Looking For Langston

Sabrina Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals–where fat bodies were once praised–showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority.
Fearing the Black Body argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. An important and original work, it reveals that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

Sonia Boyce (b.1962) is a groundbreaking artist whose practice is founded on taking creative risks. Unafraid to play against set expectations about how art should behave, her collaborative interactions between audience and performer enable spontaneous and intimate social encounters, resulting in the creation of work that is simultaneously self-aware, visceral and open-ended.

This book is a much-anticipated introduction to the life and work of this extraordinary artist. Touching on her engagement with the work of other feminist artists and her time as a leading figure in the 1980s Black British Art movement, it contextualizes Boyce’s journey from her early pastel drawings and collages to her pivotal shift to film, sound, and performance art. Highlighting her artistic innovation as she experiments with medium to explore and question culture, identity and the boundaries between the public and private spheres in unexpected ways, it celebrates the visionary practice of a truly uncompromising artist.

Letter To My Little Queer Self (LTMLQS) is a collection written by invited contributors in their words and in their own styles. LTMLQS is the third publication from hotpencil press. hotpencil press was stablished by Libro Levi Bridgeman and Serge Nicholson in 2009.  Foreword by performer and comedian Krishna Istha.

This book is Derek Jarman’s own record of how this garden evolved, from its earliest beginnings in 1986 to the last year of his life. More than 150 photographs taken since 1991 by his friend and photographer Howard Sooley capture the garden at all its different stages and at every season of the year. Photographs from all angles reveal the garden’s complex geometrical plan, its magical stone circles and its beautiful and bizarre sculptures. We also catch glimpses of Jarman’s life in Dungeness: walking, weeding, watering, or just enjoying life.

“A truthful picture of a taboo subject in an unbiased way.”

15 mins.

Documentation of the event marking World AIDS Day. Included a screening of Ron Vawter’s performance at the ICA in 1993 as part of LIFT and a conversation between Neil Bartlett and Nancy Reilly.

Documentation of the event which featured a screening of Theatre Visionary, a documentary about Abdoh, as well as a discussion with film’s director Adam Soch and director and academic Alyson Campbell.

The second volume of the landmark trilogy consent not to be a single being.

Investigates critical approaches to performance, ultimately aiming to stimulate new discussion between theorists and practitioners.

Seeking to overthrow all constraints on what can be done with and to the body, Preciado offers a provocative challenge to even the most radical claims about gender, sexuality, and desire.

Draws on Wojnarowicz’s work to explore the role of abandoned landscape in this explosion of queer culture in NYC.
Part of the Library of Performing Rights (P3041).

Pleading in the Blood: The Art and Performances of Ron Athey presents the first critical overview of this major artist’s work. It demonstrates how Athey foresaw and precipitated the central place afforded they body and identity politics in art and critical theory in the 1990s and beyond.