Hey, Gay Artists! We want to see your Stuff!! QCC presents ZEITGEIST – Big Queer Time Art Show!

 

 

 

 

 

Zeitgeist

Juried Exhibition
SOMArts Gallery
June 1 – 30, 2013
San Francisco, CA

CALL FOR ART
Zeitgeist Exhibition
Zeitgeist Market
Deadline: January 15, 2013
Contact: Zeitgeist@queerculturalcenter.org

Scholars have long maintained that each era has a unique spirit, a nature or climate that sets it apart from all other epochs. In German, such a spirit is known as “Zeitgeist,” from the German words “Zeit,” meaning “time,” and “Geist,” meaning “spirit” or “ghost.” Some writers and artists assert that the true zeitgeist of an era cannot be known until it is over, and several have declared that only artists or philosophers can adequately explain it. While we are not setting out to define a Queer Zeitgeist, the exhibition will expose and comment on manifestations of our cultural moment.

We are looking for artistic expressions that reflect or critique the intellectual, ethical and cultural climate of our queer times.

We hope to present trends in queer arts such as: queer craft, traditional as well as experimental works of painting, drawing, and sculpture, work that foregrounds emotional content and/or performance over formal aesthetics, new ways of representing the erotic, the body, gender and identity, reflections on the queer archive, ideas of domesticity, new ways of thinking about public and private space, queer time, remixed and repurposed work including collage and assemblage, eco/environmental work, the return to analog, all things digital, networked art, manifestations of social practice, relational work, collaborative work, activist art, interventions, propaganda, new approaches to film and video, audio art. International artists that offer a global perspective on queer art making are strongly encouraged to apply.

All media and artistic practices will be considered.

Zeitgeist Market

As part of our exhibition we are creating a one-day art market. If you have an idea, product, craft or performative engagement that you’d like to sell/exchange in our market please describe your product and/or exchange system. Please make it clear in your proposal that you want to be in the Zeitgeist Market.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR Work
DEADLINE: January 15, 2013

Please send the following to: Zeitgeist@queerculturalcenter.org

1. Please send visual documentation of previous work or work in progress. You may submit 2 to 5 jpegs, video links to YouTube or Vimeo or web links to images or projects. Please carefully label your images beginning with your last name and image number (example: Lastname_Image1.jpg).

2. Please include a Work Sample list describing each sample. (Title, Date, Medium)

2. If you are submitting a proposal for an installation please submit a detailed description and plan for your project including rough dimensions and any special hardware or rigging requirements.

3. For all other non-traditional media, please submit a proposal no longer that 2 pages with an appropriate work sample that will help the curators understand your idea. Please feel free to contact the exhibition coordinator if you are uncertain about what to submit. Zeitgeist@queerculturalcenter.org

4. A brief resume

5. A brief statement explaining how your work addresses the exhibition’s theme. How does your work reflect or critique the intellectual, ethical and cultural climate of our queer times.

Please send your submission via email to Zeitgeist@queerculturalcenter .org

Our Mailing Address is:

Queer Cultural Center (Qcc)
c/o African American Art and Culture Complex
762 Fulton Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Note: Arrangements and expenses for shipping/delivery/retrieval are the responsibility of the artist. All non-installation must arrive/be delivered “ready to hang.” Artworks are insured by the gallery from the time they enter the gallery until they leave.

Happy Gay Thanksgiving … 1986!

Ronald Reagan Sex Scandal! White and Genet! And turkey in bed. Gobble, Gobble, boys! From the archives of Advocate magazine, this cover is from 1986. For Happy Homoerotic Thanksgiving Day … 1928, click here.

Happy Homoerotic Thanksgiving Day …1928!

These two staunch white guys look about ready to eat each other up. Looks like the pilgrim has already started to unwrap the football player. TV didn’t link the holiday to the sport after all. Something seems to be missing from this scenario, though. Where are the First Nation studs? Maybe planning a little dessert entertainment for these two…all in good, clean fun. Of course.

SF Eagle to Re-Open!?

