To all you wonderful Utopian dreamers, 

Today was truly inspiring and I want to thank you all for making that possible! This has been such an amazing class, especially because it's my last! Cannot wait to see what's in store for Wednesday!

Much love,

Jessie

The Body Is Not An Apology

wildflowers

self-portrait

 

Jones Yorke Price Brown, self-portrait, 2012, GIF, height="399"width="640"

theres a lot of ruin in Mesopotamia

a thought on reparative reading

Our discussion during Wednesday's class of Ann Cvetkovich's "Public Feelings", and her ideas about reparative reading, reminded me of Henry Jenkins's work on fan fiction.  He sort of says that Marxists and others would say that sitting around watching a lot of star trek and journalling about it is just passive consumption, but that's not true, because "writing back" to imposed narratives totally changes up the power dynamic and in fact is a form of "productive consumption".  I don't think he uses the word utopian?  but he might as well.

INTERACTIVE AUDIENCES? THE 'COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE' OF MEDIA FANS
"Creative activity, [Pierre Levy] suggests, will shift from the production of texts or the regulation of meanings towards the development of a dynamic environment, 'a collective event that implies the recipients, transforms interpreters into actors, enables interpretation to enter the loop with collective action.'(29) Room for participation and improvisation are being built into new media franchises. Kurt Lancaster, for example, has examined how commercial works (including computer, role playing and card games) surrounding the cult science fiction series, Babylon 5, facilitate a diverse range of fan performances, allowing fans to immerse themselves in the fantasy universe.(30) The producers of the teen melodrama, Dawson's Creek, hired a team of writers to produce a website modeled on the protagonist's laptop and including e-mail correspondence, personal journals, and class essays, updated weekly in response to and in anticipation of the aired episodes. As the site developed, fans were offered opportunities to correspond in character with Dawson and his friends and thus be incorporated into the commercial text. Cult works were once discovered, now they are being consciously produced, designed to provoke fan interactions. The producers of Xena, for example, were fully aware that some fans wanted to read Xena and Gabrielle as lesbian lovers and thus began to consciously weave 'subtext' into the episodes. As Levy explains, 'The recipients of the open work are invited to fill in the blanks, choose among possible meanings, confront the divergences among their interpretations.'(31)" Henry Jenkins

Great Resource/s for Les Guerilleres

"annotation for les guerilleres: building a digitial feminary"
(notice the way she blogs is super PAR.  She's like "gotta meet with professor so and so"  "Just finished all the B's" haha)
the names

PAR as a utopian dream of ethical research, in practice

Incite pdf about Participatory Action Research

America is Waiting

i'm just joking when i say this is a generous reading but hahahaha join me in imagining the hilariousness of interpretting this dude's short film of the hot- wait sorry "inspiring women" of Occupy Wall Street as his generous reading.

ahahahahahah

but in all seriousness kelsey i think you are so right! so right that i am catalyzed to now be reminded of a further tangential-but-so-related video (1981): 

"AMERICA IS WAITING, FOR A MESSAGE OF SOME SORT OR ANOTHER"

ps i <3 the occupy ladies and the film is cool no doubt, but i'm pretty sure the guy who made it is just whatever. hahaahha "identity politics are SO WHATEVER" - the character of snake, "Mr Occupy" - written by playwright kelsey thomas.

A generous reading of Occupy Wall Street might reveal that the United States are collectively, and in public space, checking in as anticipatory...  ;)

Call in to support CeCe McDonald!

!!!LAST CALL IN DAY BEFORE TRIAL: CALL IT IN FOR CECE!!!
On April 17th, call, email, and fax Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and demand he drop the charges against CeCe. This time, we are extending the call-in to include Assistant Attorney Marlene Senechal, head of adult prosecution.

!!NEW!! Please CC mpls4cece@gmail.com on all your e-mails. Also please send us an e-mail with the time of your calls & faxes.

LET’S LET FREEMAN AND SENECHAL KNOW THAT WE WONT STAND FOR THE RACIST, TRANSPHOBIC PROSECUTION OF CECE!

While Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald is being prosecuted for murder after being violently attacked for her race and gender, Freeman’s office recently declined to prosecute the killer of Darrell Evanovich, a black man who was shot dead by a white man after an alleged robbery. While no person should be thrown to the mercy of the soulless, so-called “justice” system, the fact that CeCe is on trial after being assaulted, while a white man who killed someone after chasing them down is touted as a “good Samaritan,” highlights the racist and transphobic nature of the prosecution of CeCe. Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Marlene Senechal have the power to drop the charges against CeCe. So far, though, he has implicitly sided with CeCe’s white supremacist attackers by failing to acknowledge the racist, transphobic assault that she survived as a mitigating factor in the unintentional death of Dean Schmitz.

