Testimony by BIZZY BAREFOOT, MARS HOBRECKER, BLUSH CASSIDY, LEAH JAMES, GAGE OF THE BOONE, JULI
Testimony by BIZZY BAREFOOT, MARS HOBRECKER, BLUSH CASSIDY, LEAH JAMES, GAGE OF THE BOONE, JULIANA HUXTABLE, PEEWEE NYOB, and JACK WATERS, New York
Titled:the colorful activism of new york’s most radical queers
As Bruce Jenner prepares to share his transition with the world, Sam Smith goes platinum amidst a subtle coming-out, and LGBT characters drive storylines on beloved television shows like ‘Orange is the New Black’ and 'Transparent’, homosexual and transgender identities are playing increasingly influential roles within mainstream pop culture. These changes reflect shifting politics worldwide, with gay marriage legalized in the U.K. and many U.S. states. Yet there is a strong, insistent subcurrent within queer communities that resists rites of passage like walking down the aisle and enlisting into the military. Call them the radical queers, and know that the term is flexible, and evolving. From the local gardens of the East Village to Bushwick warehouses, a new wave of New York artists and activists young and old are banding together to question and redefine what it means to be queer today.
Twenty years ago, Jack Waters and Peter Cramer created a radical sanctuary in the form of a community garden called Le Petit Versailles. With its psychedelic art installations and freeform events, the East 2nd Street plot is a slice of the old, pre-Bowery Hotel Alphabet City. Jack and Peter met in 1980 through the art and activism collective ABC No Rio, still a downtown institution hosting hardcore punk Saturday matinees and poetry readings.
These two are elders in a loose community that also includes young artists Michael Bailey Gates (who photographed his extended creative family for this story), Mars Hobrecker and Leah James, artist Bizzy Barefoot, artist and DJ Juliana Huxtable, activist and Wild Ponies film collective member Connor Donahue (aka Blush Cassidy), and Gage of the Boone, founder of queer art space Spectrum. They’re joined by an endlessly expanding cast of characters that meet at Bizzy’s house in Brooklyn, through the MIX NYC queer film festival, at Le Petit Versailles, on the Internet. Where you probably won’t find them is at the yearly Gay Pride parade, which several dismiss as being too commercial. Some are radical faeries (a faction founded in 79 by Harry Hay, with pagan-spiritual elements and remote sanctuary camps), some are not. They’re all artists in some way or another, and activists with counter-culture leanings, fighting for causes from green space to health care to youth art. You could call them “anti-assimilationist”, as the Radical Queer Reddit bio does. Or you could just listen to what they have to say.
Published by i-D, 3/27/15
