Beauty and the Beast is collaboration between Mat Fraser, British multi disciplinary performing artist and writer, and Julie Atlas Muz, American performance artist who was Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island 2006. A beauty queen in the neo burlesque scene, Muz will model Beauty after Britney Spears, the ultimate American Beauty and capitalist whore as Fraser will play the beast, using his deformity to demonize the beastly desires of humankind and the hope of deliverance from animal-like treatment. Beauty and the Beast is a fantastical classic fairy tale that has evoked emotional attachment from generation to generation inspiring derivatives such as Phantom of the Opera, Elephant Man, Mask and King Kong where the protagonists are thought of and treated like animals until love shines through. The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast was chosen due to it’s inherent archetypal characters, as Fraser and Muz will grapple with, deconstruct and inevitably reinterpret traditional definitions of beauty and beastliness, devotion, the pain of separation, the dying of love and the transformation through love.
Inherent in Beauty and the Beast is a Judao Christian ethical prison that Fraser and Muz will not only comment on but explode as a reality worth believing in. Behind the charitable façade of religion lies a hatred of the deformed, manifested in our culture to this day.
Mat Fraser (UK)
Mat Fraser is a versatile British live art artist whose projects deal with a subject of disability. He has worked as an actor in theatre (Graeae Theatre Company — leading European company for dis-abled actors), television (presented, narrated and provided some of the strand ideas for the Channel Four series “Freak Out”, an attempt to confront previous portrayals of disabled people within an ir-reverent light entertainment format — 2000), film (co-writer and presenter of “Born Freak” documentary, directed by Paul Sapin, 2002; the executive producer of “Wrong Bodies” documentary, 2001; he co-wrote and was subject of “Freak Fucking Basics”, Jo Pearson, 1995). He did adds (“Big talker”, 2001), appeared on radio and wor-ked as a narrator. Fraser is also a musician: he sings, rapps, plays drums, percussions and keyboards. During the last 11 years (since 1994) this musician, actor and performer participated in live art performances (mostly written by himself) performed in New York, Berlin, Malta, Rio de Janeiro, Southampton and London. In 1999 he co-curated project “Wrong Bodies” (ICA London).
Julie Atlas Muz (US)
Julie Atlas Muz, Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island 2006 is one of the
most acclaimed and prolific conceptual performers and choreographers in New York. Straddling the boundaries between performance art, dance and fine art with her dark, twisted, come-hither performances Muz has secured a place in the underworld of nightlife as well as the bastion of the art world. On any given night, you can see Julie Atlas Muz peeling off the outlandish costumes she dons, covered in fake blood in the basement of a gay bar or singing along with Mr. Pussy’s new track irreverent and unexpected sense of humor. Fresh from the Flying Circus Project 2007, a cultural exchange of 25 artists from different disciplines and continents touring Singapore and Vietnam, Muz proudly continues the ever political tradition of naked ladies in public spaces begun by Lady Godiva. In the US, Muz has presented her dance work nationwide with the Sex Workers Art show and in NYC at venues including the Guggenheim, Art at St. Anne’s Warehouse, chashama, LaMama, PS 122, and Dixon Place and has exhibited her fine art at the Armory Show and at New York’s premiere gallery Dietch Projects.
www.julieatlasmuz.com
iloveyou@julieatlasmuz.com
