I’ve Got Loyalty, Got Royalty Inside My DNA: Toyin Ojih Odutola’s “When Legends Die”
Art

I’ve Got Loyalty, Got Royalty Inside My DNA: Toyin Ojih Odutola’s “When Legends Die”

In the premiere episode of Pose, which focuses on the house and ball scene in 1980s New York, the House of Abundance rushes into a barely disguised Brooklyn Museum to swipe opulent historical clothing to compete as Royalty. Before they hide under podiums to evade security, each character has a private moment with various Egyptian … Continue reading

And If I Call You From First Avenue: Dialing Up Utopian Failure With St. Vincent And Alex Da Corte’s “New York”
Art / Music

And If I Call You From First Avenue: Dialing Up Utopian Failure With St. Vincent And Alex Da Corte’s “New York”

“Utopia can never be prescriptive and is always destined to fail,” writes José Esteban Muñoz in his chapter “After Jack: Queer Failure, Queer Virtuosity” in Cruising Utopia. The chapter traces the queer utopian legacy of filmmaker Jack Smith through the work of contemporary artists and performers like Dynasty Handbag, Kalup Linzy and My Barbarian. This … Continue reading

No More Shall We Part: Finding Everyday Utopia With Perfume Genius and Félix González-Torres
Art / Music

No More Shall We Part: Finding Everyday Utopia With Perfume Genius and Félix González-Torres

“It’s almost embarrassing to acknowledge how good things are…There’s something abnormal about it,” reflects Perfume Genius’s Mike Hadreas in an interview with FADER. With the release of his new album this week No Shape, a transcendent ode to romanticism, love and domesticity as redemption, Perfume Genius raises the question: What does utopia sound like? Continue reading

Of Discoballs and Baseball Bats: Anna Campbell’s Queer Objects in ‘Etiquette Kit’
Art

Of Discoballs and Baseball Bats: Anna Campbell’s Queer Objects in ‘Etiquette Kit’

In José Esteban Muñoz’s now probably over-quoted introduction to Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, Muñoz describes, “Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness” (1). Similar to Muñoz’s assertion, artist Anna Campbell works almost exclusively with “the ornamental and the quotidian” as a site for … Continue reading

Remembering José Esteban Muñoz and Filthy Dreams’ Queer Utopia Playlist
Trashy Tributes

Remembering José Esteban Muñoz and Filthy Dreams’ Queer Utopia Playlist

As some of you observant readers may have noticed, I don’t often share my writing with other publications on this wondrously decadent blog of ours out of fear of becoming as queer theorist and former Chair of Performance Studies at New York University José Esteban Muñoz would call, using the biting words of Jack Smith, “a walking career.” … Continue reading