By Jessica Kraft
One could imagine that Helen Cixous had just finished reading the most recent issue of the queer feminist journal LTTR when she wrote, “male language is mastery and presence, female language is expansive and pleasurable”[1]. While Cixous rather notoriously could not write herself outside of reductionist gender ideas, the notion of language issuing from the female body as somehow ontologically and aesthetically distinct from male-bodied language seems an apt description for LTTR.
The name of the collective is, originally, an acronym of the tongue-in-cheek slogan, “Lesbians to the Rescue!” But with its vowel-less articulation of that fundamental component of all written language, the letter, and the reference to its related terms; letterhead, belles-letters, and the letter as old-fashioned communiqué, LTTR makes a claim for re-shaping language, re-writing the ways in which the individual in a community—queer and feminist in this case—can express itself.
And the use of language within this multi-tentacled collective is astonishingly diverse. From political slogans on limited edition posters to the posturing of heady theoretical essays to the sober prose and delirious fiction of dozens of contributors, to the very surface level of font, kerning and letting, LTTR writes its expansive and pleasurable language into being. By paring its name down to initials, hard consonants and typeface, LTTR advocates a simple metaphorical premise through the curving of these most straight of letters, the L and the T, and finishing with the defiant, satisfyingly pictographic female-bodied R. Listen Translate, Translate, Record. Love Transgender Textual Resistance.
Small magazines, low-production ‘zines and partisan periodicals have long been the repository of grand intellectual, artistic and political movements. By giving a voice to the unorthodox and the experimental, these publications incubate ideas and visions—some that may be terminally unfashionable—until times are better. But LTTR is not just a magazine or a literary phenomenon or the datum of sociology. It is a living movement and a polymorphous community that is making art, writing, and partying out on the streets. And fortunately there is no need for a queer incubator (closet) now.
The collective was begun in 2001 by Ginger Brooks Takahashi, artist and film-maker, and K8 Hardy, a performance and video artist. Hardy reported that they felt at the time that the contemporary art scene in the late 90s was in a particularly decadent mode, devoid of real political aim. “Artists that were getting attention were not making critical work,” she said, “they were making party art.”
As queer feminists, they had been influenced by the radical ethos of 90s ‘zine culture, the Riot grrrrls, DIY (do it yourself) and punk and did not see a supportive format for their aesthetic and political ideals in the art world at that time. Nor was there any kind of association of queer artists that united their ideals in a multi-generational way. And so LTTR was formed to fill this void and to name and represent artists who felt marginalized by the mainstream art system. Artists Ulrike Mueller, Lanka Tattersall and Emily Roysden joined what was loosely considered to be an editorial board after the production of the first issue.
This perception of a lack of queer, feminist visibility spawned a type of literary idealism (and potential hubris) common to young artists. In various generations, the urge to change the world with art is channeled into the production of a new communication. A passage from Dave Eggers’ A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius describes this ambition:
“And how will you do this?” she wants to know, “a political party? A march? A revolution? A coup?”
“A magazine”, was his reponse. And LTTR’s answer to “how will you do this?” is LTTR.
What was initially intended as a sort of cut-and-paste basement edition ‘zine quickly became an annual offset print production that incorporated hand-made limited edition prints, photographs, images, critical text and legendary launch parties. Its reception was extremely positive, as the queer feminist art community got to know itself through the attendant events produced to celebrate and distribute the issue. These events, which invite performance artists, musicians, actors, dancers and writers to share their work in real time, in venues that were hospitable to queer collectivism, galvanize the movement and expand the idea of what LTTR is.
For the release of the third issue, Practice More Failure, LTTR took over an exhibition space and the street in front of Art in General, a non-profit art gallery in Tribeca, for a series of workshops, film and video screenings, performances and talks. Working with the gallery’s curator, the group initially planned to fill one exhibition space for one night. However, after igniting an overwhelming response from participating artists, they planned a series of raucous events over one month that frequently spilled out onto the summer-heated streets. In that case, Hardy commented, “Critical queer work is not given space usually, so at strategic moments you want to take it.” For another launch party at Andrew Kreps gallery in Chelsea the year before, hundreds of people showed up, filling the too-small white box space. For Hardy, this kind of attention just underscored the lack of everyday visibility for queer feminist artists in the art world.
Every year, LTTR announces an open call for contributions that are all carefully considered by the editorial board. And while the issues are filled with work from artists whose professional, activist, social and sexual lives overlap in ways that might seem clique-ish, the editorial board is adamant that LTTR be composed of a diverse crowd that is continuously open to new contributors and participants. Only a couple of groups in Geneva, Switzerland and the Chicago-based PILOT collective operate similarly. The music community has Le Tigre, the Hidden Cameras and Homo a gogo, but in general LTTR is a unique phenomenon, loosely influenced by queer predecessors and feminist art of the 70s, but forging its own path.
Quite remarkably, the editors don’t feel that LTTR necessarily belongs to them and they don’t feel precious about the concept they have developed. “We do have some status,” Hardy stated. “We are a project that is a closed collective of artists making decisions, but we don’t want to be seen as an authority. We want to make connections between people who will go on to do stuff themselves and do something else. We want everyone to feel like they are a part of LTTR. We are not gatekeepers. We are not the ends. Make your own LTTR!”
