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This fall I will join the teaching team with the HIV/AIDS Course at Concordia University for the second consecutive year.  This course, along with the accompanying Lecture Series and Art Exhibition, have been around for two decades or so and together comprise a really exciting and innovative project I couldn’t be more happy to be a part of.

Karma Chavez, Yasmin Nair, and I published an article together for Fifth Estate Magazine.  In the article we take a critical look at the imagery and rhetoric surrounding the recent repeal of DADT.  We mainly focus on the ways in which sexual violence is embedded within military culture both at home and abroad, and how we as queers might not want to invest our energy in seeking inclusion in such a sexually violent form of citizenship and national belonging.

I will be appearing at the New Museum in New York City on June 21st for the Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars book launch which is taking place as part of Carlos Motta‘s Museum as Hub Thursday Night Programs.  This will be the first American book launch (we already did Canada and Australia!) for the newer of the two A.E. anthologies and recordings of the event will be made available in the near future.

Disastrous Inclusion: Critical Reflections on the Legacy of DADT, the 2nd issue of the We Who Feel Differently journal, launched online this past May and will also be part of the dialog at the New Museum book launch event on the 21st of June.  You can check out the Journal for free online or download a pdf of it here.

I am currently in the middle of editing the third and final book in the A.E. pocket-book anthology series titled, Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You.  This book critiques the demands by gay and lesbian organizations seeking LGBT inclusion in hate crimes laws and looks more broadly at the prison industrial complex as a site of harm and violence that disproportionately affects queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people.  Chris E. Vargas will be designing a fabulous cover for us once again and Dean Spade will lend his voice to do the book’s introduction.

A.E. put out a new series of postcards from our 2nd call for art including one that I designed.  The postcard was based on a poster I designed and printed in collaboration with Reyrey Castonguay for a workshop at the National Conference on Organized Resistance many years ago.  This postcard, along with the other great additions to the A.E. archives, are available for a few bucks through the online store on the A.E. webite.

Lastly, A.E. will host a panel this fall at Radically Gay: The Life & Visionary Legacy of Harry Hay, a conference hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY from September 27th – 30th, 2012.  Our panel is titled “Eat Your Fetish!: Against Equality and the Politics of Queer Cultural Production and Appropriation” and features presentations from Karma Chavez, Yasmin Nair, and myself.  We are sure to ruffle at least a few tail feathers…

Soon I will be heading back to Maine to spend the rest of the spring and summer working diligently on all sorts of projects.  Between projects I will be on the road touring with the newest Against Equality (AE) book, Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, but for the most part I will be back in the Pine Tree State.  Unfortunately I will be leaving Quebec’s maple spring behind, but it was a truly inspiring time!

In Maine I will once again stage manage Outright L/A‘s annual dragapalooza at Bates College.  This fundraiser event, which raises thousands of dollars for one of Maine’s only queer and trans youth drop in program in central Maine, has sold out every year and it’s likely it will be no different this year.  With a slew of local talent, first time youth performers, and international performers like Dave End, this years event promises to be even better than the last!

I will also appear on a panel about public sex at the University of Southern Maine on April 17th organized by the always inspiring Wendy Chapkis. At the Sex Politics panel I’ll be focusing on the history of gay male public sex cultures in southern Maine and the ways in which consensual gay sex is criminalized through disproportionate policing, surveillance, and sex offender registries.

I will be working on two written pieces: “Radical Queer Semaine & Pervers/Cité: Montréal’s Queer Autonomous Festivals” for a forthcoming anthology titled Queer Autonomous Space and “That’s Right, We’re Here to Destroy Marriage!” for the activist anthology The Gay Agenda: Creating Space, Identity, and Justice.  The first piece will be co-authored with fellow Montreal organizer Frank Suerich-Gulick and will offer up a brief history and reflections on Montreal’s two anti-corporate queer & trans festivals.  The second piece will be a reflection on my own work critiquing mainstream gay and lesbian politics and the energy that goes into denying the freaky, queer, anti-capitalist agenda some of us homos really do have.

In May the newest issue of We Who Feel Differently (WWFD) Journal will become available online.  I guest edited this issue of the digital journal which contains new and archival material reflecting on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  The journal includes new writing by Karma Chavez and others as well as some great archival gems like UltraViolet‘s Queers Out of Uniform counter-recruitment pamphlet and more.

