JJ – Tartine-moi et autres textes

Collected here are texts by writer-art critic-performer-feminist-lesbian zealot Jill Johnston, most of which appeared in The Village Voice between 1962 and 1993. They feature dancers, hordes of dykes and queers, Meredith Monk, the Radicalesbians, Pauline Oliveros, dry riverbeds, Yvonne Rainer, Lois Lane, the Gay Liberation Front and Agnes Martin. A central figure in the artistic avant-garde of 1960s New York, Jill embraced her lesbianism after the Stonewall uprisings of 1969. While her writing as a critic allows herself to be contaminated by the works she observes, veering towards experimental forms, her writing as a lesbian writer vibrates, trembles, laughs, twirls, jumps and detonates. She extends the choreographic gestures that have left their mark on her, taking them into political and collective spaces. Jill’s language splashes onto the shores of art and activism.

Translated by Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Nina Kennel and Rosanna Puyol Boralevi, the texts are introduced by Pauline L. Boulba, accompanied by drawings by Aminata Labor and an article and interview with Clare Croft.