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Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York’s Ruined Waterfront by Fiona Anderson, published by University of Chicago Press
Talk
*CANCELLED* Book Launch – Cruising the Dead River
21 Mar 2020
Regular hours
- Sat, 21 Mar
- 16:00 – 18:00
Address
- Waterlow Park Centre
- Dartmouth Park Hill
- London
England - N19 5JF
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Buses: 143, 210, 271 (Waterlow Park Lauderdale House from Archway / Highgate Hill Hornsey Lane towards Archway) W5 (Cromwell Avenue) 214 (Ponds Square, then access Waterlow Park through Upper Swains Lane Gate) 4, C11 (Magdala Avenue, then walk up Dartmouth Park Hill)
- Archway station (Northern Line) is a 10 minute walk away (via Highgate Hill)
- Trains: Upper Holloway station is a 15 minute walk away
LUX hosts the launch of Cruising the Dead River: David Wojnarowicz and New York’s Ruined Waterfront by Fiona Anderson, published by University of Chicago Press.
About
*CANCELLED*
We are sorry to announce that the screening has been cancelled due to the spread of the COVID-19.
In the 1970s, Manhattan’s west side waterfront was a forgotten zone of abandoned warehouses and piers. Though many saw only blight, the derelict neighbourhood was alive with queer people forging new intimacies through cruising. Alongside the piers’ sexual and social worlds, artists produced work attesting to the radical transformations taking place in New York. Artist and writer David Wojnarowicz was right in the heart of it, documenting his experiences in journal entries, poems, photographs, films, and large-scale, site-specific projects. In Cruising the Dead River, Fiona Anderson draws on Wojnarowicz’s work to explore the key role the abandoned landscape played in this explosion of queer culture. Anderson examines how the riverfront’s ruined buildings assumed a powerful erotic role and gave the area a distinct identity. By telling the story of the piers as gentrification swept New York and before the AIDS crisis, Anderson unearths the buried histories of violence, regeneration, and LGBTQ activism that developed in and around the cruising scene. This discussion will feature the book’s author, Fiona Anderson, in conversation with James Boaden.
The afternoon will include a film screening followed by a conversation with the author Fiona Anderson and James Boaden.
Copies of the book will be available to buy at the event and can also be bought from the LUX Shop.
About the Author: Fiona Anderson
Dr Fiona Anderson is Senior Lecturer in Art History in the Fine Art department at Newcastle University. At the moment, she is completing a book on the art and gay cruising scenes on New York’s derelict waterfront in the years immediately preceding the HIV/AIDS epidemic, looking most closely at the work of David Wojnarowicz and Peter Hujar, and working on a new project on the culture and politics of the drug AZT.
