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Gary Indiana

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For the city, see Gary, Indiana.

Gary Indiana
Indiana on the cover of his book White Trash Boulevard published in 1988 by Hanuman Books
Indiana on the cover of his book White Trash Boulevard published in 1988 by Hanuman Books
BornGary Hoisington
(1950-07-16)July 16, 1950
Derry, New Hampshire, U.S.
DiedOctober 23, 2024(2024-10-23) (aged 74)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation
  • Writer
  • filmmaker
  • artist
  • actor
  • critic

Gary Hoisington (July 16, 1950 – October 23, 2024), known as Gary Indiana, was an American writer, actor, artist, and cultural critic.[1] He served as the art critic for the Village Voice weekly newspaper from 1985 to 1988.[2] Indiana is best known for his classic American true-crime trilogy, Resentment, Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story, and Depraved Indifference, chronicling the less permanent state of "depraved indifference" that characterized American life at the millennium's end.[3] In the introduction to the recently re-published edition of Three Month Fever, critic Christopher Glazek has coined the phrase 'deflationary realism' to describe Indiana's writing, in contrast to the magical realism or hysterical realism of other contemporary writing.

Background

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Gary Hoisington was born in Derry, New Hampshire, on July 16, 1950.[4][5] After a childhood rife with bullying and mistreatment, he left home when he was 16.[4] He enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, but did not graduate, and later moved to San Francisco, and then Los Angeles; it was there, in the early 1970s, when he began using the name "Gary Indiana".[4][5] In 1978, he moved to New York City.[4][6]

On October 23, 2024, Indiana died from lung cancer at his apartment in the East Village of Manhattan, at the age of 74.[4][6]

Writing

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Indiana wrote, directed, and acted in a dozen plays, mostly during the early 1980s. He performed in small New York City venues like Mudd Club, Club 57, the Performing Garage and the backyard of Bill Rice's East 3rd Street studio. Earlier plays included Alligator Girls Go to College (1979);[7] Curse of the Dog People (1980); A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking (1980), which was filmed by Michel Auder in 1981; The Roman Polanski Story (1981); Phantoms of Louisiana (1981), and Roy Cohn/Jack Smith (1992), written with Jack Smith for performance artist Ron Vawter.[8][9][10] The latter was filmed in 1994 by Jill Godmilow.[11]

In the early 1980s, Indiana contributed essays on mid-century art to Artforum and Art in America, which led to a position as the Village Voice's Art Critic from 1985 to 1988.[4] A collection of Indiana's nonfiction writing, Let It Bleed: Essays, 1985–1995, was published in 1996.[12]

A later play, Mrs. Watson's Missing Parts, was staged in May 2013 at Participant Inc. It drastically alters a 1922 Grand Guignol theatrical adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's novel The Torture Garden by replacing all dialogue with an "almost incomprehensible" obscenity-laden libidinal glossolalia.[13][14]

In 2023, two of Indiana's books were reprinted, amid what could be considered a modern reappraisal of his work. His 1994 novel Rent Boy was reissued by McNally Jackson, under their McNally Editions imprint,[15] and Semiotext(e) reissued his 2003 novel Do Everything in the Dark.[16]

Film

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Indiana acted in several mostly experimental films by, among others, Michel Auder (Seduction of Patrick, 1979, which he co-wrote with the director), Scott B and Beth B (The Trap Door, 1980), Melvie Arslanian (Stiletto, 1981, where he plays a bellhop at the bellhopless Chelsea Hotel), Jackie Raynal (Hotel New York, 1984), Ulrike Ottinger (Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press, 1984, with Veruschka as Dorian Gray and Delphine Seyrig as Doctor Mabuse), Lothar Lambert (Fräulein Berlin, 1984), Dieter Schidor (Cold in Columbia, 1985), Valie Export (The Practice of Love, 1985) and Christoph Schlingensief (Terror 2000: Intensivstation Deutschland, 1994, in which Udo Kier kills his character with a machine gun).[17][18] John Boskovich's 2001 film North features Indiana reading from the Céline novel of the same name.[19]

Indiana's novel Gone Tomorrow reflects his experiences on set, particularly his time working on Cold in Columbia.[20]

Speaking of his acting style generally, Indiana told an interviewer, "I wasn't trained, and certainly didn't have the technique of a professional. Directors would cast me because of the way I was, not what I could pretend to be."[21]

Art

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Indiana's video Stanley Park (2013) was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Combining footage of a former Cuban prison, the Panopticon-like Presidio Modelo, jellyfish, and cuts from the films Touch of Evil and The Shanghai Gesture, the work connects the consequences of global environmental degradation with increasingly repressive governmental practices. Used as a metaphor for state surveillance, the jellyfish was described by Indiana as "an organism with no brain and a thousand poisonous tentacles collecting what you could call data." Photographs of young Cuban men appeared next to the video.[22][23]

Semiotext(e) published 22 pamphlets for the biennial, including Indiana's A Significant Loss of Human Life, which extends the video's themes by juxtaposing the artist's experiences of Cuba as it is slowly being drawn into the global economy with commentary on the ideas of Karl Marx.[24]

