“Getting your disco act together.” “Guy Hocquenghem visited New York and stayed with me in my loft on Chambers Street, and one night while I was out, he read what I'd written. When I returned later, he said to me that such straightforward description of gay culture was just the sort of thing that gay activists should be writing.” ― Douglas Crimp Douglas Crimp (b. Coeur d'Alene, USA, 1944; d. 2019) was one of the most influential art critics, curators, and AIDS activists of his time. His writings on representation and critique remain uncontested milestones in the debate over AIDS and queer aesthetics. The seminal essay Disss-co (A Fragment) reads as a primer to his pioneering studies of queer subcultures and New York's underground scene. In light of today's renewed repression of subcultural― sexual and ethnic―communities, the text has lost none of its relevance. The art works of Henrik Olesen (b. 1967) often focus on sexual politics. In this publication he shows excerpts from the project Lack of Information, 2001. Arranged as a grid, the work presents a map of different laws worldwide that are directed against gays, lesbians and transsexuals. Among other topics, the work examines anti-gay and sodomy laws, migration and adoption rights, and statistics on hate crimes. It also contains information on the frequency Disss-co (A Fragment) of same-sex behavior among animal species.
Douglas Crimp Books
Douglas Crimp was an American writer, curator, and art historian. He served as a professor of art history at the University of Rochester. His work focused on the analysis of art and critical theory.
Before Pictures
- 307 pages
- 11 hours of reading
Front room/back room -- Spanish Harlem (East 98th Street), 1967-69 -- Way out on a nut -- Chelsea (West 23rd Street), 1969-71 -- Back to the turmoil -- West Village (West 10th Street), 1971-74 -- Art news parties -- Hotel des artistes -- Tribeca (Chambers Street), 1974-76 -- Action around the edges -- Disss-co (a fragment) -- Broadway-Nassau (Nassau Street), 1976 -- Agon -- Pictures, before and after
"What determines the significance of a work of art? Doe it abide eternally within the work? Or is it continually constructed and reconstructed from the outside, through the work's presentation? The historical shift from autonomous modernist object to postmodernist critique of institutions, from artwork to discursive context, is the subject of Douglas Crimp's essays and Louise Lawler's photographs in On the Museum's Ruins. Taking the museum as paradigmatic institution of artistic modernism, Crimp surveys its historical origins and current transformations. The new paradigm of postmodernism is elaborated through analyses of art practices broadly conceived--not only the practices of artists but also those of critics and curators, of international exhibitions, and of new or refurbished museums."--back cover.
The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader
- 688 pages
- 25 hours of reading
Bringing together forty-two groundbreaking essays--many of them already classics-- The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader provides a much-needed introduction to the contemporary state of lesbian/gay studies, extensively illustrating the range, scope, diversity, appeal, and power of the work currently being done in the field. Featuring essays by such prominent scholars as Judith Butler, John D'Emilio, Kobena Mercer, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader explores a multitude of sexual, ethnic, racial, and socio-economic experiences.Ranging across disciplines including history, literature, critical theory, cultural studies, African American studies, ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, psychology, classics, and philosophy, this anthology traces the inscription of sexual meanings in all forms of cultural expression. Representing the best and most significant English language work in the field, The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader addresses topics such as butch-fem roles, the cultural construction of gender, lesbian separatism, feminist theory, AIDS, safe-sex education, colonialism, S/M, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, children's books, black nationalism, popular films, Susan Sontag, the closet, homophobia, Freud, Sappho, the media, the hijras of India, Robert Mapplethorpe, and the politics of representation. It also contains an extensive bibliographical essay which will provide readers with an invaluable guide to further reading. Henry Abelove, Tomas Almaguer, Ana Maria Alonso, Michele Barale, Judith Butler, Sue-Ellen Case, Danae Clark, Douglas Crimp, Teresa de Lauretis, John D'Emilio, Jonathan Dollimore, Lee Edelman, Marilyn Frye, Charlotte Furth, Marjorie Garber, Stuart Hall, David Halperin, Phillip Brian Harper, Gloria T. Hull, Maria Teresa Koreck, Audre Lorde, Biddy Martin, Deborah E. McDowell, Kobena Mercer, Richard Meyer, D. A. Miller, Serena Nanda, Esther Newton, Cindy Patton, Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Joan W. Scott, Daniel L. Selden, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Barbara Smith, Catharine R. Stimpson, Sasha Torres, Martha Vicinus, Simon Watney, Harriet Whitehead, John J. Winkler, Monique Wittig, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano