Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash, 2022
This paper takes as its case study the most iconic production studio for contemporary horror film... more This paper takes as its case study the most iconic production studio for contemporary horror films, Blumhouse Productions, and some of its most lucrative and culturally relevant films. We are concerned not only with the racialized implications of Blumhouse’s roster of films, but also with the nature of the discourse-shifting and genre-shifting reception of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and other Blumhouse films as cultural-financial phenomena.
Published in Jimmy DeSana and Laurie Simmons: Double Trouble by Amanda Wilkinson Gallery/Brewer S... more Published in Jimmy DeSana and Laurie Simmons: Double Trouble by Amanda Wilkinson Gallery/Brewer Street Press.
Essay for the book "Positive Fragmentation," published in 2022 by the National Museum of Women in... more Essay for the book "Positive Fragmentation," published in 2022 by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.
Available through Amazon, Columbia University Press, Printed Matter, Skylight, Powell's, City Lig... more Available through Amazon, Columbia University Press, Printed Matter, Skylight, Powell's, City Lights, etc.
Published in a monograph for Sarah Morris's exhibition at Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Fi... more Published in a monograph for Sarah Morris's exhibition at Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Finland
Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019). ISBN: 9781138191921, 2018
Fine Arts and Literature Chapter for Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, ... more Fine Arts and Literature Chapter for Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture
Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash, 2022
This paper takes as its case study the most iconic production studio for contemporary horror film... more This paper takes as its case study the most iconic production studio for contemporary horror films, Blumhouse Productions, and some of its most lucrative and culturally relevant films. We are concerned not only with the racialized implications of Blumhouse’s roster of films, but also with the nature of the discourse-shifting and genre-shifting reception of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and other Blumhouse films as cultural-financial phenomena.
Published in Jimmy DeSana and Laurie Simmons: Double Trouble by Amanda Wilkinson Gallery/Brewer S... more Published in Jimmy DeSana and Laurie Simmons: Double Trouble by Amanda Wilkinson Gallery/Brewer Street Press.
Essay for the book "Positive Fragmentation," published in 2022 by the National Museum of Women in... more Essay for the book "Positive Fragmentation," published in 2022 by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.
Available through Amazon, Columbia University Press, Printed Matter, Skylight, Powell's, City Lig... more Available through Amazon, Columbia University Press, Printed Matter, Skylight, Powell's, City Lights, etc.
Published in a monograph for Sarah Morris's exhibition at Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Fi... more Published in a monograph for Sarah Morris's exhibition at Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Finland
Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture (New York, NY: Routledge, 2019). ISBN: 9781138191921, 2018
Fine Arts and Literature Chapter for Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, ... more Fine Arts and Literature Chapter for Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture
Linda Badley has a problematic fave, as we all must. The Youths use the term “problematic fave” t... more Linda Badley has a problematic fave, as we all must. The Youths use the term “problematic fave” to refer to an artist whose work you admire, despite and because of their propensity for cancelation. It is a way of signaling the individuality of attachment to objects of culture — for love, a form of fandom, is a discourse that is both social and inscrutably unique to each of us. Above all, fandom for many people, especially the so-called Youths, offers the only respite from depression.
Text to accompany Kate Millett: Fantasy Furniture at Salon 94
https://salon94.com/design/exhibit... more Text to accompany Kate Millett: Fantasy Furniture at Salon 94
Fandom is about periodization, history, just as life is. So, the tenth anniversary of Lady Gaga’s... more Fandom is about periodization, history, just as life is. So, the tenth anniversary of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way marks a moment in her development as an artist, to be sure, but it is likewise a moment in the fan’s development, whose life is lived in proximity and relation to the object of fandom. On this anniversary of an album that defines so much, I offer not notes but memories; and in the spirit of a certain time, sins not tragedies.
I do not know that Roe Ethridge’s work is ironic, because I don’t know that I am. This is not to ... more I do not know that Roe Ethridge’s work is ironic, because I don’t know that I am. This is not to say that I am Ethridge’s work, but if it is indeed some kind of comment on the culture, as I am told it is, I am a part of that culture and therefore have some say in the application of irony. Irony is calling yourself a Rock Chick when you are really a Square and you know it. Irony is not re-photographing Warhol, as Ethridge does in Warhol (Liz) (2011) or as Catherine Opie does in the series “700 Nimes Road.” Nor is re-photographing or photographing the mundane necessarily witty or droll, for those forms of humor carry with them a classist element, or at least a cattiness. I aspire to be a bitch and a Rock Chick, but I don’t think Ethridge does, and that’s OK. In any case, where is the cattiness in pictures of dead women made by dead men, carefree children, sublime settings, your own self? Only in a refusal to identify with such phenomena and to feel the emotions, both unbearable and pleasurable, that they engender. I maintain that neither Warhol nor Ethridge are apathetic, because I am not apathetic, and they are not glib, because I am not glib, and if we, or you, choose to be, then so be it.
An exhibition of the artist, writer, and activist Kate Millett’s furniture pieces is on view at N... more An exhibition of the artist, writer, and activist Kate Millett’s furniture pieces is on view at New York City's Salon 94 through March 5. Titled Fantasy Furniture, 1967, the presentation recreates Millett’s first solo exhibition in New York City, which took place at the Judson Gallery, located in the basement of the iconic Judson Church, in 1967. Installed together for the first time in 50 years, the exhibition sheds light on Millett’s largely unknown and understudied artistic practice. Ksenia M. Soboleva, Andrew W. Mellon Gender and LGBTQ+ History Fellow, spoke with William J. Simmons, a longtime admirer, scholar, and advocate of Millett’s work—and former Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for Women’s History!
Online curatorial project /essay for Origen, with work by Jeff Koons, Tom Burr, Terence Koh, Anth... more Online curatorial project /essay for Origen, with work by Jeff Koons, Tom Burr, Terence Koh, Anthony Iacono, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Sarah Charlesworth, Carol Bove, Jack Pierson, Milano Chow, Anne Collier, Cynthia Talmadge, Etel Adnan, Nan Goldin, David Benjamin Sherry, and Shahryar Nashat.
Presented as part of "A Revolutionary Moment: Women's Liberation in the Late 1960s and Early 1970... more Presented as part of "A Revolutionary Moment: Women's Liberation in the Late 1960s and Early 1970s," a conference organized by the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University, March 27-29, 2014
Presented at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and the Institute for Art Educat... more Presented at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and the Institute for Art Education, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany
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https://salon94.com/design/exhibitions/fantasy-furniture-1967
if it is indeed some kind of comment on the culture, as I am
told it is, I am a part of that culture and therefore have some
say in the application of irony. Irony is calling yourself a Rock Chick when you are really a Square and you know it. Irony is not re-photographing Warhol, as Ethridge does in Warhol (Liz) (2011) or as Catherine Opie does in the series “700 Nimes Road.” Nor is re-photographing or photographing the mundane necessarily witty or droll, for those forms of humor carry with them a classist element, or at least a cattiness. I aspire to be a bitch and a Rock Chick, but I don’t think Ethridge does, and that’s OK. In any case, where is the cattiness in pictures of dead women made by dead men, carefree children, sublime settings, your own self? Only
in a refusal to identify with such phenomena and to feel the emotions, both unbearable and pleasurable, that they engender. I maintain that neither Warhol nor Ethridge are apathetic, because I am not apathetic, and they are not glib, because I am not glib, and if we, or you, choose to be, then so be it.
https://origenart.com/viewingroom/1