FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure Archive
2 0 1 8
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B8kLOpCyvvKqfi1KSzIxSFlycGx1TmROZ3JoVlJaYUJNdklVck1aZ1FTRWNHSDRPaUhnQVE?resourcekey=0-CunPXInNmV7miP79_ObSQg
FUCK! began as an oral capture and research project. We always envisioned the exhibition as a kind of invite for future researchers to theorize the clubs importance. They only need ask permission and they are given access. The page includes hours of video footage and limited documentation ande candid snapshots.
- Significance of the site, Silverlake
- Economic push/pull forces continuously shape population
- LGBT 1920s Silent Film Industry
- 1930s Communists, LGBT pioneers
- 1940s-1960s varying ethnic groups + light rail to downtown
- 1967 Black Cat Bar raid, 1st known LGBT rights demonstration, birth of LA Gay Rights Movement,
- Advocate Magazine, Pride celebrations, Supreme Court ruling on obscenity
- 1970s gay male S&M and leather culture
- 1980s The One Way bar
- “Theoretical” (experimental) parties bring together disparate groups
- The economic recovery and stability of the 1980s preceded the rise in housing and cost of living expenses and these conditions supported a generation who were not tethered to financial burdens. The boundaries between different creative professions were not strictly observed and the production of publications, nightclubs and other vernacular cultural forms seemed prolific
First Documented LGBT protest in Western History
The nightclub known as FUCK! opened in the Summer of 1989. By the end of that year 149,902 Americans were diagnosed with AIDS and 89,817 were dead. FUCK!’s first location was a blue collar neighborhood Latino bar called Tabasco’s/Basgo’s Disco aka Le Barcito. The Black Cat Tavern was the scene of a violent police raid on New Year’s Eve, 1966-67, that precipitated street protests marking the first documented LGBT demonstration in the United States and the beginning of Los Angeles’ gay rights movement. In the spring of 1993 FUCK! would close its doors unexpectedly when it was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department’s, Hollywood Vice Division.
Promoters James Stone, Miguel Beristain, and Cliff Diller aptly chose the floating signifier, FUCK!, for the mutability such a sign offered. FUCK! was reflective of a refusal to conform, to sublimate desire, and an index of communal rage. Like David Mancuso’s apartment parties (which popularized the sound that would become disco), FUCK! grew out of private house parties hosted by two of the club’s promoters in their apartment situated in Hollywood’s culturally historic Fonteny Building. FUCK! produced it’s own scene and style that coalesced around a synthetic sound situated phylogenetically between disco and acid house. The harsh and abrasive alien soundtrack emerged out of Chicago by way of the UK, informed by a lineage traced from the underground clubs primarily patronized by black and latino-caribbean men. The new Wax Trax sound was an apt soundtrack for the fury and rage of young queers who had rejected politics of respectability for a tough severe look that must’ve intimidated the uninitiated.
At its core, FUCK! was a queer social body united through erotically charged sensorial pleasures ranging from the scopic to aural, and for an initiated few, somatic. FUCK! Loss, desire, pleasure seeks to resurrect FUCK!’s historical legacy. This room presents works by contemporary artists Jordan Eagles, Siobhan Hebron, Young Joon Kwak, and Dominic Quagliozzi, as well as a relic from a performance by Daphne Von Rey at the exhibition’s opening. While these artists never experienced FUCK!, a focus on the body as a contested site of disease, pleasure, politics, and death aligns the work with FUCK’s over-arching ethos.
Write a title here
For the initiated, FUCK! was an inclusive space that encouraged participation, In these candid snapshots, individuals in jeans and t- shirts dance and socialize with or next to individuals clad in leather and SM accouterments or fetish clothing, representative of the club's diverse clientele. Bringing together a spectrum of sexualities, FUCK! was inherently different from the men-only leather bars of Silver Lake and the clean-cut bars of West Hollywood. FUCK!s dancers were a bevy of queer and gendered archetypes. Masculine women played with phallocentrfc power, fems danced in vintage lingerie and high heels, and scantily dressed male dancers wore codpieces and boots. Everyone refused to assimilate their sexual mores.
FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure
January 29, 2016 to March 19, 2016
FUCK! was fundamentally a celebration of the living and of life, with no partitioning of the abundant loss or grief. In the absence of life and creativity, the disease stricken body functions only as a vessel for illness, its trace and sense of humanity wiped away. Acknowledging the physical and social fragility of the illness stricken body, the activities at FUCK! were a conscious refusal of HIV stigma. These condition activated FUCK! as a key site for alternative art and performance in Los Angeles, influencing artists of the time and the present, that only recently has begun to be recognized.
