Amelia Jones

Ron Athey is one of the most important, prolific, and influential performance artists of the past four decades. A singular example of lived creativity, his radical performances are odds with the art worlds and art marketplaces that have increasingly dominated contemporary art and performance art over the period of his career. Queer Communion, an exploration of Athey's career, refuses the linear narratives of art discourse and instead pays homage to the intensities of each mode of Athey's performative practice and each community he engages. Emphasizing the ephemeral and largely uncollectible nature of his work, the book places Athey's own writing at its center, turning to memoir, memory recall, and other modes of retrieval and narration to archive his performances. In addition to documenting Athey's art, ephemera, notes, and drawings, the volume features commissioned essays, concise "object lessons" on individual objects in the Athey archive, and short testimonials by friends and collaborators by contributors including Dominic Johnson, Amber Musser, Julie Tolentino, Ming Ma, David Getsy, Alpesh Patel, and Zackary Drucker, among others. Together they form Queer Communion, a counter history of contemporary art.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you will go from enemies to lovers...Meet Elizabeth Bennet. Otherwise known as Eden Blake the understudy in Liz and Darcy, the musical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Eden has toiled away for years as a working actress in terrible commercials. While she's not guaranteed a spot on stage, this production is one step on the road to her dreams.Until Brennon Thorne, their new Mr Darcy, and all-round theatre god joins the next leg of their tour. Brennon can't hide his contempt for Eden and anyone who isn't a classically trained actor. And he doesn't care who knows it.But at least they don't need to spend that much time together.Until the actress playing Elizabeth drops out last minute and suddenly the spotlight is on Eden. Opposite Brennon. On stage. Every night. Which always ends with a kiss.Brennon's arrogance and disdain is almost unbearable. But as one on-stage kiss leads to another, Eden can't help feeling something else...Could her pretend Mr Darcy actually be one in real life? Or does that only happen in a Jane Austen novel?A wonderfully witty and spicy retelling of Jane Austen's classic tale of enemies to lovers. Fans of bookish happy ever afters will be hooked by this romantic comedy that is perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood.

In this slow-burn yet highly combustible enemies-to-lovers romance, perfect for fans of Rachel Lynn Solomon and Abby Jimenez, two stage actors find themselves falling for each other with each onstage kiss...against their better judgment. Actress Eden Blake's biggest claim to fame is a mortifying pharmaceutical commercial for male enhancement pills. That is until the female lead on the nationwide tour of Broadway's hit Pride & Prejudice musical abruptly quits and Eden is called up to fill the role. The cast of Liz and Darcy: The Musical has just settled into a three-week run in Washington, DC, and Broadway royalty Brennon Thorne is set to play Darcy. Despite Brennon's reputation as being "a dream to work with," Eden's first impression of him is more like a nightmare. Now, she'll have to kiss the pompous jerk eight shows per week. Brennon can't disguise his disdain for understudies like Eden. But New York is filled with reminders of his most recent failed relationship, and this American tour is a much-needed distraction from his loneliness. As Eden and Brennon take the stage playing Jane Austen's most memorable characters, their reality begins to mirror Elizabeth and Darcy's--explosive chemistry and all. Together, they power through press performances and curtain calls, even as rumors of Brennon's checkered romantic past resurface and prove to Eden that he can't be trusted. But with each choreographed stage kiss, Eden and Brennon's passion for the stage--and each other--ignites. Maybe, just maybe, not all rumors are to be believed--and not all showmances are doomed to fail.

This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while questioning their very bases.Addressing cultural forms from 1960s–70s sociology, performance art, and drag queen balls to more recent queer voguing performances by Pasifika and Maori people from New Zealand and pop culture television shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the book traces how and why "queer" and "performativity" seem to belong together in so many discussions around identity, popular modes of gender display, and performance art. Drawing on art history and performance studies but also on feminist, queer, and sexuality studies, and postcolonial, indigenous, and critical race theoretical frameworks, it seeks to denaturalize these assumptions by questioning the US-centrism and white-dominance of discourses around queer performance or performativity. The book’s narrative is deliberately recursive, itself articulated in order performatively to demonstrate the specific valence and social context of each concept as it emerged, but also the overlap and interrelation among the terms as they have come to co-constitute one another in popular culture and in performance and visual arts theory, history, and practice. Written from a hybrid art historical and performance studies point of view, this will be essential reading for all those interested in art, performance, and gender, as well as in queer and feminist theory.

This volume is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while questioning their very bases.Addressing cultural forms from 1960s–70s sociology, performance art, and drag queen balls to more recent queer voguing performances by Pasifika and Maori people from New Zealand and pop culture television shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the book traces how and why "queer" and "performativity" seem to belong together in so many discussions around identity, popular modes of gender display, and performance art. Drawing on art history and performance studies but also on feminist, queer, and sexuality studies, and postcolonial, indigenous, and critical race theoretical frameworks, it seeks to denaturalize these assumptions by questioning the US-centrism and white-dominance of discourses around queer performance or performativity. The book’s narrative is deliberately recursive, itself articulated in order performatively to demonstrate the specific valence and social context of each concept as it emerged, but also the overlap and interrelation among the terms as they have come to co-constitute one another in popular culture and in performance and visual arts theory, history, and practice. Written from a hybrid art historical and performance studies point of view, this will be essential reading for all those interested in art, performance, and gender, as well as in queer and feminist theory.