When: Tuesday, April 17th, ALL DAY

Where:From home, work, wherever you find yourself!

What: Call Michael Freeman at 612-348-5540, fax at 612-348-2042, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us

Call Marlene Senechal at 612-348-5561, fax at 612-348-3061, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us

!!NEW!! Please CC mpls4cece@gmail.com on all your e-mails. Also please send us an e-mail with the time of your calls & faxes.

Remember to remain polite but assertive. Some key points to mention in your calls, emails, and faxes are:

Identify yourself as a supporter, friend, family member, or community member calling about Ms. Chrishaun McDonald’s case.
Tell the County Attorney’s Office why you’re concerned: Ms. McDonald was the target of a hate crime, but she was singled out for aggressive prosecution after the attack.
County Attorney Freeman has declined to press charges in cases like this at least three times already this year. Remind him that he has the power to drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.
Tell Freeman and Senechal not to side with Ms. McDonald’s white supremacist attackers: drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.
Tell Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Assistant Attorney Marlene Senechal to take a stand against hate, racism, and transphobia. Tell Freeman and Senechal to DROP THE CHARGES against Chrishaun McDonald!

sailor beast gender bender

ahahahahaha just.... the best.

couldn't embed the video so click this link!

McOccupy

Just watch and try to tell me Occupy isn't changing the world!!!

Read the Manifesto!

;)

"just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you"  - kurt cobain

The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront

Shelley Seccombe, Sunbathing on the Edge, Pier 52, 1977, contemporary archival digital print, 11x15

"The Piers: Art and Sex along the New York Waterfront is the first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the relationship of the uses of the Hudson River docks by artists and a newly emerging gay subculture. Between 1971 and 1983, the piers below Fourteenth Street were the site of an enormous range of works by artists as different in their mediums and intentions as Vito Acconci and Peter Hujar, Selley Seccombe and Tava, Gordon Matta-Clark and David Wojnarowicz. At the same time, the fight for the rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people, spurred by the 1969 Stonewall riots, was literally transforming the cultural and social landscape of New York City. Stepping out of the closet in droves, gay men suddenly felt free to sunbathe on the piers naked, cruise and have sex in public. Within walking distance of the World Trade Center and the posh brownstones of Greenwich Village, this “arena for sexual theater,” as the painter Delmas Howe put it, became the backdrop for elaborate photographic tableaus, sometimes staged as in Arthur Tress’s picture of two naked figures in almost identical poses in adjoining rooms, or seemingly spontaneous, as in Stanley Stellar’s image taken from the rooftop of a man below giving a hand job to a fellow sunbather.a Other photographers like Alvin Baltrop, Frank Hallam, Shelley Seccombe, Lee Snider, and Rich Wandel, were intent on making a direct record of the collapsing structures, and the people that used them knowing that this strange world on the water’s edge would not last."

April 4 - May 10, 2012 at The Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art
http://t.co/60yBqe85

The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar

it was tense.

30th century

do you think she means in the year 2525?

angry grrrls

They are back from the library.  Someone asks are you queering utopia or rearing it?  Does The Future for The Children include our teenage bullshit? “No!” the girls respond.  Stacy calls out “is the future for The Child or The Fetus?  Will the world see where we’re at and meet us?”  “No!” the girls respond.  They shriek with delight at this cathartic realization and begin stomping in a circle singing maniacally “it’s settled then!!  It’s settled then!!  It’s settled then!!  It’s settled then!! Begin again begin again begin again it’s settled then!!”

“We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.”

José Esteban Muñoz, from the intro of Cruising Utopia

Owen Dreams Of Atomic Sheep, Jetsonorama and Uranium

A friend of mine has started using portraits of children in combination with radioactive sheep to draw attention to the high levels of uranium contamination with in the Navajo Nation.  A fascinating use of the child to queer futurity. 

"The Times article quotes Doug Brugge, a public health professor at Tufts University medical school and an expert on uranium, “If this level of radioactivity were found in a middle-class suburb, the response would be immediate and aggressive.”"

