The Anchoress Syndicate is a queer poetry and performance collective comprised of Gia Gonzales, Kamikaze Jones, and Becca Teich. They are the curators and hosts of events such as the annual My Smutty Valentine, a smut xxxtravaganza; Pink Noise, a series of experimental sound art concerts; and, with Nightboat Books, a marathon reading of The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions.
Their debauched and unblushing events incorporate text, performance, and installations that foreground the transgressive, the excessive, and the obscene, while honoring underground queer histories, cultivating DIY community, and prioritizing mutual aid.
Cruise us on Instagram at @anchoress.syndicate and Twitter at @anchoress_syndi
PLATONIC AMOROUS THROUPLE ISO:
- HOT & MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS IN THE DEPTHS OF CYBERSPACE
- RAW UNFILTERED RAUNCH
- VIRTUAL PLEASURE PALACES
- EROTIC TRANSVALUATIONS
- SMUT FOR THE REDISTRIBUTION OF CARE BEYOND THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
- NETWORKS OF QUEER KINSHIP IN THE FACE OF HETERNORMATIVE HEGEMONIES
This February encroaches on nearly a year since the COVID-19 pandemic forced a (re)negotiation of the syntaxes and circumstances of our love, social, and sexual lives--in ways both new and entirely not.
Our cruising is citational--what are the histories of touch, care, and intimate encounter that serve as hauntological guides for innumerable undergrounds, back alleys, and bathhouses?
Our cruising is also against precedent--how do we imagine other ways of being with and together, without requisite reliance on already institutionalized forms that we know fail us, that we know we cannot delight in? How do we begin to rearticulate the contours of our desires, intimacies, and sexual publics and perversions?
In the aftermath of Valentine’s Day, we will read and write against the heterocapitalist romance industry against the cheap sentiments of Hallmark cards and stale Godiva chocolates. Instead we desire, unrepentantly, a smutty valentine.
We will bask in the queer legacies of the past, present, and future.
We will embrace the poetics of smut across poetry, experimental narrative, cinema, sound, architectures, and beyond.
We will celebrate works that titillate, tantalize, and expand how we think of the poetics of smut. We will link the poetics of smut with communal care and harm reduction, as a refusal to concede to institutionally sanctioned mandates.
We will open up to improvisatory practices of queer kinship in the face of heteronormative rigidity, to amorous friendships, and stranger intimacies.
Together we will talk and write into the messy, the transgressive, and the smutty by exploring the techniques, experimentations, and legacies of artists such as Samuel Delany, Kay Gabriel, Cheryl Dunye, Sam Ace, Essex Hemphill, r. erica doyle, Lou Sullivan, Jean Genet, David Wojnarowicz, Dennis Cooper, Lucas di Lima, José Muñoz, and Pat Califia.
Each Dis/Course meeting is free and open and meets virtually on Zoom. Participants are invited to RSVP in advance to receive a packet of readings and other material to begin the conversation. Reading in advance, however, is not be required, nor is any particular education background or expertise. Come, talk about poetry and possibility, teach, learn, share, and connect more deeply with The Poetry Project community.