Now is definitely the time to be re-watching Barbara Hammer’s Nitrate Kisses. 4k restoration is premiering at the New York Film Festival. I wrote about it for @hyperallergic.com - hyperallergic.com/the-rough-an...
Alexis Clements
@alexisclements.bsky.social
Writer, filmmaker, hiker, camper, reader, maker and consumer of tasty eats.
As do today, you can now watch my documentary, ALL WE’VE GOT, along with hundred of other indie sapphic stories on @lesflicks.bsky.social !! I’m super excited about this and also excited to check out all the other films on the platform! www.lesflicks.com/programs/all...
What a joy to get to interview Flavia Rando for the @hyperallergic.com queer elders project. From wheatpasting lesbian art across midtown to influencing thousands in the classroom, the impact of her work continues to be felt: hyperallergic.com/by-the-force...
For this essay I got to indulge in some long-held interests…communal bathhouses, books, intangible cultural heritage, public pools and beaches, the necessity for shared space, and I even make a proposal for our new NYC mayor… Read it @publicbooks.bsky.social - www.publicbooks.org/the-once-and...
The Once and Future Bathhouse - Public Books
Utilitarian public baths and pools once filled the world’s cities, but now new expensive spas are taking their place. Has even bathing become a luxury?
publicbooks.org
New at PB: Utilitarian public baths and pools once filled the world’s cities, but now new expensive spas are taking their place, including 8 in NYC in the past 2 years. Has even bathing become a luxury? asks @alexisclements.bsky.social.
The Once and Future Bathhouse - Public Books
Utilitarian public baths and pools once filled the world’s cities, but now new expensive spas are taking their place. Has even bathing become a luxury?
publicbooks.org
Excited to have been a part of this project. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor says in her acknowledgments: “Let us end the economic system that devours the people we love.” Thx to @sandyernestallen.bsky.social and @literaryhub.bsky.social for making this happen. lithub.com/on-the-origi...
Check out my latest dispatch for info about my work and also other people’s work that I’m excited about these days….
Dispatch: Upcoming Film Screenings, Get a Zine, Meditations on Success
My documentary screens this week at one of the spaces that inspired it, I'll be part of an upcoming exhibit, and you can now get a copy of the zine I made.
mailchi.mp
Very excited to be in conversation with a scholar I really admire, Japonica Brown-Saracino, about her latest book (a fascinating read for anyone interested not just in neighborhood change but also how ideas move through and are shaped by their usage in the wider culture). 6pm Feb 11 at MoRUS.
New review up Hyperallergic - this one for the mid-career retrospective of work by Liz Collins now up at the RISD Museum - fashion and tapestry and needlepoint and more…
Liz Collins Explodes Cliches About Crafts
In her textile-based practice, she calls attention to what holds a piece together or the ways some works seem ready to come apart.
hyperallergic.com
Coco Fusco’s performances borrow from institutional procedures: She recreates military drills and enrolls in an immersive simulation and workshop on military interrogation, dissecting the grammar of disciplinary systems.
Coco Fusco Turns Back the Ethnographic Gaze
In her first US retrospective, she becomes museum specimen, interrogator, colonial queen, and more to expose the systems that produce them.
hyperallergic.com
Reading the latest book by @alisonbechdel.bsky.social I couldn’t help but think of those I know who have achieved a lot of success but still find themselves struggling financially and wondering how to move forward. So, like I do, I wrote an essay about it for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social
And Then What? The Road After “Success” in the Arts | Los Angeles Review of Books
Alexis Clements uses Alison Bechdel’s new graphic novel “Spent” to meditate on the predicament of the creative artist today.
lareviewofbooks.org
The entrepreneurs who are part of the booming school safety industry face a cruel irony: they are dependent on the uniquely American epidemic of school shootings.
Inside the $4 billion industry built on America's school shooting epidemic
Filmmakers Jessica Dimmock and Zackary Canepari examine the booming market a troubling new market.
motherjones.com
Even though this show is a retrospective of 40 years of work, I felt like it spoke to this moment of AI-generated attempts to claim political power. I also really appreciated one of Douglas’s interest in improvisatory potential. There’s not a ton of time left to see this show but it’s a good one.
