Does Barbie know about AIDS? Does she know her new friend Keith Haring died of complications from AIDS? These are the questions, some of many, I found myself considering when I discovered last week to both horror and amusement that Mattel produced, in collaboration with the Keith Haring Foundation, the Keith Haring X Barbie® who … Continue reading
“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
Toot toot! Beep beep!…wait…what’s that, dearest Filthy Dreams readers? Sorry, I was just belting out disco queen and savior Donna Summer’s naughty hit “Bad Girls.” As you may have noticed, Donna has made more frequent appearances on our Filthy Dreams playlists as of late. Yes, I’ve been struck down with Summer fever! And since I’ve … Continue reading
In her essay “Legacies of Trauma, Legacies of Activism” in the collection Loss: The Politics of Mourning, Ann Cvetkovich reflects, “The AIDS crisis, like any other traumatic encounters with death, has challenged our strategies for remembering the dead, forcing the invention of new forms of mourning and commemoration. The same is true, I would argue, … Continue reading
Devastating, enraging, moving, motivating and yes, militant, Let The Record Show succeeds in powerfully and captivatingly revealing the innumerable and almost incomprehensible losses to the arts community, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as that community’s strong and outspoken response to the crisis. Continue reading