Episode 4: Holly Hughes
Transcription:
MIGUEL
Just to start us off, can you just say your name and describe, like how you describe yourself and how you describe the work that you do?
HOLLY HUGHES
Hi, yes, I'm Holly Hughes, and on some days, I'm a performance artist. And other days, I'm a solo theatre artist. I think you’re a performance artist, because you said you are, I mean, there's like no entrance exam. And it exists because I think the category of experimental theater in this country is kind of leaky, although it's getting more leaky in a good way, and more open to different interpretations of what theater can be in the last couple of decades. So most of my work is solo, most of it's about questions of sexual identity, questions of gender, trying to locate personal narratives and the larger political landscape , so it is through a filter through my lens as being now an older, queer slash lesbian artist who grew up in the Midwest, lived in New York for a long time-- through that lens, but always trying to think about like, where does my story sit inside a larger context and at least trying to gesture to it?
MIGUEL
Yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
So that's, that's kind of where my work comes from. And it really, I was someone who, whatever training I had really was as a visual artist, which didn't really take, however, I got to New York City in the late 70s. And there was still like, a very happening, feminist art movement at that time. And I went to a short lived feminist pedagogical experiment in Soho called the New York Feminist Art Institute. And then later I joined this feminist cooperative of non cooperative queerdos - the Wow Café.
MIGUEL
I'm curious in that context, particularly Wow, because that's when you really were doing getting into performance and writing and playwriting. I mean, I'm calling it playwriting, I'm imagining you would too I mean, The Well of Horniness is essentially a play. What? What was the sort of... what were people's ideas and thinking about the idea of getting support for your work or where were people turning to? What were the economics of that context like, and how were people talking about it?
HOLLY HUGHES
Well, I walked into The Wow Café when it was a tiny little space on East 11th Street, between 1st and 2nd. And the people that helped start it the two, particularly the two women that were really running the cafe, were Lois Weaver, and Peggy Shaw, who are world renowned, the Split Britches Theatre Company. And their philosophy was really anti government funding. And they were slightly older than I was, and just enough older that they had been able to live in New York when it was much cheaper to live. So that was one thing. But I also think like, as queer women, both working class queer women, they really, um, you know, their experiences of getting funding and support and getting anything positive from the government were pretty much zero.
MIGUEL
Yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
Especially I think, Peggy... Peggy really grew up with some, both of them grew up with like, some pretty serious economic hardship. And it was like, we're just gonna do the work, and we're gonna find out a way to do it. And they also talked about something that was real when people would apply, they would come up with an idea that they wanted to do, they'd apply for funding, anyone gets funding and they wouldn't do the work.
MIGUEL
Yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
Um, so it's like, we are going to think about what we want to do. We're going to dream as big as we want to. And then of course, we're not getting any money.
MIGUEL
Yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
And we're just going to.. we're just going to do it anyways. And there was a lot of bartering that went on. I mean, one of the things that was great about Wow is... I mean didn't make money on your work, but you also really didn't lose money on your work. (MIGUEL: Ah interesting) You make very little in that you put in sweat equity at the place. So you worked on other people's shows, you ran the two dimmer, you know, the lighting board and controlled a clamp lamp and somebody's desk lamp. So it was very high tech, [Miguel Laughs] or, you know, ran the box office or did something like that, in exchange for getting your own opportunity to work and rehearsal space was free, and you knew that somebody would help you stage manage and... Sure you know, there was stuff that you would have to spend money on. But I think you know, everybody was working on everyone's shows, and pretty much people volunteered. So.
MIGUEL
So there wasn't like a kind of-- there wasn't some sort of conversation around like, "Oh, I should be getting... why am I not getting paid to be in your show," or "I'm not being seen as a full artist, because you're not giving me compensation,” that wasn't the kind of conversation.
HOLLY HUGHES
I think people really... I think having a space where you could make queer women's work, and not having to pay for it felt like enough, and you can have your crap jobs. I think none of us thought. And as it turned out correctly, I think that you know, that we thought we would get funding for our work. And a lot of us were just like, I mean, I don't know what the fuck I was doing. I mean, I'm not sure that I do now either, but I really enjoyed what I was doing. So I would have had no idea how to put the grant application together. Um, and, um, so I think that it was-- what worked in that moment is that you made a show, there was like, no reflection on it. You just went into the next show. Yeah, you know, there were good things about it, there were bad things about it. But you learned from just, you know, you're working all the time and seeing other people's work. And then, of course, was happening in the East Village at a time when there was lots of work going on. So you could go and see, you know, a bunch of stuff in dive bars, or, you know, and then the, the Grand Ole Opry of the Lower East Side at that time, which was PS 122 Yeah, it's still PS 122.
