BGSQD

Born After 1989
2014-03-28 20:00 - 23:55 (America/New_York) | NY
Tonight’s poetry reading is in conjunction with the renowned exhibition, “Poetry Will be Made for All,” at the LUMA/Westbau exhibition space, within Löwenbräukunst, in Zurich, Switzerland curated by Kenneth Goldsmith, Danny Snelson and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Tonight’s reading will be hosted by Felix Bernstein, Skyped in to Zurich, photographed by ArtForum, with press from the Village Voice, Rhizome, Frieze, and n+1 in attendance. All of tonight’s readers will be profiled in jacket 2. Two of tonight’s readers will be selected by Obrist for profile pieces in Bomb Magazine. Several audience members will also be selected to participate in a roundtable discussion for Grey Room (MIT Press) on ‘audiences in the age of digital poetics.’

Readers:

Jameson Fitzpatrick lives in New York, where he is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Awl, The American Reader, The Los Angeles Review, and POETRY, among elsewhere.
https://jameson-fitzpatrick.tumblr.com/
https://poetrywillbemadebyall.ch/book/morrisoe-erasures/

Deanna Havas was born in New York City in 1989, where she currently lives and works. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011. In 2012 she exhibited in a solo exhibition at NP Contemporary Art/Envoy Enterprises in New York. Some of her recent exhibitions include a commissioned piece for Rhizome’s The Download and an e-book published through Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York. She also recently completed a residency at the LUMA /Westbau as part of the 89+ project in Zürich.
www.deannahavas.com

Cornelia Barber is the author of ‘Before I Am Lost’ a critical novella. Her latest work is a set of poems, Grace Holes, on the dialectics of pleasure, god and form. “his ass holes running spectacular juices / moaning for affection as if / it is you that must cradle him / bandage his wounds that / he made himself. / Impulse will infiltrate the surface of whatever / form you find yourself consumed by.”

Gil Lawson is a writer from Santa Fe, NM. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, n+1, Triple Canopy, Metazen, KTBAFC, and others. He received the Bard College Written Arts Prize in May of 2013.

Paco Catart is a musician and writer. “KccLhhlckk- and there’s the hateful pink jelly / broken into bits / like a shattered bottle of frozen cough syrup / or human mucus. / There’s the jelly / beneath my sneaker.” pacocathcart.bandcamp.com

Joshua Kleinberg is a barback, an MFA candidate in Poetry & Translation at Columbia University and the curator (with Dana Jaye Cadman) of Banquet Reading Series in Brooklyn. His work has received awards from Ohio State University and The Academy of American Poets and has been anthologized in Chorus: A Literary Mixtape (2012, MTV Books).
gentleslant.net

Cassie Seltman’s book is called Palimpsest: Columbus. “A sneeze in my nose. Spit, mom says. I spit. Mom pokes at the spit with her fingers. She opens the tissue blown into, it’s definitely green. You have something. If you were healthy it would be paler. More yellow.”

Clara Lipfert is a writer and performer whose work has been featured in Illuminati Girl Gang, the Scrambler, and MIX NYC. As one half of the curatorial/performance project HAG, she has performed at Grace Exhibition Space and the Invisible Dog Art Center. She also writes reviews for the Helix Queer Performance Network. hagcollective.tumblr.com

TELL 2: SUMMER
2014-03-23 19:00 - 23:00
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
Summer is the theme of the second installment of TELL.
Featuring special guests:
Camille Atkinson
Susana Cook
Katrina del Mar
Marcus Hicks
This event is free. We will pass a hat on behalf of the performers.
The Bureau is not wheelchair accessible–up one flight of stairs.
The Bureau has a gender-neutral bathroom.
About the featured guests:

New York vocalist Camille Atkinson was born in the Midwest and raised in New Orleans. She preforms regularly in the New York area with rockNrollNsoul band Empire Beats , co-writing songs, and co-producing the monthly Juke Joint Revue at the Parkside Lounge with Mark Boquist. She’s become a popular hostess in the NY Burlesque scene, and is always looking to take It to the next level. She came in second this Year in Murray Hill’s Miss LEZ pageant and she wants to cook for you.

https://camillebatkinson.com

Born in Argentina, Susana Cook is a New York based performance artist who has been writing and producing original work for over 20 years. She has presented over 17 original plays in New York and around the world. Susana writes and directs all her shows and performs in them with her company . Her work is bold, cleverly tackling racism, homophobia and animal rights. Her cast is comprised mostly of minority and queer women. Her work has been presented in numerous performance spaces in New York City, including Dixon Place, PS. 122, W.O.W Cafe Theater, Ubu Rep, Theater for the New City, The Puffin Room and The Kitchen. She also performed internationally in Spain, France, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and at several colleges and universities around the country.
Some of her latest plays are : We Are Caligula, The Funeral of the Cow, The Homophobes, The Fury of the Gods, Homeland Insecurities, The idiot King, The Values Horror Show, 100 Years of Attitude, Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats:The Fantasy of Extermination and Tango Lesbiango
Her work is archived at the Digital Video Library of The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics of New York University.

Photo by Daniel Jack Lyons

Katrina del Mar is a New York-based photographer, video artist, writer and award-winning film director. Her work has been described as “beautiful” exuding an “intimate chemistry” and also as “filth of the highest quality.” Katrina herself has been described as a “major league cutie,” “a wild woman,” “the Lesbian Russ Meyer,” and “apparently, the lesbian stepchild of Kenneth Anger.” Her solo exhibition GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS was presented in January 2013 at Participant Inc. in New York. Her solo exhibition, Gangs of New York was presented in 2010 at Wrong Weather Gallery in Porto, Portugal. Invited to teach at the University of the Arts in Bremen, Germany, she conducted the first ever “Queer Trash Feminist Film Workshop,” also in 2010. In 2012, she presented a series of films and photographs from the Golden Age of Performance Art (1988-2000 with Dona Ann McAdams, On the Edge of Society: Moments in Live Art, at Warehouse 9, Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work has shown at Deitch Projects, NY; Museum for Contemporary Art (CAPC), Bordeaux, France; American Fine Arts Company, NY; Binz 39, Zurich, Switzerland; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Miami Light Project; P.S.122, NY; FabLab, Berlin; and the University of Cardiff, Wales.
Her first film, Gang Girls 2000, shot entirely on super 8mm film, received a four and a half star review in Film Threat magazine, among other glowing reviews, inviting comparisons to the legendary Kenneth Anger. The follow up, Surf Gang, about a gang of women surfers from Rockaway Beach, landed del Mar a fellowship in video from the New York Foundation for the Arts, “Best Experimental Film” from the Planet Out Short Movie Awards announced at the Sundance Film Festival 2006, and was screened at the Museum for Contemporary Art (CAPC), Bordeaux, France.
Her latest film project, Hell on Wheels Gang Girls Forever, completes the Girl Gang Trilogy and was the recipient of the 2010 Accolade Award of Merit. Recent screenings include Girl Gang Trilogy, Nightingale Cinema, co-presented by Chicago Underground Film Festival, 2012; Super 8 Film Portraits, curated by Stephanie Gray, Millennium Film Workshop, NY, 2012; Surf Gang (excerpt), Sound & Light, and winner of Juried Competition, Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2012; Girl Gang Trilogy, Fringe Film Festival, London, UK, 2012; and Girl Gang Trilogy, Bio Paradis, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2012.

