-lovin' fellow: Paul McCarthy's Santa Clause (2001) on the Eendrachtsplein. I'm pretty sure the beignet kiosk, commandeered by a Mrs. Claus doppelgänger, was erected here as a sly addition to the artwork.
After our triumphant screening at KINO, Zach took me and Ben out to dinner at this Chinese restaurant I chose, which opened in 1963. I think it's terribly important to have a favorite Chinese restaurant in every European city one frequents, where the ambiance is more important than the food. For me, it's also that place in Paris's 5th arrondissment, where François Mitterand dined every evening (name escapes me but Diane Pernet introduced me to it) and also the celebrated Hang Zhou da Sonia in Rome, which features a Mao Room and is owned by former Gucci model Sonia, who appears in Abel Ferrara's documentary Piazza Vittorio.
We were not quite camera-ready, but this is the only photo I have of Zach from the trip. Our waiter, who I think was the owner, was very campy and entertaining.
I lingered in Rotterdam for about eight days total, and bunked down at the marvelous Citizen M Hotel, which is right next to the controversial Cube Houses.
No, Kinderdijk is not the name of a new lesbian dating app for cougar bulldaggers on the hunt for baby dykes...it's a tranquil area of marshlands punctuated by picturesque windmills that Ben and I visited. Well, you can't get any more "Holland" than this!
After a Koffee break, Ben and I made our way back to the ferry station so we could attend a dinner party at his host's home in Rotterdam...well, at least we thought we are heading back. Who gets lost in two straight paths of windmills? Ben and I, that's who. At one point, we passed a warehouse that had hundreds of jumbo wheels of Gouda cheese stacked up in front of it and I was like, I don't remember seeing that on our way here!
And then before we knew it, we were wandering around a quiet little village of low houses, each one with a pair of wooden shoes on its doormat. When we saw a teenager actually walking around wearing a pair of wooden shoes, we knew we were a far way off from the city. Eventually we made our way to some dock where we had to practically beg a salty old captain to take us on his ferry boat back to the city ("Well, it is getting rather late—almost dinner time!" he said as he glanced at his watch.) He was ready to leave us there with no way other way to get back!
After a wonderful dinner of boerenkool stamppot at the home of Ben's charming host, the writer and editor Matthew Stadler, I hopped into a cab and headed to WORM, the festival's event venue, to attend a party and catch up with Zach from VDB and some peeps from LUX. I had a long, lovely chat with Hong Kong animation filmmaker Wong Ping, who had work screened in the festival. Immediately after he left the party, he boarded a plane and headed to Sundance. Supernova!
The next day, Ben and I took a subway to the charming, canal-lined town of Delft. Most people visit Delft for its famous Delftware, but we had another agenda....
Delft is where Werner Herzog filmed his 1979 remake of Nosferatu. At once creepy and campy, his version sees the pale, chrome-domed vampire stowing away on a ship from Transylvania to the unnamed city of Delft. Much of the action takes place in the main square, Markt, including plague sufferers enjoying an outdoor dining experience with thousands of rats. Sounds like a typical 2020 dinner in the East Village! Pictured here is the spooky and imposing Nieuwe Kerk (New Church).
On the opposite end of the square is
Another reason to visit Delft, of course, is to shop for wooden shoes. Here's Ben contemplating a lovely, lemony pair. Are wooden shoes easy to walk in? Let's go to the clip and find out:
After Ben went back to Israel, I spent some time seeing films at the festival. A highlight was the screening of Beth B's documentary about Lydia Lunch, The War Is Never Over. I've been a Lydia Lunch fan since the mid-'80s (her duet with Thurston Moore on "Death Valley '69" really sends me) and not long ago, I met her through my friend Bibbe Hansen, when the two of them were doing a Fluxus performance at HOWL! in the East Village.
After the screening, Lydia and Beth took questions from the audience. When my turn came, I told Lydia that an essay she had written about the Me Too movement was sent to me by my friend and collaborator, the guerrilla scholar and feminist Camille Paglia. Lydia's face lit up at the mention of Camille's name. "Tell Camille I would love to speak at her university!" I told Lydia that Camille was a fan of hers and Lydia was amazed that Camille knew who she was.
Camille and Lydia are both from upstate New York (Camille from Syracuse, Lydia from Rochester). "It’s interesting to think of Lydia Lunch and me as members of a feisty, nonconformist upstate cohort!" Camille told me.
Rotterdam lacks the annoying crowds of weed-huffing students one finds in Amsterdam. Modern and subtle, Rotterdam is full of delightful surprises.
