Letter for Project 3 (reading group)

Dear reading group,

Thank you for showing interest in WITHOUT’s reading group. WITHOUT is a project I am putting together for the front space at 200 Gertrude Street in the context of the Midsumma Gay and Lesbian festival. I wanted one of the activities for the piece to be a reflection on an artistic and cultural period we currently don’t inhabit – a period from the mid 80’s to mid 90’s. Identity politics, Queer theory, a return to subjectivity, cultural activism and an emphasis on theoretical models in the analysis of artistic production where some of the hallmark features - discourses that still pop up in a festival like Midsumma. I thought it might be interesting to actually look at some of the canonical texts together in an informal reading group and place them in our current context. While we might be familiar with the rhetoric in the texts – there will be something new for most of us. To tackle the issues raised in the reading I’m thinking we’ll probably need two sessions over the period of Jan 16th - Jan 29th. At the moment the list of texts looks tentatively like this:

- A chapter of Judith Butler, probably from Gender Trouble.
- A chapter from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (probably from the Epistemology of the Closet)
- The BAD GAY ART catalogue featuring a short curatorial text from Robert Schubert and a longer work by Dean Kiley.
- An article form OCTOBER (43, Winter 1987) “AIDS Cultural Analysis, Cultural activism”
- If ACCA gets around to helping – trying to find a catalogue from the old ACCA – they had VNS Matrix, (A cyberfeminist manifesto for the 21st Century) and a REA show in the early 90’s. Apparently they haven’t archived their catalogues – Can you believe it? (Working on it)
- I’m also looking at picking an article out from More Gender Trouble: Feminism meets Queer Theory – maybe a take from Elizabeth Grosz on psychoanalysis via feminism and lesbianism or another article in the same journal by Carole-Anne Tyler “Passing: Narcissism, identity and Difference.”
- Something a bit more pop from early Art + Text.

I am also making these cardboard helmets (deep sea diving/astronaut style) that are incised with coloured cellophane windows (think stain glass) – as a utopic marker of the different lenses that this reading will introduce – or maybe its to protect us from the fallout or maybe I just like to outfit and accessorise an event like this. I don’t know - but what I need you to do is to tell me the kind of geometric forms that you would like your helmet to come in. Totally sperical is hard for a stiff cardboard – so think rigid cardboard and just send me a brief description.

I am logging/documenting the project (and its lead up) on my blog that could be found at www.with-out.blogspot.com.

So what I need you all to do is send me your residential or work addresses so that I can drop of a parcel (whichever is more convenient). I would also like you to email me your availability during the period that runs from Jan 16th – Jan 29th. Lets give ourselves 1.5 hours for each session. While the activity can’t avoid being earnest in some way – I want it to have the scope to be relaxed, critical, confused, deluded and fun. No academics are going to rain on this parade, so really it’s what we as a group, want to make of it. Don’t hesitate to give me a call –-------------. Oh yeah – there will be cookies and milk.

Best,

Spiros Panigirakis

Letter for Project 2 (single poster)

Dear Kate,

I am an artist who will be exhibiting at Gertrude Contemporary Art Space (200 Gertrude St) in mid January 2006. The gallery is closed during this period and the space has traditionally been used as a window display for the Midsumma festival. As part of the project I am creating a space that will be used exclusively in the reflection of queer discourse within an art practice. The project will transform the space from a window display to a more private space that only queer people will utilise. There will be many activities planned for the space – most having a community of queers collaborating on a craft project. The projects currently proposed for this space are: a celebratory collaborative paper sculpture made by gay and lesbian youth; a reading group and craft response project with queer artists and a poster design workshop for activist queers. I am writing to enquire as to whether you might be able to help out with the later project.

I am developing a project that requires activists to become collaborators with me in the production of a singular hand crafted paste-up poster. This would entail you becoming a sort of client - in a designer/client relationship. The parameters of the project would require you to; have the time to meet on an informal basis; pinpoint a particular queer issue that you think needs addressing; a particular site where you would like this poster to be contextualised in and therefore pasted on and give me permission to post our interaction on the project’s blog site www.with-out.blogspot.com. There will also be formal and technical boundaries due to the aesthetic limitations/possibilities inherent in a hand-crafted poster, my technical abilities and the overall aesthetic of the project.

The reasoning behind the production of a singular poster for this particular project is to: make a distinction between the mass produced and poster made with say collaged coloured paper and marker pen; critically engage with the question of the role of the artist in a queer politic; investigate the micro (the personal, the local etc.) and its relationship to the macro and to recognise that a midsumma art project based in Fitzroy has a limited capacity to effect a broader change but is more capable of small ones and to engage with one issue but publish multiple voices.

Due the time frame of the project – I would like to meet with you soon if you are interested in the project to get the ball rolling, answer any of your questions and give you more detail of how and when the poster will be produced. My numbers are ---------------- or get back to me via email with your number.

Yours sincerely,


Spiros Panigirakis