Club Fuck!

Last updated

Club Fuck! (also known as Club FUCK!) [1] was a nightclub that officially began the summer of 1989 and was hosted by Miguel Beristain, Cliff Diller, and James Stone. [2] [3]

The weekly party was located at Basgo's Disco in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. [4] [5] It later moved to Dragonfly Bar in West Hollywood and lasted until 1993, when it was raided by the Los Angeles Police Department's Vice Division. Fuck! constituted a gritty liminal space oppositional to both the neighborhood's largely men-only leather bars as well as the clean-cut bars of West Hollywood. At Fuck! the modified, pierced, and tattooed body was front and center. Scarring, mummification, and piercing were staples at Fuck!, confronting fears of contagion while revealing the temporality of the body during the height of the AIDS crisis. Performances at Fuck! were both transgressive and theatrical, pushing the limits of what the performer's body (and audience) could endure with a spirit of play.

Notable performers at Fuck! included Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose, Buck Angel, Ron Athey, Vaginal Davis, Daphne Von Rey, Jenny Shimizu, Durk Dehner, Catherine Opie, Michele Mills.

In an April 1991 article in the LA Weekly, Fuck! was described as not simply “an existential exercise in bad attitudes,” but rather “a celebration of the primal life force amped up to overload,” with an “S&M/sexual subtext” that makes it “sociologically fascinating.” [6]

On August 5, 2009, Antebellum Hollywood presented Club Fuck! 20 year reunion, featuring photography, artworks, posters, and memorabilia from the people who created the once-in-a-lifetime club. Curated by Rick Castro, the event featuring live performance by Club Fuck original Linda Lesabre, original playlist from DJ John Mark, artwork and contributions from James Stone, Michelle Carr, Catherine Opie, Sheree Rose, Jenny Shimizu and many more.

Club Fuck was the subject of the exhibition entitled "FUCK! Loss, desire and pleasure" curated by Lucia Fabio and Toro Castaño at USC's ONE Archives. [7] [8]

Related Research Articles

<i>Butch</i> and <i>femme</i> Masculine and feminine identities in lesbians

Butch and femme are terms used in the lesbian subculture to ascribe or acknowledge a masculine (butch) or feminine (femme) identity with its associated traits, behaviors, styles, self-perception, and so on. The terms were founded in lesbian communities in the twentieth century. This concept has been called a "way to organize sexual relationships and gender and sexual identity". Butch–femme culture is not the sole form of a lesbian dyadic system, as there are many women in butch–butch and femme–femme relationships.

Bob Flanagan was an American performance artist and writer known for his work on sadomasochism and lifelong struggle with cystic fibrosis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregg Araki</span> American film director

Gregg Araki is an American filmmaker. He is noted for his heavy involvement with the New Queer Cinema movement. His film Kaboom (2010) was the first winner of the Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Athey</span> American performance artist

Ron Athey is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally. Athey's work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality and traumatic experience. Many of his works include aspects of S&M in order to confront preconceived ideas about the body in relation to masculinity and religious iconography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barney's Beanery</span> Chain of American gastropubs

Barney's Beanery is a chain of gastropubs in the Greater Los Angeles Area. John "Barney" Anthony founded it in 1920 in Berkeley, California, and in 1927 he moved it to U.S. Route 66, now Santa Monica Boulevard, in West Hollywood. As of 2011, Barney's Beanery had locations in Burbank, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Westwood, Redondo Beach at the Redondo Beach Pier and the original in West Hollywood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesbian erotica</span> Visual art depiction of female-female sexuality

Lesbian erotica deals with depictions in the visual arts of lesbianism, which is the expression of female-on-female sexuality. Lesbianism has been a theme in erotic art since at least the time of ancient Rome, and many regard depictions of lesbianism to be erotic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives</span>

ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries is the oldest existing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organization in the United States and one of the largest repositories of LGBT materials in the world. Located in Los Angeles, California, ONE Archives has been a part of the University of Southern California Libraries since 2010. ONE Archives' collections contain over two million items including periodicals; books; film, video and audio recordings; photographs; artworks; ephemera, such as clothing, costumes, and buttons; organizational records; and personal papers. ONE Archives also operates a small gallery and museum space devoted to LGBT art and history in West Hollywood, California. Use of the collections is free during regular business hours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The ArQuives</span> Canadian organization that preserves historical LGBT materials

The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives, formerly known as the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, is a Canadian non-profit organization, founded in 1973 as the Canadian Gay Liberation Movement Archives. The ArQuives acquires, preserves, and provides public access to material and information by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit communities primarily in Canada.