Lastly, to catch up on Against Equality gossip…  The After Homo conference in Melbourne was amazing and AE folks will have a piece in a forthcoming anthology reflecting on the conference and Denis Altman’s broader work.  I will be launching the AE DADT anthology in New York City as part of Carlos Motta’s WWFD “Museum as Hub” series at the New Museum.  Our new postcard series will be up on our website soon.  Lastly, Karma Chavez, Yasmin Nair, and I will be hosting our first Against Equality panel in Chicago on April 21st at Mess Hall to kick off a small mid-western tour!

I’ve been settling in quite nicely here in Montreal where I’ve started contributing to the city’s fiercest fagrag, 2B Magazine.  I’ve contributed book and film reviews, interviews with other queer artists/activists, and even had my nearly naked body featured is series of photographs of emerging artists, activists, and writers.  Thanks to the sweet folks at 2B Mag and photographer César Ochoa, a 16″ x 20″ print of my portrait (see cropped head shot for a PG version) was auctioned off to support Against Equality!

Late this past summer I finally had my silence = death chest tattoo completed after four years of designing and reflection thanks to my friend and tattoo artist Gemma Borealis.  More detailed images and information about the work is available on the projects section of this website.

My newest experimental short video titled things are different now… is complete!  By collaging archival footage from ACT UP’s political funerals with super 8 portrait images of twenty of my peers, I try to imagine what it would feel like to lose all of them in a few years time to AIDS.  This video will premiere in Montreal sometime soon, stay tuned!

Against Equality‘s second archival anthology, Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, is now available from AK Press and they have been flying off the selves!  I edited this book which features an introduction by the one and only Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and contributions from radical anti-war voices critical the gay and lesbian mainstream’s investment in militarism and overturning DADT.  This book, like our last one  Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, is also available at no cost to gay, queer and trans prisoners.

I am gearing up for an early February conference in Melbourne Australia honoring Dennis Altman titled, After Homosexual: the Legacy of Gay Liberation.  At this conference I will give a paper about the work and politics of Against Equality and how we, as a radical queer and trans community, might imagine what global solidarity might look like that doesn’t perpetuate the centrality of gay marriage as the primary goal of queer/trans activism.

Lastly, I will be guest editing the 2nd edition of the online journal launched by Carlos Motta as part of the We Who Feel Differently project.  This edition will focus critically on the fervor to undo Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and reflections on its aftermath.  Due out this Spring, it will be a good antidote to what is likely to be one of the most heinously uncritical forthcoming issues of the Journal of Homosexuality focused on DADT.

The Pervers/Cité festival in Montréal was a fantastic success this year.  I was honored to be part of the organizing collective this past August and to host two of the forty+ scheduled events over the duration of Montréal’s only anti-capitalist pride festival.  Looking forward to Montréal’s other radical queer & trans festival Radical Queer Semaine next Spring.

b. 1983, the short experimental video reflecting on my relationship to HIV and anti-queer violence, will be premiering in Japan (Osaka and Kyoto) at the Kansai Queer Film Festival.  Many thanks to Keiko Ofuji for the time and dedication to translate and subtitle the film.

The broadsheet version of b. 1983 was also shown as part of a group exhibition and fundraiser, Love in the Time of AIDS, for the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center in New York City.  The exhibition opened with a night of performances on September 16th at Le Petit Versailles Community Garden and raised over $500 for the organization’s harm reduction programs.

Against Equality will be releasing its second archival anthology, Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, this fall.  The anthology which I edited features an introduction by the fierce and fabulous Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and contributions from radical anti-war voices critical the gay and lesbian mainstream’s investment in militarism and overturning DADT.  This book, like our last one  Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, will be available from the great folks at AK Press.

I will also be presenting Against Equality’s work in an international framework at the After Homosexual: The Legacy of Gay Liberation conference in Melbourne Australia at La Trobe University this coming winter.  Against Equality will also be contributing a additional piece to a conference publication, After Homosexual.

I recently made the move to Montréal to begin my PhD in Concordia’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program.  I will be pursuing my degree through a self-designed sexuality studies curriculum with a heavy studio arts component.  Be expecting lots of written and visual work from me over the next five years from one of Canada’s most exciting queer cultural centers!

Carlos Motta‘s We Who Feel Differently database documentary project launched this past May and includes a journal article I co-authored with Yasmin Nair on gay marriage, neo-colonialism and re-imagining what global queer solidarity could look like.  I was also interviewed about my involvement with Against Equality as part of WWFD.  A transcript, audio mp3 and the full video can be accessed here.

