Download or read book It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful written by Jack Lowery and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize The story of art collective Gran Fury--which fought back during the AIDS crisis through direct action and community-made propaganda--offers lessons in love and grief. In the late 1980s, the AIDS pandemic was annihilating queer people, intravenous drug users, and communities of color in America, and disinformation about the disease ran rampant. Out of the activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an art collective that called itself Gran Fury formed to campaign against corporate greed, government inaction, stigma, and public indifference to the epidemic. Writer Jack Lowery examines Gran Fury's art and activism from iconic images like the "Kissing Doesn't Kill" poster to the act of dropping piles of fake bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Lowery offers a complex, moving portrait of a collective and its members, who built essential solidarities with each other and whose lives evidenced the profound trauma of enduring the AIDS crisis. Gran Fury and ACT UP's strategies are still used frequently by the activists leading contemporary movements. In an era when structural violence and the devastation of COVID-19 continue to target the most vulnerable, this belief in the power of public art and action persists.
Download or read book It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful written by Jack Lowery and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize The story of art collective Gran Fury—which fought back during the AIDS crisis through direct action and community-made propaganda—offers lessons in love and grief. In the late 1980s, the AIDS pandemic was annihilating queer people, intravenous drug users, and communities of color in America, and disinformation about the disease ran rampant. Out of the activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an art collective that called itself Gran Fury formed to campaign against corporate greed, government inaction, stigma, and public indifference to the epidemic. Writer Jack Lowery examines Gran Fury’s art and activism from iconic images like the “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster to the act of dropping piles of fake bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Lowery offers a complex, moving portrait of a collective and its members, who built essential solidarities with each other and whose lives evidenced the profound trauma of enduring the AIDS crisis. Gran Fury and ACT UP’s strategies are still used frequently by the activists leading contemporary movements. In an era when structural violence and the devastation of COVID-19 continue to target the most vulnerable, this belief in the power of public art and action persists.
Download or read book The Vulgar written by Jane Alison and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Potent, provocative and sometimes shocking, the word vulgar conjures up strong images, ideas and feelings in us all. The Vulgar is the first exhibition to explore the inherently challenging but utterly compelling territory of taste in fashion, from the renaissance through to contemporary design.Examining the constantly evolving notion of vulgarity in fashion whilst revelling in its excesses, you are invited to think again about exactly what makes something vulgar and why it is such a sensitive and contested term.Drawn from major public and private collections worldwide, this richly illustrated volume showcases over 120 stunning objects, ranging from historical costumes to couture and ready-to-wear looks.With contributions from leading contemporary designers including Chlo�, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Miuccia Prada, Elsa Schiaparelli, Philip Treacy, Viktor & Rolf, Louis Vuitton and Vivienne Westwood.This book contains fascinating literary definitions by curator Judith Clark (Professor of Fashion and Museology, University of the Arts, London), and psychoanalyst and writer Adam Philips, alongside interviews with several leading contemporary designers.Taking the definitions as a starting point, more than 200 stunning images are also included - weaving together historic dress, haute couture and ready-to-wear fashion, textile ornamentation, manuscripts and photography.Published on the occasion of the exhibition, The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined at the Barbican Centre, London (13 October 2016 - 15 February 2017).
Download or read book AIDS written by Douglas Crimp and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1988-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature on AIDS has attempted to teach us the "facts" about this new disease or to provide a narrative account of scientific discovery and developing public health policy. But AIDS has precipitated a crisis that is not primarily medical, or even social and political; AIDS has precipitated a crisis of signification the "meaning" of AIDS is hotly contested in all of the discourses that conceptualize it and seek to respond to it. AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism is the first book on the subject that takes this battle over meaning as its premise. Contributors include Leo Bersani, author of The Freudian Body; Simon Watney, who serves on the board of the Health Education Committee of London's Terrence Higgens Trust; Jan Zita Grover, medical editor at San Francisco General Hospital; Suki Ports, former executive director of the New York City Minority Task Force on AIDS; and Sander Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology. Also included are essays by Paula A. Treichler, who teaches in the Medical School and in communications at the University of Illinois; Carol Leigh, a member of COYOTE and contributor to Sex Work; and Max Navarre, editor of the People With AIDS Coalition monthly Newsline. In addition to these essays, the book contains a portfolio of manifestos, articles, letters, and photographs from the publications of the PWA Coalition, an interview with three members of the AIDS discrimination unit of the New York City Commission on Human Rights; and presentations for the independent video documentaries on AIDS, Testing the Limits and Bright Eyes.
Download or read book Me and Earl and the Dying Girl written by Jesse Andrews and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller that inspired the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film. The funniest book you’ll ever read about death. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl. This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life. “Mr. Andrews’ often hilarious teen dialogue is utterly convincing, and his characters are compelling. Greg’s random sense of humor, terrible self-esteem and general lack of self-awareness all ring true. Like many YA authors, Mr. Andrews blends humor and pathos with true skill, but he steers clear of tricky resolutions and overt life lessons, favoring incremental understanding and growth.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “One need only look at the chapter titles (‘Let’s Just Get This Embarrassing Chapter Out of the Way’) to know that this is one funny book.” —Booklist (starred review) “Though this novel begs inevitable thematic comparisons to John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, it stands on its own in inventiveness, humor and heart.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Download or read book Vulgar Beauty written by Mila Zuo and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-24 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vulgar Beauty Mila Zuo offers a new theorization of cinematic feminine beauty by showing how mediated encounters with Chinese film and popular culture stars produce feelings of Chineseness. To illustrate this, Zuo uses the vulgar as an analytic to trace how racial, gendered, and cultural identity is imagined and produced through affect. She frames the vulgar as a characteristic that is experienced through the Chinese concept of weidao, or flavor, in which bitter, salty, pungent, sweet, and sour performances of beauty produce non-Western forms of sexualized and racialized femininity. Analyzing contemporary film and media ranging from actress Gong Li’s post-Mao movies of the late 1980s and 1990s to Joan Chen’s performance in Twin Peaks to Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy specials, Zuo shows how vulgar beauty disrupts Western and colonial notions of beauty. Vulgar beauty, then, becomes the taste of difference. By demonstrating how Chinese feminine beauty becomes a cinematic invention invested in forms of affective racialization, Zuo makes a critical reconsideration of aesthetic theory.
