The Long Bio
Hadassah Hill is a Brooklyn-based queer outsider artist, writer, creative, and activist who goes public under the name Axon D'Luxe [the D stands for lots of things!]. 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's electrotext has been curated & performed all over North America, including at Queeruption 10, The Seattle Science Cabarets, Sista'hood, Femme 2006, Ladyfest, 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.
Publications
HH has been published in:
$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. She has work forthcoming in a few anthologies. and a forthcoming article in $pread Magazine about femme sex workers' histories.
She has three self-published albums out:
- Bad Girls Belief System, 2005
- Bombshell Lexicon [Trash & Ready], 2005
- Ice-9, 2008
She has tracks that have been featured on: SWIRL Radio and FemmeCast.
Media Making
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 currently the Art Director of the award-winning $pread Magazine, a quarterly glossy magazine by and for people in the sex industry and their allies in its fourth year of publication.
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 to do now.
She likes to curate and plan events, and has put together shows on a regular basis since 1999. She can pack a house, manage a stage and promote with the best, and has organized shoes from Manhattan to Seattle.
She is currently producing her second album, Ice-9 using Garageband [good! free!], and is also learning Final Cut to make music videos and trailers for her publications.
Teaching
Hadassah likes to say that she is completing her teaching 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's taught at:
- Women, Action and the Media Conference, Boston 2008
- Bent Writing Institute, Seattle 2007
- Desiree Alliance Conference 2007
She is upcoming at the Desiree Alliance Conference in July, 2008 and on the Grassroots Media Teaching Tour Fall 2008.
She's also been in front of university classrooms and on the radio talking about underground spokenword dyke culture - including at the University of Toronto, and on 88.1 CKLN in Toronto and WITR 89.7 in Rochester.
Aaaaand
Hadassah is trained as a costumer and makes textile artist using embroidery, antique and vintage fabrics, costumery and recycling vintage clothing, 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 recently set up their studio at the Fat and Queer Conference in New York.
Lastly, Hadassah made her film debut in the 2003 dyke porn Pornograflix, moonlighted as an Aslan Leather model, and recently submitted a photo set to NoFauxxx.com. And she used to do burlesque before she realised that saying the words, too, made her way happier!
