“Maybe I can’t find you, Peter,” darkly exclaims David Wojnarowicz, walking through a cemetery in his essay “Living Close To The Knives” (100). While detailing his harrowing and nerve-wracking attempt to find the grave of photographer Peter Hujar, who Wojnarowicz later describes as “my friend…my brother my father my emotional link to the world,” Wojnarowicz’s … Continue reading
I’m not used to suffering from invasive flashbacks inside a major museum. But, pulling back the heavy curtain, leading into Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Closet, a cozy yet mind-altering intergalactic Day-Glo-painted trash utopia, I was immediately sent through a time warp to June 2011, boogying to The B-52s “Planet Claire” and Martha and the Vandellas “Jimmy … Continue reading
Are all major institutional exhibitions on queer culture doomed to fail? That’s what it unfortunately seems like, especially in the wake of self-asserted “groundbreaking” exhibitions like Art AIDS America (though not identity-based per se, obviously touched on queer culture and activism) and more recently, the Museum of the City of New York’s Gay Gotham. Curated … Continue reading
As a connoisseur and supporter of nightlife as an important domain for activism and art in the face of judgments of its superficiality and frivolity, I naturally jumped at the chance to dive into Tim Lawrence’s recently published study of New York nightlife Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983. At 600 pages, … Continue reading
Finishing his manifesto with a rallying battle cry for the absurd or, as he describes, “instructions for use,” Theatre of the Ridiculous auteur Charles Ludlam writes, “This is farce not Sunday school. Illustrate hedonistic calculus. Test out a dangerous idea, a theme that threatens to destroy one’s whole value system. Treat the material in a … Continue reading
In his book Role Models, our preeminent filth elder John Waters writes, “Explain what? A role model? Someone who has led a life even more explosive than mine, a person whose exaggerated fame or notoriety has made him or her somehow smarter and more glamorous than I could ever be? A personality frozen in an … Continue reading
I’m about ready for another dose of maniacal queer nightlife obsessing so grab yourself a hot drink and enter….The Ethyl Eichelberger Video Lounge! Continue reading