At FUCK! the modified, pierced, and tattooed body was pushed to its corporeal limit. Scarring, mummification, and piercing were staples of ritual-like floorshows, demonstrations, and performances. Collective rage about governmental indifference to HIV/AIDS united participants as they pushed the boundaries of art and performance. Acknowledging the physical and social fragility of the illness stricken body, the activities at FUCK! were a conscious refusal of HIV stigma. FUCK! was also a key site for alternative art and performance in Los Angeles, influencing artists of the time and the present, that only recently has begun to be recognized.
Representation Meets Politics of Respectability
FUCK! participated in the 1991 Christopher Street West (CSW) Pride Parade. The display of bare breasts and signage would have violated the limits of CSW rules for acceptable speech and comportment. The hand stenciled signs bearing the club's name with the word "censored" overlaid indicate tension and resistance, the full scope of which is not completely understood. Further research will clarify specific details. However, it is understood that CSW had a tenuous relationship with Queer Nation and ACTUP.
QUEER NATION LA STICKER MEMES
These Queer Nation slogan-bearing stickers represent a pre- internet meme technology. Two stickers in particular are directed at the parade and festival. "CSW DOESN'T REPRESENT ME" speaks to a disinvestment in what some saw as an appeal to respectability politics while "CAGES & ADMISSION PRICES ARE FOR ZOOS; OPEN UP THE FESTIVAL, A QUEER NATION DEMAND" support one account of a plan to cut a hole in the festival grounds fence to allow visitors to enter without paying admission, a barrier to those with limited resources. Due to conflicting accounts, it is unclear to what extent actions were carried out and in which years. This was the only year that FUCK! participated in the parade.
Performance artist Ron Athey began performing after a 15 year hiatus. Riitual like floorshows filled with blood and needles pushed audiences and performers to their affective limits. These shows were workshopping for Athey's Martyrs and Saints which would premiere in Mexico City in 1992. Club founder, Cliff Diller, died one month before the premiere. Athey improvised the suturing of each performers mouth shut as a way of metaphorizing grief. Diller was a makeup artist
on Reza Abdohs Bogeyman Trilogy, an allegorical series about AIDS. The grandure and size of the production informed Athey's developement of Martyrs which premiered in a cathedral. The sutured mouth image refernces David Wojnarowics, a friend of the cast.
In 1994 Athey became a figure in a culture war, as conservative politicians fought to bar artwork with visible gay and feminist content from receiving public funding.
FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure
seeks to resurrect FUCK!’s historical legacy. The walls around this mezzanine present historical photographs, flyers, and objects from FUCK! that punctuate the club’s importance as a space of community, friendship, and playful experimentation. FUCK! Loss, desire, pleasure is co-curated by Toro Castaño, Curatorial Assistant at the ONE Archives Foundation, and independent curator Lucia Fabio. Support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
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FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure exhibition at ONE Archives at the USC Libraries
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Transcript
FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure Archive
2 0 1 8
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B8kLOpCyvvKqfi1KSzIxSFlycGx1TmROZ3JoVlJaYUJNdklVck1aZ1FTRWNHSDRPaUhnQVE?resourcekey=0-CunPXInNmV7miP79_ObSQg
FUCK! began as an oral capture and research project. We always envisioned the exhibition as a kind of invite for future researchers to theorize the clubs importance. They only need ask permission and they are given access. The page includes hours of video footage and limited documentation ande candid snapshots.
First Documented LGBT protest in Western History
The nightclub known as FUCK! opened in the Summer of 1989. By the end of that year 149,902 Americans were diagnosed with AIDS and 89,817 were dead. FUCK!’s first location was a blue collar neighborhood Latino bar called Tabasco’s/Basgo’s Disco aka Le Barcito. The Black Cat Tavern was the scene of a violent police raid on New Year’s Eve, 1966-67, that precipitated street protests marking the first documented LGBT demonstration in the United States and the beginning of Los Angeles’ gay rights movement. In the spring of 1993 FUCK! would close its doors unexpectedly when it was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department’s, Hollywood Vice Division.
Promoters James Stone, Miguel Beristain, and Cliff Diller aptly chose the floating signifier, FUCK!, for the mutability such a sign offered. FUCK! was reflective of a refusal to conform, to sublimate desire, and an index of communal rage. Like David Mancuso’s apartment parties (which popularized the sound that would become disco), FUCK! grew out of private house parties hosted by two of the club’s promoters in their apartment situated in Hollywood’s culturally historic Fonteny Building. FUCK! produced it’s own scene and style that coalesced around a synthetic sound situated phylogenetically between disco and acid house. The harsh and abrasive alien soundtrack emerged out of Chicago by way of the UK, informed by a lineage traced from the underground clubs primarily patronized by black and latino-caribbean men. The new Wax Trax sound was an apt soundtrack for the fury and rage of young queers who had rejected politics of respectability for a tough severe look that must’ve intimidated the uninitiated.
