Johanna Rachel Fateman (born May 16, 1974) is an American writer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She is a member of the electropunk band Le Tigre and founded the band MEN with Le Tigre bandmate JD Samson.
Early life and education
Fateman 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 City.
Writing
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.
She donated her early zines and correspondence to New York University, where they are kept in the Riot Grrrl Collection at the Fales Library.[ Johanna Fateman Riot Grrrl Papers at the Fales Special Collections Library at NYU]
Beginning in 2016, Fateman became a columnist for The New Yorker, regularly contributing to the magazine's "Goings On About Town" section.
Music career
When Bikini Kill was on hiatus, Kathleen Hanna moved to Portland, where she and Fateman lived with several other women in an off-campus Reed College house known as "The Curse."
Radio Sloan, who also lived at The Curse, taught Fateman how to play her first songs on a $60
bass guitar. 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.
Le Tigre
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 filmmaking.
JD Samson joined the line-up for
Feminist Sweepstakes, their next release. The band's most recent album is
This Island and in January 2007, they went on hiatus.
[[2] Le Tigre Split]
In June 2011, a documentary film 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 interview footage of the band members reflecting on their experiences.
Swim with the Dolphins
While working with Le Tigre, Fateman started her own solo project called "Swim with the Dolphins", named after a self-help book by the same title with the subtitle "How Women Can Succeed in Corporate America on Their Own Terms". She made a five-song
Compact 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".
[ The feminist rave in my head: a quick chat with Le Tigre's Johanna Fateman]
MEN
After Le Tigre went on indefinite hiatus, Fateman and Samson worked together as DJs. They took on the name MEN, eventually adding members and turning into a full musical troupe. Although Fateman left early after becoming pregnant, MEN carried on, making electro-influenced dance music with a political slant.
Collaborations
Fateman has continued to
remix, write and produce music for other artists, often with JD Samson. Fateman, Hanna, and Samson wrote and produced the Christina Aguilera song "My Girls" featuring 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 was the sound designer for experimental filmmaker Cecilia Dougherty's Gone.
Seagull salon
Since 2006, Fateman has been part-owner of a
West Village hair salon called Seagull. Established in the 1970s and named after the novel
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the salon was the city's first unisex barber shop.
Fateman runs the business side while her partner, Shaun Surething, handles the styling crew.
Surething (a regular collaborator with performance artist K8 Hardy) and Fateman were featured in a short documentary on
Current TV.
External links
