Rated RX: Conversation with Yetta Howard and Sheree Rose

Celebrate the release of Rated RX: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (The Ohio State University Press, 2020) with Sheree Rose in conversation with Rated RX editor Yetta Howard, followed by a discussion with Rated RX contributors including Martin O'Brien, Amelia Jones, Rhiannon Aarons, Luka Fisher, and Judy Ornelas Sisneros. While Sheree Rose is mostly known for blurring the boundaries between art and lived experience in the context of her full-time, Mistress-slave relationship with late partner, "supermasochist" Bob Flanagan, Rated RX shifts focus from Flanagan to Rose, presenting a feminist project that critically reassesses the artistic legacies of Rose. Curated with attention to queer-crip subjectivities and transgressive feminisms, Rated RX includes essays by and interviews with scholars, artists, and Rose’s collaborators that address gender politics, archival practices, minority embodiment, and disability in Rose’s work as well as more than eighty photographs and rare archival materials primarily based on Howard's archival work in the Rose/Flanagan Papers at ONE Archives. Rated RX is the first collection to underscore Sheree Rose as a legendary figure in performance art and BDSM subcultural history, reflecting her lifetime of involvement in documenting the underground and the transformative role her work plays in sexual, subcultural, and art exhibitionism.

Yetta Howard is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Co-Director of the LGBTQ Research Consortium at San Diego State University. Howard is the author of Ugly Differences: Queer Female Sexuality in the Underground (University of Illinois Press, 2018) and editor of Rated RX: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (The Ohio State University Press, 2020).

Sheree Rose has been thrilling, shocking, and exciting audiences around the world, beginning with her collaborative photography and performances with Bob Flanagan in 1981. Their groundbreaking show Visiting Hours opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1994 and travelled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. She collaborated with Mike Kelley on the video piece One Hundred Reasons as well as on videos by bands such as Nine Inch Nails. She co-produced the Sundance-award-winning documentary Sick. Since 2011, she has collaborated with British performance artist Martin O’Brien in performances in England, New York, and Los Angeles.

Martin O'Brien is an artist, thinker, and zombie. He works across performance, video, and writing. All of his work explores illness, death, and pain and uses his own experiences of suffering from cystic fibrosis as a starting point. He is best known for his long-durational solo performances and his collaborations with Sheree Rose. The Live Art Development Agency published the book Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O'Brien in 2018. Martin has shown his work widely throughout the UK, Europe, Canada, and the US. He recently outlived his life expectancy and is enjoying life as a zombie. 

Amelia Jones is Robert A. Day Professor and Vice Dean of Researchat Roski School of Art and Design at USC and is a curator and scholar of contemporary art, performance, and feminist/sexuality studies. Recent publications include Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual Arts (2012), Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories (2016), co-edited with Erin Silver, Queer Communion: Ron Athey (2020), co-edited with Andy Campbell, and In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance (2020).

Rhiannon Aarons is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist, writer, and lecturer. She received a BFA from Otis and MFA from California State University, Long Beach. She is a recipient of the Marilyn Werby Grant, HOGAR Grant, and Live Art Development Agency's DIY+. Her work has been included in Senses of Cinema, Rip Rap, and Culture on the Offensive. Rhiannon co-edited bob Flanagan's The Book of Medicine with Sheree Rose. 

Luka Fisher is a gender-queer transfemme artist, cultural producer, and occasional Russian translator. They began thinking about performance art and its documentation while working as a producer with artists Kayla Tange, Sheree Rose, Tristene Roman, Christopher Zeischeggg, and various recording artists courtesy of Records Ad Nauseam to create and promote works that crossed disciplinary boundaries. They hold an MFA in Photo/Media and Integrated Media from CalArts. 

Judy Ornelas Sisneros is a native of Bakersfield, CA. She now resides in Los Angeles where she was a local member of ACT UP, Queer Nation, a Los Angeles Dyke March co-founder, and on the board of Tongues, a Latina lesbian arts collective. Currently she practices her activism via documentary photography, particularly preferring to shoot queer underground nightlife, artists, scenesters, activists, and their friends. She plays noisy bass guitar, likes her tequila, and is an avid cat lover. 

If you would like to order the book--20% off + free shipping on the paperback with code RATEDRX when ordering from https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814214480.html 

Image Credit: Front Cover of Rated RX, Judy Ornelas Sisneros, from 100 Reasons performance at Coagula Curatorial 2014