At its core, FUCK! was a queer social body united through erotically charged sensorial pleasures ranging from the scopic to aural, and for an initiated few, somatic. FUCK! Loss, desire, pleasure seeks to resurrect FUCK!’s historical legacy. This room presents works by contemporary artists Jordan Eagles, Siobhan Hebron, Young Joon Kwak, and Dominic Quagliozzi, as well as a relic from a performance by Daphne Von Rey at the exhibition’s opening. While these artists never experienced FUCK!, a focus on the body as a contested site of disease, pleasure, politics, and death aligns the work with FUCK’s over-arching ethos.
Write a title here
For the initiated, FUCK! was an inclusive space that encouraged participation, In these candid snapshots, individuals in jeans and t- shirts dance and socialize with or next to individuals clad in leather and SM accouterments or fetish clothing, representative of the club's diverse clientele. Bringing together a spectrum of sexualities, FUCK! was inherently different from the men-only leather bars of Silver Lake and the clean-cut bars of West Hollywood. FUCK!s dancers were a bevy of queer and gendered archetypes. Masculine women played with phallocentrfc power, fems danced in vintage lingerie and high heels, and scantily dressed male dancers wore codpieces and boots. Everyone refused to assimilate their sexual mores.
FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure
January 29, 2016 to March 19, 2016
FUCK! was fundamentally a celebration of the living and of life, with no partitioning of the abundant loss or grief. In the absence of life and creativity, the disease stricken body functions only as a vessel for illness, its trace and sense of humanity wiped away. Acknowledging the physical and social fragility of the illness stricken body, the activities at FUCK! were a conscious refusal of HIV stigma. These condition activated FUCK! as a key site for alternative art and performance in Los Angeles, influencing artists of the time and the present, that only recently has begun to be recognized.
At FUCK! the modified, pierced, and tattooed body was pushed to its corporeal limit. Scarring, mummification, and piercing were staples of ritual-like floorshows, demonstrations, and performances. Collective rage about governmental indifference to HIV/AIDS united participants as they pushed the boundaries of art and performance. Acknowledging the physical and social fragility of the illness stricken body, the activities at FUCK! were a conscious refusal of HIV stigma. FUCK! was also a key site for alternative art and performance in Los Angeles, influencing artists of the time and the present, that only recently has begun to be recognized.
Representation Meets Politics of Respectability
FUCK! participated in the 1991 Christopher Street West (CSW) Pride Parade. The display of bare breasts and signage would have violated the limits of CSW rules for acceptable speech and comportment. The hand stenciled signs bearing the club's name with the word "censored" overlaid indicate tension and resistance, the full scope of which is not completely understood. Further research will clarify specific details. However, it is understood that CSW had a tenuous relationship with Queer Nation and ACTUP.
QUEER NATION LA STICKER MEMES
These Queer Nation slogan-bearing stickers represent a pre- internet meme technology. Two stickers in particular are directed at the parade and festival. "CSW DOESN'T REPRESENT ME" speaks to a disinvestment in what some saw as an appeal to respectability politics while "CAGES & ADMISSION PRICES ARE FOR ZOOS; OPEN UP THE FESTIVAL, A QUEER NATION DEMAND" support one account of a plan to cut a hole in the festival grounds fence to allow visitors to enter without paying admission, a barrier to those with limited resources. Due to conflicting accounts, it is unclear to what extent actions were carried out and in which years. This was the only year that FUCK! participated in the parade.
Performance artist Ron Athey began performing after a 15 year hiatus. Riitual like floorshows filled with blood and needles pushed audiences and performers to their affective limits. These shows were workshopping for Athey's Martyrs and Saints which would premiere in Mexico City in 1992. Club founder, Cliff Diller, died one month before the premiere. Athey improvised the suturing of each performers mouth shut as a way of metaphorizing grief. Diller was a makeup artist
on Reza Abdohs Bogeyman Trilogy, an allegorical series about AIDS. The grandure and size of the production informed Athey's developement of Martyrs which premiered in a cathedral. The sutured mouth image refernces David Wojnarowics, a friend of the cast.
In 1994 Athey became a figure in a culture war, as conservative politicians fought to bar artwork with visible gay and feminist content from receiving public funding.
FUCK! Loss, Desire, Pleasure
seeks to resurrect FUCK!’s historical legacy. The walls around this mezzanine present historical photographs, flyers, and objects from FUCK! that punctuate the club’s importance as a space of community, friendship, and playful experimentation. FUCK! Loss, desire, pleasure is co-curated by Toro Castaño, Curatorial Assistant at the ONE Archives Foundation, and independent curator Lucia Fabio. Support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.