Happy Valentine’s Day! Feeling the need to drop to a knee at the first person who makes eye contact with you? Feeling into your pockets to ensure that your emergency engagement ring is still there? Tempted to slip a roofie into a punch bowl with fingers crossed? Stealing Valentines from others, only to argue that … Continue reading
You know all the words to Grace Jones’s Pull Up To the Bumper and you’ve probably strutted in the club to Walking In the Rain. But have you met her brother Chris Jones? Iconic in his own right, he is a musician and DJ making waves with his new eminently danceable album Strong2. We talk … Continue reading
How many imaginary dialogues with dead poets have you had lately? Multidisciplinary artist Félicia Atkinson recently orchestrated an experimental performance in dialogue with Francis Ponge’s “The Candle (La Bougie)” from his collection Le Parti Pris des Choses (Siding with Things) at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn. An incantation of sorts, Atkinson’s sonic dreamscapes are haunting … Continue reading
“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
Is there something about music that lends itself as a medium to explore tortured and painful yet romantic and erotic queer longing? From Perfume Genius’ melancholic songs like “Hood” to The Communards’ bizarrely manic renditions of torch songs and even, appropriated show tunes from Broadway musicals such as “On My Own” from Les Miz caterwauled … Continue reading
Rather than depicting an It Gets Better-style representation of queerness, Perfume Genius’ album Too Bright portrays feelings ranging from disillusionment, melancholy, shame, stigma, loss and frequently a deep engagement with the sense of being trapped in one’s body. Continue reading
Unsurprisingly since Marion and I envisioned Filthy Dreams as a confetti-filled nightclub from hell before we lowered our expectations and created a blog on queer culture, we already gave some thought to the club’s music selection. Cobbled together from nights of drunken karaoke, voodoo fantasies, John Waters’ obsessions, burlesque shows and B-52’s hero worship, among … Continue reading