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CREATIVE TIME BOOKS
AA Bronson & Peter Hobbs: Queer Spirits
Edited by AA Bronson, Peter Hobbs.
From 2008 to 2010, the artist AA Bronson, formerly of the General Idea collective, and Toronto-based artist and academic Peter Hobbs collaborated to convene small groups of men in various locations (Banff, AL, New Orleans, LA, Winnipeg, ON, Manhattan and Fire Island, NY) in a secret group ritual titled “Invocation of the Queer Spirits.” Invoking the “queer” and marginalized histories of each site in celebrations of sexuality and memorialization, the groups performed something that Bronson has characterized as “a hybrid between group therapy, ceremonial magic, a séance, a circle jerk and a quilting bee.” Queer Spirits explores all five performances in five chapters of photographic essays, primarily by Bronson, together with a brilliant and frequently humorous reflection on queer animals, forest rangers, shamanism and park sex by Peter Hobbs. A series of drawings by Chicago artist Elijah Burgher completes the volume.
"These drawings by Elijah Burgher, a participant in the Invocation, act as idealized documentation: together, we drew a circle that would contain us for the night."
Caption and featured image reproduced from Queer Spirits.
STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely.
FROM THE BOOK
"Three national parks appear in this book: Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies; The Fire Island National Seashore off the south coast of Long Island; and Governors Island off the tip of Manhattan. All three were all-male colonies for much of their recorded histories, and none of them was otherwise inhabited until the modern period. Banff was originally a gathering place for native ritual: with its healing waters and intense energies, it was not conducive to daily living. Fire Island was a sandbar: both natives and colonial settlers considered it uninhabitable, and it became the terrain of pirates and smugglers. The aboriginal peoples did not live on Governors Island and were happy to sell it to the Dutch for two axes, a string of glass beads, and some nails: it became a military colony, a federal prison, and a quarantine for yellow fever and cholera, a place to be incarcerated, and to die. All three have become National parks; all three have used the culture and hospitality industries to redefine themselves as tourist destinations and to create capital through spectacles; all three mask their queer, all-male, and often spiritual histories in a rewritten tale of settlement, expansion and bourgeois entertainment."
AA Bronson, excerpted from About This Book in Queer Spirits.
FORMAT: Hbk, 6.5 x 9 in. / 176 pgs / 136 color / 12 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $34.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $45.95 GBP £30.00 ISBN: 9781928570141 PUBLISHER: Creative Time Books AVAILABLE: 7/31/2011 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Creative Time Books. Edited by AA Bronson, Peter Hobbs.
From 2008 to 2010, the artist AA Bronson, formerly of the General Idea collective, and Toronto-based artist and academic Peter Hobbs collaborated to convene small groups of men in various locations (Banff, AL, New Orleans, LA, Winnipeg, ON, Manhattan and Fire Island, NY) in a secret group ritual titled “Invocation of the Queer Spirits.” Invoking the “queer” and marginalized histories of each site in celebrations of sexuality and memorialization, the groups performed something that Bronson has characterized as “a hybrid between group therapy, ceremonial magic, a séance, a circle jerk and a quilting bee.” Queer Spirits explores all five performances in five chapters of photographic essays, primarily by Bronson, together with a brilliant and frequently humorous reflection on queer animals, forest rangers, shamanism and park sex by Peter Hobbs. A series of drawings by Chicago artist Elijah Burgher completes the volume.