MIGUEL
Yay.
HOLLY HUGHES
Like, what?
MIGUEL
Girl.
HOLLY HUGHES
You could name it something like better. Like, yeah, like. So that was-- that was kind of an economic model that sort of worked at the time, of course, people wanted to get paid for their work. Yeah, of course, that was a goal-- and wanted to pay other people too. It's just, um, there was, first of all, you need to do the work and you need to develop the work, and we're gonna help each other but I think also, it came out of a feminist ethos at that time of collectivity.
MIGUEL
Yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
That was, you know, when people talk about how much, you know, easier it was to live in New York. In some ways, it was true, things were cheaper, but no one I knew had very much money. You know, there weren't nice restaurants. And if there were, you wouldn't have been able to go to them anyways. You know, and it was unsafe and challenging. But that was an economic. Well, I had a conversation, I think with Dan Fishback a while ago talking about like, he was like, you know, young queer artists are not willing to do that model anymore. And it's like, okay, that's fine. I totally believe people should get paid for their work. I really do. Um, and I, I don't know what the model of support when you're sort of emergent, or your work feels like it's sort of outside of a vocabulary of conventional or not conventional, even like the fringe version of what art making is. So, I see that things have shifted. But that commitment that people should get paid for the work was always there. It just, you know what's funny, the playwright John Jesurun said to me... You know, I've known John for like, I don't know, almost 40 years. And he said to me, like, you know, the thing is like, I get paid the same amount of money I got paid like 35 years ago.
MIGUEL
Yeah, the fees themselves aren't any different. Yeah, no, I mean, that's…
HOLLY HUGHES
Stays the same, if I'm lucky!
MIGUEL
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's a whole thing, right? I mean, even like something like the NYFA Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, it's $7,000. It's been $7,000 for at least 20 years, because I started applying 20 years ago. So I'm kind of like, you know, and then I think about the fact that like, the money that you were defunded originally was in that same ballpark. And I'm like, this, the dollar amounts that we're talking about have never been these kinds of extreme dollar amounts in terms of this end of the scale. But I guess just the last thing about that context, which is like, do you feel... I mean, do you-- was there a kind of, almost, for you. Maybe not, this is independent of what Peggy or Lois may have been espousing. But like, well, for you? Did you have a sense of a kind of anti-establishment thing of like, I'm gonna make my work without support, and that's, like, gives it a certain kind of merit, or... and the people who are out there getting this other kind of support, well fuck them? And, you know, obviously, their work is more boring, or, you know, like, was there you know, some sort of like, either consciously or sort of unconsciously that sort of vibe or ethos in the air?
HOLLY HUGHES
Well, I think, when I did a collection, about The Wow Cafe, the first 10 years of it. So it refreshed my memory of like, or at least, our recovered memories, what we, what we remember about what happened now, almost 40 years ago, I think the first of all thing was... a queer women feminist space felt so revolutionary, that so much of our, what we were doing in the beginning, I'm not saying it was artistically great, but just that we felt that we could say it in a context where someone would not try to hospitalize us. It felt amazing, like that alone was -- and there was some debate at the beginning, whether we want to be an art space, maybe we want a clubhouse. And we had fights about like, whether there was a piano, or a pool table. I mean, there wasn't even room to have like, you know, a piano and you could like have a crowd scene was two people. And the piano that was perennially broken. I don’t know why we had the piano, the pool table dykes left! So that was the first-- that was the first thing. I do think there was something of that moment where there was an idea of... I think you can simultaneously have different ideas about the economic realities of your work. And I think that part of it was a holdover from kind of a feminist utopian vision of the 70s melding on to other social change movements. I think we really thought that there was going to be a counterculture. I think that we really-- there was a sense of a counterculture and of a world. And I, when I look back on that, I feel like both I wanted to be in that world and wasn't very interested in more mainstream work. On the other hand, I was aware that's how you got paid and liked some of that work. So-- but I think that whole idea of having a counterculture... I don't even know that that-- I know that there's artists doing kind of like, opt to-- trying to opt out of the commercial sort of economic perimeters and do end runs around capitalism in different ways. But I think that... the dream of a counterculture? I mean, just that word seems like so archaic. Right? Like, you know, dial up, pre-dial up.
MIGUEL
I'm sure.
HOLLY HUGHES
It's like the time when Iceberg lettuce was the lettuce. Except the anti-Iceberg was, [Miguel Laughs]
But anyway. So I think that was... that was, that was one of... one of the ideas that we had. And that was also sort of like, we had no belief that even-- even sort of the mainstream downtown spaces at first-- when I remember when Mark Russell started to respond to my work, and I got criticism for showing in that context.
