Welcome to Filthy Dreams
Well hello there! Welcome to Filthy Dreams, a blog that analyzes culture through a queer lens. Rather than jumping right into new content, we thought it best to introduce ourselves and our aesthetics with our Trash Manifesto
Latest Entries
The John Waters Collection Doesn’t Hate You, but Contemporary Art Still Might
Someone was taking a dump in The John Waters Restrooms at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Was it an art-inspired intestinal emergency or a dedicated tribute to the filmmaker whose major public stink involved Divine sampling some doggy-doo in the filthy finale of Pink Flamingos? Or perhaps, this intrepid museum-goer previously devoured John’s chapter “Act … Continue reading
Xiu Xiu’s “Ignore Grief” Is the Feel-Bad Album of the Year (So Far)
“I’m not a big fan of the ‘Goth’ label. I much prefer ‘Sad Bastard Music.’” So reads a meme featuring my beloved Nick Cave, holding a cigarette with his hand to his head, possibly wondering why the hell his image has been used for a meme. Of course, Nick never said this. He’s as likely … Continue reading
A Session of Porn Therapy in Dean Sameshima’s “Being Alone” at Queer Thoughts
Can you write an essay about porn theaters that doesn’t cite Samuel R. Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue? Similarly, can you look at photographs of queer spaces and not immediately start flipping through Jose Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia to find a relevant quote? These two texts have done a number on criticism and critical … Continue reading
Having a Moment in André Leon Talley’s Collection at Christie’s: A (Mostly) Photo Essay
In Hilton Als’s at once heroic and damning 1994 portrait of then-Creative Director of Vogue Magazine André Leon Talley in The New Yorker, entitled “The Only One,” Als details Talley’s unwavering attachment to having “a moment.” “He finds moments in other people’s impulses (‘I can tell you were about to have a moment’), work (‘What Mr. … Continue reading
I Found It: The Worst Art Job Listing Ever Created
Art World Family. That’s the phrase that inspired me to click on the listing for an Executive Assistant position on NYFA’s classified listings (UPDATE: As of Friday, February 17, the listing has now been deleted, but good thing I kept this PDF as proof), curious about what this mysterious organization Art World Family was. I … Continue reading
Boy, Don’t You Know You Can’t Escape Me?: Carrie Schneider’s “I don’t know her” at CHART
Emily Colucci, Filthy Dreams. That’s how I signed the guestbook for Carrie Schneider’s exhibition I don’t know her at CHART. I don’t usually bother to write in exhibition guestbooks. The only major exception is the book for Stranger Than Kindness: The Nick Cave Exhibition in which a placard assured us fanatics that he would receive it. … Continue reading
To Be Gorgeous: A Conversation on Thierry Mugler and Jimmy DeSana at the Brooklyn Museum
“To be Gorgeous, strictly speaking, is something in itself. To be Gorgeous therefore is admirable, to be Absolutely Gorgeous most desired.” So begins an essay in one of the many zines in the Brooklyn Museum’s Jimmy DeSana: Submission exhibition, which is joined by the museum’s concurrent Thierry Mugler: Couturissime show in advocating for skin-deep/skin-tight beauty. … Continue reading
Cries & Whispers: The Corrections
Letter from the editor: An apology to our readers. There were numerous mistakes within the pages of last week’s edition of the Sun-Times-Post-Gazette. We received hundreds of emails, letters, and phone calls about one or more of these errors. While I, as editor-in-chief, take full responsibility for each issue of our newspaper, it seems that … Continue reading
Puppy Love (But No Doggystyle) In Vassilis H.’s “Must Love Dogs” at The Hole
I once saw Mary Boone make out with her dog. I should preface that I’m not a puppy hater, doggie-spit phobic, or even an anti-face- or lip-licker. Bring on the slobber! However, there was something alarming about voyeuristically staring at the typically stoic stalwart gallerist, the woman who fostered the careers of mega-art stars, was … Continue reading
Double Decadence: “Infinity Pool” Is Oscar Wilde’s Kind of Horror Movie
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” This quote by 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson opens the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as an epigraph. There, it foreshadows a number of essential elements that make up Hunter’s classic manic eulogy … Continue reading