Loöq interviews Silencefiction and Fauxnique

Collaboration isn't always a cakewalk. Fauxnique! Lick the faux-queen!

The track "Lipstique feat. Fauxnique" has already inspired seven remixes, in addition to a genre and gender bending music video.  Loöq Records takes a minute to interview the minds behind this concept video.  Scroll down to the bottom to watch it if you haven't already.

Loöq: What inspired the track "Lipstique"?

Silencefiction: The music was a collaboration between Jondi  and me. He suggested vocals. Monique and I were bouncing around lyric ideas over the phone, and she suggested that I dig around in her makeup kit to get ideas. Despite how much makeup she has, the labels are all worn off from heavy use. So I had to go to Sephora.

Fauxnique: I've always thought "lipstick-namer" would be a great job to have.

Loöq: Is this the first Silencefiction / Fauxnique artistic collaboration?  If not, what was the first?

Fauxnique: In this specific capacity, with me as a vocalist, yes. But during our long history as a couple, and mine as a dancer/choreographer, Marc (Silencefiction) has provided all kinds of musical support.

Loöq: You're a married couple.

Silencefiction: Yeah!
Fauxnique: Like Lucy and Ricky.
Silencefiction: But with more crying.
Fauxnique: And hi-jinx.

Loöq: Describe how you are either similar or different to other married couples you know.

Fauxnique: Well for starters, one of us is a man and one of us is a woman, as opposed to us both being men.

Silencefiction: For a straight couple, we're pretty queer identified. We sort of live in a gay ghetto. We've also been together since high school. That's pretty rare.

Loöq:  So, who wears the pants, or do you switch off?

Silencefiction: Uh, yeah. 'Switch'.

Loöq:  How did the music video for "Lipstique" come about?

Silencefiction: I think Jondi said, "Let's do a video for 'Lipstique.'"

Fauxnique: We met with Jondi and director Kia Simon and bounced a lot of ideas around.

Silencefiction: Kia is Jondi's wife. Another great creative couple.

Fauxnique: The final idea we went with came from Marc's head - the getting into face, and the instructional aspect, and filming all through a two-way mirror.

Loöq: What was it like working with Kia Simon?

Silencefiction: Both Fauxnique and I had worked with Kia before. Fauxnique was in her video for Momu's The Dive and I ran sound for her film "Disarmed" and it had been great. She has one of those rare balances between easy going and hard working.

Fauxnique: It was fabulous. She also has the great, rare dual qualities of being both open and decisive.

Loöq:  The video is loaded with top-notch drag-queen talent.  How did you pull that off?

Fauxnique: We definitely wanted it to have something to do with makeup, which led us instantly to the brilliant drag talent that we have in San Francisco. All of the performers in the video are friends and respected colleagues of mine, with wildly varying drag personae, as you can see. We thought it could be really interesting to reveal the makeup process, which is kind of an artistic performance in itself. And we wanted it to have kind of an instructional aspect: what old NY queens would call "schooling the children." We are really lucky that they agreed to reveal their processes.

Silencefiction: We wrote out a list of who we wanted in the video and the list was about forty queens long. Getting the list down was really hard. What we really wanted was performers who would be super-fierce, but also show what is singular about our community – about San Francisco drag in particular.

Fauxnique: So we ended up with a nice range, from the classic and classy (Katya Smirnoff-skyy) to the messy and disturbing (Hoku Mama).

Silencefiction: It's also rare to have these performers go from their street clothes to their more performance drag. Like, it's one thing to see the techniques behind drag makeup, but it's another thing to see how filmmaker Joshua Grannell transforms himself into Peaches Christ. There were a few performers that we asked to be in the video who respectfully declined saying that they prefer to keep their personae separate. The mystique behind high drag holds a lot of power. They didn't want the illusion to be revealed. Sort of revealing the man behind the curtain. Or wig.

Loöq:  The video has tons of positive feedback on YouTube.  What do you think about that?

Fauxnique: We're thrilled.

Silencefiction: The performers are so good! I still love watching it.

Fauxnique: And it is amazing, after being primarily a live performer whose main medium is dance, to have something that can exist outside my body and the moment of performance and reach so many people,

Loöq:  What's next for Silencefiction?

Silencefiction: More recording. More DJing. Land Sound, my collaboration with Robert Crouch, has just finished a few more tracks. I've also recently started a techno label called Untitled & After. That's keeping me incredibly busy.


Loöq:  What's next for Fauxnique?

Fauxnique: "Parlor Game", a dance performance created around the Yves Saint Laurent exhibit at the de Young museum (in which we teach the audience 'the Hustle'!) Faux/Real, a solo show at the Climate Theater in late Spring, a performance in NYC, and a new piece at ODC Theater in the Fall.


http://silencefiction.com/
http://fauxnique.net/