In the latest OLD NEWS roundup with Emily Colucci of Filthy Dreams, we start by revisiting our prior, charged exchanged about Louis CK, in which Emily was admittedly a bit of an apologist for him, which alienated some listeners- in this case, while we don’t land on the same page, we do air out our respective perspectives, and Emily dubs herself a contrarian. This leads to a brief discussion of the culture of heterodoxy, which promotes viewing issues from multiple angles as opposed to just your typical ideology; Emily’s interest in what she calls ‘the trash aesthetic,’ the pinnacle of which she explored by braving a late-October rally at Madison Square Garden featuring you-know-which-politician as the headliner, an event she ultimately describes as surprisingly boring; Emily’s own article (appearing in the Oct. 12th OLD NEWS), “GAGOSIAN-BRANDED STICKER MADE ME HATE NAN GOLDIN’S “YOU NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG,’ in which she critiques Goldin’s exhibition at Gagosian through the highly distorted lens of being made to cover up her phone’s camera lens with a Gagosian-branded sticker; yet Emily still shares her admiration for Goldin, not only her art but also her activism, through P.A.I.N. as well as that related to A.I.D.S.
In the second half of our conversation, which is available to Patreon supporters, we also talk about: the legacy of the East Village writer and art critic Gary Indiana, who was an art critic (for the Village Voice and elsewhere) and wrote both fiction and non-fiction, and has been a huge influence on Emily; Indiana’s penchants for not holding back in his reviews, which led to our own discussion of how to approach reviews, particularly punching up, or at least laterally (as Emily has done) as opposed to punching down; Emily talks about how her platform, Filthy Dreams, is a passion project, one that she doesn’t want to be paid to do, so that she has absolutely no one to answer to- she sees at a hobby that she has fun doing, and she doesn’t want to deal with anyone who gets mad because she’s having fun; we do a quick round up of some of the OLD NEWS just for headlines; and then we talk about Ben Davis’s article about getting chills from seeing art, including a YouTube video by a French cinephile that ranks highest for providing chills; and we wrap things up talking about Libbie Mugrabi, who’s in a complex case around having her Warhol stolen, and has fought back with everything from putting up Wanted posters with her enemies to otherwise denigrating her antagonists.
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