Kathleen Hanna

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Kathleen Hanna performing Bikini Kill (1996)

Kathleen Hanna (born November 12, 1968 in Portland , Oregon ) is an American musician , feminist activist and author . She was the singer of the punk band Bikini Kill and founded the electropunk band Le Tigre . She also released a solo album of the same name in 1998 under the name Julie Ruin . She made a significant contribution to the renewal of feminism in the USA and is a symbol of the Riot Grrrl movement .

Life

Career

Kathleen Hanna's childhood was marked by several changes of residence, as her father changed jobs several times. At the age of nine, her mother took her to a rally by the US feminist and suffragette Gloria Steinem , where Hanna first came into contact with feminist ideas. She soon shared her mother 's sympathies for the women's movement and began to be interested in feminist literature, especially Betty Friedan's book Der Weiblichkeitswahn (original title: The Feminine Mystique ). According to her own statement, these experiences had a significant impact on her life and led to her campaigning for feminist concerns early on in her youth. In an interview, Hanna said that for her, feminism is the ending of the oppression of all people and not just white women climbing the corporate ladder.

In the late 1980s she began studying photography at Evergreen State College in Olympia , Washington , financed by performing as a burlesque dancer . During this time she founded the independent feminist art gallery Reko Muse together with her friends Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland . Soon the three founders began to open their exhibitions with band appearances and founded the band Amy Carter . In addition, Hanna hosted spoken word appearances in which she addressed topics such as sexism and violence against women. Inspired by the writer Kathy Acker , who advised her to give up the (unpopular) spoken word appearances in favor of a band career, she then formed the band Viva Knievel , with whom she toured the USA for two months before the band formed dissolved again.

In the following years she wrote the zines Revolution Girl Style Now and Bikini Kill together with her fellow students Tobi Vail and Kathi Wilcox , in which they criticized the widespread discrimination against women in the punk rock scene. In order to enforce their ideals, the three finally founded a punk band together with Billy Karren as the fourth member in 1990, which they named Bikini Kill after their zine . In the following years the band released the Independent - label Kill Rock Stars five albums, one EP and several singles. In addition, the band by several well-known artists, such as. B. Nirvana or Joan Jett , both musically and politically supported. In April 1998 the band finally broke up.

After the breakup, Hanna devoted herself to various other music projects, including her solo project Julie Ruin, with which she released an album of the same name in August 1998. In the same year she moved to New York City , where she founded the electropunk band Le Tigre , together with the zine editor Johanna Fateman and the video artist Sadie Benning , which was initially only intended as a live accompaniment band for Julie Ruin. The band has released a total of three albums, six EPs and several singles to date and was under contract with the Mr. Lady Records label until 2004 . In January 2007, the band announced that they would take a longer break.

Since then, Hanna u. a. Art at New York University and was involved in various feminist organizations.

Influence on the Riot Grrrl movement

Hanna with Le Tigre in Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 2000s

Due to the ubiquitous discrimination against women in the punk scene in the early 1990s, Hanna regularly wrote socially critical zines together with other women and members of feminist bands in which they criticized the sexism of the male-dominated punk scene and the lack of equal rights for women. This feminist subcultural punk movement, which initially focused primarily on Olympia, Washington, spawned a plethora of bands such as: B. Babes In Toyland , Bikini Kill , Bratmobile , The Donnas , Hole , Jack Off Jill , L7 , Le Tigre , Sleater-Kinney or Team Dresch .

The Riot Grrrl movement was named after the Zine Riot Grrrl published by Hanna's band Bikini Kill and members of the band Bratmobile . The movement's slogan (“Revolution Girl Style Now!”) Also goes back to the title of one of their zines. Because of her commitment, Kathleen Hanna is still regarded today as one of the earliest and most prominent representatives of the movement, although she no longer sees herself as part of it.

Filmmaker Sini Anderson explored Hanna's life and role in the Riot Grrrl movement in the 2013 documentary The Punk Singer .

Personal

In 2006, Hanna married her long-time friend Adam Horovitz , a rapper for the hip-hop band Beastie Boys .

Hanna supports the pro-choice movement and publicly confessed to having had an abortion when she was young. With her example, she wants to encourage other women to openly discuss the topic and to overcome social stigmatization .

Hanna is an atheist .

The title of Nirvana's song Smells Like Teen Spirit came about when Hanna wrote the phrase “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit” on a wall in Kurt Cobain's apartment, as Cobain named after the deodorant “Teen Spirit ”that his then girlfriend Tobi Vail was using. Cobain liked the implication of the sentence, he ended up using it as the song title.

Discography (selection)

With bikini kill

  • 1991: Revolution Girl Style Now!
  • 1991: Bikini Kill (EP)
  • 1993: Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah (together with Huggy Bear )
  • 1994: Pussy Whipped
  • 1994: The CD Version of the First Two Records
  • 1996: Reject All American

As Julie Ruin

  • 1998: Julie Ruin
  • 2016: Hit Reset

With Le Tigre

  • 1999: Le Tigre
  • 2001: From the Desk of Mr. Lady (EP)
  • 2001: Feminist Sweepstakes
  • 2004: This Island

With Green Day

  • 2004: Letterbomb

Movie

  • The Punk Singer , documentary, 2013, directed by Sini Anderson

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Gloria Steinem and Kathleen Hanna. ( Memento of April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) medlem.spray.se; Retrieved March 30, 2009
  2. ↑ Punk Icon Kathleen Hanna Brings Riot Grrl Back To The Spotlight
  3. ↑ a b Hillary Frey: Kathleen Hanna's Fire . In: The Nation . January 13, 2003.
  4. ↑ a b Official biography. letigreworld.com; Retrieved March 30, 2009
  5. ↑ Le Tigre News . letigreworld.com; Retrieved March 30, 2009
  6. ↑ Interview with Kathleen Hanna ( Memento of the original dated May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. msmagazine.com; Retrieved March 30, 2009 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.msmagazine.com
  7. ↑ Laura Barcella: The A-word ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: salon.com . September 20, 2004. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / dir.salon.com
  8. ^ Johnny Ray Huston: Women vs. rock ( memento of April 29, 1999 in the Internet Archive ). In: San Francisco Bay Guardian . September 9, 1998.
  9. ↑ Michael Azzerad: Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana . Doubleday, 1994, ISBN 0-385-47199-8 , pp. 211 f .
personal data
SURNAME Hanna, Kathleen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ruin, Julie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician and feminist activist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland , Oregon, United States