It was exciting and unexpected, and since reading this book my process has been imprinted with science and the drive to always dig deeper.īy Ahmad Shamlu (Tehrān: Morvarid Publication, 2010 first published in 1977) The thorough and dense amount of information on homo/bi/poly/trans animals in this text helped me imagine visual arts with denser narratives engaging complicated Trans/Queer identities that transcend the trappings of anthropocentric thinking. This was the book that shifted the way I go about creating ideas and spurred my love for creating research-based artworks. Now, it’s my plan to allow some women artists the same degree of latitude…īiological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversityīy Bruce Bagemihl (New York: Stonewall Inn Editions, 1999) Pettibon’s drawings set off these gross diversions with a cunning known only to the most irreverent and uncompromising artists. As a compendium of raw source material, Pettibon’s Reader provides insight through misinterpretation-which I firmly believe is the best route to knowledge. True to form, Pettibon doesn’t give a rat’s ass about giving Charles Manson the same treatment as Charles Baudelaire. Each of the below texts, represents the flint from which these artists build fire.ĭena Beard, Executive Director, The Lab SFĮdited by Ann Temkin and Hamza Walker (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1998) Ultimately, the role of radical writing is to lead the bear out of the circus to discover her own freedom and power, not to burn down the tent. Some are contemplative and expository while others are explosive, aberrant, ruminating. The texts they have selected vary in form, tone, and content. The Bay Area artists, curators, and culture shifters selected to contribute to this reading list, labor with dissident hearts from a place of criticality that chafes against the status quo. Revolution often begins with revelation, and this comes in many forms and voices. Today, as Bay Area artists struggle to exercise this heritage in an increasingly hostile economic environment, they continue to excavate, assemble, and deploy transgressive thought: both its legacy and potential.

The Bay Area and radical thought and action are inseparable in the collective consciousness. In a game of association, words like “revolution,” “radical,” “progress,” and “liberation” consistently evoke images of the Bay Area: Berkeley sit-ins, Black Panther community breakfasts, Haight Street hippies, Occupiers, anarchists, protests, riots, love-ins, etc. Occupy Oakland protesters at the Port of Oakland in California after effectively shutting down the nation’s fifth-busiest port during a day of nonstop protesting.

A Pornography of Grief by Philip Huang