2008
Multi-channel video and audio installation
10 PA speakers, 5 projection screens (helium balloons, colored light bulbs)
HD, color, sound
Dimensions variable

Revolutionary Love: I am Your Worst Fear, I am Your Best Fantasy is the final in a series of love addresses. Moving deeper off the work I started in Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love? and I March in the Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free, Revolutionary Love is a two part performance staged with over 100 participants in the summer of 2008 at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. The two performances were: Revolutionary Love: I am Your Worst Fear, performed on the 16 th Street Mall in Denver, CO during the DNC and Revolutionary Love: I am Your Best Fantasy, performed on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds in St. Paul, MN. In each a group of 50-80 people read a text in unison addressing political desire, romantic love and queer and trans liberation.

Drawing on both the history of the Gay Liberation movement, which forged a new and deep relationship between love and politics, and the 2008 political moment, in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan figured as a central element in the Presidential campaign, the performances challenged simplistic oppositions between love and war. Where the classic slogan says, “Make love not war,” I was more interested in the more complicated position of Stonewall-era Gay Liberationists whose chant was “An army of lovers cannot lose.”

The performances were staged in active relation to their documentation with three camera people recording each performance, making choices informed by early 70s footage of gay liberation parades and actions wherein the camera was as much a participant as the bodies that marched. This footage was cut into a five-channel video installation.

The piece was a two-part commission for Creative Time’s summer-long, national public art initiative Democracy in America: The National Campaign, curated by Nato Thompson, originally commissioned by Creative Time for Democracy in America and presented with Dialog:City, UnConvention, and the Walker Art Center.

Production Credits:
Director of Photography: Ashley Hunt
Production Manager: Wu Ingrid Tsang
Videographers, Denver: Holen Kahn, Chris Bravo
Videographers, Minneapolis/St. Paul:
Sound, Denver: Will Robinson
Outreach Coordinators, Denver: Jody Bouffard and Ana Maria Osburne, Carlos Perez
Outreach Coordinators, Minneapolis/St. Paul: Shannon Forney and Eric Jones
Denver Participants: Kathy Andrews, Jan Brennan, Trine Bumiller, Catherine Burns, Clark Clarken, Carolyn Gentile, Dav Guidry, Elizabeth Hauptman, Alex Hernandez, Lisa Hochtritt, Lauren Larken, Andie Lyons, Erica McCollough, Brooke O’Harra, Courtney Bastian; Oldham, Rev. Cathryn Paradise, Bruce Price, Jessie Rodriguez, Dylan Scholinski, Shelly Schroeder Jeanine Strasia, Rebecca Vaughan, Lori Wahl, Samuel Wells
Minneapolis/St.Paul Participants: Corrie Bastian, Jessica Becker, Nastalie Bogira, Daniel Byers, Sue Charles, Clark Clarken, Chelsea Culp, David J. De Block, Lauren DeLand, Elizabeth A. DeVries, Shannon Forney, Michael David Franklin, Gabrielle Fulmer, Bobbi Gass, Elizabeth Gwinn, Megan Holm, Haley Honeman, Andrea Jenkins, Elissa Johnson, Misty Johnson, Robin Johnson, Eric Jones, Tere Kupin-Escobar, Lauren Larken, Kelly Lewis, Jeffry Lusiak, Sheena M. Meddaugh, Crystal Meisinger, Kelley Meister, Emily Mercer, Mindi Monroe, Sarah Peters, Pricilla G. Pope, Zannah Porter, Jack Randol, Scotty Reynolds, Esmé Rodríguez, Abby Seeskin, David Seitz, Margaret Helen Sergeant, Kelley Shipwreck, Becky Smith, Mary C. Stein, Joseph Sullivan, Marisa Vape, Colin Waitt, Vanessa Yancey.