Between certain death and a possible future: Blacklips performance cult’s post-apocalyptic queer futurity

Abstract

The following text provides a glimpse into New York City’s experimental drag scene and late-night culture in the early 1990s. It introduces the work of Blacklips Performance Cult, a group founded by ANOHNI, Johanna Constantine, and Psychotic Eve in 1992, and presents their gory, monster camp plays as a form of worldmaking in response to the cosmic grief of mass queer death in the wake of the epidemic that decimated the East Village arts community in the preceding decade.