Download or read book All the Beauty in the World written by Patrick Bringley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A best book of the year from New York Public Library, NPR, the Financial Times, Book Riot, and the Sunday Times (London). A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard. Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew. To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns. In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
Download or read book AIDS Demo Graphics written by Douglas Crimp and published by Bay Press (WA). This book was released on 1990 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Crazy Enough written by Storm Large and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The popular indie rock performer describes her battle against the hereditary mental illness that decimated her mother's health and prompted the author to engage in a self-destructive downward spiral before discovering her musical talent.
Download or read book After Silence written by Avram Finkelstein and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-06-19 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in the 1980s AIDS epidemic, six gay activists created one of the most iconic and lasting images that would come to symbolize a movement: a protest poster of a pink triangle with the words “Silence = Death.” The graphic and the slogan still resonate today, often used—and misused—to brand the entire movement. Cofounder of the collective Silence = Death and member of the art collective Gran Fury, Avram Finkelstein tells the story of how his work and other protest artwork associated with the early years of the pandemic were created. In writing about art and AIDS activism, the formation of collectives, and the political process, Finkelstein reveals a different side of the traditional HIV/AIDS history, told twenty-five years later, and offers a creative toolbox for those who want to learn how to save lives through activism and making art.
Download or read book The Arrangement written by Kiersten Modglin and published by Kiersten Modglin. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A #1 bestselling novel from award-winning author Kiersten Modglin... Fans of Gone Girl, The Swap, and My Lovely Wife are sure to be gripped by this fast-paced, scandalous, and completely twisted story. Domestic thriller readers are raving: "...my new obsession!" "...that ending shook me to my core." "I was sure I knew where it was going. I couldn't have been more wrong." "Hands down, my favorite read this year!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The arrangement was just meant to fix their marriage. No one was supposed to get hurt. But when the rules of this open marriage are broken, the consequences are sinister. Ainsley Greenburg is a fixer. It's what she prides herself on. So, when she realizes her marriage is at its breaking point, she makes a decision to repair it, no matter the cost. Approaching her husband to propose the arrangement is supposed to be the hard part, but Peter agrees to the salacious plan almost immediately. The rules are simple: They will each date someone new once a week. They will never discuss what happens on the dates. Soon, though, the rules are broken, turning terrible mistakes into unspeakable consequences. When the only person they can count on to keep their darkest secret is each other, new questions and deceits surface. Can they truly trust the person they share a life with, or will the vicious lies that have mounted over the years destroy everything they've built? Once, Peter and Ainsley vowed to stand together forever, but as they push boundaries of deception, suspicion, and temptation, each begins to wonder if 'til death do us part may come sooner than they'd intended.
Download or read book Dark Days Bright Nights written by Peniel E. Joseph and published by Civitas Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a narrative chronicle of race in the United States and the successes, failures, and stalemates of African American leaders in the past fifty years.
Download or read book Beautiful Losers written by Leonard Cohen and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the best-known experimental novels of the 1960s, this uninhibited tale centres on the hapless members of a love triangle, and their sexual obsession and shared fascination with a mythic saint.
Download or read book Pastrix written by Nadia Bolz-Weber and published by Jericho Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a New York Times bestselling author, Nadia Bolz-Weber takes no prisoners as she reclaims the term "pastrix"(pronounced "pas-triks," a term used by some Christians who refuse to recognize female pastors) in her messy, beautiful, prayer-and-profanity laden narrative about an unconventional life of faith. Heavily tattooed and loud-mouthed, Nadia, a former stand-up comic, sure as hell didn't consider herself to be religious leader material—until the day she ended up leading a friend's funeral in a smoky downtown comedy club. Surrounded by fellow alcoholics, depressives, and cynics, she realized: These were her people. Maybe she was meant to be their pastor. Using life stories—from living in a hopeful-but-haggard commune of slackers and her unusual but undeniable spiritual calling to her experiences pastoring people from all walks of life—and poignant honesty, Nadia portrays a woman who is both deeply faithful and deeply flawed, giving hope to the rest of us along the way. Wildly entertaining and deeply resonant, this is the book for people who hunger for a bit of hope that doesn't come from vapid consumerism; for women who talk too loud and guys who love chick flicks; and for the gay person who loves Jesus and won't be shunned by the church. In short, this book is for every misfit suspicious of institutionalized religion but who is still seeking transcendence and mystery.
Download or read book Everything Beautiful written by Simmone Howell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When sixteen-year-old Riley unwillingly attends a religious summer camp, she forms a deep bond with another camper who happens to be wheelchair bound.
Download or read book Charm written by Joseph Epstein and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joseph Epstein takes on that most enchanting (and, alas, increasingly rare) of human gifts, charm. “Almost everyone will recognize when he or she is in the presence of charm,” he writes. “Charm is magic of a kind; it casts a spell. In the presence of charm the world seems lighter and lovelier. A charming person can cause you to forget your problems, at least temporarily, to hold the world’s dreariness at bay. Charm is a reminder that the world is filled with jolly prospects and delightful possibilities. Watching Fred Astaire dance, or listening to Blossom Dearie sing, or reading the poems of C.P. Cavafy, or merely looking at Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner, one recalls that the world can be a pretty damn fine place.”
