I’m not used to suffering from invasive flashbacks inside a major museum. But, pulling back the heavy curtain, leading into Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Closet, a cozy yet mind-altering intergalactic Day-Glo-painted trash utopia, I was immediately sent through a time warp to June 2011, boogying to The B-52s “Planet Claire” and Martha and the Vandellas “Jimmy … Continue reading
As most of you dearest Filthy Dreams readers know, today, June 12, is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which killed 49 people who were namely LGBTQ and Latinx. Given our ongoing engagement and belief in the significance of nightlife for the queer community and communities of color, it … Continue reading
I’m a sucker for disco balls. There, I said it. If anywhere or anything includes a mirror ball, I’m immediately a fan. I’m like a moth to a shimmering, glittering flame.
But beyond my lizard brain fixation with shiny objects, disco balls can be harnessed as a complex symbol–a metaphor for community, excess, escapism, utopia, self-fashioned identity and even, safety in nightlife. Continue reading
Toot toot! Beep beep!…wait…what’s that, dearest Filthy Dreams readers? Sorry, I was just belting out disco queen and savior Donna Summer’s naughty hit “Bad Girls.” As you may have noticed, Donna has made more frequent appearances on our Filthy Dreams playlists as of late. Yes, I’ve been struck down with Summer fever! And since I’ve … 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
Stumbling, bleary-eyed, back into the outside world, the morning after clubbing isn’t exactly the magic hour. Or at least, not typically. But, Richard Renaldi’s photographic series Manhattan Sunday not only merely captures the still-awake but not-yet-hungover post-clubbing period of 5, 6 or even 9AM, but it also glamorizes it. Continue reading
In his book Role Models, our preeminent filth elder John Waters writes, “Explain what? A role model? Someone who has led a life even more explosive than mine, a person whose exaggerated fame or notoriety has made him or her somehow smarter and more glamorous than I could ever be? A personality frozen in an … Continue reading
Who would have thought that tossing orange and peach roller-skate wheels across a concrete floor to a disco tune could be so powerful? That a seemingly simple gesture could have such complex conceptual and political consequences? Continue reading
Both drawing on and emphasizing Cvetkovich’s understanding of queer archives as ephemeral records of affect and memory, the Pittsburgh Queer History Project’s current exhibition Lucky After Dark at Future Tenant, which closes June 29, uncovers the hidden history of Pittsburgh’s gay after-hours social clubs. Continue reading