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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
“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
“Over the past year four more of my most beloved friends have died of AIDS. Two were artists I had selected for this exhibit. One of the writers for this catalogue has become too sick to write. And so the tone of the exhibition has become less theoretical and more personal, from a show about … 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