MIGUEL
Oh… Like, you were selling out?
HOLLY HUGHES
It was selling out and that you were going to be co-opted in some way. Which, I mean, what was great about that space and other spaces like it, you know, it's just sort of like, you got an opportunity. And you got some rehearsal space, and you got, you got on the bill, but like, there was nobody sitting in the room trying to dramaturg the thing for good or for….
MIGUEL
Yeah, yeah. It did. It didn't make it much more official to do the work there, short. It was just another venue.
Yeah. What did you? Yeah, well, what did you think, you know, before, before the shit hit the fan, as it were... What did you envision that your career, or your work was gonna be like? Or how did you? Was there a map? Or was there a kind of idea of like, "Okay, I'm going to make this kind of work, I want to make this kind of work." And like, I'm just curious if you had, were you even in that kind of way of thinking?
HOLLY HUGHES
That... I, you know, in the, in the late 80s, I started to... be getting, you know, paid work and getting grants and being able to pay people, I kind of didn't know, where it was going to go. And there weren't a lot of models. That was the thing that... I didn't like, look and see, "Oh, I want to be like this artist," so much because, I've never really been that interested in traditional plays. Just I, I like some plays quite a bit. But I like actually think that that kind of, you know, the more sort of like, realist, psychological realist work, that stuff feels like now it's better realized on TV than in theater, because you're not leveraging the liveness. You know, the opportunities of what, what do you really get when you have bodies in space with other bodies, and there's things that TV can just do better. So I didn't really have any, you know, I mean, I, that was a... that was a bit of a gap. And then I thought, but I did start to get, in the late 80s and early 90s, I started to get work and started to be able to basically support myself as an artist touring doing residencies, things like that. And I guess I thought, "Well, maybe that'll continue." But there is that problem that you, I'm sure you know yourself, if you're always in the self producing model. It's completely exhausting. And, and it, it's sure there's, there's opportunities, and it was fun, but like, the support to really develop something, and any sort of sense of stability, I mean I don’t know if any artists ever have a sense of stability, but it felt like... I saw a lot of artists, sort of my generation I think, really run out of steam because there's a physical limit of how long you can be-- even if you're having a career, but you're producing yourself, you're having to really do everything for yourself. And maybe you get grants that cover 75% of your expenses and doing a show. And the pace of of doing that is really punishing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And there was-- there was... but I did fairly well, despite all of the NEA stuff in the 90s, in part, because there was more interest, I think. Like, now there's, oh, wow, you know, we want to have a gay person, one, you know, come to our school and... briefly and then leave. And, you know, we'll do that once every five years, or maybe just once. And there was a moment in the late 90s, around 2000, where there were some regional reps that were flirting with my work. And I had it, I had a long run at one and I thought, well, I might enter a different kind of mode of production.
MIGUEL
Yep.
HOLLY HUGHES
Pluses and minuses that might be more sustainable in the long run. And then that just didn't happen. It's just, you know, I got so... and I, by now I'm in my 40s, I'm in my mid to late 40s. And I think, like, I don't know how this is going to, it's not going to get easier.
MIGUEL
Sure. Sure.
HOLLY HUGHES
It's not going to get easier to follow.
MIGUEL
You saw what the options had been. Were going to be, you were like okay.
HOLLY HUGHES
So yeah. And that was, I think, really the case? I mean, do you-- are you? Do you have a full time teaching job?
MIGUEL
I'm about to for the first time, like, in my entire life, I'm gonna-- I mean, but just for a year. I have a year long appointment at Princeton.
HOLLY HUGHES
Right.
MIGUEL
Which is, like, amazing, and I am applying for a job in another place. But I have never, I've never had, I mean, I've done you know, a good shit ton of guest artists things, but never... nothing permanent and I, you know, it's been a real... It's been a question. You know, like, of course, like any of the artists like what, you know, the University becomes the only sort of... the only hope to have any kind of fucking paycheck. And, you know, all the things right, but, but then it's all these kind of other fears. I mean, I want to get to that, but I want to go back a little bit and just kind of now sort of get into the NEA stuff a little bit. But I'm kind of curious, cuz I feel like I don't ever really hear about this, which is, what did it mean for people at the time to even apply to the NEA? Like, since that's something that doesn't happen so much for individual artists now at all… I'm wondering if in the moment that that was happening, was that seen as a kind of, like, you know, well, we're just gonna try this because we gotta try all the options, or was it like, no, this is going to be the thing that really makes me legit, or I don't know? Was it just like, "Oh, it's more cash, I can get boom," you know, like, what were the... do you have a sense of what people feel?