Marcus Hicks is a designer/performer living in Brooklyn NY. Originally from Ca. SDNBrooklyn.com

Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement with Author Ralf Dose
2014-03-23 14:00 - 15:30
Join author Ralf Dose for a discussion of his new biography of Magnus Hirschfeld: Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. Ralf Dose illuminates Hirschfeld’s ground-breaking role in the gay liberation movement and explains some of his major theoretical concepts, which continue to influence our understanding of human sexuality and social justice today.
STARTING AT 2 PM SHARP!

Ralf Dose is the co-founder and director of the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft (Magnus Hirschfeld Society) in Berlin. He writes widely on sex education, homosexuality, the gay movement, the history of sex research, and has lectured at the Berlin Free University and Hannover University.

An intimate evening of readings by Xeňa Stanislavovna Semjonová, Kevin Simmonds, and Joseph Whitt
2014-03-22 19:00 - 22:00
The Bureau of General Services – Queer Division invites you to an intimate evening of readings by Xeňa Stanislavovna Semjonová, Kevin Simmonds, and Joseph Whitt.

Xeňa Stanislavovna Semjonová is a poet, artist, and a translator living in New York City. Originally from Slovakia, she has performed in venues such as Dixon Place, Bowery Poetry Club, The Poetry Project, RADAR, SPECTRUM NYC, Strange Maine, Happy Endings, GRRRLS on FILM, Nicholas Robinson Gallery, and others. She was selected as a 2013 Poets House Fellow, and was also the recipient of the 2013 QAM Fellowship. She is currently working on her first full-length novel entitled SHE, and is curator of the WHAT NOW audio anthology supported by the Jerome Foundation and the Raymond Federman Foundation of Experimental Fiction.

Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include the full-length collections bend to it and Mad for Meat (both from Salmon Poetry), and the edited works Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Ota Benga Under my Mother’s Roof (University of South Carolina). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as Emmett Till, a river and the Emmy Award-winning documentary HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica. A recipient of fellowships and commissions from Cave Canem, Creative Work Fund, Fulbright, the Pulitzer Center, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, he divides his time between Japan and San Francisco.

Originally from Alabama, Joseph Whitt is an artist, writer and independent curator living and working in New York City. His work has been presented at MOMA PS1, PPOW Gallery, Eyedrum, Deitch Projects, CRG Gallery, Envoy Enterprises, and Interstate Projects, and has been reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, and Sculpture. His writings have appeared in Art Papers, ArtUS, Useless Magazine and K48. He has released two chapbooks of poetry – 09.29.12 and Defriendings (both from T.M.I. Ltd.) – and is currently working on a third.

Publications by the authors will be available for purchase.
This event is free and open to the public.

Poetry Reading with Ocean Vuong, Jason Schneiderman, Amy King
2014-03-21 19:00 - 21:00
The Bureau General Services—Queer Division is thrilled to host three award-winning poets, who bring beauty, emotional depth, intelligence, and honed craft to each of their works. Introductions by Lawrence Kaplun. This is a reading you don’t want to miss, so put it on your calendar today.

Ocean Vuong is the author of two chapbooks, BURNINGS, and NO (YesYesBooks, 2013). He is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, and The Saltonstall Foundation. His poems have appeared in many journals including The Nation, Quarterly West, Passages North, Guernica, The Normal School, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Magazine, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the 2012 Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets.

Jason Schneiderman is the author of two books of poetry, SUBLIMATION POINT, and STRIKING SURFACE (Ashland Press, 2010). His poems and essays on contemporary poetry have appeared in many journals including American Poetry Review, Court Green, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Grand Street, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is an Assistant Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Amy King is the author of five books of poetry, including I WANT TO MAKE YOU SAFE (Litmus Press, 2011) and THE MISSING MUSEUM (forthcoming, 2014). Her poems and prose have appeared in Boston Review, The Rumpus, and Poetry Magazine. She serves on the Executive Board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY-Nassau Community College.

Closets, Combat and Coming Out: A Reading, Signing, and Q&A With Author Rob Smith
2014-03-19 19:00 - 21:00
Closets, Combat and Coming Out author Rob Smith will have brief remarks regarding the 11th anniversary of the Iraq War, and he will read from his new memoir. Signing and a Q&A afterwards. This event will be filmed for an upcoming docuseries. Attendees have the option not to appear on camera.

Rob Smith is an openly gay Iraq war veteran, journalist, lecturer, and LGBT Activist. He served for 5 years in the United States Army as an Infantryman, earning the Army Commendation Medal and Combat Infantry Badge. After graduating with honors from Syracuse University, he became a freelance journalist and opinion writer, with work published at Salon.com, Metro Weekly, The Advocate, CNN.com, and The Huffington Post among many others. In November 2010, he was arrested with 12 other LGBT military veterans and civilian activists at the front gates of the White House while protesting the U.S. Military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) law, which barred open military service by gays and lesbians. In December of that same year, he was an invited guest of President Barack Obama at the ceremony which saw the repeal of the discriminatory law be signed and put into effect.
Rob is a sought after lecturer on LGBT and diversity issues on college campuses and events across the country. He has lectured at Virginia Tech, Vanderbilt University, Hofstra University, Illinois College, and Buena Vista University among many others. In August of 2012, he made his literary debut in the anthology book For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Was Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home, which won the 2012 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award and was recently nominated for the 2012 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT anthology. Closets, Combat, and Coming Out: Coming of Age as a Gay Man in the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Army is his first full-length work as a solo author.

Future Perfect Reading at The Brooklyn Community Pride Center
2014-03-17 18:30 - 20:30
Join the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division at The Brooklyn Community Pride Center in a celebration of the Bureau’s book Future Perfect, edited by Andrew Durbin and published by Publication Studio.
Several of the contributors to Future Perfect will be at the event, some of whom will read their contributions, including Felix Bernstein, Ted Kerr, Justin Allen and Yulan Grant of BDGRMMR (pronounced BADGRAMMAR). Yulan’s work is a video that she’ll project while Justin reads the poem that inspired the video–both titled Black Atlantis.
The book Future Perfect will be available for purchase at the event. The cost is $26, and the proceeds go to supporting the Bureau’s work. Cash and credit card payments accepted.

Future Perfect includes contributions from:
Penny Arcade
Felix Bernstein
Stephen Boyer
Lonely Christopher
Nicole Eisenman
BDGRMMR
Bruce Hainley
Ed Halter
Juliana Huxtable
Ted Kerr
Kevin Killian
Wayne Koestenbaum
Rachel Levitsky
Trisha Low
Stephen Motika
Eileen Myles
Tim Trace Peterson
Luther Price
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Pamela Sneed
Max Steele
Laurie Weeks
JOIN US!!!

Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers--Reading by Author Anne Balay Followed by Discussion
2014-03-16 19:00 - 21:00
Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers (University of North Carolina Press, April 2014) explores how sexuality and gender overlap in the sprawling steel mills of Northwest Indiana. Drawing from extensive, detailed oral histories taken of a previously silent and invisible population, it investigates how gay, lesbian, and transgender steelworkers interact with their co-workers, communities and families in the context of their physically demanding, risky work. It explains how and why basic steel mills are inhospitable, even dangerous to queers, and demonstrates that we can’t understand what it means to be GLBT without including working-class, blue-collar voices and stories.

Photo by Riva Lehrer
Anne Balay has taught English and Gender Studies in Chicago, and in Gary, Indiana, where she did most of the interviews that led to her book.

Launching Kelly Cogswell's Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger and Susana Cook's Queering the Classics: A Benefit for the Lesbian Avengers Documentary Project
2014-03-15 19:00 - 22:00
Join two of your favorite fire-eating dykes to celebrate their new books and raise money for the Lesbian Avenger Documentary Project. Writer Kelly Cogswell will read from her brand new memoir, Eating Fire: My Live as a Lesbian Avenger, and Argentinean icon Susana Cook will present Queering the Classics: Hamletango, Dykenstein, and We Are Caligula, a new collection of her theatrical work.

Suggested donation of $5 to support Lesbian Avenger Documentary Project (no one will be turned away)

“Veering between Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dyke and Rebel Without a Pause, Cogswell’s memoir of the Lesbian Avengers is incisive, politically astute, and a much needed addition to LGBT history.” —Michael Bronski, Harvard University

Since setting out from Kentucky armed only with an electric typewriter, a stack of poems, and willingness to do the bare minimum as a maid, a dishwasher, and temporary secretary, Kelly Cogswell has fended off beer bottles from angry Irish bigots, eaten fire in front of the White House, co-founded pioneering projects like The Gully online magazine offering “queer views on everything”, and pursued a career as indy journalist specializing in society, culture, and politics. Her work has appeared in a range of venues including the International Herald Tribune, Louisville’s Courier-Journal, and THIS WAY OUT: the international lesbian & gay radio magazine. Her column in New York’s Gay City News has been recognized by the New York Press Association. She is the director of the Lesbian Avenger Documentary Project.

“Susana Cook is among the best artists working in America, doing cultural work that will transform the way we see things” – Martha Wilson, Franklin Furnace

Susana Cook is an icon of the lesbian underground. Born in Argentina, the New York based performance artist has been writing and producing original work both solo and with her own theatrical company comprised mostly of minority and queer women. Her internationally recognized work boldly and cleverly tackles political issues like racism, homophobia and animal rights. Her plays include: We Are Caligula, The Funeral of the Cow, The Homophobes, The Fury of the Gods, Homeland Insecurities, The idiot King, The Values Horror Show, 100 Years of Attitude, Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats: The Fantasy of Extermination, and Tango Lesbiango. Her variety show, The Service Economy Vaudeville, was instrumental in introducing a range of new voices to the New York performance scene.

Publishing Puppies: Book Launch and Screening of Two Lakes at BGSQD
2014-03-14 19:00 - 22:00
Publishing Puppies, a small press based in Berlin, is launching its most recent book, Two Lakes.
The book is an illustrated version of a short experimental film under the same name, Two Lakes, a queer experience relayed over vibrant canvases, will also be screened that day.
Both projects, film and book, have been a collaboration project between artists Amelia Bande, Deborah Bower, Mat Fleming and Annette Knol.
We are thrilled to introduce Publishing Puppies in New York City, all our books will be for sale at the event. https://publishing-puppies.tumblr.com/

About Two Lakes, the film:
A handmade camera-less film, Two Lakes was collectively created from piles of luscious colour gels, cut, stuck and manipulated into 16mm film echoing a narrated story. A teenager moves to the big city, a universal city without a name. In between low-pay jobs, lesbian parties and junk food, she makes new friends and falls in love. Life as a sort of margin, following the words of a street preacher, telling stories and making songs in the middle of the night. The outcome is a fast-pace explosion of shapes and colours that shine and blink, creating a parallel universe to the experience of a young woman wandering through a new life.
By Amelia Bande, Deborah Bower, Mat Fleming & Annette Knol 2012, NL/UK/DE, 16mm-to-video, color, sound, 7:36 min.
The film Two Lakes was produced during a residency at Filmwerkplaats, WORM in Rotterdam, it has been selected for the MIX 26th NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, the London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Film London Artists´ Moving Image Network.

About Two Lakes, the book:
by Deborah Bower & Annette Knol (February 2014)
Script by Amelia Bande
Publishing Puppies #4
First Edition, 75 copies
24 pages, 23,5 x 17cm
Printed by Deborah Bower & Annette Knol with Copyroboter at Kotti-Shop, Berlin.

What MIX 26th NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival wrote about Two Lakes:
A visually stunning cameraless film. Luminous color gels explode across 16mm film to create a luscious tapestry of hues accompanied by a voice-over narrative of a teenage moving to “The City” – which remains nameless to evoke mythologies of the metropolis. Two Lakes, in this way, challenges pereception through medium and narrative. The youngster’s excitement for their first queer party and the hustle of city life is paralleled by our excitement for this new kind of film that makes the camera unnecessary. A colorful delight that is sure to open your eyes as well as your hearts.

Screening of Gay Sex in the 70s followed by Q & A with Director Joseph Lovett
2014-03-13 19:00 - 22:00
Gay Sex in the 70s is a stunning visual document of New York during the decade of gay liberation and sexual abandon following Stonewall and before the outbreak of AIDS. Gay men cruised the streets, frequented gay bars, and, of course, had loads and loads of sex everywhere. But only 12 years after Stonewall, AIDS brought this unprecedented era of sexual Freedom to a close.
Lovett expertly mixes archival footage and interviews with those who lived through the times, including author/activist Larry Kramer, photographer Tom Bianchi, and the former business manager of the St. Marks Baths. From Greenwich Village to the Fire Island Pines, Gay Sex in the 70s celebrates a city and an era with the unbridled joy that characterized the decade, while at the same time offering a sobering reminder of the AIDS crisis that followed.
The DVD of Gay Sex in the 70s is available for purchase at the Bureau.

Joseph Lovett is an award-winning filmmaker, whose films have informed, engaged and inspired people into action. After working at ABC News 20/20 for ten years as director/producer, Joe founded the company in 1989. During the 1990s, Joe produced, in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and ABC, In A New Light prime time specials, a 5-year AIDS awareness campaign that flooded the CDC’s AIDS hotline with an unprecedented number of calls. In 2001, Joe won a Peabody Award and received an Emmy nomination for writing, producing and directing HBO’s Cancer: Evolution to Revolution. The film was the focus of a national public health campaign, which described it as “150 minutes of television that could save your life” and launched a national conversation about coping, treating and learning to live with the realities of cancer. His highly acclaimed feature, Gay Sex in the 70s, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was released theatrically in over 25 cities, and broadcast on the Sundance Channel in 2007. Joe’s latest film, Going Blind, and its Outreach Campaign, Going Blind and Going Forward, have ignited a global movement of individuals, grassroots organizations and medical professionals sponsoring screenings to raise awareness and to improve access to vision enhancement services. Other broadcast films Joe has directed and/or produced include The Way Home, a one-hour special on forgiveness for the Hallmark Channel; State of Denial, a film on the AIDS crisis in South Africa; and Too Hot Not to Handle, an HBO film on Global Warming. Over the years, Joe has been honored with numerous awards from advocacy organizations, including the AIDS Leadership Award, the Christopher Award, and the Kitty Carlisle Hart Award.

