By Hello group! I have no physical stack. Only mental. And that’s not because I’m planning on an exclusive audiobook tour. I have physical books in mind…and one in hand.
Leading up to this seasonal challenge I was eyeing up a book on my shelf that I put down quite awhile back. I felt it was time to return to SEXUALITY Documents on Contemporary Art. This series is an anthology of collected art writings, critiques, and interviews compiled within a number of subjects. I had read the one on MEMORY while I was in grad school and really enjoyed it. I picked up the one on Sexuality while writing my thesis, but was swarmed with other reading/writing/working that I only got a quarter of the way through. I am now halfway through! Thanks to the last two days of reading. I had to put it down for tonight after reading two consecutive interviews (David Wojnarowicz and then Felix Gonzalez-Torres) who both talked about the NEA censorship and AIDS crisis (two inevitable topics to come up in a book about art and sexuality). I made the mistake of checking on their time of death. Both men died the next calendar year after giving these respective interviews from HIV/AIDS. It’s too heartbreaking.
Open Arts Spring 2024 
There’s a beautifully poignant tribute to David Wojnarowicz in Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City, as well as one of the only reflections that I’ve ever read on the stark beauty of the piers adjacent to West Street in Manhattan, a place of sometimes anonymous encounters, where the need for human contact outweighed the possibility of contracting HIV. The world is a worse place with the deaths of Wojnarowicz and Gonzales-Torres. And soon there won’t even be an NEA anymore.
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Thank you for sharing. I think if I was in a better place with my depression, I would read The Lonely City. Perhaps it’s a title I can visit towards the end of the reading challenge. It certainly sounds like something I would enjoy (if I could separate my own emotions just enough).
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I read The Lonely City and it was a challenging read for me but it was a very powerful book. Daniela- I can send to you if you want!
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Looking forward to your commentary on the sexuality book while I read my own! It’s always so interesting to learn the various perspectives and applications of thought in this field that is so based in individuality.
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Daniela, I remember your mentioning (in our email exchange about the book in this series that you sent to me) that you hadn’t had time to get through SEXUALITY, so I was pleased to hear that Winter Reading 2018 has given you a reason to get back to it! I’ll let you, well, everyone, know about FAILURE. Gonzalez-Torres is in this one, too. So sad.
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