Johanna Fateman
Encyclopedia
Johanna Fateman is a writer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She is a member of the post-punk
rock band Le Tigre
and founded the band MEN
with Le Tigre bandmate JD Samson.
, California
, where her father, computer scientist
Richard Fateman
is a professor at UC Berkeley. On the official Le Tigre website, Fateman refers to filmmaker Miranda July
as being her "best friend from high school"; July is also from Berkeley. At the age of seventeen Fateman moved to Portland, Oregon
to attend Reed College
, which she later left for art school in New York
.
Fateman began her writing career producing zines including My Need To Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock
; ArtaudMania!!! The Diary of a Fan; The Opposite, Part I; and SNARLA, which she co-wrote with Miranda July
. It was through her zines that Fateman first met bandmate Kathleen Hanna
. At a performance of Hanna's band Bikini Kill
, Fateman gave Hanna a copy of one of her zines. As Hanna has related in interviews, she was impressed and inspired by Fateman's writing and the two kept in touch. Later, when Bikini Kill was on a hiatus, Kathleen Hanna moved to Portland, Oregon
, where she and Fateman lived with several other women in an off-campus Reed College house known as "The Curse". (All such "Reed Houses" have a clever or ironic name of some sort.) Radio Sloan
who also lived at The Curse, taught Fateman how to play her first songs on a bass guitar
that cost $60.
Around this time, Hanna and Fateman formed their first band together, The Troublemakers, named after the film of the same name by G.B. Jones. The band played at house parties in Portland but broke up when Fateman moved to New York. Hanna soon followed her to the east coast and the two women joined forces with filmmaker Sadie Benning
to form Le Tigre. After their first album Benning left the band to return to making films. JD Samson
joined the line up for Feminist Sweepstakes
, their next release. The band's most recent album is This Island & as of January 2007, they are on hiatus.
While working with Le Tigre, Fateman started her own solo project called Swim With the Dolphins, named after a book by the same title with the subtitle "How Women Can Succeed in Corporate America on Their Own Terms". She made a five-song cassette
entitled "the struggle for the full exercise of woman's equality" during the winter of 1999, which she describes as "sample-based, dj/dance-floor inspired music for the feminist rave in my head." She was also the sound-designer for experimental filmmaker Cecilia Dougherty
's Gone.
Fateman has continued to remix, write and produce music for other artists, often with JD Samson. Fateman and her Le Tigre
bandmates Hanna and Samson wrote and produced the Christina Aguilera
song My Girls ft. Peaches
for Aguilera's album Bionic Fateman wrote about the experience on the Le Tigre blog: "Together we tailored themes and specific references to her personality and image but found a ton of common ground in our aim to make upbeat danceable tracks celebrating female friendship, strength, and of course, PARTYING. And while the giant sound of her stacked vocals and the pop sheen she lends to the tracks might seem at odds with Le Tigre’s aesthetic roots, it really works. The songs have a lot of elements we’re known for, like a garage guitar sound, schoolyard chants, new wave-y synths, electro beats, and somehow it all sounds crazily right with Christina’s unbelievable voice."
Fateman and Samson are credited as co-writers on the 2011 Cobra Starship song "Shwick."
Fateman continues to write critically about art and pop culture for Bookforum and Artforum
magazine.
Fateman has donated her early zines and correspondence to the Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales Library, NYU.
She is credited as the music director and composer for artist Laura Parnes's 2011 episodic video work "County Down."
As mentioned in a 2006 interview with the vegan-oriented magazine Herbivore, Fateman owns a West Village, New York
hair salon called 'Seagull'. Both Fateman and her business partner, Shaun SureThing (a regular collaborator with performance artist K8 Hardy) were featured in a short documentary on Current TV
. Seagull has been featured in The New York Times
, The Observer
and many other publications.
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
rock band Le Tigre
Le Tigre
Le Tigre is an American electroclash band, formed by Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman in 1998. It also featured Sadie Benning from 1998 until 2001, and JD Samson for the rest of the group's run...
and founded the band MEN
MEN (band)
MEN is a Brooklyn-based band and art/performance collective that focuses on the energy of live performance and the radical potential of dance music...
with Le Tigre bandmate JD Samson.
Background and career
She grew up in BerkeleyBerkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where her father, computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
Richard Fateman
Richard Fateman
Richard J. Fateman is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.He received a BS in Physics and Mathematics from Union College in 1966, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1971. He was a major contributor to the Macsyma computer...
is a professor at UC Berkeley. On the official Le Tigre website, Fateman refers to filmmaker Miranda July
Miranda July
Miranda July is a performing artist, writer, actress and film director. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with high school friend Johanna Fateman, called Snarla.- Background :Miranda...
as being her "best friend from high school"; July is also from Berkeley. At the age of seventeen Fateman moved to Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
to attend Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
, which she later left for art school in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
Fateman began her writing career producing zines including My Need To Speak on the Subject of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
; ArtaudMania!!! The Diary of a Fan; The Opposite, Part I; and SNARLA, which she co-wrote with Miranda July
Miranda July
Miranda July is a performing artist, writer, actress and film director. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with high school friend Johanna Fateman, called Snarla.- Background :Miranda...
. It was through her zines that Fateman first met bandmate Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna
Kathleen Hanna is an American musician, feminist activist, and punk zine writer. In the early- to mid-1990s she was the lead singer and songwriter of Bikini Kill, before fronting Le Tigre in the late 1990s and early 2000s...