Work with Against Equality continues on.  I toured the west coast and mid-west this past April, bringing the the total number of events since the book’s launch this past October to 21.  I am currently editing the collective’s next archival anthology focused on critiquing gay and lesbian investments in overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell titled Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, due out Fall 2011. The cover will be designed by Chris Vargas and the introduction will be penned by none other than Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore.  A KickStarter campaign will be launching in July to fund the project!

The annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza this past May pulled in just over $3000 dollars for Outright L/A‘s drop in program for LGBTQ young people in central Maine.  Stage managing the show was a blast and it was wonderful to be part of a project that allowed for so many first time youth  performers to share the stage and shake what they got alongside some of Maine finest Kings and Queens.  Next year’s Spring show will surely sell out like this one did, so be sure to get your tickets in advance!

The Against Equality book tour continues on the west coast this April as I make my way from Seattle to L.A.  I will be will be lecturing, work shopping, and q&a’ing (along with a few other A.E. related folks here and there) at colleges, autonomous youth spaces, cooperative cafes and bookstores.  Books, postcards, pins, and stickers will be available at all events.  Click here for a list of tour dates.

Carlos Motta‘s We Who Feel Differently multi-media online journal launches in May.  The ambitious project includes a piece Yasmin Nair and I co-authored on imaging what an international radical queer and trans politic might look like.  I was also interviewed on video for the project which will become available when the site launches in coordination with an exhibition opening in Norway this spring.

The Domestic Queens Project, a group exhibition at the FOFA Gallery in Montreal curated by Evergon, included the collaborative film project between Liam Michaud, REB and myself titled Everything About You Son, Is Because of Me (chapter one of eight).  The show opened with a half day symposium where I sat on a panel, discussing the work in the exhibition along with JJ Kegan McFadden, Larry Glawson, Eduardo Ralikas, and Evergon.

For the third year in a row I will be stage managing the annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza benefit for Outright L/A, a queer and trans youth empowerment project in Lewiston/Auburn Maine, on May 7th 2011 at Schaeffer Theater on the Bates College campus.  More information about the show is available on Outright’s website.

I also just got word that the anthology Queering Anarchism is tentatively scheduled to be released by AK Press in the fall of 2012.  My piece on the use of affect to mobilize queer and trans subjects in relation to the national gay marriage campaigns in the United States titled (Gay) Marriage and (Queer) Love, will appear in this anthology.

My 2009 video, b. 1983, is now available for viewing on youtube!

Domestic Queens, a group exhibition curated by Evergon at the FOFA gallery in Montreal at Concordia University opens in March 2011.  The show will feature work from Ryan Conrad, Liam Michaud, Richard E. Bump aka REB, Jim Verburg, Zachari Logan, and more!

I will be presenting on behalf of the Against Equality collective at the College Art Association’s annual conference in New York this year.  Our work will be part of the Queer Caucus for Art’s panel discussion, Creating in the Queer Diaspora, scheduled for Thursday February 10th from 12:30-2pm.

I am collaborating with other Against Equality collective members on a written and visual critique of the national gay marriage campaigns in the U.S. and the non-profit mega-corporations that maintain the prioritization of the issue for the debut publication of the We Who Feel Differently Journal, a project initiated by New York based artist Carlos Motta.

Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage has been selling well (already distributed over 700 copies!) and we have just begun our first shipments to queer and trans prisoners at no cost.  We also just released a new set of 1″buttons that have been causing quite a rumble!  I will continue touring with the book in February in New York, Virginia and North Carolina before making my way to the west coast in April, traveling from Seattle all the way down to San Diego.

A.V.A.T.A.R.
 (Anglos 
Valiantly 
Aiding 
Tragic 
Awe-inspiring
 Races) is 
a 
fast‐paced 
media 
mashup 
that 
highlights 
the overplayed 
racial 
tropes 
of 
Hollywood 
cinema 
using James 
Cameron’s 
multimillion‐dollar 
epic 
Avatar as 
its visual 
anchor. This project is a collaboration between myself and Craig Saddlemire and was submitted to the Washington Project for the Arts’ Experimental Media Series CFP.  The Experimental Media Series will be curated by DJ Spooking and we should be hearing back any day now…

The Against Equality Collective has published their first book, Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, which I edited.  The book includes written work by  some of today’s foremost and emerging queer voices: Kate Bornstein, Eric Stanley, Dean Spade, Craig Willse, Kenyon Farrow, Kate Raphael, Deeg, John D’Emilio, Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, Martha Jane Kaufman, Katie Miles, and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. The book also includes a set of postcards from our series designed by Beth Slutzky, Liz Kinnamon and Chris Vargas (who also designed our book’s fabulous cover).  Since the book’s release in mid-September it has shipped to four continents (north america, europe, africa and australia) and has nearly gone out of print!

