“Doing things, similar things…” These are the vague yet salient words extracted from Trump’s predictably maladroit national emergency address, unwittingly evoking the bracingly confrontational and unnerving self-portraiture of our inadvertent queen of self-quarantine: Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja. As we bunker down in our contaminated cities, fantasizing about remote escapes, and “cancel culture” takes on a … Continue reading
When we think of the world, we tend to think of it in terms of endings and deaths rather than beginnings. Only a very select few could make the case that they have the capitalism they want and yet, as writer/teacher/influence-peddler McKenzie Wark has continued to wager over the years since A Hacker Manifesto, Molecular … Continue reading
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon of perusing exhibitions around the Lower East Side, and somewhat of a synchronistic moment to meet the artist Martin Wilner in midst of his current exhibition The Case Histories at Pierogi. Wilner invited each of the gallery’s artists to produce their own “responsa” to his dialogue with them, each … Continue reading
I don’t mind today but the everyday makes me barf. There’s no such thing. Puking would put something on the sidewalk of the everyday so it might begin to be now. —Eileen Myles, Sorry, Tree, 2007. I continue to find this statement perplexing, even after a day that finished hurling on the pavement of an … Continue reading
Mystics are having a welcome moment of resurgence, from Hilma af Klint’s Painting for the Future at the Guggenheim, to Leonora Carrington’s Magical Tales at The Contemporary Art Museum of Monterrey, to Leonor Fini’s overdue first survey in New York at the Museum of Sex, Theatre of Desire, 1930-1990, curated by Lissa Rivera. This is … Continue reading
How many imaginary dialogues with dead poets have you had lately? Multidisciplinary artist Félicia Atkinson recently orchestrated an experimental performance in dialogue with Francis Ponge’s “The Candle (La Bougie)” from his collection Le Parti Pris des Choses (Siding with Things) at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. An incantation of sorts, Atkinson’s sonic dreamscapes are haunting … Continue reading
“It was the opposite of nihilism, it was more a case of too much care-ism,” quipped my friend as we stepped out onto Park Avenue, having just been exposed to Australian director Simon Stone’s adaptation of Yerma, based on Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca’s play of the same name, which debuted in 1934. … Continue reading
New Zealand-born, NYC-based artist Jess Johnson’s recent exhibition Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost at Jack Hanley Gallery was a maximalist installation in which analog met digital, whereby her drawings were translated into virtual reality. Filthy Dreams’s Jessica Caroline chats to Johnson about her hyper-psychedelic theme park of cyber bodies in both unison and discord: … Continue reading
Carol Rama has a few favorite colors. The one she likes best is black. And brown. And red. Black being the color that prepares one for death, sets one at ease with it. It is also the color of the wedding dress she made. It is the color of her darker side, yet also the … Continue reading
“Often, he runs his hands over the work, tempted as to whether it is flesh or ivory, not admitting it to be ivory. he kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned; and speaks to it; and holds it, and imagines that his fingers press into the limbs, and is afraid lest bruises appear from … Continue reading
