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Queer and Now at Temple Contemporary
MFA Thesis Exhibition
In the 1980s, the NYC Meatpacking district became the epicenter of the queer club and kink scene. Derelict distribution centers were repurposed by marginalized communities as night clubs, gay bars and BDSM dungeons. In the iconic club Mineshaft, patrons fucked and sucked in back rooms bathed in red light to the distant beat of club music. In these back rooms, new definitions of love and pleasure were written and new potentials of community were radicalized. By 1985, however, the HIV/AIDS crisis spread through the community and anti-gay political rhetoric followed. Though the radical flames of these transgressive sites were extinguished, they ignited the path for powerful political collectives to emerge in the midst of callous social politics.
We find ourselves in a heightened conservative era and global pandemic that threaten even the protections that assimilation and gay pragmatism have afforded.
What was forgotten on the road to assimilation? How can past tactics of resistance be repurposed to address ongoing issues of alienation and political complacency? What are the capacities of ecstasy as a locus of political imagination? How does one celebrate pleasure in the face of adversity? What potential lies in the tension between looking back and moving forward?
Exhibitions takeaway available here.