Jill Johnston. The Disintegration of a Critic

Jill Johnston (1929-2010)—cultural critic, auto/biographer, and lesbian icon—was renowned as a writer on dance, especially on the developments around Judson Dance and the 1960s downtown New York City scene, and later as the author of the radical feminist classic Lesbian Nation (1973). Her 1960–1974 column in The Village Voice provided a format in which Johnston could dissolve distinctions between the personal, the critical, and the political. This program features three films reflecting Johnston’s shifting cultural milieus, and relates to the recent exhibition and publication Jill Johnston. The Disintegration of a Critic, curated and edited by Fiona McGovern, Megan Francis Sullivan, and Axel Wieder (Bergen Kunsthall/Sternberg Press 2019).

Program

Andy Warhol, Jill and Freddy Dancing, 1963, 4 min
Phyllis Birkby, Jane O’Wyatt and Jill Johnston, 1972, 3 min
Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker, Town Bloody Hall, 1979, 88 min

Presented by Fiona McGovern and Megan Francis Sullivan (in German and English)

Fiona McGovern is an art historian, writer, and curator. Since 2018, she has held a junior professorship for curatorial practice and art mediation at the University of Hildesheim.

Megan Francis Sullivan is an artist living in Berlin.