Panel Discussion with Tony Whitfield, Carlo McCormick and Sur Rodney (Sur)

Howl! Happening is pleased to present a panel discussion on Tony Whitfield’s exhibition: Ruminations: Notes on New Love. Writers, critics, and art historians who contributed to the catalog look at Whitfield’s particular narratives and the metaphors that run through the varied art practices he has explored. In a variety of serial works, Whitfield embraces queer identity as mutable lifelong experience, manifested in learned strategies for living, fluid expressions of desire and infatuation in the context of external responses and constraints. This panel brings these writers together with Whitfield to discuss provocative aspects of his work they did not explore in their essays.

“Each man Whitfield interviews explains his own stumbling first steps towards queer love and queer identity, and in outline they are almost always the same. They are unsupported, untaught, denied role models, and punished for their desires,” says Hugh Ryan in his essay about the narratives embedded in video works at the center of the exhibition. Grounded in theses experiences of queer love and identity, this panel will explore with Whitfield how he seeks to manifest their collateral complexities in a wide range of contexts and media ranging from video, performance, artist books, installations, curating, writing, furniture design, and teaching.