38 WITNESSED HER DEATH, I WITNESSED HER LOVE: THE LONELY SECRET OF MARY ANN ZIELONKO (Kitty Genovese Story) A One-Act Play Written and Performed by LuLu LoLo
2014-03-12 19:00 - 21:00
Based on personal interviews with Mary Ann Zielonko
A Staged Reading to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Kitty Genovese
38 WITNESSED HER DEATH, I WITNESSED HER LOVE: THE LONELY SECRET OF MARY ANN ZIELONKO (Kitty Genovese Story) written and performed by LuLu LoLo is a four part/three character drama in which LuLu portrays “The Chorus of 38”; the New York Times City Editor A.M. Rosenthal recalling the murder and the Times headline story; Winston Moseley testifying at his trial which convicted him of the murder; and Kitty’s lover Mary Ann Zielonko reminiscing after 40 years of silence about gay life in New York in the 60’s, her life with Kitty, the murder, the trial, and its aftermath
Herstory:
Fifty years ago on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally murdered in Kew Gardens, Queens, NY. Forty years later it was revealed that Kitty was a lesbian and living with her lover Mary Ann Zielonko at the time of her death. At the time of Kitty’s murder, the New York Times reported that 38 people witnessed her being attacked in three separate incidents—38 people heard her cries for help—And not one person called the police or came to her aid. Her death and the silence of the witnesses became a worldwide symbol of the apathy of the modern city.
In 2004, LuLu LoLo was granted an interview with Mary Ann Zielonko which LuLu developed into the “Mary Ann Monologue” that was first performed at the Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival in Columbus, Ohio in 2004. Due to popular demand, LuLu in 2006 developed this monologue into a one-act play to include a portrayal of The New York Times Editor, A.M. Rosenthal, and Kitty’s murderer Winston Moseley. In 2009 LuLu incorporated choreography by Jody Oberfelder and her dance company into the production which was performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Mary Ann Zielonko attended the first performance of this production.
Quotes from reviews:
“The performance that steals your heart…I was moved to tears…”. Bill Kaiser, On the Purple Circuit
”This deeply affecting play features performance artist LoLo as multi-character monologist in the brilliant Anna Deveare Smith vein…” Eva Yaa Asantewaa Infinite Bodyblogspot.com
“This is riveting theater, with intensity and passion..” Elizabeth Ahlfors www.curtainup.com
Biography:
LuLu LoLo is a playwright/actor, international performance artist, and multi-disciplinary artist. LuLu has written and performed seven one-person plays Off-Broadway highlighting her Italian immigrant family heritage, her passion for historical research and social justice especially as pertaining to the dramatic struggle of women in New York City’s past on such subjects as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire; the lesbian lover of murder victim Kitty Genovese; the murder of Helen Jewett; women who fought in the Civil War disguised as men; and Aaron Burr’s tragic relationship with his daughter Theodosia Burr Alston. Her latest play portrayed the shameful treatment of the women consigned to the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. LuLu recently performed on 14th Street for Art in Odd Places as “Loretta the Telephone Operator” in “Remembrance of Phone Numbers Past” attempting to connect passers-by on the street with the earliest phone numbers they remember. LuLu’s current projects are “Obits” a play based on lives revealed in obituaries, and a book based on the letters written to the late controversial East Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio. LuLu was a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer in Residence, and has been named a 2013 Blade of Grass Fellow, www.abladeofgrass.org
www.lululolo.com
LuLu LoLa’s fan page on Facebook

The Values Perform at the Bureau
2014-03-08 20:00 - 22:00
The Values
This fresh Brooklyn-based rock band wants to open your eyes to stellar music. Hailing from China, Nashville, and Los Angeles, the three-piece band sweeps sizzling dance tracks into sultry ballads and electrifying blues. Let your heart skip over the sidewalk. Damocles, drama queens, everyone’s invited! The Values are your friends!
thevalues.bandcamp.com

Images from a Different Path
2014-03-06 19:00 - 22:00
Join photographer Efrain John Gonzalez for a presentation of 30 years of his photography, a slideshow of his photographs of the golden era of the Meat Packing District’s gay and fetish scenes. The presentation draws from an incredible collection of images from the Hellfire Press archives. Come and relive a hidden past.

Efrain John Gonzalez is a photographer who’s talents with a camera bend to the unusual, the erotic, the unique, the wild and slightly crazy, from the world of body modifications to the universe of radical S&M, from sensual beauty of the flesh, to raw sexual desires. An internationally published photographer who for the past 30 years has been seeking real life images that tell a story of people finding the path to their souls, finding their bliss, with piercing, branding, cuttings, tattoos, latex, implants, leather, and a whole lot of radical sex and sexuality. He has traveled from coast to coast to find images of people exploring their limits, discovering and living with their own self-defined cultural tribes of beauty, pleasure, joy, and self-realization. People who take the forbidden, and turn it into an empowering statement of their own. People who see their bodies as a blank canvas, and allow their imaginations and dreams to come to life upon a living canvas. Whether that canvas be painted with ink, pierced and molded by blade, or covered in latex and leather of colors that would put the peacock to shame

Much of his photographic imagery was taken at events such as Living in leather (Portland, Chicago), The Fetish Factor (East Village), the SMACK parties, Wigstock (Tompkins Square), The Eulenspiegel Society (New York City), Mayday (Seattle), The Black Rose (Washington D.C). The Power Exchange, and The Fetish Fantasy Flea market (Boston). Some of his work has been compared to that of other famous photographers, such as Robert Mapplethorpe, and Helmut Newton, but he prefers to see his work more in the light of such photographers as Weegee, W. Eugene Smith, and Erich Salomon. Their dedication and artistry allowed them to use the camera to capture the living core of human experiences.

What the artist tries to tell us through his lens is the idea that these forms of radical play and alternate cultures are not the symptom of some bizarre mental illness, not anti-social behavior, or a sign of society disintegrating into degeneracy that it has so long been perceived to be by those who fail or refuse to understand or accept it, but that these cultures are a natural outreach of the curious and an exploration of the self by those chosen few who’s inner voices dare them to walk down forbidden paths to seek an inner truth.

Photograph: Efrain John Gonzalez. Beautiful Francis working the old West Side Highway. Circa 1986. Photo from the Hellfire Press Archive.

TELL
2014-02-28 19:00 - 22:00
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC. Hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division. Magic is the theme of the first installment of TELL.

