At a panel last July entitled IV Embrace: On Caregiving and Creativity, organized by Visual AIDS in conjunction with the show In The Power Of Your Care at The 8th Floor, Ted Kerr observed that we are in “the revisitation phase” of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And Kerr is right. While smaller exhibitions have been mounted … Continue reading
I need to get something off my chest, dear Filthy Dreams readers, that really steams my buns. And this comes up time and time again as I walk through the West Village. I hate the NYC AIDS Memorial. Not just dislike–hate as in loathe, detest, abhor. Continue reading
“The irony for me was, like, I’m in a production to express yourself. I wasn’t being that at all with myself,” remarks Carlton Wilborn in the documentary film Strike A Pose. Directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan, Strike A Pose traces the experiences–both past and present–of the six (seven, if you include Gabriel Trupin … 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
In her essay “Legacies of Trauma, Legacies of Activism” in the collection Loss: The Politics of Mourning, Ann Cvetkovich reflects, “The AIDS crisis, like any other traumatic encounters with death, has challenged our strategies for remembering the dead, forcing the invention of new forms of mourning and commemoration. The same is true, I would argue, … Continue reading
Nick Cave’s thoughts on time have stuck with me long after witnessing his deeply upsetting grief-strewn film One More Time With Feeling. Directed by Andrew Dominik, One More Time With Feeling is an all-encompassing look into the recording of the Bad Seeds’ album Skeleton Tree in the wake of the death of Nick’s son Arthur … Continue reading
In his published journals Water From A Bucket, queer forefather Charles Henri Ford describes the process of keeping a diary. He quips, “I shall continue this document until the end of next year, then I vow to continue it no longer. It’s a secret vice. Vices should be public.” Certainly no stranger to documenting his … Continue reading
Is it possible to look back to that gold lamé-draped, handlebar moustache-wearing, disco-dancing, cruising post-Stonewall era of the 1970s without the lens of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which would irrevocably alter the course of LGBTQ life? Can you look at artwork, photographs and other documentation from that decade without searching for the images and names of those who would disappear in the decades to come? Or of the others who would become continual caregivers to friends and lovers? Or the clubs, bathhouses, piers and others spaces that would be shuttered for fear of transmission? Continue reading
“Merrymakers dance the night away,” reads the bottom of a magazine sheet that the 2015 Baxter St Workspace Resident Pacifico Silano ‘tore’ from a vast collection of gay porn ephemera for his intricately hung solo exhibition at Baxter St Camera Club’s Chinatown location. Tear Sheets fits like a glove as a title to Pacifico’s practice, which … Continue reading
Billing itself as “groundbreaking” and “the first comprehensive overview and reconsideration of 30 years of art made in response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States,” Art AIDS America, curated by Jonathan David Katz and Tacoma Museum of Art’s Rock Hushka, has in the past few days come under heavy criticism for its lack … Continue reading