Why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! Are you sick of reading words?! I realize that the last few Filthy Dreams essays have been rather…ahem…lengthy. And just before the holidays! Surely, your eyes are too caked with that impossible-to-remove glitter from opening too many Christmas cards and your fingers are too red and sticky from … Continue reading
“Before you go in,” a tired-eyed older security guard stopped me at the entrance of the black tortoise-shaped screening room for Nan Goldin’s new slideshow Stendhal Syndrome, part of her current exhibition, You never did anything wrong, at Gagosian, “you have to put one of these on your phone camera.” These being, as the guard shuffled … Continue reading
Why hello there, faithful Filthy Dreams denizens! The beautiful people who keep our humble tribute to trash alive! The fuel that keeps our fanatical fires burning! Yes, that’s right–where and what would we be without YOU?! You should really give yourself a round of applause, treat yourself to some terribly ill-advised shot of well liquor … Continue reading
There are a few, select objects that are intrinsic to my sense of home. Objects that, without which, I would feel a fraction less myself. Things that have followed me for years, bearing dust from various flats and houses, collecting traces of skin from various hands. My copies of Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual … 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
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
Packed into a crowded theater at Dixon Place (one of my favorite performance venues in the city as well as the site of the infamous Great Marion and Emily Moistini incident of 2010) on Thursday night for the incredibly-named Drag Explosion, I was riveted witnessing drag legend Linda Simpson narrate slideshows of her photographs of the late 80s and early 90s drag scene like your sassy-but-sweet aunt showing family photographs on Don Draper’s favorite Kodak carrousel. Continue reading