In addition to Stanley Park, publicly screened video art by Indiana includes Soap (2004–2012), inspired by the Francis Ponge poem; Plutot la vie (2005), concerning the Society of the Spectacle and mass hypnosis; Unfinished Story (2004–2005), which records readings by and conversations between Indiana and photographer Lynn Davis; and Young Ginger (2014).[25][26]

Bibliography

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Fiction

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  • (1987) Scar Tissue and Other Stories ISBN 978-0930762094
  • (1988) White Trash Boulevard ISBN 978-0937815205
  • (1989) Horse Crazy ISBN 978-0802111104
  • (1991) Disorderly Conduct: The VLS Fiction Reader (contributor) ISBN 978-1852422455
  • (1993) Gone Tomorrow ISBN 978-1852423360
  • (1994) Rent Boy ISBN 978-1852423247
  • (1994) Living With the Animals (editor, contributor) ISBN 978-0571198504
  • (1997) Resentment: A Comedy ISBN 978-1584351726
  • (1999) Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story ISBN 978-1584351986
  • (2002) Depraved Indifference ISBN 978-0060197261
  • (2003) Do Everything in the Dark ISBN 978-0312312053
  • (2009) The Shanghai Gesture ISBN 978-0982015100
  • (2010) Last Seen Entering the Biltmore: Plays, Short Fiction, Poems 1975–2010 ISBN 978-1584350903
  • (2011) To Whom It May Concern (limited edition artist's book with Louise Bourgeois) ISBN 978-1900828369
  • (2016) Tiny Fish that Only Want to Kiss ISBN 978-0991219667

Nonfiction

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Critical studies and essays on Indiana's work

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References

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  1. ^ Gary Indiana Semiotext(e) Biography
  2. ^ Joseph Nechvatal (February 13, 2019). "Gary Indiana's Helter-Skelter Prose Experiments". Hyperallergic. Retrieved October 27, 2024.
  3. ^ Resentment. Semiotext(e) / Native Agents. Semiotext(e). September 25, 2015. ISBN 9781584351726. Retrieved December 23, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Green, Penelope (October 25, 2024). "Gary Indiana, Acerbic Cultural Critic and Novelist, Dies at 74". The New York Times. Retrieved October 25, 2024.
  5. ^ a b Kaczorowski, Craig. "Indiana, Gary (b. 1950)". glbtq.com. Archived from the original on October 15, 2012. Retrieved December 29, 2012.
  6. ^ a b Armstrong, Annie (October 24, 2024). "Writer Gary Indiana, Dark Prince of the 1980s East Village Art Scene, Is Dead at 74". Artnet. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  7. ^ Boch, Richard (2017). The Mudd Club. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-62731-051-2. OCLC 972429558.
  8. ^ Maxwell, Justin (Fall 2011). "Review: Last Seen Entering the Biltmore: Plays, Short Fiction, Poems 1975–2010". Rain Taxi. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  9. ^ Holden, Stephen (May 3, 1992). "Two Strangers Meet Through an Actor". The New York Times. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  10. ^ Jeppesen, Travis (April 25, 2011). "New York Dolls". 3:AM Magazine. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  11. ^ Holden, Stephen (August 4, 1995). "2 Extremes of Gay Life". The New York Times. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  12. ^ "GLBTQ >> literature >> Indiana, Gary". Archived from the original on October 15, 2012.
  13. ^ Barron, Michael (April 2016). "Interview with Gary Indiana". The White Review. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  14. ^ "Reading: Mrs. Watson's Missing Parts". ART HAPS. May 12, 2013. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  15. ^ Indiana, Gary (January 10, 2023). Rent Boy. McNally Editions. ISBN 978-1-946022-52-3.
  16. ^ "New York Times Style Magazine: Gary Indiana Doesn't Travel in Any Circles".
  17. ^ "Irma Vep Interviews Gary Indiana". Uncanca. February 8, 2009. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  18. ^ "Stiletto (1981)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
  19. ^ "North (2001), Dir. John Boskovich, Starring Gary Indiana". The Renaissance Society. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  20. ^ Kaczorowski, Craig. "Indiana, Gary (b. 1950)". glbtq.com. Archived from the original on October 15, 2012. Retrieved May 14, 2018.
  21. ^ Indiana, Gary (Winter 2021). "The Interview – Art of Fiction (250) Gary Indiana". The Paris Review. 63 (238): 30–60. Retrieved December 14, 2021.
  22. ^ "Gary Indiana: Stanley Park". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  23. ^ Miller, M.H. (April 22, 2014). "Sleep When I'm Dead: Gary Indiana Might Be Out of Print, But He's Still Going Strong". The New York Observer. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  24. ^ Indiana, Gary (April 2014). "The Terrace". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  25. ^ Smith, Jonathan (April 23, 2013). "Gary Indiana Has a New Show". Vice. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
  26. ^ "It's Gary Indiana's Town". Artsy. April 10, 2015. Retrieved October 29, 2024.
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