It’s been over a year now, and the City of San Francisco has been without one of its iconic Leather bars, The SF Eagle. This site’s most popular post ever heralded its loss. In a city where real estate is at a premium, the expansive patio had for years provided a big outdoor space where Old Leather and New Gear, club brothers and Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Queers of all spots and stripes and even friendly str8 hipsters and visiting moms could all relax, if not quite mix. For the last year, a group of die-hards has occupied other bars for monthly Eagle in Exile events. Now, it seems, the bar is set to re-open…under gay ownership. There has been a lot of weird back-room politics on this one, and there was a moment when it appeared that the place would be delivered to straights. And now?

The New SF Eagle states on their website:

“It will take a couple of months to do the much-needed repairs and upgrades that the property requires, but some upcoming events are already in the works prior to the opening of the bar. Please check this website periodically for new announcements coming soon.

The bar and patio located at 398 12th Street has long been a special place, not only to the LGBT community, but to the entire community for decades, not to mention the live music community as well. We just couldn’t let such a historic place like this disappear!

We will continue to host fundraisers for all the organizations from the past, as well as welcoming new ones to make the S.F. Eagle the pride of our community once again.

We look forward to seeing all of you very soon!”

Well…Cool! Looking forward to the re-opening with (guarded) optimism!

Eagle Poster by Uyvari, 1981. This poster, and lots of other hot, hard art will be on display at the Tough Love exhibit in San Francisco during the month of September. Cum out and see sum!

An ancient ritual: Beating the Bounds for Gangdays…and whipping some boys on the way.

Beating the Bounds: an ancient ritual still practiced today in the British Isles. Communities traditionally reinscribed the boundaries of their parishes by walking the edges carrying sticks, pounding on the boundary marking stones. In an era before maps were common, when literacy was rare, these annual events (also called “gangdays”) were intended to impress upon everyone where community boundaries lay. Since resources were allocated according to parish, it was vital that the knowledge was passed down accurately though successive generations. It also helped keep the neighbors in line. To reinforce the lesson, the gangs would (and d0) stop occasionally to literally beat the knowledge into the boys. Sometimes, the youngsters would also be flung against the rocky stiles. All in good fun! Part of a suite of jolly old British customs that includes flogging the peg boys.

Big Gay Boat Trip: Jack Fritscher on Going Down on the Titanic

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Honcho magazine published in serial form a short novel by author and advocate of homomasculinity Jack Fritscher. This weekend, Palm Drive Press is publishing his Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew, 100th Anniversary Collectors’ Edition.

Fritscher notices the details and comments on contemporary media reportage, saying: “In movie-newsreel footage shot three days later on the deck of the rescue ship Carpathia immediately after it docked in New York, a dozen of the surviving Titanic crew, mostly sailor lads in tight white pants hiding little, showing lots, can be seen in very intimate horseplay, camping around, and posing in life jackets, pretending to faint. Of the 885 male crew on Titanic, 693 (or 78%) died. Altogether, 1,352 men perished. If, according to Kinsey, one out of six ordinary men is gay, then 225 gay men died. If two out of six in the travel industry are gay, 450 gay men died, making the Titanic an overlooked but essential chapter in gay history.”

Looking forward to this read! Flip open the cover…take a deep breath and…go down. Speaking of sweet-looking sailors, click here and here. Studio Royale’s take on ship discipline here. More on the gay implications of the Titanic and That Sinking Feeling here.

Club Turkish Baths

More from the Gay Museum mini-exhibit on gay bathhouses here and here.

Activist in Chains: Life and Death in Black and White

From the exhibit Life and Death in Black and White. Photographers Jane Philomen Cleland, Patrick Clifton, Marc Geller, Rick Gerharter and Daniel Nicoletta picture AIDS activists and actions from the key years between 1985 – 1990. More on this exhibit here. See this small show concurrently with the long-running sampler of the museum’s collection: Our Vast Queer Past. above: April 7th, 1989, UN Plaza, San Francisco. Unidentified member of ACT UP/SF in chains protesting INS exclusion of tourists and potential immigrants with HIV/AIDS. Photo: Marc Geller.

Bathhouses: Coming Together or Waiting Outside?

From the exhibit Our Vast Gay Past at the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco. More on the bathhouse display here.

Danger! Don’t throw WHAT Where?!

Constructing a damn dam. The Hoover? No context for this strange sign. Was throwing workers into the ravine a real issue? Collection of Gay Highwaymen.