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2012/04/11/owen-dreams-of-atomic-sheep-jetsonorama-and-uranium/

Just in case anyone is getting stuck in the "This is impossible/there is no alternative" train of thought:

Historic Jouissance

 

from Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis edited by Dany Nobus

I LOOK JUST LIKE MY DADDY

 I LOOK JUST LIKE MY DADDY
Cass Bird (born. 1975)
C-print, 2003 (printed 2010)

This is a photo from the Hide and Seek Exhibit maybe possibly still at the Brooklyn Museum.  It was a nice surprise to see them in one of the short films by Tara Mateik tonight.  It was cool to see a photo come to life, hat and all.

http://npg.si.edu/exhibit/hideseek/index.html

http://cassbird.com/portfolio.php?cat=1

http://www.taramateik.com/

The End

Tank Girl

 

hannah, this one's for you.

bahahaha

http://heygirlitsrih.tumblr.com/

Cathy Cohen's Kids

Whats up now Edelman!
by. Jayson Musson (aka Hennessy Youngman)

being singular plural

I brought this poem up as an example in my group today when we were thinking through the idea of being singular plural... this is a poem by Mark Doty, who wrote a lot about the AIDS epidemic & lost his gay lover to AIDS-related complications. My poetry book describes his work as being "attentive to the way an individual sense of identity is shaped by collision with the collective... with the troubling fact of self-in-the-world. The political force of his work is personal rather than polemical, drawing on what scares and thrills him." Sounds pretty Munoz-ian to me! I think this piece is such a beautiful example of longing for collectivity:

A Display of Mackerel

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales'

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

--nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they're all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfillment

of heaven's template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler's

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before.

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer-- would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don't care they're dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn't care they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

&

Here's a lovely, astonishing visual ;)

Queer Conversations with "UndocuQueer" Julio Salgado

HOMOTOPIA

Set sometime in the future-present Homotopia chronicles a
group of radical queers dedicated to exposing the trouble
with gay marriage, dismantling the State, undoing Empire,
while looking totally fierce. Homotopia
holds cinematic assumptions hostage through its motley
assemblage of never-passing crew. Race, gender, ability
and desire are reworked through an anti-colonial take of
queer struggle creating a visual rhythm of melancholic
utopianism that knows there may be no future but still
hopes today is not their last. Love revolution, not State
delusion, Homotopia.

Linkotopia.

MUNOZ PUPPY

FINDS UTOPIAN FEELINGS IN THE QUOTIDIAN

Well, technically

we're all time travelers.

TGIJP

TGIJP stands for the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, commonly referred to as TGI Justice.

In their words:

"TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures. We seek to create a world rooted in self determination, freedom of expression, and gender justice."


Click here to visit their website.

Also here's a short video TGI Justice made entitled "Prison Industrial Complex - Trans Views":

Mad Pride

Mad Pride is important for Queer Pride, I think, in short because Queerness is and has been so pathologized.  One of my favorite Mad Pride pop cultural stars is "Ben Chang" from the show Community.

"Maybe I was crazy.  Or maybe, just maybe, I was a detective."

    

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/01/a-counter-narrative-for-psychic-diversity/ 

http://www.madinamerica.com/author/sadubrul/ 

http://fuckyeahmadpride.tumblr.com/

Neo-liberal "Equality + Togetherness"

from the show Community (nbc)

The Pansy Project

Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse. Each location is photographed and named after the abuse received. The Pansy Project has many incarnations; small scale unmarked individual plantings, free pansy 'Hand Outs' where the artist speaks to passersby about the project, installations of thousands of plants at the site of homophobia and exhibitions of the photographs the artist has made over the last five years....

"Fucking Faggot" Birmingham, for David Viney

http://thepansyproject.com/

Brown Boi Project

"The Brown Boi Project is a community of masculine of center womyn, men, two-spirit people, transmen, and our allies committed to transforming our privilege of masculinity, gender, and race into tools for achieving Racial and Gender Justice."

Click it.

pop-up museum of queer history

The Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project has been selected to exhibit work as a part of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History - Philadelphia Exhibit on April 21^st- May 19, 2012!

Our exhibit will consist of Film Stills featuring Black lesbian elders from the film, as well as small videos where attendees can learn more about the women featured in the film and the production process.

About the The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History: The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History is a grassroots organization that transforms empty spaces into temporary autonomous shrines dedicated to celebrating the rich, long, and largely unknown histories of queer people. We believe that our community – and especially our youth – deserve to know our history. If you don’t know you have a past, how can you believe you have a future? We work with communities across the country to create and promote educational installations, gallery shows, public art, and memorials. We foster ongoing relationships with artists, historians, and organizations exploring facets of queer history. We also nurture an on-going virtual community of queer historians (amateur and professional), bringing together artists and academics to fluoresce brightly and briefly wherever possible.

