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

Book-in-progress on the overlap between the Downtown performance art scene and the locus of the modern LGBT rights movement in New York City. In particular, it argues that the street served a queer forum through which the limits of community were tested and expanded. Public performance art aimed both to constitute a queer audience and to confront an unwitting and unwilling mainstream crowd, and Street Addresses charts how rogue performances about and in New York’s streets modeled alternate and sometimes radical versions of post-Stonewall gay, lesbian, and trans futures. Case studies includes: Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt’s “Ethel Dull” performances, the Hot Peaches’ Alice (1973), Stephen Varble’s Costume Tours of New York (1975), and the performance art of Betsy Damon.

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, will be the first book on Varble and the networks of queer performance in which he worked. It will examine the development of Varble’s work in performance, writing, costume sculpture, and video as well as provide a sourcebook of key writings by and texts about Varble’s confrontational work.

Magic Episodes and Other Synchronicities:
The Transhemispheric Correspondence of Scott Burton and Eduardo Costa

Co-edited with Patrick Greaney
When Scott Burton (1939–1989) and Eduardo Costa (b. 1940) met in New York City in 1968, they developed a close friendship that lasted until Burton’s death. In letters from the 1970s and 1980s, they gossiped and shared thoughts about the rapid changes taking place in the art world, queer life, and their work as writers and artists. Burton and Costa’s letters show a vibrant transnational queer artistic friendship and offer a new perspective on the struggle to establish conceptual, critical artistic practices in the Americas. As Costa moved from New York to Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, he and Burton discussed the art communities of North and South America, including Costa’s friend Hélio Oiticica and the lasting influence of Marcel Duchamp. Both artists found the letters to be a source of emotional and intellectual nourishment—as will their future readers.

Forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2025