2017-06-25


Friday was the film premiere, hosted by my favorite gallery. We made a great short film and I was humbled by the turnout. And it seemed that people were actually entertained. A five minute art film couched in horror traditions. The event was only supposed to run from 8-9, the film on loop. But we finally locked up at 11.

Saturday I attempted to recover but by evening I was already thinking about the solo show I haven't even started that is still going to happen end of August...Jesus.

But a quick update on topics addressed in the previous entry. Yes, I did get included in the group show. It was a success in that my contribution was featured in an article on the show in Paper Magazine, my first real press. Secondly, it was successful in that it stoked the rage of the model whose picture was found in the collage, a friend (now ex-friend) who demanded I remove the work. I acquiesced, alerted the curator, and she conveniently forgot. So when the press came out I was careful to broadcast it on social media by excluding him and people very close to him from seeing it. Fuck him.

It was an honor when one of my employers (I have three now), who is very respected in the community for a clean record as a dealer with much influence, handed me unsolicited accolades for what I've been able to manage in my life as someone who arrived "out of nowhere" in a town where one's career success is almost always exclusively contingent to the local school they attended and that type of privilege nepotism.

And it is very meaningful for me to receive acknowledgment of my ability to navigate a relatively closed space like this. I am adroit and talented and I know how to hustle. So now that I have congratulated myself I can move on to the real reason I started this entry. To process the solo show in a public, albeit anonymous, online space.

The fucking solo show.

I've been collecting footage of instances of what we consider to be "obvious" faggotry in gay performers who were not publicly out at the height of their fame. For example, Boy George, George Michael, Freddie Mercury, and Liberace. The plan is to show this footage somewhere in the tiny space it will be exhibited. The footage itself will be silenced with different audio added, that of cheering and applause, punctuated in intervals. I'm thinking of the footage as very superficial, very visual elements to frame the show

The unresolved portion of the show I'm thinking about is exploring the phenomenon that these these acts co-existed and functioned in times of homophobia. This is what really interests me here.

I brought something up to my boyfriend along these lines. I thought, "Its interesting that an America so wrought with racist, homophobic, and mysogynistic ideas can be seen in historic footage during times of extreme versions of this hostility, literally worshipping, crying hysterically, and falling in love with the objects of their usual hatred." To which my boyfriend responded, "they only want parts of us".

So in terms of the public and how they responded to gay performers, to some they knew the performers were gay and just dealt with it on wink-wink terms (so I've been told and heard from people who were adults then), most were oblivious to the gay codes/giveaways they were seeing. Either way the cash was flooding in and funding the spectacle, and it was good for all, minus the part about being forced into hiding in the closet.

That's it for now...





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