“Through clothing, an inner phantom self becomes visible,” quoth FIT Professor of Art History Anna Blume on a plaque before one of her sartorial signifiers: a relaxedly tailored suit, white shirt and tie.
Queer Theory
Posted inArt
The Great Refusal: Videos Taking on New Queer Aesthetics
CHICAGO — The Great Refusal: Taking on New Queer Aesthetics induces a sort of lonely feel, one that falls closer in line with Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, which argues that “the efficacy of queerness lies in its very willingness to embrace this refusal of the social and political order” than the playful camp of Planet Unicorn. It is after Lee Edelman’s polemic text, and namely the notion of “refusal,” that this video screening and the larger exhibition series takes its name. Yet, if queerness is all about transcending and transforming beyond normative modes of being and believing, why do the works in this screening mostly rely on queer theory texts of the past? This video screening presents 11 videos covering topics of the abject body, intersections of sex and death, the gay mystic, explorations of S/M fantasies and fetish, power plays, the bathhouse, and the odd world of online amateur porn.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, Damien Hirst’s global spot challenge, TJ Clark on Leonardo, Cairo’s art scene, Green & Knight on PST, de Kooning conversation, Queer theory, vandalism as art criticism, imagining a drunk gay Jenny Holzer twitterfeed and an Abby Road spoof.