I checked out a strange installation at Het Nieuwe Institut. I think it was a representation of an imaginary religion.
If you're a design aficionado, a visit to the Sonneveld House is mandatory. One of the best-preserved houses in the Dutch Functionalist style, this painfully stylish villa was designed in 1933 by architecture firm Brinkman and Van der Vlugt for Albertus Sonneveld, a director of the Van Nelle Factory. The architects designed a total concept in which architecture, interior and furnishings are perfectly coordinated and reinforce one another.
I was absolutely over the moon for this divine staircase.
The dining room, with Bauhaus-influenced furniture, and a view of the spacious living room.
"Sonneveld House now contains various examples of Dutch design from the 1920s and 1930s that were not originally in the house. These objects, in particular glass items, have been added because they fit with the style of the house and the family’s taste. This chartreuse, pressed-glass service is one of the first examples of modernist industrial design in the Netherlands.
This service was originally designed for Glasfabriek Leerdam by architect H.P. Berlage (1856-1934). In 1924 it was adapted for mass production by Piet Zwart (1885-1977), who was then working in Berlage’s practice. The service proved difficult to produce in the desired material – graniver – a newly developed opaque form of glass with a granular structure."
Unfussy and spare, like the rest of the house's furniture, this vanity is in the master bedroom.
The Sonneveld House is currently closed because of the pandemic, but if you visit their site you can take a virtual tour.
My last night in Rotterdam: Enjoying a genever (Dutch gin) Negroni in the lobby of my terrific hotel, Citizen M, while waiting for my friend, the chic and mysterious Ilanga van Throo to arrive from Amsterdam. We dined at Kaat Mossel, on the port near Rotterdam's Yacht Club, famous for their extremely fresh mussels. An artist friend of Ilanga's joined us and we had a wonderful dinner with fascinating conversation and were so engaged, we didn't think to get any photos of ourselves. We're old-school, dolls!
(Unfortunately, I just read on Kaat Mossel's site that they had a devastating fire a few weeks after we dined there, but sounds like they've risen from the ashes and rebuilt.)
On my way to Delfshaven, I visited the Russiche Orthodoxe Kerk Rotterdam.
A moody afternoon in Delfshaven.
In February, when the pandemic still felt like just a rumor from China, I flew to snowy, sub-zero Chicago for a rather exciting life moment: the official launch of my newly digitized video archives by my distributor Video Data Bank!
To introduce my work from the 1990s to new audiences, VDB organized two events: an exhibition of their artists that included two of my videos, staged in the Sullivan Galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an artist talk in the galleries.
Looking maybe a little too serious here, but I greatly enjoyed speaking to the audience of SAIC students, local artists, professors, academics and curators about my drag activist series The Brenda and Glennda Show (1990–1992) and Glennda and Friends (1993–1996). I showed and discussed clips from Takeover of the Empire State Building (1990), Gender Cruise on the Circle Line (1991) and On the Campaign Trail with Joan Jett Blakk (1992). Abina Manning, the Executive Director of Video Data Bank, gave me an amazing introduction and talked about how we met in London in 1996, when she curated my retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art.
(When I showed the photos from my lecture to Camille Paglia, she had this to say: "You look really European in those photos!!!—the discreet black ensemble and intellectual glasses as you coolly contemplate the flamboyant Glennda! You could be in an Antonioni movie!!")
Glennda Orgasm and Joan Jett Blakk.
Even though it was 20 below zero out, people showed up—it was a packed house! (Big thanks to David Getsy for urging students via the SAIC website to attend the lecture.)
There were some great questions for the audience at the end of the talk. I was really impressed when one student asked about the stapled condom piece in the queer 'zine I co-edited in the early '90s, Pussy Grazer. They did their research!
When I arrived in Chicago, I visited VDB's headquarters and Tom Colley, Archive and Collection Manager, in the room where the magic happens: This is where Tom digitized my video archives! I am eternally grateful to VDB for transferring all those videos!
After years of languishing in my closet and at the office of Stevin Michels, co-producer/editor of The Brenda and Glennda Show/Glennda and Friends, my 3/4" tapes are now carefully preserved and stored in the archives at VDB.
On the night before my lecture, we attended the opening of We Don't Want Your MTV, the exhibition curated by VDB at the Sullivan Galleries. My 1991 video Seize Control of the Taj Mahal was projected onto a large screen. Attack of the 50-Foot Glennda!
