Underneath the 1980s nostalgia of Netflix’s drama Stranger Things, the sleepy Midwestern town of Hawkins, Indiana becomes a porous portal into an alternate dimension that the kids on the show call “The Upside Down.” Continue reading
Category Archives: Art
Mama Does “Night Fever” At Future Tenant
Co-founder’s Note: Why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! As you may recall on July 7, I opened the group show Night Fever, which I curated at Pittsburgh’s Future Tenant. It drew an opening crowd of over 1500 people (seriously). Of course, like Party Out Of Bounds: Nightlife As Activism Since 1980, I can’t write about it myself since … Continue reading
Postcards From The Edge: Cosey Fanni Tutti’s “Art Sex Music”
If Cosey Fanni Tutti’s life and work could be summed up in a quick sound byte, it would be, “My Life Is My Art. My Art Is My Life” (115). From her performance art and musical work in COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, Chris & Cosey, and Carter Tutti to her solo performance work and her … Continue reading
Your Silence Will Not Protect You: “VOICE = SURVIVAL” At The 8th Floor
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you,” warns Audre Lorde in her paper The Transformation of Silence Into Language And Action. In this essay, Lorde argues for speaking–the voice–as an essential, if not the most essential, activist tool. She concludes, “The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break the silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken” (44). Continue reading
You’re Invited To: “Night Fever” At Future Tenant This Friday
Why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers? What’s that? Where have I been? While I know I’ve been slightly ignoring you, faithful Filthy Dreams readers these past couple weeks, it’s been for a good cause because I’ve been installing my newest exhibition–a group show Night Fever at Pittsburgh’s Future Tenant. The show focuses on disco and its … Continue reading
Filthy Dreams’s Guide To The Art World Ken Dolls
As some of you dearest Filthy Dreams readers may know, Mattel, this week, released its new updated line of Ken Dolls. Besides looking like they all came straight out of The Cock (dirty boys!), these Kens seemed vaguely familiar. Beholden to ill-fated fashion and hairstyle choices (I mean, a man-bun? Really?), we swear we’ve seen these … Continue reading
Honoring Communities of Care In “AIDS At Home” at Museum of the City of New York
At a panel last July entitled IV Embrace: On Caregiving and Creativity, organized by Visual AIDS in conjunction with the show In The Power Of Your Care at The 8th Floor, Ted Kerr observed that we are in “the revisitation phase” of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And Kerr is right. While smaller exhibitions have been mounted … Continue reading
Someday You Will Ache Like I Ache: Carol Rama’s ‘Antibodies’
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
Divine Dolls, Pink Flamingos Bedsheets and Other Glimpses Of A Childhood I Never Had At La MaMa Galleria
Recently, I realized I was abused as a child. No, I didn’t discover some satanic ritual trauma while going through repressed memory therapy. I visited La MaMa Galleria’s current exhibition Lost Merchandise of the Dreamlanders, which confronted me with an idyllic John Waters-infused childhood I never had–a childhood where I could play tea party with … Continue reading
I Cared, But What Did It Do?: Juliana Huxtable’s ‘A Split During Laughter At The Rally’
Juliana Huxtable just gets it. It’s the last day to view Huxtable’s solo exhibition A Split During Laughter at the Rally at Reena Spaulings Fine Art. The utter contemporaneity of the works is owed to how well she captures the humorously chaotic contradictions in today’s political climate, where the urgency to outwardly appear activist has … Continue reading