Johanna Fateman

Johanna Fateman

Fateman performing with Le Tigre in August 2008
Background information
Also known as Jo
Born 1974 (age 40–41)
Genres Indie
Years active 1998–present
Associated acts Le Tigre
Notable instruments
Guitar, keyboards, drum programming

Johanna Fateman (born 1974) 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.

Background and career

She grew up in Berkeley, 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[1] & as of January 2007, they are on hiatus.[2]

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." [3] She was also the sound-designer for experimental filmmaker Cecilia Dougherty's Gone.[4]

After Le Tigre

In June 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 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.[5] Seagull has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer and many other publications.

References

  1. ↑ Jo's Herstory
  2. ↑ Le Tigre Split
  3. ↑ Mediocrity Rules. Jo Fateman
  4. ↑ Video Data Bank: Video Art and Video Artists
  5. ↑ Le Tigre Haircuts episode on Current TV

External links