Outfest is an LGBTQ-oriented nonprofit that produces two film festivals, operates a movie streaming platform, and runs educational services for filmmakers in Los Angeles. Outfest is one of the key partners, alongside the Frameline Film Festival, the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, and the Inside Out Film and Video Festival, in launching the North American Queer Festival Alliance, an initiative to further publicize and promote LGBT film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Reigns</span> American poet, artist and activist (born 1975)

Steven Reigns is an American poet, artist and activist known for his poetry publications, his work as West Hollywood's first City Poet, his participatory art projects, his LGBT activism, and his scholarly work on Anaïs Nin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art</span> Visual art museum in New York City, US

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (LLMA), formerly the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, is a visual art museum in SoHo, Lower Manhattan, New York City. It mainly collects, preserves and exhibits visual arts created by LGBTQ artists or art about LGBTQ+ themes, issues, and people. The museum, operated by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, offers exhibitions year-round in numerous locations and owns more than 22,000 objects, including, paintings, drawings, photography, prints and sculpture. It has been recognized as one of the oldest arts groups engaged in the collection and preservation of gay art. The foundation was awarded Museum status by the New York State Board of Regents in 2011 and was formally accredited as a museum in 2016. The museum is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and operates pursuant to their guidelines. As of 2019, the LLMA was the only museum in the world dedicated to artwork documenting the LGBTQ experience.

Celine Parreñas Shimizu is a filmmaker and film scholar. She is well known for her work on race, sexuality and representations. She is currently Dean of the Arts Division at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Laura Aguilar was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributed her start in photography to her brother, who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught, although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College, where her second solo exhibition, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, was held. Aguilar used visual art to bring forth marginalized identities, especially within the LA Queer scene and Latinx communities. Before the term Intersectionality was used commonly, Aguilar captured the largely invisible identities of large bodied, queer, working-class, brown people in the form of portraits. Often using her naked body as a subject, she used photography to empower herself and her inner struggles to reclaim her own identity as “Laura”- a lesbian, fat, disabled, and brown person. Although work on Chicana/os is limited, Aguilar has become an essential figure in Chicano art history and is often regarded as an early "pioneer of intersectional feminism” for her outright and uncensored work. Some of her most well-known works are Three Eagles Flying, The Plush Pony Series, and Nature Self Portraits. Aguilar has been noted for her collaboration with cultural scholars such as Yvonne Yarbo-Berjano and receiving inspiration from other artists like Judy Dater. She was well known for her portraits, mostly of herself, and also focused upon people in marginalized communities, including LGBT and Latino subjects, self-love, and social stigma of obesity.

Richard Hawkins is an American artist. He lives and works in Los Angeles. His works are held by museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tony Greene was a visual artist whose work combines photographic imagery with an overlay of thickly applied decorative patterns or calligraphic letterforms. Rarely exhibited during his lifetime, his work has subsequently staged what the Los Angeles Times describes as "a remarkable posthumous comeback," including a mini-retrospective of Greene's work as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial exhibition, and additional exhibitions held in Chicago and Los Angeles during 2014, including the UCLA Hammer Museum's biennial "Made in LA" exhibition.

Sheree Rose is an American photographer and performance artist. She is best known for her collaborative work with performance artist Bob Flanagan, and her photography documenting a wide range of Los Angeles subcultures, especially in relation to BDSM and body modification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewel's Catch One</span>

Jewel's Catch One was a dance bar owned by Jewel Thais Williams. It was located at 4067 West Pico Boulevard in the Arlington Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Opened in 1973, it was the longest running black gay dance bar in Los Angeles. After nearly closing in 2015, it was purchased by Mitch Edelson and his father Steve Edelson - who reopened under new management. Briefly called Union after the change in management, it has since reverted to the Catch One moniker.

Rikki Streicher (1922–1994) was an American activist and community leader in San Francisco's LGBTQ movement. In the 1960s, she had an active leadership role in the Society for Individual Rights, an organization that promoted equal rights for gays and lesbians. In 1966, she opened and ran Maud's, a year prior to the San Francisco’s Summer of Love; it stayed open for 23 years, at that time the longest continuously running lesbian-owned lesbian bar in the country. She opened a second bar, Amelia’s, in 1978 in the city’s Mission district, with both venues serving as makeshift community centers for lesbians who had very few accepting socializing options. In the early 1980s, she was a co-founder of the international Gay Olympics, later called Gay Games, she helped to create the Federation of Gay Games and served on the board of directors. In 1994, she received the Dr. Tom Waddell Award for her contribution to Gay Athletics.

Homosocialization or LGBT socialization is the process by which LGBT people meet, relate and become integrated in the LGBT community, especially with people of the same sexual orientation and gender identity, helping to build their own identity as well.

Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.

References

  1. "FUCK! Loss, desire, pleasure - ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries".
  2. Lecaro, Lina (26 January 2013). "RIP James Stone: Nightlife Innovator Is Dead".
  3. Henkes, Andrew J. (21 Dec 2013). "A Party for the "Freaks": Performance, Deviance and Communitas at Club Fuck!, 1989–1993". The Journal of American Culture. 36 (4): 284–295. doi:10.1111/jacc.12050.
  4. "The Low L.A. Dee Da Life". 18 November 1998.
  5. Ehrman, Mark (10 January 1993). "Nonconformist Fun". Los Angeles Times.
  6. "Media Fields Journal - Industrial Strength Queer - Industrial Strength Queer: Club Fuck! and the Reorientation of Desire".
  7. "L.A.'s Legendary Queer Night Club". 2016-02-29.
  8. "FUCK! Loss, desire, pleasure - ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries".

34°05′32″N118°16′47″W / 34.09222°N 118.27964°W / 34.09222; -118.27964 [1]

  1. "Club Fuck Turns 20". 5 August 2009.