The Long Bio
Hadassah ‘Damien’ Hill is a Brooklyn-based queer femme, liberationist artist, writer, creative, and activist who goes public under the name Axon D’Luxe. D'Luxe talks about the blurry lines between choice and situation, identity and representation, science and spirit. Her work focuses on dissecting social structures and femininity; feminist and queer archiving and storytelling, and on the notion that we must both analyze and enjoy life. She makes her own music using shareware software and sometimes raps. She is a repatriated expat by way of Toronto, DIY tech geek, and working-class gone hustling-class high femme fatale who's been entertaining and educating crowds for over twelve years. She loves anything on two wheels and rhinestones.
Performing
D'Luxe has been performing text-based theatre and music at cabarets, festivals and literary events regularly since 2003, and irregularly since 1997. Along with touring in 2009 and 2007, the electrotext of her performance alter ego has been curated & performed all over North America, including at:
- the HOT!Festival,
- Radical Queer Semaine,
- Writing Outside the Margins,
- The Femme Conference 2008,
- Queeruption 10,
- The Seattle Science Cabarets,
- Sista'hood,
- Femme 2006,
- Ladyfest[s],
- Hysteria Festival and High Femme Fridays at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre,
- Trade Queer Things,
- Mayworks: Festival of Working People in the Arts;
- at colleges & universities,
- at her own and colleagues' shows,
- and with the now retired all-femme troupe, Trash & Ready.
As a performing artist, she talks about the blurry lines between choice and situation, identity and representation, science and spirit. And she makes her own music and sometimes raps.
She has three self-published albums out:
- Ice-9, 2009
- Bad Girls Belief System, 2005
- Bombshell Lexicon [Trash & Ready], 2005
Publications
She has writing published in:
- Femmethology,
- $pread Magazine;
- Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class, ed. Michelle Tea.;
- Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, ed. Zoe Whittall;
- Bad Subjects Journal
- The Gargoyle.
Media Making + Activism
She has worked in independent print, web, theater and audio production for 10 years, and is committed to creating representations of the diverse communities she embodies using self-taught multimedia techniques.
She is co-founder of the New York Femme Family, a queer femme community.
Damien was the Art Director of the award-winning $pread Magazine for three years, a quarterly glossy magazine by and for people in the sex industry and their allies, currently in its fourth year of publication.
Event Production
D’Luxe has curated and organized over 50 literary, cabaret and art events since 1999. She can pack a house and promote, stage manage and (f)emmecee, and has produced shows from Manhattan to Seattle; Montreal to Vancouver.
Audio/Video Production
She has tracks that have been featured on SWIRL Radio and FemmeCast.As well, her music has been used in the $pread Magazine Documentary, In Our Own Image, and the Queer X Show.
She’s produced a series of music videos:
- Judgement Blues, 2009
- Gaybomb, 2009
- Craigslist, 2008
She produces audio using Audacity [good! free!] and Garageband [good! only free for Mac folks], and uses Final Cut to make music videos and trailers for her publications.
Teaching
She is completing her requirements for an MFA in DIY by teaching no/low-cost multimedia strategies and is committed to empowering individuals to speak for themselves using new technologies. She believes that anything you can go to school for, you can teach yourself, and so has avoided thousands of dollars in unnecessary student loans learning how to make magazines, websites, books and music, all of which she gets paid [in money or adventure] to do now.Places she's taught / lectured at include:
- Pay As You Go: Sex Worker Media Panel, 2009: DIY Media
- The NYC Anarchist Bookfair, 2009: DIY Media
- University of Texas, Austin, 2009: on her MFA in DIY
- Evergreen State University, 2009: on Sex Workers’ Activsm
- The Grassroots Media Justice Tour: Texas, 2008: DIY Media
- Women, Action and the Media Conference, Boston 2008
- Bent Writing Institute, Seattle 2007
- Desiree Alliance Conference 2007
- University of Toronto, 2004: on spoken word poetry culture
She's also been on the radio talking about underground spokenword dyke culture - including on 88.1 CKLN in Toronto and WITR 89.7 in Rochester.
Visual Art
She also is co-founder of the H[art] Collective, an all-femme art collective based out of Brooklyn. The Hart Collective is working on a queer portrait gallery, and are working with the artists Coral Short, Maya Suess and Heather Acs and the photographer Alison Picard on a femme photo series entitled House of Trisha.Damien is trained as a costumer and makes textile art using embroidery, antique and vintage fabrics, costumery and recycling vintage clothing.Etc.
Lastly, Hadassah made her film debut in the 2003 dyke porn Pornograflix, moonlighted as an Aslan Leather model, and recently put a video on NoFauxxx.com. And she used to do burlesque before she realised that saying the words too made her way happier!