Featuring special guests: Heather María Ács, Merrie Cherry, Mizz June, Foxy Squire, and Judy Yu.

This event is free. We will pass a hat on behalf of the performers.
The Bureau is not wheelchair accessible–up one flight of stairs.
The Bureau has a gender-neutral bathroom.

Heather María Ács is a performing artist, activist, curator, educator and high-femme troublemaker. Her work has been featured in festivals, theatres, galleries, conferences, and universities internationally. She is the Co-Director of Heels on Wheels, a queer femme-inine spectrum, all genders performance group. Heather has worked with Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Nao Bustamante, Lois Weaver, J. Ed Araiza (SITI Company), and Paula Pell (SNL). Film credits include Building No. 7, dir. Steven Soderbergh; blink, dir. Silas Howard; Sunset Stories (SXSW); and Michelle in Valencia (the movies): Chapter 9 based on the novel by Michelle Tea. Heather has worked as a teaching artist in NYC public schools for over a decade. heatheracs.com, heelsonwheelsroadshow.com

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Besides winning the 2011 Miss LEZ title, Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in fesivals globally. Drae was dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell throws a monthly party in Brooklyn called PRIME. Check her out online and around town. www.draecampbell.com

Photo by Santiago Felipe
Merrie Cherry reigns over the Brooklyn drag community with a sweet hand. She hosts, MCs, and plans events in the popping community and beyond. The creator of the Brooklyn Nightlife Awards she was set a new meaning of what is means to be a drag queen. With no plans to stop we can expect so much more from this cherry. Stay tuned!

Mizz June got her start in activism and musical theater. As a resident young artist at The Henry Street Settlement and, as a founding member of the youth activist group- FIERCE! She was the first black transwoman to be a guest cast member on “All My Children”. Her previous band, “Mizz June and the Housewives” was a “drag punk”/punk rock/pro-feminist band ala the Riot Grrl movement. She was a featured member of the video chorus for Theater Transgression/House of Yes’ trAntigone- A Genderqueered Act of Resistance and most recently “Lez Miz” (Dixon Place) and “These Pieces Won’t Fit/The Waldorf Hysteria” (Mix 26 Art and Film Festival). She will be featured in two soon to be released music videos. Justin Vivian Bond’s “The Golden Age of Hustlers” and Tamar-kali’s “Pearl”. She is currently working on her debut EP- release date TBA.

After completing the burlesque class series by Deflouered Productions, Foxy Squire gathered her wits and talent to begin performing. Though, she is a resident performer at Rivers of Honey Cabaret, she had performed both nationally and internationally in London, Connecticut, California, Philadelphia, and NYC. Foxy’s first headliner performance was in May 2013 at the DC Gurly Show (Washington, DC). This year, she will be performing in Georgia (DragonCon) and North Carolina (Heavy Rebel Weekend). Her motto is EMBRACE YOUR SPECTACLE. Now, she shares her love for deviant art and dark beauty through burlesque and performance art.

Judy Yu writes stories on the number 2 or 3 train from Brooklyn to Harlem, and advocates for LGBTQ youth in the youth justice system at the Juvenile Justice Project of the Correctional Association of NY. She has lived in New York for over 20 years and calls Brooklyn home. She has an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence and an MPH from Hunter.

Dirty Looks NYC and Animal Shelter Present The Adventures of Sylvia Couski
2014-02-26 20:30 - 23:00
We are proud to welcome Dirty Looks back to the Bureau!
Dirty Looks NYC and Animal Shelter are teaming up for a screening of Les intrigues de Sylvia Couski (The Adventures of Sylvia Couski), 1974 by Adolfo Arrieta. Editor of Animal Shelter Hedi El Kholti will introduce the film.
Suggested donation of $8 to cover film rental costs
Arrieta’s first feature stars famed Parisian transsexual, Marie France, and has been called “the first Parisien underground militant film.” The plot revolves around the ex-wife of a famous sculptor who convinces her lover to removed one of the sculptures of her ex-husband and replace it with a live model, on the eve of the show’s opening.
A small insert about Marie France (including a new introduction by Semiotext(e)’s Hedi El Kholti and two period interviews) will accompany the current issue of Animal Shelter, which features contributions by Tisa Bryant, Michael Carroll, Jean Eustache, Pierre Guyotat, Richard Hawkins, Guy Hocquenghem, Cookie Mueller, Grace Ndiritu, Dalia Rosetti, Heathcote Williams, Melissa Barrett, Robert Dewhurst, Tony Duvert, Iris Klein, Fernanda Laguna, Lodovico Pignatti Morano, Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Noura Wedell, Gary Lee Boas, Shannon Durbin, Matt Fishbeck, Kathryn Garcia, Mim Goodman, Peter Hujar, Eli Langer, Tracy Nakayama, Grace Ndiritu, Warren Neidich, A. L. Steiner. This issue is available at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division.

Launch Party for Future Perfect
2014-02-21 19:00 - 22:00
Join the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division in a celebration of the book we produced for our fundraiser last year: Future Perfect. Edited by Andrew Durbin and published by Publication Studio, Future Perfect includes contributions from
Penny Arcade
Felix Bernstein
Stephen Boyer
Lonely Christopher
Nicole Eisenman
Bad Grammar
Bruce Hainley
Ed Halter
Juliana Huxtable
Ted Kerr
Kevin Killian
Wayne Koestenbaum
Rachel Levitsky
Trisha Low
Stephen Motika
Eileen Myles
Tim Trace Peterson
Luther Price
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Pamela Sneed
Max Steele
Laurie Weeks
If you donated $50 or more to the Bureau’s fundraiser and you selected Future Perfect as a perk we welcome you to claim your book at the event. Several of the contributors will be at the event, some of whom will read their contributions.
Andrew Durbin, Pamela Sneed, Max Steele, Juliana Huxtable, and Justin Allen of BDGRMMR (pronounced Bad Grammar) will read at 8 PM. Yulan Grant of BDGRMMR will screen her short film Black Atlantis—inspired by Allen’s poem The First Born of the Black Atlantis, which is included in Future Perfect alongside stills from Grant’s video. Brandon Owen, also of BDGRMMR, will DJ before and after the readings!

Emanuel Xavier Reads from Nefarious
2014-02-20 19:00 - 21:00
The Bureau is pleased to welcome Emanuel Xavier, who will read from his most recent book of poetry, Nefarious (Queer Mojo, 2013).

Photograph by Sophia Wallace
Emanuel Xavier is an acclaimed writer–often referred to as one of the first openly gay Nuyorican poets and founder of contemporary “mariposa lit.” With heartfelt honesty and humor, Nefarious is a poetry collection that welcomes the reader into the second act of a former underage prostitute.
This book captures insights into his private world; relationships, heartbreaks, life as a spoken word artist, time spent with his cat, aging. With a dose of dark humor, Xavier’s pleasure in the written word and his passion makes this an engaging collection.
Featured guest David Iglesia will also share a few of his poems.

