»I know you want me. You don’t have to tell me. All your fucking money that you give me and these bags that you send me … I don’t need them. You’re the one who needs me.«
Belladonna in ›Money to Burn‹ (2010)

»I would like to be a spoiled rich white girl. They get what they want whenever they want it and they don’t really have to struggle with finances and nice things and nice clothes and they don’t have to have that as a problem.«
Venus Xtravaganza in ›Paris Is Burning‹ (1990)

In 2015, pop star Nicki Minaj used the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards as a platform to refer to the racism that pervades the music industry. She confronts the VMA host and white fellow musician Miley Cyrus, who in an interview had previously dismissed Minaj’s political statements as insignificant, with the words: »Miley, what’s good?« The prevailing power structure within pop culture, but also in the society that it mirrors, forms the starting point of the audiovisual performance What’s Good? by Anja Kaiser and Katharina Merten. What’s Good? collects audio material in the form of quotes and excerpts from stars in the worlds of music, fashion and porn films. Selected tracks that address the political relationship with the mainstream, draw the complex fragments together. Within the aesthetic of an intimate live screencast, the performance zooms in at a visual level into private email conversations, a desktop strip show and follows YouTube vloggers around the world. The performance looks at the body as an ambivalent medium of power and powerlessness in the game of recovery determined by the self or by others, and attests to the visibility of a self-empowering Grrrls-, POC and LGBTQ community.