Pop-Up Philadelphia will run from April 21 - May 19, and will be housed on the ground floor of the William Way Community Center, located at 1315 Spruce St. The show will be open to the public at almost all times the Center is open, though visitors should call ahead. The William Way Community Center is fully accessible. Visit www.waygay.org for more information.

Favorite Phrases of the White Neoliberal:

(Another reference to hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com. Check it out, again. It's still hilarious.)

ALL IS FULL OF LOVE

bjork on bjork robot.  queering utopia like it's 1999.

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us… we can practice being gentle with ourselves by being gentle with each other. We can practice being gentle with each other by being gentle with that part of ourselves that is hardest to hold, by giving more to the brave bruised girlchild within each of us.

Audre Lorde

Jeffrey McDaniel, “The Quiet World”

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

Found this analysis of the above video on Tumblr and couldn't resist posting it!  I think some blogger named kitty riot wrote it?  but i found it here: http://tangledupinlace.tumblr.com/post/20173971324/kitten-riot-this-music-video-is-really

"this music video is really Important because:

a. women reclaiming public space/space where harassment occurs
b. reappropriation of physical harassment thru the use of handprint imagery
c. reappropriation of masculine object (baseball bat) for self-defense by women
d. men shown performing physical labor as work/women shown performing physical labor for pleasure
e. deconstruction of ageism thru the inclusion of young & elderly women being complete badasses
f. centering around performance by women of color, which is refreshing when we as a culture just had to deal with the fucking white girl mafia
g. doooooope. beat. not going to pretend i don’t love this song (or rye rye in general)"

Daria

Jane

you're standing on my neck

ART THOUGHTZ: Institutional Critique

 prison, utopia, capitalism, and the trans-atlantic slave trade

Karaba the (wicked) sorceress

the men

An Utopian Journey Through Song With One T. Byers

The year is 2012.

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empir-....er, ...oh fuck and shit, wrong intro! Let's try again:

The year is 2012.

A group of young (very fashionable, also, excellent) Prescott College students take on the challenge of queering utopia. Long story short, their collective studious and imaginative natures pay off. They are successful. They queer the hell out of utopia! Utopia never saw it coming!! The oppressive state is brought down, its plastic neon-colored rumble surrounding them in all directions. "Where to go from here?", they all ask. The answer comes in one swift Original Broadway Cast of Rent style choreographed collection of song and dance.

What they are singing together after they collectively defuckingstroy the neoliberal capitalist state:

"SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE

I CAN BREATHE FOR THE FIRST TIME

I'M SO MOVING ON YEAH, YEAH.

THANKS TO YOU NOW I GET WHAT I WANT."

Also relevant:

"I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN."

What they are singing together as they collectively rebuild:

"The touch and feeling of free is

untangible technically
something you’ve got to believe in
connect the cause and effect
one foot in front of the next
this is the start of a journey.
and my mind is already gone
and though there are other unknowns
somehow this doesn’t concern me

and you can stand right there if you want

but I'm going on."

Also:

"Anyone that needs what they want,

and doesn’t want what they need
I want nothing to do with
And to do what I want
And to do what I please
Is first of my to-do list"

What they are BELTING together when building is done and Utopia finally is upon them:

"Finally you've come along

The way I feel about you,
It just can't be wrong
If you only knew the way I feel about you
I just can't describe it
Finally it has happened to me right in front of my face
My feelings can't describe it
Finally it has happened to me right in front of my face and
I just cannot hide it"

And with those fateful words, history ends.

Ta ta.

She Ra, princess of power

XENA, warrior princess

ACT UP Returns to Wall Street With Occupy and Others on April 25

"On April 25th, and in honor of its 25th anniversary, AIDS activist group ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), joined by organizations ranging from Occupy Wall Street to Visual AIDS to Housingworks as well as other AIDS activist and queer organizations, will be staging a large scale demonstration on Wall Street reminiscent of its original Wall Street protests of the late 1980s."

http://hyperallergic.com/49515/act-up-returns-to-wall-street-on-april-25/

bieber fever

PANOPTIMISM

Panopticat: the original. Top hat cat: has got it all. Can we copyright these? I'm worried.

panopticat

kitten industrial complex

art and captions by brooke b.  created during a theory + cats + friends = memes facebook frenzy.

found via jac

hissy fit

alternate conference poster?

foucault...

foucault

jac get in on this

NEOLIBERALISM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAfFfqiYLp0

"deregulate the lights" - reagan

marx madonna memez