HOLLY HUGHES
I feel like the NEA. I mean, most of the grants you got you know, like the famous one that got taken away was $5,000. That was 30 years ago, almost exactly. So that was more but it's still like was not, you know, it wasn't like, you're gonna live for any great amount of time for $5,000 that were, you know, project based funding. That was more but, um, I think that in some ways, there was a sense that the NEA was almost the like "fairest" of the, you know, you didn't have to have... they did site visits. So they'd send people to come and look at your work and talk to you. So people who didn't have the money to hire you know, especially in that time when, when-- well, maybe in any time-- like a professional video crew and have it edited and couldn't swing that or not at-- or couldn't do it themselves were not as much at a disadvantage. I mean, of course, like it's amazing to me how small in some ways the overlapping in the art world, the art worlds are and students of mine work with people that I used to work with. And you know, I mean, and it, it favors people in certain kinds of, you know, in a handful of cities, although the NEA really tried to pay attention to more than someplace else what was happening in other places, but um, it felt like a big deal to get an NEA grant, like it was legitimizing. But it was also like, it's not like a one time thing like a Guggenheim or a Creative Capital. It's like, "Okay, so here's one pot of money that I can never go back to again." It's like, you could keep applying...
MIGUEL
Keep applying. That's so true.
HOLLY HUGHES
Yeah, you can get, you know, annual funding. I mean, it wasn't a guarantee if you were an individual, but people might get annual funding.
MIGUEL
That's so interesting to think about that.
HOLLY HUGHES
But, but the site visits and... I, I felt like they really tried to be democratic. And I remember panels. Sorry, there's dogs barking... COVID times.
MIGUEL
I know. COVID canine space, I get it.
HOLLY HUGHES
Coming from the dog star. I remember that. They embodied more diversity than a lot of arts organizations at that time. No, so much in the permanent staff, but in the panels?
MIGUEL
Sure.
HOLLY HUGHES
And people that they would send out as site visitors. Um, yeah, more more racial, ethnic, diversity and more gender equity. And that felt like a serious commitment. So a lot of the art spaces were still like, the same white boys were being seen all the time.
MIGUEL
Yeah, because it was sort of their mandate to represent.
HOLLY HUGHES
Right.
MIGUEL
Represent the country, right. Have you? I'm curious, if you developed a like, elevator pitch version of what happened to you. Like, since then, you know, like, you're like, you know, do you have like the most shorthand version of how you describe it to people?
HOLLY HUGHES
Sometimes I do... people, I mean, I think it's like really sort of like now... so far off the radar screen that people don't ask about it as much. I've thought about, it's a story. It's a story that I returned to and tell differently at different times. I mean, one of the funny things about it was, I don't know it must be almost 10 years ago, The Moth wanted me, wanted to develop us, us develop a story with me talking about the NEA experience. And so I worked with this really great Moth producer, and I tried to talk him out of it. It's like I've done other things. I've rather..
MIGUEL
You have a show, you made a whole show about it.
HOLLY HUGHES
Exactly. So I made a show about it. And I did sort of pull some bits from that show. There was a slightly different retelling of it. And then there was a tour that I was part of telling the story and, you know, Midwestern tour and the night that I was supposed to perform here in Ann Arbor, at this big venue, 15 minutes before I'm supposed to tell this story. I get like, somebody comes for me, some stagehand said, like, you know, please go to the green room, they can see that The Moth is that you sit in the audience and you burst out on stage and just spontaneously tell this thing that's not written even though you know, tell it as if it's just coming to right there. They're supposed to not be acted and all this other kind of crap. So anyways, I know that some of the personnel from The Moth, the main office were in town to see this launch of this... wasn't the launch, but see this show. And I got called in and they said, "We understand you're going to say that you were censored by the NEA." And I'm like, yeah, that's what it's about. And they're like, you can't say that. It was like 15 minutes. It's like, it's like, you know, the NEA... representatives of the NEA are here tonight and they support The Moth. And, you know, we can't we can't do that. And I'm like, "Okay, so first of all, the people from the NEA know that this happened, a lot of them came to see the show about it," and it's not like, it's not like it's mysterious. And you know, it's not gonna catch them by surprise.
MIGUEL
Yeah, it's not new information.
HOLLY HUGHES
And it's like, no, no, no, no. So it's sort of like, and the sort of like, stink eye I was getting from these people was kind of like, you're endangering The Moth. Um, you know, you're like, tricking us. And...
MIGUEL
They had asked you, they asked you to do the fucking thing!
HOLLY HUGHES
It was a stupid thing. And I could see the like, poor woman who like, obviously doesn't have any clout at The Moth, who helped me with this story. And I think it was like her idea to invite me at all, just sort of, like, you know, very hangdog. But, I just, I thought it was like, that's, that is my experience of telling this story. It's... I'm either told when I tell it's like, "That never happened,"or that's not really. Or "You can't say that," or...