Undesirable Elements: New York City's Gay Press Before Stonewall, 1960-1969: A Talk with Ben Miller
2014-02-15 19:00 - 21:00
Undesirable Elements: New York City’s Gay Press Before Stonewall, 1960-1969
In July 1969, readers of the New York Mattachine Newsletter (put out by New York Mattachine, the city’s largest and oldest formal gay group) found five mimeographed sheets inserted into their copies of the magazine. Titled, “The Hairpin Drop Heard Around The World,” the article summarized the events of the Stonewall riots: the 1am bar bust, the accumulating crowd, and the decision to fight back, concluding with the following declaration: “Homosexuals are tired of waiting. After all, we can’t be put off with the old line that things will improve in the next generation and our children will lead better, happier lives. Most of us aren’t going to have children, and we have to struggle to make our own lives better. If the traditional means of winning reform cannot work in this age…then possibly the only place for those of us who care about reform is in the streets.” How did the gay movement arrive at this point, and how did periodicals like the New York Mattachine Newsletter aid in the construction of physical communities and constitute communities in themselves? This talk will explore those questions by examining periodicals aimed at gay men in New York City during the 1960s, discussing how physique magazines cloaked their queer objectives while creating consumer communities, and how organizations used public and private periodicals to bolster physical communities and create communities of print.

Ben Miller is a New York-based writer and student of history. Current projects include thesis research on early gay activist Harry Hay that has taken him to archives in California and conferences from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, an adaptation of an early Mozart libretto for performance at Carnegie Hall, and new short fiction influenced by his historical research. His teachers in history and writing have included Linda Gordon, K. Kevyne Baar, Marcelle Clements, and Jonathan Safran Foer. His academic writing has appeared in Historian, College Film and Media Studies, and the Chicago Journal of History; and his short fiction has appeared in Brio, Studio on the Square, and West 10th. He is editor or co-editor of several publications, co-founder of Squid Ink Magazine (launching soon), and serves on the communications committee of the New York City Anti-Violence Project. He tweets @benwritesthings.

Anal Magazine at the Bureau
2014-02-14 19:00 - 22:00
Ricardo Velmor of Anal Magazine is visiting NYC from Mexico City, and the Bureau is happy to welcome him. Ricardo will talk about Anal Magazine and the work that they do in Mexico at 8 PM.
Anal Magazine is a printed publication addressed to the gay male community that is interested in getting to know art, design, photography, literature, fashion, eroticism, and many other Mexican and international creative expressions. This magazine is about the work of artists who experiment with masculinity in a wide threshold. Our main goal is to create a solid, intelligent yet appealing magazine for all our readers. The publication coexists with exhibitions, videoart shows and parties within the whole Anal universe.
Anal Magazine Vol. 2
In this second issue we feature a text by Pedro Brizuela about the psychological implications of group sex; an essay by Pável Granados that deals with the subtle homoerotic speech in Mexican boleros music; a story by Rob Morris; an interview to Gerardo Delgado, founder and film director in Mecos Films, the only mainstream Mexican gay porn company; an essay about the work of Japanese shunga artist Gengoroh Tagame; image portfolios of work by artists Tony Solís, SUPERM (Brian Kenny & Slava Mogutin), Héctor Belloc; and erotica by Christian Castañeda. Plus an intervention by Carlos Amorales made specially for the magazine.
96 full color pages. Texts in English and Spanish.
Anal Magazine Vol. 3
Features a fiction by writer and publisher Alfredo Núñez Lanz; an interview by Clarisse Mérigeot & Pauline Magnenant to Alan Charlesworth about his series of a “bear” community; an essay about the work of General Idea and their retrospective solo show at Musée D’art Moderne in Paris; poetry by Sergio Téllez-Pon; image portfolios by painter Taner Ceylan, videoartist Ricardo Nicolayevsky and photographers Omar Gámez and Rick Castro. Our classic “Chico Anal” erotica series + an illustrated story by Dino Vanko and Ricardo Velmor.
96 full color pages. Texts in English and Spanish.
Anal Magazine Vol. 4
Our newest issue comes in a numbered and certified edition of only 1000 copies. It features and essay by Alfredo Nuñez Lanz about the work of Japanese Samurai Era writer Ihara Saikaku with two of his texts in full version, both illustrated by Hideki Koh; a fictional story by Wenceslao Bruciaga; art portfolios by artists David Romero, Rafa Esparza and Luis Marquez Romay; more “Chico Anal” series than in any other issue; a “Colour Me” porn and a Frotispiece specially made for this issue with guys from an open call.
96 full color pages. Texts in English and Spanish.

Perry Halkitis and Guests Present The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience
2014-02-12 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for a presentation by Perry Halkitis of his new book The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience. Halkitis will be joined by five of the men he interviewed for this book: Jim Alba, Erik Bartley, Sean McKenna, Lee Raines, and Steve Schalchlin. After the presentation, the author and the five interviewees will engage the audience in discussion.
The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience examines the strategies for survival and coping employed by these HIV-positive gay men, who together constitute the first generation of long-term survivors of the disease. Through interviews conducted by the author, it narrates the stories of gay men who have survived since the early days of the epidemic; documents and delineates the strategies and behaviors enacted by men of this generation to survive it; and examines the extent to which these approaches to survival inform and are informed by the broad body of literature on resilience and health.
The stories and strategies detailed here, all used to combat the profound physical, emotional, and social challenges faced by those in the crosshairs of the AIDS epidemic, provide a gateway for understanding how individuals cope with chronic and life-threatening diseases. Halkitis takes readers on a journey of first-hand data collection (the interviews themselves), the popular culture representations of these phenomena, and his own experiences as one of the men of the AIDS generation.
This riveting account will be of interest to health practitioners and historians throughout the clinical and social sciences — or to anyone with an interest in this important chapter in social history.
The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience is available at the Bureau.

Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH is Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Health (Steinhardt School), and Population Health (Langone School of Medicine), Director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies, and Associate Dean (Global Institute of Public Health) at New York University. Dr. Halkitis’ program of research examines the intersection between the HIV epidemic, drug abuse, and mental health burden in LGBT populations, and he is well known as one of the nation’s leading experts on substance use and HIV behavioral research. Dr. Halkitis hold degrees in psychology, education, and public health.

