Current Book project

Diana Davies, The Hot Peaches in Alice and the Great American Sideshow, 1973. [Pictured from left to right: Marsha P. Johnson, Lenny Dean, Alan, Ian McKay (with Lance Norebo behind), and Sister Tui]

Diana Davies, The Hot Peaches in Alice and the Great American Sideshow, 1973. [Pictured from left to right: Marsha P. Johnson, Lenny Dean, Alan, Ian McKay (with Lance Norebo behind), and Sister Tui]

Street ADDRESSES:
PerformING THE QUEER LIFE OF THE STREET IN 1970s NEW YORK

Book-in-progress on the divergent perspectives at play in the overlap between the Downtown performance art scene and the geographic locus of the modern LGBT rights movement in New York City. In particular, the book roots its analyses in the already-out culture of queer street life in the 1960s and how artists, playwrights, and performers came to draw on their experience of it to make performances that rejected both commodified and institutional forms of art and theater. The street served a queer forum through which the limits of community were tested and expanded, and these performers made it their stage and theme. Street Addresses charts how rogue performances about and in New York’s streets modeled alternate and sometimes radically inclusive versions of post-Stonewall gay, lesbian, and trans futures. Based on new archival research and extensive oral history interviews with participants and viewers, the book’s case studies include: Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt’s “Ethel Dull” performances (1968–69), the circulation of (and resistance to) stereotypes of street life in Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s films (1968–72), the Hot Peaches’ Alice (1973–74) as critical street performance, and the parodying of gentrification in Stephen Varble’s Costume Tours of New York (1975–76).

Read more about the project here.

 

Other projects

Jimmy DeSana, Stephen Varble performing Gutter Art, 1975. © Jimmy DeSana Trust.

Jimmy DeSana, Stephen Varble performing Gutter Art, 1975. © Jimmy DeSana Trust.

RUBBISH AND DREAMS:
THE GENDERQUEER PERFORMANCE ART OF STEPHEN VARBLE IN 1970S NEW YORK

Performance artist, playwright, and fashion designer Stephen Varble (1946-1984) was a fixture on the streets of SoHo in the 1970s, but his ephemeral practice has largely gone unrecognized in histories of art. Varble's guerrilla practice aimed at disruption -- of commerce, of gender roles, and of the institutions of art and celebrity. In elaborate sculptural garments made of street trash, Varble held unauthorized gallery tours through SoHo and protest performances in banks, Fifth Avenue stores, and in the street. His works performed gender transformation and hybridity for both popular and art audiences in the 1970s.

Rubbish and Dreams, based on Getsy’s 2018 retrospective of the same title, is an open-ended exhibition, archiving, and essay project that aims to provide insights into Varble’s work in performance, writing, costume sculpture, and video.