MIGUEL
Wow, that's so intense. I mean, that's...
HOLLY HUGHES
It was intense.
MIGUEL
That's 20... that was already 20 years after the fact.
HOLLY HUGHES
Right. And it's just... I mean, one of the funny things about that whole NEA Four experience... it was so much about being an out queer person, in a time when there was explicit content restrictions, about funding for homoerotic art. And in... so I felt like it was part and parcel of what was going on with the AIDS crisis at that time, which was not just about erasing AIDS and HIV and ignoring it, but like, kind of erasing queer people and making it an impossible... so difficult to get any kind of like LGBTQ experience into into mainstream media at all. Yeah. So I remember like, you know, the New York Times would only reluctantly use... refer to like, sexual identity, and the word at the time was homosexual.
MIGUEL
Yep, homosexual.
HOLLY HUGHES
And like, in 99, I mean, nobody wanted to be a homosexual. No fucking one. I mean, like, being put in a basement in Arkansas. I mean, it was like, it was like a word like “Negro.”
MIGUEL
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
HOLLY HUGHES
It was really... so I remember having like, I'd have an interview with someone. And then I'm like saying what you have to say, I'm a lesbian or gay or whatever, you know, whatever. And they were just like, they would have these incredible fights. And think that I was like, the Queen Diva, you know, wanted nothing but green M&Ms, and, you know, have a jacuzzi filled with Evian water. It was just… “She’s so difficult!” So it was difficult to talk, this thing makes no sense. It allowed the right to just define it. These are offensive artists. And they had no trouble defining it. We were homosexuals and homosexual at that time meant pedophile.
MIGUEL
Oh, yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
That... that's what we did, when we weren’t sticking bottles up our ass. Nothing against that. But...
MIGUEL
Hey, if the shoe fits, or if the bottle fits. But, well, something that's very interesting, sort of, for me, at least, you know, thinking, you know, cuz I mean, I was 20, probably around 19, 20 when it all was happening, but in going back and researching and reading so much about it to really sort of map out you know, I think we so often, well, those of us who ever think about this at all, think of it as this very concentrated, two, three year period, but really, you know, in terms of sort of like the beginning to the end of that particular chapter, you can really argue it's from 89 to 98. You know, this is a nine year era. And it's it's spanning not just a Republican administration, but it's going deeply into a Democratic one, although, of course, presidential one, but not necessarily a, you know, congressional one. And I just find that-- I found that, just when I really thought about that, and when I was, you know, and watching Preaching to the Perverted and just thinking about the, that you continued the case past the initial just re-awarding of the money to this, to really get into the obscenity of stuff and how... how, you know, like you just said, on the right, it was very, you know, without knowing you at all, the y had a very clear sense of who they thought you were, but on the quote unquote, left, like, what the fuck were people thinking? Or what the hell did... how are they conceiving of, of, you know, of, of, of you, of artists in this time? Like, how come there was no, how could there have been no unified defense of anyone to stand up and just be like, these are Americans, like everybody else, like, you know, or if you even wanted to go that stupid ass patriotic justification, but it's like, it's really like you don't see it? You don't, I don't, I don't see that language.
HOLLY HUGHES
It wasn't in fact, we were often attacked. And I think there were a couple things going on. And one of them was just, you know, really in the throes of HIV AIDS. And really, you know, there was so much virulent homophobic crap coming from the religious right, and the religious right used this attack to kind of stage a takeover of the Republican Party, I think. (MIGUEL: I agree) It was part of, it was part of the way that they, they went from the political margins into like, really running one of the major parties, and they never looked back. And so I think HIV AIDS was just such an insane shit show that that was going on. And it seemed, even though I think it was very connected... I think it was about containing the contagion of queerness. And in every way possible. And I think, you know, there's a weird thing that happens, I think, when individual artists are censored, attacked, I can almost predict that the following story is going to be written by someone that you would think, would be sympathetic to that it won't be written about censorship, it'll be like, actually, they weren't censored. Or maybe they're not really very good artists. So the story that maybe they're not really good artists, going to meetings where people would be trying to talk about some kind of action, and it would be like, you know, can we talk? I really don't like Karen Finley, or, you know, like, Mapplethorpe is racist, or, you know, and we need to talk about this or. Ah, and there is, there was a lesser version, but still a version of that idea that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Like, you're getting this great air, you are in mainstream press, and you're getting occasionally for like, a nanosecond, on on some sort of mainstream platform. And there was incredible sort of jealousy about that.
MIGUEL
So jealousy from your peer artists.