In any individual issue of LTTR, it is perhaps the Cracker Jack treat effect that initially grabs the reader. The artworks included with every issue are delightful, provocative and open to multiple interpretations. Michele Marchese’s set of one-off IOUs wrapped in a small envelope promise the future delivery of such things as “one heavy sigh” and “one flirtatious glance.” Liz Collins’ two-fingered glove is made of soft red cotton and transforms the reader’s hand into an all too human form while simultaneously creating an alien appendage. In the second issue, Jesal Kapadia’s inserted brochure “how to wrap a sari in 5 easy steps” is printed on the other side with an incredibly disturbing narration of an event in recent Indian political history. Each goodie in the LTTR trick-or-treat bag doubles as a political missive. A regular tampon is custom-wrapped with a message: “Dress to kill, your safety depends on concealment”—making a critique of the modern culture of shame surrounding menstruation. Other inserts include a mixed CD, full-color posters, and little reproductions of everyday objects. And for only $10! Here we have the materialization of the French jouissance: overflow, abundance, pleasure.
Much of the texts included in the journal are characterized by a sort of anti-periodicity—there is not much reference to specific historical or political events, although it could generally be dated to after the late ‘90s because of its strategic use of the term “queer.”
Some essays and fiction are quite comedic, despite their intimate grappling with issues of gender and sexuality. The transgender artist named Boots wrote a hilarious essay for LTTR 2 in which he explains why he is walking to the grocery store to buy pudding and balloons before his parents arrive for a visit. He has recently had elective breast-removal surgery and is seeking to create a life-like female chest for the duration of their stay in order to avoid confrontation about his gender choices. Pudding Tits Project addresses the experience of being a “titted and a non-titted person in one day.” Aisha Burnes offers a funny critique of masculinity in the military with her piece, Decorated Soldiers in LTTR 3, for which she has drawn fanciful ornamentation with gel inks on top of sepia-tint military portraits from the Second World War. In the same issue, Marie Therese Escribano writes about the lesbian sci-fi future in which a priestess is overseeing a Catholic confession. All the rules of Rome have been reversed and any activity formerly prohibited is now embraced. A kingdom of lesbian heaven has come to earth. In confession, a woman tells the painful story of how she fell in love with a man, prompting her priestess to hypothesize that she may have some of the last remaining “hetero genes”.
Not everything in LTTR is queer-identified. A lot of the theoretical insights don’t relate directly to identity, but to praxis. LTTR 3, Practice More Failure was a rallying cry to anti-professionals and anti-perfectionists. In a success-driven world, they asked, are we discounting the value of failing, which often provokes more insight and change than positive achievement? LTTR urges artists to enthuse process and practice as opposed to focusing solely on the masterpiece.
Spokeswoman Hardy doesn’t skip a beat when she proclaims that LTTR is anti-capitalist, a position that is evident from the collection of essays over the four existing issues. But the politics are not just on paper. Fittingly, the collective has never made a profit on the issues, and have had to self-finance the production and rely on generosity in the gift economy of the art world to survive.
However, the language of anti-capitalism, especially in New York City in 2005, can seem heavy-handed. Sometimes what comes across is an ideological posturing with all the impudence of Valerie Solanas, the famed militant lesbian who shot Andy Warhol for not producing her play about radical queer feminism. Working to negate these associations, LTTR tries to be an anti-deconstructionist collective. For all of the Derrida-influenced identity politics circulating in the critical theory community, editor Ulrike Mueller states that LTTR wants to offer an antidote with a positive practice bent on building community and constructing a movement that brings people together.
An incendiary essay by Craig Willse in LTTR 2 elucidates how “capitalism is a system that eats itself” and explains the principle that media truth must entail resistance by the body politic. A healthy assortment of impenetrable social theory is made powerfully real and is, at the conclusion, combined with the type of hedonism that the gay community is so good at creating. He writes, ‘I’ll give up on being right if I can find some people with whom to be is surprising, turned on and messy.” This resignation of political might in the face of bohemian indulgence might be seen as a sell-out, but it might also, as LTTR contends, be a different way of acting out politics.
A pull quote from an article by Wynne Greenwood on the opposite page says, “can you pause that for a second… and let yourself groove.” Greenwood finds the act of video pausing to be a radical representation of the potential to stop the incessant play of patriarchy, global politics and the workaday world. Partying as a political action allows a space to creatively self-define.
In feminist theory, the potentially multiple and internal female orgasm is often posited as the basis for a differently-activated sense of feminine pleasure. Where the male, phallo-centric order prizes singularity, externality and climax, “feminine desire seeks renewed sensual contact, enlivening experience, and does not desire an object.[2]”
This pleasure finds its expression in the parties that LTTR hosts several times a year. As the queer community has historically found, even before the days of Stonewall, same-sex affection and jubilance becomes an overtly political expression. “It’s a celebration, it’s not about getting drunk” said artist/participant Aisha Burnes, “hetero-normative structures want to restrain life, but LTTR wants to party so we can feel our bodies and dance and love the people around us.”
[1] Cixous, Hilhne and Catherine Clement. The Newly Born Woman. 1975. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. p. 73
[2] Cixous, Ibid, p. 86.
