Sean Burns is a Birmingham-born, London-based artist; the author of DEATH, part of the LOOK AGAIN series of volumes interpreting the TATE’s collection through particular themes and published to coincide with TATE BRITAIN’S recent re-hang; and the director of DOROTHY TOWERS, a film in which I appear. In the accompanying podcast, we discuss these iconic Birmingham Tower blocks that are the subject of the film; how their design and location meant that generations of queers ended up living there and continue to do so; how these buildings have a patterned history but not just one story; there are different stories, different layers of stories, spectral and layered, plural. We discuss how ‘Queer’ in England is constantly re-written as something that only happens in London and how the film is often interpreted by audiences as a reclaiming and a validation of similar histories that have probably taken place in cities all over the country. It’s a film that also brings into play modernism, brutalism, drag, fashion, and urban design that prioritises cars over people. We discuss how the film was driven by a mandate to search but not necessarily to find; and how what is evoked is a layered history but one with the feeling that comes from a place in which death, mourning and sadness are spectral but not defining elements. A film aware of the perils of representation and thus conscientiously ethical in its approach. We talk also of Burn’s recent book on death, his obsession with Francis Bacon and George Dyer, how Ireland and Irishness are developing concerns, and whether death, mourning, and longing are themes common to all this work.
The podcast may be listened to below:
The podcast may also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT
and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546
José Arroyo
The queerest show currently on in London is the Aubrey Beardsley at Tate Britain. And he´s got a lot of competition: Tom of Finland at House of Illustrations; Warhol at Tate Modern; Masculinities at the Barbican. Beardley´s work includes beautiful innovative drawings, illustrations, graphic design, erotica. His work is refined and artificial, irreverent and playful, erotic and grotesque. The masculinities on display are often ridiculous, even, or particularly, at their most phallic. The genders, non-conforming. The influences ranging from Russia to Japan. The friendships include Wilde, Burne-Jones, Arthur Symons, W.B. Yeats. It´s extraordinary to think his career only spanned seven years. He died of consumption at the age of only twenty-five but his influence is extensive and wide-ranging: you´ve seen it even without knowing it (The Beatles´Revolver album). I first came across his work when Susan Sontag referred to it as an exemplar of camp in her famous essay. It is so much more than that. Beardsley is a key visual signifier of fin-de-siècle culture in Britain and to us now queer avant-la-lèttre, an ancestor to many queer currents.