HOLLY HUGHES
Yeah, yeah. So...
MIGUEL
Even though it was completely distorted.
HOLLY HUGHES
It was completely distorted. And so I think most of the individuals that were targeted, I think, felt really isolated and even, even from, you know, even from some of your friends and peers. But I think it also made it a lot easier for them to really invest right, the NEA and get rid of funding for individualized-- except for fiction writers, or literary...
MIGUEL
Literary those yeah.
HOLLY HUGHES
Yeah. And I, you know, I've asked people like, well, how does that happen? They said, everyone who's ever read a book or had anything, any professional relationship to the world of literature, descended on Congress and lobbied the shit out of… you know, including like, I don't know John Grisham. I don't know if it was John Grisham. [Laughs] So like,
MIGUEL
[Laughs] Tom Clancy! Yeah. Like, you know, Danielle Steele.
HOLLY HUGHES
Yeah, Danielle Steele! But sort of on that level and... hotshot literary agents, and we're like, you don't want to do this. This is like, you know, writing is so important, and it just didn't happen.
MIGUEL
Well, that's the thing that really comes across. So I read John Frohnmayer's book, Leaving Town Alive. And I will be speaking with him in a few weeks, actually.
HOLLY HUGHES
Oh, you will? Wow!
MIGUEL
Yeah, yeah. I reached out to him, he, he actually responded really quickly. And we set it up. And I'm actually reading another book of his now, which is, I'm having a hard time getting through that one. But Leaving Town Alive is actually a, I gotta say, it's a pretty good read. It's, I mean it, you know, he's a good writer. And I just was kind of curious. I was like, I want to hear what that perspective was. And so I have many things that I want... I could say about that. But what... a lot of things come up for me in reading it. One was just how straight the environment? Yeah, he's worked. I mean, you know, he himself very straight person, you know, coming from the background, you know, Master's in Christian Ethics, you know, like singer, church singer, rows every morning just is very freakin straight. [Laughs] And, and, and the milieu that he's in. Although, I will say amazing detail, like the person who was the acting chair right after him. I don't know if you know, this Anne-Imelda Radice who was kind of like, fucking with him while he was still there. Because she was like a kind of crony of the Bush administration. She was a closeted dyke. And, and even, but she was very much like, you know, very kind of... very nervous about the content stuff. And anyway, so I'm really struck by how straight everything was, very white actually, it, I mean, maybe they might have been just disseminating funds to a diverse array of people. But the context itself there, I mean, you know.
HOLLY HUGHES
Oh, yeah, no, no.
MIGUEL
And not until Obama, do you get a person of color who's even running the NEA. So, but, and then the other thing that really strikes me, is how well organized the Right was, you know, like, Donald Wildmon can just get like, people to write hundreds of letters, you know. Who's the other guy Falwell, like, Phyllis Schlafly. I mean, you know, we're watching Mrs. America right now, me and my boyfriend. So, you know, and it's like, I mean, say what you will, I mean, when we all know how we feel about the content of these people's actions, but they have their shit together, you know. And, and, and, and there is that kind of glorious sort of monolithic thing that the Right can do, where they can just stand on the Bible, or stand behind a very simple slogan, and just kind of unify, whereas the Left is kind of like rawr, you know, and, and kind of what you're saying, like peer artists kind of getting weirdly jealous when it's like, what peer artists like your peers should have just rallied around you, you know, but then this kind of, I feel like I always perceive this kind of like, "Oh, well, that person is getting something. So now I don't like them anymore." And well, yeah, you know, “I never did like her anyway.” And, you know, this just weird, like, and where, where's the organization? On the left side, you know, which is why I think it's so amazing that you guys went through with the suit. And you talked about in this interview, you talked about how organizing artists is like herding cats. And, and I'm, you know, so I'm, I'm also curious about that, like, in what ways was that process even challenging between the four of you to... to push that thing through to the...
HOLLY HUGHES
We were very separate entities. Although, like, Tim and I became really good friends. But, you know, when we ended up settling, for example, like, Karen Finley was very disappointed that we weren't going to push through for a court case. She really wanted her day in court, and I just thought, I can't... I can't take this anymore. There's a settlement. It's, I don't think we're going to do better and... and so.
MIGUEL
Are you talking about in ‘93 when you, when they decided that yes, you can get this money?
HOLLY HUGHES
Yeah.
MIGUEL
Okay.
