There are a few, select objects that are intrinsic to my sense of home. Objects that, without which, I would feel a fraction less myself. Things that have followed me for years, bearing dust from various flats and houses, collecting traces of skin from various hands. My copies of Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual … Continue reading
Gary Indiana’s art column in The Village Voice, which ran from 1985 to 1988, is unthinkable from today’s standards of art criticism. And this just isn’t because The Voice doesn’t exist anymore (or, actually, it does in the form of a zombie Twitter account blasting out old articles into the void). More than just the … Continue reading
Well hello there, ghosties and ghoulies! Are you feeling creepy crawly? Me too! All I need is a big cup of our World Famous Pumpkin Punch and I’ll be ready to lunge into an audience of hand-waving disciples and kick them in their eager faces with my pointy-toed patent leather shoes, shrieking about reading diaries … Continue reading
“You’re a fucking liar.” This damning sentence concludes Bob Woodward’s recently published and impossible to find book Fear: Trump in the White House, which offers yet another gaudy glimpse into the ongoing conservative camp circus held in the West Wing. Spoken by John Dowd, Trump’s former attorney that was replaced by bug-eyed wacko and frenzied … Continue reading
“I think that so often in society in order to belong we have to shrink parts of ourselves,” says Janet Mock at the conclusion of Blood Orange’s song “Dagenham Dream” off of the new album Negro Swan. The writer and activist’s voice flows through the album, tying its disparate parts together with her thoughts on … Continue reading
“I want you to teach me how to be fabulous,” pleads Macaulay Culkin inhabiting the role of infamous club kid Michael Alig in 2003’s cheeseball Party Monster. In response, Seth Green’s James St. James spits back, “We have nothing in common,” picks up his metal lunchbox/purse, and changes his mind, quoting William Blake: “The road … Continue reading
“It’s about twenty minutes later. I just can’t stand my self-consciousness when talking into this thing,” says David Wojnarowicz, speaking into an audio recorder in November/December 1988. One of his eleven tape journals he made from 1981 to 1989, he later admits on the same tape: “I don’t know. I really can’t get at this … Continue reading
In August, The Outline published an investigative piece on Mic.com, detailing how the co-founders Chris Altchek, a conservative-leaning Goldman Sachs banker, and Jake Horowitz, who worked as a foreign policy columnist at Change.org, transformed the news site into social justice central, exploiting identity politics to enact some elaborate and lucrative performance of allyship. In “Mic’s Drop,” writer … Continue reading
Writing about nightlife isn’t easy. Something about that transcendent substances and dancing-fueled atmosphere gets lost in translation when put to a page. Not that many academics and fellow writers haven’t attempted to capture that rhythmic, sweat and glitter-drenched disco ball-illuminated utopia. But, staid and stodgy academics that haven’t stepped foot in a club in the past 20 years or maybe ever don’t typically spin captivating tales of after-hours debauchery. Continue reading
“Over the past year four more of my most beloved friends have died of AIDS. Two were artists I had selected for this exhibit. One of the writers for this catalogue has become too sick to write. And so the tone of the exhibition has become less theoretical and more personal, from a show about … Continue reading