Liberation!
[Last updated: 14.06.2006 15:57]
I've been asked to write an article about disco for this Sunday's edition of Liberazione,
the leftist Italian newspaper. I thought I'd post the English version
of the article here, but if you're in Italy this coming weekend and
would prefer to read Francesco WARBEAR Macarone Palmieri's translation,
which will definitely be more sonorous
than the original, why not go ahead and buy a copy of the newspaper?
While you're there, maybe you could pick up a copy for me as well? Oh,
and some parmegiano plus five packets of saffron, please?
The "Disco: Liberation of the Body" piece was commissioned in advance of next weekend's Queer Jubilee III festival, and Liberazione is running a special feature on the festival, which is where my piece will appear. For more info on the festival, visit www.phagoff.org. It's racy stuff ⎯ racy enough for Warbear to have been censored three times by MySpace ⎯ so I can't wait. I'll be speaking on Friday night and think I'll be talking around 11pm, after which I'll be DJing for an hour or two. Warbear, any chance we can skip the talk and get straight into the music?
I met Warbear when I spoke in Bologna a few months ago alongside my good friend, colleague and Lucky Cloud partner-in-dance Jeremy Gilbert. We talked about the gay/queer continuum in disco/dance, and made the point that the body enters into a different dimension on the darkened dance floor. It's certainly not a straight dimension, and it's not obviously gay, either. Confounding identity, it's more of a queer space ⎯ or, in Foucauldian/Deleuzian terms, an affective space organised around pleasure and sensation. You don't have to be a cultural theorist to get this.
Warbear enjoyed the Bologna tango enough to invite me to talk at the Queer Jubilee festival and it looks like it'll be quite a weekend. I'll be flying to Italy on Friday late afternoon and will be shooting back ⎯ probably straight from the venue ⎯ on the 10:00-a.m. flight the next morning. On the Saturday afternoon Enrica, Carlotta and I will be putting on a birthday party for Ilaria ⎯ she'll be one! ⎯ and on the Sunday the Lucky Cloud Sound System's will be celebrating its Third Anniversary with party featuring David Mancuso (the Loft) at the Light. For more info, visit www.loftparty.org.
I'm planning to stay in on Monday night…
The "Disco: Liberation of the Body" piece was commissioned in advance of next weekend's Queer Jubilee III festival, and Liberazione is running a special feature on the festival, which is where my piece will appear. For more info on the festival, visit www.phagoff.org. It's racy stuff ⎯ racy enough for Warbear to have been censored three times by MySpace ⎯ so I can't wait. I'll be speaking on Friday night and think I'll be talking around 11pm, after which I'll be DJing for an hour or two. Warbear, any chance we can skip the talk and get straight into the music?
I met Warbear when I spoke in Bologna a few months ago alongside my good friend, colleague and Lucky Cloud partner-in-dance Jeremy Gilbert. We talked about the gay/queer continuum in disco/dance, and made the point that the body enters into a different dimension on the darkened dance floor. It's certainly not a straight dimension, and it's not obviously gay, either. Confounding identity, it's more of a queer space ⎯ or, in Foucauldian/Deleuzian terms, an affective space organised around pleasure and sensation. You don't have to be a cultural theorist to get this.
Warbear enjoyed the Bologna tango enough to invite me to talk at the Queer Jubilee festival and it looks like it'll be quite a weekend. I'll be flying to Italy on Friday late afternoon and will be shooting back ⎯ probably straight from the venue ⎯ on the 10:00-a.m. flight the next morning. On the Saturday afternoon Enrica, Carlotta and I will be putting on a birthday party for Ilaria ⎯ she'll be one! ⎯ and on the Sunday the Lucky Cloud Sound System's will be celebrating its Third Anniversary with party featuring David Mancuso (the Loft) at the Light. For more info, visit www.loftparty.org.
I'm planning to stay in on Monday night…