Hundreds of years of ridicule, persecution, erasure, misunderstanding, and institutionalization could put anyone in a bad mood. Killjoy invites you into her kastle for a queer exorcism and celebration of the past.
Lesbian feminist histories can have a haunting effect on the present. This book explores the making and experience of Killjoy’s Kastle, an immersive walk-through installation and performance artwork (by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue) that materializes the frightfully acrimonious past for today. Inspired by Evangelical Christian hell houses, the exhibition has been staged in three cities so far – Toronto, London, and Los Angeles – inviting visitors to interact with humorous and frightening manifestations of the spirits that haunt feminist and queer history.
Whereas traditional hell houses set out to scare and convert, Killjoy’s Kastle cheekily aims to provoke and pervert, giving expression to old and new anxieties and creating a space for critique, affect, and discussion. Inside Killjoy’s Kastle fills this space by exploring the kastle’s theoretical and political legacies in chapters by queer and feminist scholars and in vignettes by artists who participated in the project. The many colourful photos in the book also bring Killjoy’s Kastle to life, offering an important visual context. By taking the kastle as a starting point, the contributors consider the role of lesbian feminist histories and direct-action aesthetics in contemporary communities, particularly the ways in which political artwork can produce new ways of knowing about the past.
Table of Contents:
Lesbian Rule: Welcome to the Hell House / Cait McKinney and Allyson Mitchell
RISING FROM THE DEAD: INCEPTION
1 Scaling Up and Sharing Out Dyke Culture: Killjoy’s Kastle’s Haunted Block Party / Heather Love
- Lesbianizing the Institution: The Haunting Effects of Killjoy Hospitality at the Art Gallery of York University / Emelie Chhangur
2 Feminist Killjoys (and Other Wilful Subjects) / Sara Ahmed
- Killjoy in the ONE Archives: Activating Los Angeles’s Queer Art and Activist Histories / David Evans Frantz
THE KASTLE: EXECUTION
3 Inside Job: Learning, Collaboration, and Queer-Feminist Contagion in Killjoy’s Kastle / Helena Reckitt
- Valerie Solanas as the Goddamned Welcoming Committee / Felice Shays
- Valerie Solanas Script
4 Playing Demented Women’s Studies Professor Tour Guide, or Performing Monstrosity in Killjoy’s Kastle / Moynan King
- Demented Women’s Studies Professor Tour Guide Script
- The Sound of White Girls Crying / Nazmia Jamal
- Paranormal Killjoys / Ginger Brooks Takahashi
- Menstruating Trans Man / Chase Joynt
- A Ring around Your Finger Is a Cord around Your Genitals! / Chelsey Lichtman
- Once upon a Time I Was a Riot Ghoul / Kalale Dalton-Lutale
- Riot Ghoul / Andie Shabbar
- Inconvenienced / Madelyne Beckles
- On the Cusp of the Kastle / Karen Tongson
5 Processing Killjoy’s Kastle: A Deep Lez Performance / Ann Cvetkovich
THE CRYPT: ARCHIVING AND REFLECTION
- Facebook Statements: “We Learn More Every Time We Do This”
6 Reflections of a Real-Life Feminist Killjoy: Ball-Busters and the Recurring Trauma of Intergenerational Queer-Feminist Life / Kyla Wazana Tompkins
- R.I.P. Little Frida’s / Chris E. Vargas
7 Home Sick: Horror, Gothic Storytelling, and the Queers Who Haunt Houses / S. Trimble
8 The Graveyards of Community Gathering: Archiving Lesbian and Feminist Life in London / Catherine Grant
- Leave Britney Alone! and Other Ghostly Feelings / Tobias B.D. Wiggins
Index
About the Author :
Allyson Mitchell is an independent artist, an associate professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University, and she runs FAG Feminist Art Gallery with her partner/collaborator Deirdre Logue. Cait McKinney is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.
