CANCELED: Due to weather this event has been canceled and rescheduled for April 11 at 7 p.m. Please register here>>
Target Studio: Incubator Project
What do you know about the historical and social context of erotic dance in the Twin Cities? Hear from artist-in-residence Monica Sheets; Beth Hartman, a lecturer in the UMN Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department; and Jayne Swift, a PhD candidate in the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department, whose scholarship and activism focus on the history of commercial sex economies and on enhancing the political, social, and economic power of sex workers. Supported by Stardust.
In 1991, I didn’t anticipate the reactions of my art school peers when I told them I had been working as an “exotic dancer” for the past year and a half. Of course I knew that it was a somewhat transgressive job and might bring me some notoriety, but I hadn’t expected to be pitied, seen as exploited, or accused of false consciousness. And their image of what dancers were like didn’t match the women with whom I had worked.…
The labor issues faced by strip club entertainers—job insecurity, harassment, discrimination, and wage theft—are now being regularly covered in mainstream press, yet the entertainers’ own suggestions for addressing these issues are notably elided. During her residency at the Target Studio last year, Monica Sheets established The Feminist Strip Club: a collective of current and former entertainers who examine attitudes toward erotic dance and its intersection with larger ambivalences toward “women’s work” and transactional exchange in emotional and intimate labor. This…
Elise Armani is a fourth year BFA candidate, with a dual degree in Gender, Women and Sexuality studies and a minor in Art History. Elise is an artist and an independent curator, and works as the Projects & Programs assistant at WAM. In the off moments when she isn’t working, Elise enjoys reading, frolicking in nature, and spending time with her pitbull (child) Lando.
