NYC reads

Great visit to NYC last week. One of my favourite things to do there is shop for books....at Bluestockings, St. Mark's Books and the Strand. There are other amazing places but I never fail to find something I've never seen before at those three.

We also spent time in Brooklyn and found this comic book shop:
http://www.desertislandbrooklyn.com/

I was super excited to pick this up.

It's got Richard Kern, Beth/Scott B, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch et all. Looks amazing.

Above is the namesake film, also fantastic starring David Wojnarowicz and Karen Finley as the parents of Lung Leg, 'celebrating' a traumatic Thanksgiving. EYE POPPING

And....another gem from Bluestockings:

I first heard of him at a retrospective at the New Museum on Lower Broadway in 1999. He did an amazing breadth of work in a short period and was an outspoken influential AIDS activist when ACT UP was prominent in NY. I'd never seen this before either. I like him a lot.

this is one of his more famous pieces

And.....

I'm stoked for this too, it's sort of Arsenault's gender/plastic surgery journey as performance art. I don't know much about her, she's from Toronto. I gathered her transformation has been about art as well as her own gender issues, using the body as a canvas for commentary like Orlan. (that video is preceded by an ad, which i hate. anyhoo). 

This kind of combines my interests in body transmogrification, and performance art via mortification of the flesh, combined with always interesting gender performance issues! 

I got two other books at Bluestockings, one is a compilation of a zine about yard sales, another a treatise against equal marriage. I like reading about gay perspectives on equal marriage, and the idea that Proposition 8 is sort of a bait and switch for more meaningful reforms and inequities affecting LGBTT communities.