"We Don’t Want Your MTV combines video installation and a specially curated screening program to consider the influence of television on a generation of artists who came of age during the legendary TV station’s reign."
Artists in the show included Jenny Holzer, Sadie Benning, Miranda July, Sterling Ruby, Martine Syms and others.
Reunited! Abina Manning and I had not seen each other since 1996! What a delight to spend time with her again during my days in Chicago.
The exhibition also included my 1996 collaboration with Vaginal Davis, One Man Ladies.
"In One Man Ladies, Glennda Orgasm is joined by Vaginal Davis as they meet women on the streets of New York City to discuss Laura Schlessinger's book Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives. The pair humorously explore the best ways modern women can find and secure a husband."
A still from the video. Camille Paglia remarked, "Looks like a procession of European royalty!"
As luck would have it, my friend the fashion scholar Ellen Sampson was also in town giving a lecture. (I think it was at the same time as mine!) She stopped by the opening and we gossiped while nibbling on Chicago-style hot dogs.
What a huge treat to be able to visit the Chicago Art Institute and take in their important collection! I had never seen this Georgia O'Keeffe.
And of course I nearly fainted when I feasted my eyes on this painting by Ivan Albright from one of my favorite films of all time, the 1945 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray!
My hotel was one block away from this Bauhaus beauty: Mies van der Rohe's post office (1964).
And I was across the street from Art Deco landmark the Field Building (now Bank of America Building). It's open the public, so I did a little tour through the lobby...
In September, there was a relatively bright, if brief, moment during the pandemic when cases were much lower in New York State. A few counties had resumed indoor dining and NYC was no longer the epicenter. The weather was lovely during Labor Day Weekend, so took a train up to the laid-back, artsy town of Hudson to visit friends and to check out the Hudson Eye art festival.
I spent quality time with fashion legend Lauren Ezersky. One morning, we met up with Lauren's friends Julius James and the artist Tschabala Self for brunch at my hotel, the splendid Rivertown Lodge. Lauren and I really loved the frozen Negronis—they packed a punch!
Moi in "vacation mode" Agnès B. Hawaiian shirt, artist Tschabala Self, Lauren Ezersky and Julius James.
Poolside laughter: We visited Teresa, one of my colleagues from MoMA Design Store, at her beautifully decorated house for Rosé by the pool.
My friend Bibbe Hansen—Warhol Superstar, Fluxus artist, mom of pop star Beck—had a big presence at the Hudson Eye arts festival. She invited Lauren and I to the cavernous Second Ward art space (very conducive to social distancing) to hear her read her essay "How I Met Andy Warhol," project her Warhol screen tests, and answer questions and tell more stories (I asked her to relate the story of the film she made with Edie Sedgwick, Prison (1965). My feverish description from my Instagram:
'Last night we were treated to a special evening with my pal @bibbe.hansen who read from her roller-coaster of an essay (in her 14-yr-old former self’s voice) “How I Met Andy Warhol” which involved copious amounts of LSD, speed, a spaghetti orgy, her dad, the Fluxus artist Al Hansen, sending her to prison for 6 months and Bibbe’s fortuitous introduction to Andy Warhol (via Al) at Stark’s restaurant on the Upper East Side which resulted in 2 Warhol screen tests for Bibbe (screened last night) and a role in Warhol’s PRISON, co-starring Edie Sedgwick. There is also an exhibition of Bibbe and her dad’s work, organized by @newdiscretions.'
Bibbe signed posters and books afterwards.
One of her works in the exhibition.
Breakfast with Bibbe and her husband Sean Carrillo is always a tradition when I visit Hudson. We went to this very classic diner in a town near Hudson.
My adorable room at the Rivertown Lodge. My stay here was absolutely perfect. Highly recommended!
Lauren and I visited Art Omi, the outdoor sculpture park.
I loved my post-apocalyptic pandemic porch swing.
David Shrigley engraved his shopping list on a cement obelisk.
After Omi, Lauren I had a traditional end-of-summer lunch at Red Barn. It was the last day for fresh lobster! The lobster was heavenly but the real star was the mashed potatoes....they wouldn't tell me what the secret ingredient was.
Pink gin and social distancing. The Maker is an uber-posh hotel in Hudson (the room rates are astronomical) and they have have a very fancy cocktail bar. Lauren and I met her friend Julius there on my last day in Hudson.
Thank you for taking this virtual trip with me....here's hoping we can meet in Rome or Rio or Havana or Hong Kong in 2021.
Love,
Glenn Belverio