To support the release of Against Equality’s book, I will be touring down the east-coast from Maine to Virginia and then onward to the mid-west starting in Chicago.  The Marriage = Death Tour will include potlucks, panel discussions on alternatives to marriage, debates between for/against gay marriage advocates and public lectures.  Touring will continue in Canada and the west-coast this winter and spring.

The College Art Association‘s Queer Caucus for Art will be hosting a panel themed “Creating in the Queer Diaspora” at the CAA’s annual conference in February 2011 in New York. I will be presenting with Yasmin Nair on behalf of the Against Equality Collective.

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles is hosting the archival exhibition Out of the Closets, Into the Streets: Posters of LGBTQ Struggles and Celebration. A handful of posters I have designed will be in the show including the infamous “No Faggots Allowed” poster used in a spoof postering campaign to expose the Red Cross’ homophobic gay blood ban.  The show will be up from July 3rd to September 26th at the ONE Archive and Gallery with an opening reception on July 3rd from 5-8pm.

Liam and I will be facilitating a workshop at the Robert’s Street Social Center in Halifax on July 6th from 7-9pm.  Combining Liam’s work with the Prisoner Correspondence Project with my own work on queer historiography and inter-generational queer affect/bonds we will be presenting a workshop about queers and criminalization.

“Solidarity in the Archives,” is a written account of my most recent trip to South Africa and the work I did with the folks at Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action based out of Johannesburg.  It has been published in print by UltraViolet and online at the Bilerico project.

Against Equality: Queer critiques of gay marriage, the anthology I am editing, is in its final copy edit stages before being sent off to the printers.  A.E. Collective members will be working on a speaking/book across the north east, mid-west and west coast this October/November with a kick off event at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine on October 2nd.  More details coming early fall!

“(Gay) Marriage and (Queer) Love,” my chapter contribution to the forth coming international anthology Queering Anarchism has been accepted and is now in the hands of a number of fine editors.  More details on the anthology forthcoming.

b 1983 was shown as part of Edmonton Pride at Queer Images, a two night film series curated by Ted Kerr June 16th and 17th.  This film will also be shown at the DIY queer film festival Entzaubert in Berlin from July 1st – 4th along with a slew of other really great stuff!

Cruising the Cartography, my immersive research laboratory installation focused on Portland Maine’s public sex cultures over the last fifty years, opened as part of the Maine College of Art’s Graduate Student show last month.  Documentation of the exhibition is now available online as both still images and video.

b.1983 will be showing at in + body, Concordia’s 16th installment of its annual HIV/AIDS art show, from Monday March 29^th to Friday April 9^th at the VAV Gallery in Montreal.  An opening party will be held April 1^st from 7-9pm at the gallery with performances by Coral Short, RPM, and Kathleen Patricia Lamothe.

Cruising the Cartography, my immersive research laboratory installation on queer public sex cultures in Portland Maine, opens at the Maine Institute for Contemporary Art on May 7^th.  This piece is part of a group exhibition of graduate students at Maine College of Art that will be up through June 6^th.  An accompanying catalog will be available soon.

Liam Michaud-O’Grady and I will be installing seven site-specific broadsheet in Montreal the week of April 15^th & 16^th as part of the Concordia graduate studies conference, Resistances: counter-conduct, inter-disruptions, and compromising acts, for our project Queer Cartography: Mapping Public Pleasures, Safety, Risk.  A .pdf of our postcard map is available here.

I will be stage-managing the 2^nd Annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza on May 8^th at Schaeffer Theater on the Bates College Campus in Lewiston Maine.  This totally wild drag show benefit raises money for the queer and trans youth advocacy organization Outright L/A.

From May 12^th to 27^th I will be in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa on a post-graduate research trip thanks to the Roderick Dew Travel Fellowship at the Maine College of Art.  Primarily I will be working with folks from the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action Archive at the University of Witwatersrand in Jo-burg.