Seeing Differently offers a history and theory of ideas about identity in relation to visual arts discourses and practices in Euro-American culture, from early modern beliefs that art is an expression of an individual, the painted image a "world picture" expressing a comprehensive and coherent point of view, to the rise of identity politics after WWII in the art world and beyond.The book is both a history of these ideas (for example, tracing the dominance of a binary model of self and other from Hegel through classic 1970s identity politics) and a political response to the common claim in art and popular political discourse that we are "beyond" or "post-" identity. In challenging this latter claim, Seeing Differently critically examines how and why we "identify" works of art with an expressive subjectivity, noting the impossibility of claiming we are "post-identity" given the persistence of beliefs in art discourse and broader visual culture about who the subject "is," and offers a new theory of how to think this kind of identification in a more thoughtful and self-reflexive way.Ultimately, Seeing Differently offers a mode of thinking identification as a "queer feminist durational" process that can never be fully resolved but must be accounted for in thinking about art and visual culture. Queer feminist durationality is a mode of relational interpretation that affects both "art" and "interpreter," potentially making us more aware of how we evaluate and give value to art and other kinds of visual culture.

Seeing Differently offers a history and theory of ideas about identity in relation to visual arts discourses and practices in Euro-American culture, from early modern beliefs that art is an expression of an individual, the painted image a "world picture" expressing a comprehensive and coherent point of view, to the rise of identity politics after WWII in the art world and beyond.The book is both a history of these ideas (for example, tracing the dominance of a binary model of self and other from Hegel through classic 1970s identity politics) and a political response to the common claim in art and popular political discourse that we are "beyond" or "post-" identity. In challenging this latter claim, Seeing Differently critically examines how and why we "identify" works of art with an expressive subjectivity, noting the impossibility of claiming we are "post-identity" given the persistence of beliefs in art discourse and broader visual culture about who the subject "is," and offers a new theory of how to think this kind of identification in a more thoughtful and self-reflexive way.Ultimately, Seeing Differently offers a mode of thinking identification as a "queer feminist durational" process that can never be fully resolved but must be accounted for in thinking about art and visual culture. Queer feminist durationality is a mode of relational interpretation that affects both "art" and "interpreter," potentially making us more aware of how we evaluate and give value to art and other kinds of visual culture.

Including over 100 illustrations from mainstream film to independent film, video art, performance and the visual arts, this important and original book explores how technology has affected artists' abilities and forms to express themselves.From analogue photography to more recent artistic practices including digital imaging, performance robotics and video installations, Self/Image is one of the first full length studies to investigate the complex relations among these diverse artistic practices.This will make an excellent companion to studies of contemporary art history, and media and cultural studies in the post-1960 period.

Including over 100 illustrations from mainstream film to independent film, video art, performance and the visual arts, this important and original book explores how technology has affected artists' abilities and forms to express themselves.From analogue photography to more recent artistic practices including digital imaging, performance robotics and video installations, Self/Image is one of the first full length studies to investigate the complex relations among these diverse artistic practices.This will make an excellent companion to studies of contemporary art history, and media and cultural studies in the post-1960 period.

Explores the gap between an individual's perception of their identity and the perceptions of others. This monograph uses video, painting and photography, and places stereotypes alongside the subject of those stereotypes, to examine issues of identity, racism and belonging. It presents a multi-faceted view of the individuals concerned.

A revisionist history of New York Dada, with appearances by Baroness Elsa as the embodiment of irrational modernism.In Irrational Modernism, Amelia Jones gives us a history of New York Dada, reinterpreted in relation to the life and works of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Jones enlarges our conception of New York Dada beyond the male avant-garde heroics of Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia to include the rebellious body of the Baroness. If they practiced Dada, she lived it, with her unorthodox personal life, wild assemblage objects, radical poetry and prose, and the flamboyant self-displays by which she became her own work of art. Through this reinterpretation, Jones not only provides a revisionist history of an art movement but also suggests a new method of art history. Jones argues that the accepted idea of New York Dada as epitomized by Duchamp's readymades and their implicit cultural critique does not take into consideration the contradictions within the movement-its misogyny, for example-or the social turmoil of the period caused by industrialization, urbanization, and the upheaval of World War I and its aftermath, which coincided with the Baroness's time in New York (1913-1923). Baroness Elsa, whose appearances in Jones's narrative of New York Dada mirror her volcanic intrusions into the artistic circles of the time, can be seen to embody a new way to understand the history of avant-gardism-one that embraces the irrational and marginal rather than promoting the canonical. Acknowledging her identification with the Baroness (as a "fellow neurasthenic"), and interrupting her own objective passages of art historical argument with what she describes in her introduction as "bursts of irrationality," Jones explores the interestedness of all art history, and proposes a new "immersive" understanding of history (reflecting the historian's own history) that parallels the irrational immersive trajectory of avant- gardism as practiced by Baroness Elsa.

A critical analysis of postmodernism in the visual arts since the 1960s, this book focuses primarily on American texts that reference and construct Marcel Duchamp as the originator of postmodern art. Amelia Jones contends that Duchamp, through his ‘readymades’, (the standard terms used to describe Duchamp’s works) has paradoxically served in a paternal role for post-1960s American artists, critics and art historians, who have attempted to construct a new tradition of artistic practice that counters the masculinist ideologies of Abstract Expressionism and Greenbergian modernism. Adapting feminist, psychoanalytic and Derridean conceptions of interpretation as an exchange of sexual identities, Jones offers highly charged readings that focus on the eroticism of Duchamp’s works and on his theories of artistic production. She reconstructs Duchamp as an indeterminably gendered author whose gift to postmodernism might best be viewed in terms of the potential of his readymades to destructure the contradictory notions of sexual difference and subjectivity.