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
Role Models: Buddy Cole
Reciting seven simple rules for a life in hiding in Todd Haynes film I’m Not There, Ben Whishaw reveals the fifth, “If ever told to look at yourself, never look.” Well, Mary, we at Filthy Dreams looked and do you know who looked back? Buddy Cole. Continue reading
Bodies Everywhere: A Look at All Those Bodies in Istanbul
An artist is, beyond all of its transcendental and inventive impulses, a body–a physical statement, a functioning machine. Furthermore, a work of art, same as its creator, is a corpse–the kind that is compact, variant and mythical, waiting to be decoded and configured for its true meaning. Continue reading
Under The Posing Straps: 80 WSE Excavates Bob Mizer
The first institutional solo exhibition of Bob Mizer’s expansive career, “DEVOTION: Excavating Bob Mizer” at 80 WSE delves into the little known and barely seen photographs separate from his career as the penultimate beefcake photographer Continue reading
Happy Birthday William S. Burroughs: A (Mostly) Video Centennial Celebration
Celebrating William S. Burrough’s 100th Birthday, a centennial of deviance, depravity and disturbing literary innovation, we here at Filthy Dreams want to give a fitting tribute to the eponymous gentleman junkie, Beatnik novelist, dangerous queer, cut-up magician, Control subverter and one part of The Third Mind. Continue reading
Be Mine, Mary: Filthy Dreams’ Sleazy Songs of Seduction Playlist
As Valentine’s Day quickly approaches, we here at Filthy Dreams come to you with the best VD surprise ever (no not that kind of VD surprise!)–Filthy Dreams’ Sleazily Songs of Seduction. Continue reading
Crochet, Embroidery and Macramé, Oh My!: Finding The Queer In Craft At ‘Queer Threads’
Even though Lulu may never have wanted to kill with 1970s kitsch, Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community, a current exhibition of queer artists who all employ the medium of craft, from embroidery to needlepoint to crochet and Lulu’s beloved macramé, is slaying at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Continue reading
Queen Abe: Skylar Fein Revisits Lincoln’s Sexuality At C24 Gallery
Was Abraham Lincoln queer? Oh I know what you’re thinking, Mary: that old question again? Well stop sighing, drink your Old Fashioned and listen. New Orleans-based artist Skylar Fein’s current exhibition The Lincoln Bedroom at C24 Gallery raises and re-energizes this debate through a detailed, heavily researched, immersive installation of the bedroom, including the infamous bed, that Lincoln shared with Joshua Speed, a wealthy plantation owner’s son. Continue reading
Love From Bertha: Queer World-Making In The Art Of Mark Morrisroe
Well, at ClampArt’s current exhibition of artist Mark Morrisroe’s work Hello From Bertha, we discovered we are certainly not the only ones who treat our beloved Tennessee Williams as a role model. Continue reading
They Were Cheap So You Could Be Too: Photographs Of 1990s Times Square Sleaze
From Show World to The Deuce to Peep Land and The Playpen, Gregoire Alessandrini’s photographs document Times Square’s “adult” businesses in a state of flux, closing down to make way for the Disney-fied Times Square Redevelopment Project. Continue reading
Our World Was All A Stage For Her Transgressive Ways: On Linda Simpson’s ‘Pages’
As legendary New York drag queen and Downtown drag documentarian Linda Simpson writes in her debut photographic publication Pages, describing her friend and subject of the book, the provocative transgender performer Page, “I first laid eyes on Page in the spring of 1990, when my friend Tabboo! rented a video of the documentary What Sex … Continue reading