Dictionary: Featuring Amanda Davidson, Dia Felix, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Nick Comilla, Norhan Hassan, Oki Sogumi, Sophy Naess, and Tennessee Jones
2014-02-11 20:00 - 22:00
Dictionary is a reading/performance/film/whatever-yr-medium showcase curated by Stephen Boyer, hosted by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division. This month Amanda Davidson, Dia Felix, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Nick Comilla, Norhan Hassan, Oki Sogumi (skyping in from the Bay Area), Sophy Naess, and Tennessee Jones will be sharing work.
Dictionary will begin promptly at 8pm, but the bookstore will be open all day so come early, warm up, grab a drink, browse for a new book and save yourself a seat!
Amanda Davidson never knew how much she could love one small dog. partedinthemiddle.wordpress.com.
Dia Felix is a writer and filmmaker. Areas of interest include romance, celebrity, obsession, decadence, 2013, and rock and roll. She has written for many blogs and online channels and self-published some number of booklettes. Her novel “Nochita” will be published through City Lights/Sister Spit in early 2014. She is founder and editor of “Personality Press.”
Felix has worked for many museums and arts institutions as a digital media producer, with a particular emphasis in exploring the desires and obsessions which drive extraodinary creative accomplishments.
She also works with young people as a filmmaking instructor and mentor.
Born and raised in Southern California, Felix now lives mostly in New York.
Kaitlyn Greenidge is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Believer, At Length Magazine, Green Mountains Review, The Feminist Wire, Out History, and Afrobeat Journal among other places. She was a 2011 Visiting Emerging Writer at Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont and is currently an Artist in Residence at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace. She is also an editor at the Tottenville Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has received scholarships to Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Her interview with Victor LaValle can be found in McSweeney’s Press’s Always Apprentices: The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Interviews Between Writers.
Nick Comilla: Born on a military base turned ghost town in Rome, NY, Nick Comilla currently lives in NYC. His poems have appeared in Assaracus, Poetry is Dead, Lambda Literary and HOMO Magazine. He is a poetry/fiction MFA student at The New School where he is currently working on his first book project, Ghosts of Montreal.
Norhan Hassan, a problem child. She goes to the New School for politics and urban design. She makes pamphlets and zines for the streets. She uses performance and writing to further a dialogue about social reproduction and the process of feminizing the body for different forms of labor.
oki sogumi (b. Seoul, South Korea) watches k-dramas, writes into small white boxes on the internet, and stays warm in the Bay Area. Her poems have appeared in Claudius App, Hi Zero, and LIES Journal. She is currently working on something like a novel.
Sophy Naess is a painter and diarist based in New York. Her publications are available at Printed Matter and sophynaess.com. She was a 2013 artist in residence at the Shandaken Project.
Tennessee Jones is the author of the Lambda Literary Award nominated collection Deliver Me From Nowhere, a “cover” of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. He is the recipient of awards from the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and Hunter College, where he received his MFA in Fiction in 2010. He was also the George Bennett Fellow (Writer in Residence) at Philips Exeter Academy 2010-11, and the Philip Roth Writer in Residence at Bucknell University (2013). His current novel in progress is about generational trauma in an Appalachian town known for two brutal incidents: the hanging of an elephant and the expulsion of its black population. He grew up in the hollers of East Tennessee and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Poetry Reading with Claudia Cortese, Joy Ladin, Trace Peterson, and Grey Vild
2014-02-09 19:00 - 21:00
Claudia Cortese, Joy Ladin, Trace Peterson, and Grey Vild share a love of poetry and each other that cannot be contained. They are thrilled to read their work together—please come be their beautiful audience.

Trace Peterson is author of Since I Moved In (Chax Press) and numerous chapbooks. The Editor/Publisher of EOAGH, she also recently co-edited the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books). She lives in Brooklyn.

Claudia Cortese’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2011, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review Online, and Rattle, among others, and her essays and book reviews have appeared in Devil’s Lake, Mid-American Review, and Iowa Review. Her first book of poems—which explores trauma, myth, fairy tales, and girlhood—is currently traveling the land of book contests and has been a semifinalist for prizes from the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Persea Books, and the University of Wisconsin Press. A recipient of awards from RHINO Poetry, Baltimore Review, and Kent State University, Cortese lives and teaches in New Jersey.

Joy Ladin, Gottesman Professor of English at Yeshiva University, has published six books of poetry, including 2012’s The Definition of Joy, Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life, and Lambda Literary Award finalist Transmigration. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in many periodicals, including American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and North American Review, and has been recognized with a Fulbright Scholarship.

Grey Vild’s work has been best described as sitting in a closet, dittling itself, and, like, you know, frying baloney on a light bulb.

Opening Reception for Manorama - Collages & Drawings by René Smith
2014-02-07 18:00 - 21:00
Manorama – Collages & Drawings by René Smith
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
83A Hester St., between Orchard and Allen Sts.
NY, NY 10002
Friday, February 7th, through Sunday, March 30th Thursday, April 10th
Join us for a discussion with René Smith about her work on Sunday, March 30th, at 4 PM

“This body of work is a sincere ode to longing and the beauty of men’s bodies, but it also contains small jokes, ideas about history, and references to our relationship to photography. The project is about men’s bodies seen through a woman’s eyes – the woman’s gaze – the man’s body – the body as landscape with hills and valleys to roam. The collages are made from vintage magazines from the 60’s and 70’s – a time when the male nude in widely circulating publications was new, and the idea of a woman appreciating the male nude was radical. The paintings and drawings are based on my own photographs of friends and professional models and take on the same subject – still fairly uncommon from a woman’s point of view.” René Smith

René Smith lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. She was a Visiting Lecturer in Painting at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and has also been an artist in residence at The Gil Society in Iceland and Vermont Studio Center. She has shown her work at The Bangkok Art & Culture Center, Koi Gallery (Bangkok), NoSpace Gallery (Bangkok), BKK Art House (Bangkok), The Chiang Mai University Art Museum (Thailand), and Aljira Contemporary Art Center (New Jersey). René Smith was born in Philadelphia and received her M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome and her B.A. in Painting from Bennington College in Vermont. She teaches painting at St. Thomas Aquinas College.

Frank Spinelli Reads from His Memoir Pee-Shy
2014-02-05 19:00 - 21:00
Part family memoir, part love story, PEE-SHY by Frank Spinelli gives readers an inspiring message of empowerment with the page-turning suspense of true crime.
In 1978, eleven-year-old Frank Spinelli’s parents signed him up for Boy Scouts. Soon after, he was taken under the wing of Scoutmaster Bill Fox, a cop who sexually and mentally abused him for two years. When Frank told his family, they were convinced to do nothing. Frank blamed himself for everything. That year he also became pee-shy.
Thirty years later, Frank has a thriving medical practice and a comfortable home in Manhattan’s gay community, but still struggles to overcome the physical reminder of his past trauma. Then he learns his former Scoutmaster and abuser has adopted fifteen boys in the decades since they last crossed paths. One adoption had even earned Bill a national Father of the Year Award and a book deal.
This shocking discovery gives Frank the opportunity to overturn thirty years of confusion and self-blame—for himself, and for other boys like him. During the course of the next three years, he confronts the man who stole his childhood and brings him to justice.