Stan Douglas Conjures Histories That Might Have Been
Through his narrative art, Douglas reminds us that every story contains the potential for history to take another course.
hyperallergic.com
This was a really well put together show - kudos to the curators, Anjuli Nanda Diamond and George Bolster. Was glad to spend some extra time with it and to write about it for @hyperallergic.com
Exploring New Paths in Landscape-Based Art
A show at The 8th Floor gallery in Manhattan extracts the politics of landscape.
hyperallergic.com
"You kill people and break things for a living." --Pete Hegseth, giving very eloquent instructions to military generals flown in for this momentous occasion
While I was in Atlanta for the Art Papers symposium, I also stopped in to the #AtlantaArtFair, which was different in many ways from other art fairs I’ve attended before. You can read my coverage below.
Atlanta Art Fair Shines a Spotlight on the Southeast
The second edition of the show embraced unexpected artworks, price transparency, and a spirit of community among galleries from the region.
hyperallergic.com
Mermaids, selkies, enormous man-eating mollusk shells, and lesbians - oh my! Had fun going down into the femme maelstrom for this one about the show currently up the Alice Austen Museum. Read it @hyperallergic.com
Alice Austen’s Sapphic Siren Song
A water-themed, lesbian-centric group exhibition in Staten Island explores the sea’s long association with a feminine force.
hyperallergic.com
These photos have been making their way into the culture for a couple of decades now. There’s so much to say about them, but I shared some thoughts @hyperallergic.com - hyperallergic.com/1033022/casa...
Was great to get to spend some time this spring biking around a little bit of Brooklyn to check out water system sites with Stanley Greenberg and to visit his studio for this conversation, now up @hyperallergic.com hyperallergic.com/1032599/phot...
An embarrassment of riches! Yes, thanks to @rahnealexander.com for sending these five magnificent issues of @baltimorebeat.bsky.social cross-country so I could devour them in Seattle, hooray for Baltimore's newish alt-weekly, Black-led and controlled, and free for all, to more!💖🌠
The United States hasn’t always gone by America. That name rose to its current ubiquity only in the 20th century. It did so in response to the United States becoming an empire.
When did the US start calling itself "America," anyway?
It took an imperial war for the country to settle on a nickname.
motherjones.com
Super excited to share that my documentary film about queer and trans spaces and communities is now available to stream worldwide, with captions/subtitles in 6 languages. Excited this film keeps making its way in the world a few years after it premiered. vimeo.com/ondemand/all...
Mushrooms, a scientist who wasn’t really known in her day but managed to root herself in the field, and debating metaphors… It was inevitable that I would want to write about this fascinating little exhibit now up at the NY State Museum in Albany. Up @hyperallergic.com
The Woman Scientist and Artist Who Revolutionized the Study of Mushrooms
Scientists today still make use of Mary Banning’s research, examining the same mushrooms that she located, preserved, and packed away for posterity.
hyperallergic.com
BY THE WAY, YOU WANT TO FOLLOW THE RESIST LIST.
Resist List@resistlist.bsky.social · last yr.Just a reminder - if you're ever looking for updates on the ongoing resistance to the Trump regime, then follow us @resistlist.bsky.social. Hopescroll through stories of people’s noncooperation. And if you have any tips - send them our way! choosedemocracy.us/resist-list/
Was stewing on this for a couple of weeks and decided to just write it down and share it. Just shaking my head over here…
Post-Pride Thoughts After Listening to Yet Another Aggravating Radio Interview, or It Was Never About Love – Alexis Clements
alexisclements.com
In which I get to write about #PhyllisBirkby #JuneJordan and some excellent contemporary art… now up @hyperallergic.com
Queer Artists Make Fantasy Architecture a Reality
Phyllis Birkby harnessed her knowledge and lesbian feminist politics to encourage countless people to reimagine their built environments.
hyperallergic.com
I got such an ick walking through this show, for even more reasons than I had the word count to write about, but here are the main points up @hyperallergic.com
Galleries That Play the “Responsibility” Game
This commercial undertaking works hard to present itself with an institutional veneer, making claims that it “fosters a sense of shared responsibility” in the art world.
hyperallergic.com
