Your Silence Will Not Protect You: “VOICE = SURVIVAL” At The 8th Floor
Art

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

History Keeps Me Awake At Night: Civilization And Its Discontents In ‘Repossession’
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History Keeps Me Awake At Night: Civilization And Its Discontents In ‘Repossession’

I don’t know about you, dearest Filthy Dreams readers, but the past couple weeks (ok, year) have felt like civilization failed us. Between the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the shootings in Dallas, the shootings at Pulse in Orlando, the Brexit vote, the attack in Nice, the failed coup attempt in Turkey and … Continue reading

X-Ray Of Civilization: Beyond Biopolitics In Carlos Motta’s ‘Deviations’
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X-Ray Of Civilization: Beyond Biopolitics In Carlos Motta’s ‘Deviations’

What would happen if we looked back–past the contemporary Western civilization that we know? Past governments that try to regulate use of bathrooms depending on the biological sex written on birth certificates? Past governmental restrictions on who can be served at what establishment? Past rigidly constructed sexual and gender identities based on science, law and religion? Past, as Foucault described, biopower and biopolitics? What would happen if we looked back to cultures where there were no identities only acts? Continue reading