HOLLY HUGHES
So, I mean, I want to go back to why the Left didn't organize. I mean, yes, the lack of I mean, gay people were on their own. Like, we were not... gay rights. In any stretch of the imagination, we're just not part of the vocabulary. That is only so recently. I mean, into the 2000s, where, you know, Bush is, Bush and Cheney are engineering wins, especially thinking about 2004, but even 2008 trying to win on the wedge issue of gay marriage. And, you know, how you have in the same year that Barack Obama wins, you have California passed Proposition Eight. It was only 12 years ago. It just was beyond the pale, it was trivial. It was, it was not real, it was, you know, everything else was before, you know, should come before it, and the deep unease that you could feel, even including people that were your friends, that were straight friends, who were also sort of working in downtown, near you, who liked your work, and all of that, but like trying to make an argument for it. So the arguments were so weak that were mounted, they were all about like, they were all these vague sort of odes to freedom of expression, and we have to talk about workshops for children, and then, you know, sort of like a very watered down multiculturalism, like, you know, showing a Pow Wow or Jazz, you know, and it's like, that stuff, not gonna deride it, but that's not what is being attacked. That like, you know, that's, that is not. So I remember the first meeting I had about the lawsuit, which is very shortly after the defunding with a virtual meeting, but a conference call of the time and they said, "Well, why did you lose your funding?" And I said, because I'm gay, and you know, this like, obscenity clause, and they're like, well, you cannot say that. Half the lawyers were gay. They're like, you cannot say that, you cannot say that. We're gonna lose this case, if that's what you say. And it's like, well, what, you know, that is what it's about. I mean, John, this is what John Frohnmayer said about my work when he introduced it to the National Council was “Holly Hughes is a lesbian. Her work is very heavily about that genre,” which I like love. So Tim Miller is a an AIDS activist. And he is, you know, from California, he describes himself as an alien. So like, okay, you know, John Fleck doesn't know what gender he is, and he urinates on a photograph, which I always thought was like, great, there's a photograph? [Both laugh] Is it like driver's license is like a mug shot from like, the mishegoss at the temple? Is that like his high school prom? I don't know. Bar Mitzvah? I don't know. I'm interested in this photograph, I agree he shouldn’t have peed on it! (Both laugh)
MIGUEL
So like, it's just that there was no, there's no, there was no sort of even thought at the time of kind of a, of irreverence, or, you know, a certain kind of specificity of culture, as applied to queerness. It was just kind of like, you know, it was just marginal. It wasn't it wasn't, it wasn't that there was a tradition. I mean, because you know, you can while while absolutely, you know, we're talking about minoritarian status, but it's certainly not hard to dig into American history or, you know, at least artistic history and find the like legacy and the strains of queer influence, you know, and so it's...
HOLLY HUGHES
It's all so coded and there were only pockets of places where it can be so open and nobody was equipped to... you know, I mean, what was also happening as I'm sure your cultured with the moment too like, you know, one of the epic freakout about the growing popularity of rap music and hip hop and particularly stuff that was really about anger at police brutality. And this is, you know, the NEA for... stuff happens a little, just a year before the Rodney King video. And I think to a lot of white people... unless they've, you know, I mean, it, it's seemed completely unreal. And also, I mean, there was more crime, you know, so that was an easy card to play on people's fears. It's just there was just, in the last 10 years, I don't want to sort of imply that, you know, everything around the gay... has… gay, queer, trans has been fixed. But the idea that we've been added, you know, that you see the signs, especially here in this university town of like, “no one is illegal.” You know, “love is love,” which is the slogan that we get. [Laughs] I don't know what it means. But no, that's included in the sort of mantra of, you know, liberal beliefs, the catechism that gets repeated. Yeah. It's just...
MIGUEL
Yeah, it's another world, it was another world. I mean, I don't think I don't think people can appreciate that at all. I mean, I I'm curious, like the... what do you think? I don't know, you've had time to think about this, like, you know, the relationship of support to getting work and funding and government? And like, I know, you've been asked this throughout time since or, you know, but I'm just kind of curious like today, where are you at with that? Thinking about that? You know, do you think it's worth artists' trouble to try to get support for their work? Do you think that it should be more like The Wow Cafe model of like, just fucking make it happen somehow? Do you think? Do you have any current thoughts on the the way that NEA...
HOLLY HUGHES
Could happen? I mean, I think people should get paid for their work. I think that... I think, you know, you always. I think, you know, for a lot of people, the first step is just like fucking make it happen. That you're probably, unless you're in school, you're probably not going to get any money to make the first thing that you can imagine making, you're just gonna have to make something. But obviously, people should be paid for the work and trying to figure out what that looks like. And you know, how to support that is like, you know, ongoing. It's an ongoing question. And I think it's very clear that it's becoming harder and harder to be an independent artist. You know, and then sort of the best gig you can have maybe as a tenured professor, but it's a real job. And you might get sent to a place you don't really want to be. But definitely, I feel that people should be. I mean, there's not other professions where people are just sort of like, you're just supposed to do it for exposure and joy and applause and you know, dentists don't work that way. So, I think in some ways, I think that Americans are more interested in culture than ever before. And I think like, digital media, the internet has made it so accessible for different kinds of expression. You have this like, amazing stuff that's been, that's happening on television, but you then have people producing stuff in mediums like Instagram and TikTok and stuff like that that's really incredible. But how does that get sustained? How does that work even survive if the digital platforms keep shifting and changing?
