Never Can Say Goodbye: Eric Sneathen Conjures Gaétan Dugas (Aka ‘Patient Zero’) and Other Ghosts in “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Books / Poetry

Never Can Say Goodbye: Eric Sneathen Conjures Gaétan Dugas (Aka ‘Patient Zero’) and Other Ghosts in “Don’t Leave Me This Way”

Eric Sneathen’s Don’t Leave Me This Way, published recently by Nightboat Books, is a ghost story. Ok, the book is not a ghost story in any traditional sense. There are no vengeful ghosts banging open closets or throwing silverware around after being summoned by a Ouija Board or, as in Danny and Michael Philippou’s film … Continue reading

“What, Like You Get In Parrots?…You Haven’t Got A Parrot, Have You?”: I Watched “It’s A Sin” And I Have Questions
TV

“What, Like You Get In Parrots?…You Haven’t Got A Parrot, Have You?”: I Watched “It’s A Sin” And I Have Questions

Are all Welsh twenty-somethings well versed in parrot illnesses? Are they experts in bird diseases? Apparently so if we’re to believe a bizarre scene–one of many–in the critically acclaimed surprise hit British drama miniseries It’s a Sin, which traces the AIDS crisis through 1980s and early 1990s London. In the scene in question, wide-eyed, endearingly … Continue reading

Drag Them To Filth: I Didn’t Get COVID-19 So You Could Write A Bad Think Piece Edition (Part 1)
Drag Them To Filth

Drag Them To Filth: I Didn’t Get COVID-19 So You Could Write A Bad Think Piece Edition (Part 1)

Why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! Does anyone else feel hot or should I obsessively take my temperature again to make sure I’m not backsliding in my virus? Are you feeling your lungs burning? Me too! No no, it’s not the COVID-19. At least not anymore…thankfully I haven’t felt a blazing inferno in my … Continue reading

‘I Am Consumed in the Weight of You’: “Self-Portrait in 23 Rounds: A Chapter in David Wojnarowicz’s Life (1989-1991)” at London’s Live Art Development Agency
Art

‘I Am Consumed in the Weight of You’: “Self-Portrait in 23 Rounds: A Chapter in David Wojnarowicz’s Life (1989-1991)” at London’s Live Art Development Agency

To mark this year’s World AIDS Day, London’s Live Art Development Agency (LADA) hosted the first UK screening of Marion Scemama’s 2018 film essay Self-Portrait in 23 Rounds: A Chapter in David Wojnarowicz’s Life (1989-1991), co-directed with François Pain. Having spent the past two years immersing myself in Wojnarowicz’s life and work, I was hungry … Continue reading

There’s No Memorial Like Merch: What The Hell Is With The Keith Haring X Barbie?
Art / Trash

There’s No Memorial Like Merch: What The Hell Is With The Keith Haring X Barbie?

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

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: David Lebe’s “Long Light”
Art

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: David Lebe’s “Long Light”

If you go onto the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s website and look at their exhibition offerings, you might notice that a great many of their recent shows are made up of works in the museum’s permanent collection. Frank Gehry’s architectural expansion of the museum is in full swing, meaning that there are fewer blockbuster shows like … Continue reading

I’m Lying Down And This Vehicle Keeps Moving: The Vulnerability Of “Weight Of The Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz”
Art / Books

I’m Lying Down And This Vehicle Keeps Moving: The Vulnerability Of “Weight Of The Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz”

“It’s about twenty minutes later. I just can’t stand my self-consciousness when talking into this thing,” says David Wojnarowicz, speaking into an audio recorder in November/December 1988. One of his eleven tape journals he made from 1981 to 1989, he later admits on the same tape: “I don’t know. I really can’t get at this … Continue reading

And We Watched The World As It Fell Past: Domestic Intimacy As Activism Hugh Steers’s “The Nullities of Life”
Art

And We Watched The World As It Fell Past: Domestic Intimacy As Activism Hugh Steers’s “The Nullities of Life”

It’s been a long year this week, hasn’t it? Between the Supreme Court upholding the travel ban, Justice Kennedy retiring (fingers crossed for Supreme Court Justice Jeanine Pirro), the shootings at the Capital Gazette and the daily insanity of Trump’s Wrestlemania-esque tweets, I’m tired. And this fatigue doesn’t just come from our national politics. This … Continue reading

Into The Black: Peter Hujar’s “Speed Of Life”
Art

Into The Black: Peter Hujar’s “Speed Of Life”

“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