Perimeter's curated Reading Capsules aim to explore some of the store's key points of interest and enquiry. Each capsule, focusing on various themes, mediums and contexts in art and design publishing, features titles available for individual purchase or as a specially priced bundle.
CAPSULE #11 brings together publications that tell LGBTQI+ histories. Centred on unearthed archives of photography and printed matter, these titles either chronicle the personal histories of individual artists or speak of wider cultural movements within LGBTQI+ communities. This capsule also includes a special focus on the activist art and graphic design that developed during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s.
Each of these titles are available for individual purchase through the web store, or as a specially priced bundle ($449 with free domestic shipping).
Thought Pieces: 1970s Photographs by Lew Thomas, Hal Fischer and Donna-Lee Phillips
Thomas, Phillips and Fischer were all extremely active in the mid to late 1970s. In addition to making their own artwork, they published essays, reviewed shows and organised exhibitions. Under the name NFS Press, Thomas published a number of books designed by Phillips, including Structural(ism) and Photography (1978), which featured Thomas’ work; Eros and Photography (1977), which was edited by Phillips, and two books of Fischer’s work: Gay Semiotics (1978) and 18th Near Castro Street x 24 (1979). This volume, edited by Erin O'Toole, assesses their work, their relationship to one another and their place in the history of photography in the 1970s. (MACK – London)
Made over the course of some thirty years, the photographs in this book depict the many faces of April Dawn Alison, the female persona of an Oakland, California based photographer who lived in the world as a man. This previously unseen body of self-portraits, which was given to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2017, begins tentatively in 1970s black-and-white, and evolves in the 80s into an exuberant, wildly colourful, and obsessive practice inspired by representations of women in classic film, BDSM pornography and advertising. A singular, long-term exploration of a non-public self, the archive contains photographs that are beautiful, hilarious, enigmatic, and heartbreakingly sad, sometimes all at once. (MACK – London)
Philip Aarons and AA Bronson (eds) – Queer Zines, Vol. 1
The second edition of Queer Zines Vol.1 includes a new preface by editors Phillip Aarons and AA Bronson, corrections to the first edition, and errata. Queer Zines, the catalogue, collects the variegated practices of zine makers past and present, from North America and Europe, and lists them alphabetically, starting with Toronto's 88 Chins and ending with the Dean Sameshima zine, Young Men at Play. In a riotous assemblage of more than 200 pages, we find comprehensive bibliographies and sinful synopses for more than 120 zines by Alex Gartenfeld, excerpted illustrations and writings by zine makers, reprints of important articles in and about queer zines, a directory of important zine archives, and a list of zine outlets around the world. (Printed Matter – New York)
Philip Aarons and AA Bronson (eds) – Queer Zines, Vol. 2
With comprehensive bibliographies of more than 120 titles, Queer Zines 2 offers a visually arresting, intellectually provocative, and unashamedly sexy take on the rich output of contemporary queer zinemakers. This second volume includes over a dozen new essays, including writing by Bruce LaBruce, Edie Fake, K8 Hardy, Scott Treleaven, and more. Reflecting the authors’ deep belief in the urgency and vitality of zines as an individual and collective forum, these essays offer both personal and critical assessments of independent queer publishing as an important agent in shaping identity, establishing community, and altering the course of culture more generally. (Printed Matter – New York)
Gay Areas Telephone Directory is an artefact from another age. It is an exact facsimile of an American telephone directory published in December 1983 by Gay International Inc. and targeted at queer population. This queer directory featured listings and advertisements for businesses friendly towards or catering to lesbians and gay men at a time when such visibility was a rare and possibly dangerous thing. 1983 was a watershed year for LGBTQ people. The first HIV/AIDS cases were reported barely two years before, marking the beginning of a health crisis that would go on to kill more than half a million (primarily LGBTQ) people within the next ten years. In addition to serving as a portrait of a community and its culture at a crucial state of development, Gay Areas Telephone Directory stands as a time capsule of lost generation(s) felled by AIDS. (Pre-Echo – New York)
David McDiarmid (1952–1995) was an artist, designer, DJ and activist who made an indelible impact on the intersecting histories of art, craft, fashion, graphic design, gay liberation and AIDS awareness in Australia and New York. Working alongside friends and contemporaries including Jenny Kee, Linda Jackson and Peter Tully, McDiarmid’s salacious, darkly humorous and deeply personal output left an unmistakable mark on the shifting cultural landscape and discourse throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s – “from camp to gay to queer”. Edited by Dr Sally Gray (executor of the David McDiarmid estate) and Dan Rule Gifts from David McDiarmid traces the artworks, clothing, mix-tapes, objects and keepsakes McDiarmid made for his closest friends and family up until his death from AIDS-related conditions in 1995. (Perimeter Editions – Melbourne)
Tommaso Speretta – Rebels Rebel. Aids, Art and Activism in New York, 1979-1989
Rebels Rebel traces the movement of AIDS activism by various art collectives in New York in the 1980s – a subject that has not, as yet, been discussed widely in Europe. The book is conceived as a tribute to the activist art collectives born in New York City at the beginning of the 1980s, united by a common refusal of traditional aesthetic criteria, the synthesis of artistic strategies and commercial advertising for political propagandistic ends and by a willingness to take direct action to end the AIDS crisis. This volume takes a look at the graphic design and imagery associated with the movement and also includes social, political, art historical and curatorial reflections. Rebels Rebel aims to demonstrate that art can play a crucial role in social and political change. (MER. Paper Kunsthalle – Ghent)
mono.kultur #43 Fatima Al Qadari: Embedded Narratives
mono.kultur #43 features Kuwaiti producer and visual artist Fatima Al Qadiri. Bending and fusing different genres of music, Al Qadiri has released a handful of largely instrumental albums that often imply narratives wrapped in a dystopian atmosphere, evoking an uncanny imagery of our increasingly oversaturated and disorienting information age. It is a simple yet complicated sound that owes as much to electronic music and video game soundtracks as it does to Russian composers and Arab musical traditions. Almost all of Al Qadiri’s work is defined by the thematic undercurrents that run throughout her records, installations, and collaborations, dealing with cultural stereotypes, notions of place and displacement, regional and global politics, and concepts of national but also gender and sexual identity. (mono.kultur – Berlin)