MIGUEL
Well, that's the irony, right? I mean, it's like, there is this kind of thing where everyone's a creator now or a creative but the platforms are so pre determined and corporately controlled and sort of... and then the content doesn't belong to the, to the maker. And you don't... you don't get compensated unless you're like an influencer or you like really make it your job. I mean, I think it's I... which makes me wonder. And I certainly, I have a thesis statement that I always sort of like pronounce when I'm teaching of like, I really feel like posts, the NEA stuff of the 90s, that work just kind of gets increasingly conservative in the US, even though there are, even though there is this, this cultural, larger cultural shift of sort of tolerance or acceptance around gayness, which I don't see as being the same as queerness anyway. And there are this proliferation and kind of democratization of technology. But is, you know, I don't know is the-- has, is the work actually pushing, you know, against that, and has, how did the operation of what happened to you, and your peers, in that time, sort of bring us to a place where artists are afraid, whether they even realize that they're afraid or not, of, of doing something that's going to rock the boat?
HOLLY HUGHES
I mean, I think that I'm certainly an artist who works from failing and working through failing and making mistakes and just doing stuff. And, you know, I always had, I, you know, in New York at a time I had, you had venues where you could try some stuff. And, you know, Dixon Place I---off nights at Dixon Place and things like that, and certainly at The Wow Cafe, I mean, trying to do a book about how important this was. But, you know, at the end when you just feel, like, here's the here's the genius. Um, it's, it's, it's a lot of it was a process and a space and experience and an opportunity. And I think the economics are different. So it's harder to have the space to take risks. And, you know, then the temptation is to make the same stuff. I think. Yeah, I agree. Or pitch it so that it's, you know, how can... how can it always be monetized?
MIGUEL
Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing that happens now. I mean, last-- I was, a couple last questions. I mean, what would you say to John Frohnmayer? Now?
HOLLY HUGHES
You know, I, I did. I think a couple of years ago, I re-read some account, a long account of the nuts and bolts of the NEA. And it sort of, was clear that he was in a really-- he was in a bad place. And I don't know that he necessarily felt great about what happened. I mean, it'd be curious to see how he reflected on it. I just... why would somebody take that job in that moment? Like, because you were really-- I think when he took the job. It was already after the point of culture wars taking off. And maybe had this great faith in his ability as sort of a nice white guy, you know, church going guy, upper middle class guy who had always sort of like, been able to work in a... in a reasonable way that it would just sort of pass the angel of death would fly over there. I don't. I mean, I think I'd be very curious to hear what he says. It's also evident that it ended his career. I mean, that was the end of his career, in terms of like, arts funding, or just like in the arts. I don't have anything to say to him. I just want to be a fly on the wall of your podcast interview with them.
MIGUEL
Yeah. I'm curious how it's gonna feel to talk to him. I mean, he's very amiable. But even just recently when I was reading, you know, so I've been reading this other book he wrote called Socrates The Rower where he kind of talks about philosophy through the lens of rowing. And it's a kind of like, intro to philosophy, which is interesting. And at one point I was reading it the other night. And he like kind of offhandedly mentioned, David Wojnarowicz. And not in a-- not in a bad way, per se, but he just... and then I just, like, looked up, and I was looking at my Whitney Museum Catalog of David Wojnarowicz. It's like, right sitting on my, and I was like, yeah, and David is dead. And you are alive. Like, I just had this very visceral, almost, I mean, quite angry, actually feeling in myself, of like, you're getting to write here and speculate about rowing, and Aristotle. And then blahblah, and you were like, so you know, where you were... so you were freaked out by the anger of these artists? Or some of them and yeah, look, what happened, that person's not here hasn't been here for 20 years.
HOLLY HUGHES
I mean, in some ways, he's a type that's familiar to me after spending 20 years in academia, which is like, people get really-- in administrators jobs in some ways is to sort of preserve the institution. And, you know, the argument is institution facilitates all these, you know, research scholarship, creative expression, and civic dialogue, and yada yada yada and keeping the flames of humanity alive. But I, I think that they can get really invested in their idea of... what it costs to save the institution, can sort of destroy any reason for the institution being there. And so it feels like, yeah. He's alive. A lot of people are dead... [silence] Yeah.