. At a performance of Hanna's band Bikini Kill
Bikini Kill
Bikini Kill was an American punk rock band formed in Olympia, Washington in October 1990. The group consisted of vocalist and songwriter Kathleen Hanna, guitarist Billy Karren, bassist Kathi Wilcox, and drummer Tobi Vail. The band is widely considered to be the pioneer of the riot grrrl movement,...
, Fateman gave Hanna a copy of one of her zines. As Hanna has related in interviews, she was impressed and inspired by Fateman's writing and the two kept in touch. Later, when Bikini Kill was on a hiatus, Kathleen Hanna moved to Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, where she and Fateman lived with several other women in an off-campus Reed College house known as "The Curse". (All such "Reed Houses" have a clever or ironic name of some sort.) Radio Sloan
Radio Sloan
Radio Sloan is a musician from Olympia, Washington.She is best known as a guitarist for The Need, the band she formed with Rachel Carns; her other bands include Ce Be Barns Band, The Circuit Side, Fact or Fiction, Grandpa's Ghost Stories; and Courtney Love's short-lived all-female backing band The...
who also lived at The Curse, taught Fateman how to play her first songs on a bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
that cost $60.
Around this time, Hanna and Fateman formed their first band together, The Troublemakers, named after the film of the same name by G.B. Jones. The band played at house parties in Portland but broke up when Fateman moved to New York. Hanna soon followed her to the east coast and the two women joined forces with filmmaker Sadie Benning
Sadie Benning
Sadie Benning is a video maker, visual artist, and musician.She first made her name in the early 1990s as a teenage video maker from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Raised by her mother in inner-city Milwaukee, Benning left school at age 16, primarily due to the homophobia she experienced...
to form Le Tigre. After their first album Benning left the band to return to making films. JD Samson
JD Samson
JD Samson is the stage name of Jocelyn Samson, a member of the feminist electropunk band Le Tigre. Samson grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Pepper Pike, Ohio and attended Orange High School. She came out as a lesbian at age 15...
joined the line up for Feminist Sweepstakes
Feminist Sweepstakes
Feminist Sweepstakes is the second studio album by the American feminist electroclash band Le Tigre.The album is the follow-up to the trio's self-titled debut and the first to feature JD Samson as a member of the band...
, their next release. The band's most recent album is This Island & as of January 2007, they are on hiatus.
While working with Le Tigre, Fateman started her own solo project called Swim With the Dolphins, named after a book by the same title with the subtitle "How Women Can Succeed in Corporate America on Their Own Terms". She made a five-song cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
entitled "the struggle for the full exercise of woman's equality" during the winter of 1999, which she describes as "sample-based, dj/dance-floor inspired music for the feminist rave in my head." She was also the sound-designer for experimental filmmaker Cecilia Dougherty
Cecilia Dougherty (filmmaker)
Cecilia Dougherty creates videotapes and digital films which focus on the themes of lesbianism and popular culture. While her early work places lesbians in a cultural territory separate from mainstream society, other projects portray the lesbian experience in terms of commonly-held norms; in her...
's Gone.
After Le Tigre
In June of 2011, a feature documentary about Le Tigre's final year of touring was released by Oscilloscope Laboratories. "Who Took the Bomp? Le Tigre on Tour" directed by Kerthy Fix documents the band's live show and features new interview footage of the band members reflecting on their experiences.Fateman has continued to remix, write and produce music for other artists, often with JD Samson. Fateman and her Le Tigre
Le Tigre
Le Tigre is an American electroclash band, formed by Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman in 1998. It also featured Sadie Benning from 1998 until 2001, and JD Samson for the rest of the group's run...
bandmates Hanna and Samson wrote and produced the Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994...
song My Girls ft. Peaches
Peaches (musician)
Merrill Beth Nisker , better known by her stage name Peaches, is a Canadian electronic musician and performance artist who lives in Berlin, Germany. Her songs are noted for disregarding traditional gender norms and their use of sexually explicit lyrics...
for Aguilera's album Bionic Fateman wrote about the experience on the Le Tigre blog: "Together we tailored themes and specific references to her personality and image but found a ton of common ground in our aim to make upbeat danceable tracks celebrating female friendship, strength, and of course, PARTYING. And while the giant sound of her stacked vocals and the pop sheen she lends to the tracks might seem at odds with Le Tigre’s aesthetic roots, it really works. The songs have a lot of elements we’re known for, like a garage guitar sound, schoolyard chants, new wave-y synths, electro beats, and somehow it all sounds crazily right with Christina’s unbelievable voice."
Fateman and Samson are credited as co-writers on the 2011 Cobra Starship song "Shwick."
Fateman continues to write critically about art and pop culture for Bookforum and Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
magazine.
Fateman has donated her early zines and correspondence to the Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales Library, NYU.
She is credited as the music director and composer for artist Laura Parnes's 2011 episodic video work "County Down."
As mentioned in a 2006 interview with the vegan-oriented magazine Herbivore, Fateman owns a West Village, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
hair salon called 'Seagull'. Both Fateman and her business partner, Shaun SureThing (a regular collaborator with performance artist K8 Hardy) were featured in a short documentary on Current TV
Current TV
Current TV, or Current, is a media company led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. Comcast owns a ten percent stake of Current's parent company, Current Media LLC....
. Seagull has been featured in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
and many other publications.
External links
- http://www.current.tv/pods/scene/PD07351
- http://www.seagullhaircutters.com
- http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/kkofibru/jo.html&date=2009-10-26+01:25:22
- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1111419
- http://www.LeTigreWorld.com
- Johanna Fateman's zine ArtausMania at ZineWikiZineWikiZineWiki is an open-source online wiki devoted to zines, fanzines, small press publications, chapbooks, and independent media. It covers the history, production, distribution and culture of the small press.-History:...