The John Waters Collection Doesn’t Hate You, but Contemporary Art Still Might
Art / Camp / Filthy Dreams On Location / Trash

The John Waters Collection Doesn’t Hate You, but Contemporary Art Still Might

Someone was taking a dump in The John Waters Restrooms at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Was it an art-inspired intestinal emergency or a dedicated tribute to the filmmaker whose major public stink involved Divine sampling some doggy-doo in the filthy finale of Pink Flamingos? Or perhaps, this intrepid museum-goer previously devoured John’s chapter “Act … Continue reading

Into The Black: Peter Hujar’s “Speed Of Life”
Art

Into The Black: Peter Hujar’s “Speed Of Life”

“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

Your Silence Will Not Protect You: “VOICE = SURVIVAL” At The 8th Floor
Art

Your Silence Will Not Protect You: “VOICE = SURVIVAL” At The 8th Floor

“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

Why Is It So Hard To Get An Institutional Show On Queer History Right?: A Look At ‘Gay Gotham’
Art

Why Is It So Hard To Get An Institutional Show On Queer History Right?: A Look At ‘Gay Gotham’

Are all major institutional exhibitions on queer culture doomed to fail? That’s what it unfortunately seems like, especially in the wake of self-asserted “groundbreaking” exhibitions like Art AIDS America (though not identity-based per se, obviously touched on queer culture and activism) and more recently, the Museum of the City of New York’s Gay Gotham. Curated … Continue reading

Laugh And You Are Free: The Ridiculous Theater Of Jackie Curtis And Ethyl Eichelberger
Art

Laugh And You Are Free: The Ridiculous Theater Of Jackie Curtis And Ethyl Eichelberger

Finishing his manifesto with a rallying battle cry for the absurd or, as he describes, “instructions for use,” Theatre of the Ridiculous auteur Charles Ludlam writes, “This is farce not Sunday school. Illustrate hedonistic calculus. Test out a dangerous idea, a theme that threatens to destroy one’s whole value system. Treat the material in a … Continue reading

I Am A Photograph: Reviving The Liberatory Legacy Of The 1970s At Leslie-Lohman Museum
Art

I Am A Photograph: Reviving The Liberatory Legacy Of The 1970s At Leslie-Lohman Museum

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

From New York To Paris: Peter Hujar And Christer Strömholm Look At Their Lost Downtowns
Art

From New York To Paris: Peter Hujar And Christer Strömholm Look At Their Lost Downtowns

“To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt,” says Susan Sontag in On Photography, who was one of many Downtown fixtures captured by photographer Peter Hujar. Present in Lost Downtown, an exhibition commemorating the devastatingly impressive … Continue reading

You Are Invited To–Party Out Of Bounds: Nightlife As Activism Since 1980
Art

You Are Invited To–Party Out Of Bounds: Nightlife As Activism Since 1980

  Why hello there, dearest Filthy Dreams readers and fellow filth fanatics! It’s about the right time to announce what your co-founder Emily Colucci and intrepid contributor Osman Yerebakan have been working hard on since December 2013. As you know, Filthy Dreams was originally conceptualized as a sleazy bar before we lowered our expectations and started … Continue reading