Advance praise for Pee-Shy
“Spinelli deftly portrays his years as a chubby, awkward adolescent and the complexity of his reaction to the molestation. Spinelli’s refreshing honesty as a protagonist make this memoir an important testament to a reality that is too often concealed by shame or fear.” – Publishers Weekly
“Intensely bracing reading…an engrossing memoir about overcoming childhood sexual trauma.” – Kirkus Reviews
“With raw honesty [Dr. Spinelli] makes us understand that monsters do exist and a child’s innocence is precious.” – Whoopi Goldberg
“A devastatingly heart-breaking look at life after childhood abuse, with wit and piercing insight that can only come from a place of brutal honesty.” – Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of The Bucolic Plague and star of The Fabulous Beekman Boys
“This is a memoir about a grown-up boy’s generous—and healing—heart.” – Kevin Sessums

Frank Spinelli -Photo Credit Chad Schroer
DR. FRANK SPINELLI is a licensed and board certified internist and sits on the board of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Center, the oldest HIV organization. His memoir, PEE-SHY, recounts his childhood of sexual abuse as a young Staten Island Boy Scout, his decision 30 years later to pursue his abuser, and how he ultimately had the Scoutmaster who molested him – and many other boys over the years – put in prison. Spinelli is also the author of Advocate Guide to Gay Men’s Health and Wellness (Alyson Books, 2008), was the host of Ask the Doctor on Advocate.com, and appeared as the medical expert on Threesome on here TV. Dr. Spinelli has been featured in two documentaries; Positive Youth and the Emmy nominated 30 Years from Here, and has appeared on several episodes of Sesame Street. Currently, Dr. Spinelli appears monthly on Sirius Radio’s Morning Jolt. He has made several appearances on ABC News, NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, MTV and Veria TV. For more information, please visit: www.FrankSpinelliMD.com

NEWFANGLED
2014-02-01 19:00 - 21:00
Robert Siek introduces poets Jeffery Berg, Jerome Murphy, and Justin Sherwood.

JEFFERY BERG grew up in Six Mile, South Carolina, and Lynchburg, Virginia. He received an MFA from New York University. His poems have appeared in Court Green,Map Literary, MiPOesias, the Gay & Lesbian Review, and Harpur Palate. He has written reviews for Lambda LiteraryReview and the Poetry Project Newsletter. A Virginia Center of the Creative Arts fellow, Jeffery lives in New York and blogs at jdbrecords.

JEROME MURPHY received an MFA from New York University, where he currently acts as Program Administrator at the Creative Writing Program. He assisted Diane Middlebrook in researching Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage. His reviews have appeared in the column Outwords, which he authored for Next Magazine from 2010 to 2011, and in The Brooklyn Rail.

JUSTIN SHERWOOD’s poems and essays have appeared in ILK, H_NGM_N, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and New Criticals, among others. He is a graduate of the New School MFA Creative Writing Program, where he was selected for the 2012 Paul Violi Prize in Poetry. He lives in Astoria.

ROBERT SIEK is a poet who lives in Brooklyn and works as a production editor at a large publishing house in Manhattan. His poems have appeared in journals such as The Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Mary, Assaracus, Chelsea Station, and The Nervous Breakdown. In 2002, the New School published his chapbook Clubbed Kid, and in 2007, his short story “Sixteen” appeared in the short-fiction anthology Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground. His first full-length collection of poetry, Purpose and Devil Piss, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in late 2013.

Ariel "Speedwagon" Federow Presents Mädchen in Uniform
2014-01-31 19:00 - 21:00
Friend of the Bureau Ariel “Federow” Speedwagon introduces the 1931 lesbian cult film from Germany Mädchen in Uniform, directed by Leontine Sagan. Lively discussion will follow the screening.
IMDB page for Mädchen in Uniform.
Check out B. Ruby Rich’s “Maedchen in Uniform: From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation,” published in Jump Cut, no. 24-25, March 1981, pp. 44-50 (copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1981, 2005).

Ariel “Speedwagon” Federow is a writer/performer, dancer, clown, and the former Miss JewSA. She’s worked with, among others, Jenny Romaine, Susana Cook, Katy Pyle, and Coral Short. Notable stages: Dixon Place, LaMama, WoW Theater, the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics’ Encuentro in Sao Paulo, HEY QUEEN!. Company member: Butch Burlesque, Katy Pyle’s Ballez, Aftselokhis Spectacle Committee. Ariel is one of the Squirts in Dan Fishback’s Squirts: New Voices in Queer Performance at La Mama, January 3-12.

When is White Girl – a Public Reading
2014-01-30 19:00 - 21:30
Hilton Als’s latest book, White Girls, is an essay collection (personal and critical) that takes the idea of “white girl” and twists it through the lens of American culture.

It is a book that defies an easy read, or contemplation in solitude. Is it a mess, a mockery, and brilliant? Is it confusing, contradictory, and liberating? Does it serve identity politics to itself on a platter? Is it post racial? Is it fierce?
Join curators and artists Malene Dam, Bridget de Gersigny, and Ted Kerr for a public conversation on the book. Participants will be invited to read passages that stuck with them and that they want to discuss, and as a group we will engage in a conversation about the book, its impacts and possible meanings.
When is White Girl is part of “NO NARRATIVE PRECEDED US” an ongoing collaboration between Dam, de Gersigny, and Kerr started in Oct. 2013 with public conversations and performances in New York and at CCS Bard. Using the format of a reading group the collaboration explores the intersections of identity politics with shared queer and feminist histories across time.
White Girls is available for purchase at the Bureau.

Bios:
Malene Dam is a Danish born artist and curator currently a student at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She engages in an array of issues related to contemporary society, most recently with a strong focus on queer temporality, histories of feminism, education, and conflict. Her research-based practice addresses temporal and spatial notions of cultural collectivizations, inquiring how discourses situate themselves as knowledge. She holds a BFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and a MFA in Photography and Media from CalArts.

Bridget de Gersigny is a South African born, visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work draws upon political history and technological communications, often related to shifting ideologies, through a post-colonial and queer lens. She is a 2014 Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellow and recently completed her MFA at ICP-Bard. She holds a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, in Psychology and Literature, and Art History from University of South Africa.

Canadian born Ted Kerr is a New York based artist, writer and organizer whose work focuses on queerness, HIV/AIDS and community. He was the 2011 Artist in Residence at the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and is currently the programs manager at Visual AIDS.

The Mancaster Interviews Destiny Devine
2014-01-28 19:00 - 21:00
Destiny Devine began her career in 2009 when she landed a starring role in a show called “ICONS” in which she impersonated BEYONCE KNOWLES, JANET JACKSON,TINA TUNER, WHITNEY HOUSTON, RUPAUL, and NICKI MANAJ.
The Show ran in Provincetown Massachusetts for the summer of 2009 and 2010. The show quickly became a huge success, garnering awards including “Best new show of the summer” and Destiny was re-booked for the 2010 Season of ICONS, in the fall of 2010 Icons then hit the off-Broadway stage at the SNAPPLE CENTER in New York City.
Destiny Devine is constantly working on new and fresh projects.
The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

The Mancaster Interviews Eli Lewis
2014-01-26 14:00 - 16:00
ELI LEWIS is a New York City-based ballet and contemporary dancer, porn performer, blogger, Rentboy, and pocket Gaysian. He is originally from the great country of Texas – specifically Austin – and has since toured and collaborated with renowned dance companies and choreographers, worked in a variety of events from New York Fashion Week to kink and adult performances at Folsom Street Fair and HustlaBall, go-go danced at some of the hottest bars and clubs around the States, and writes about how his adventures and sexcapades have shaped him into the man he is today. Whoever said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too clearly hasn’t met this boy on fire!

The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.
