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Gary Indiana

American writer, playwright and poet (1950–2024) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gary Indiana
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For the city, see Gary, Indiana.

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.

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Background

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. Hoisington later moved to San Francisco, and then Los Angeles; it was in LA 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]

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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]

In January 2025, Indiana's personal library was destroyed in the Eaton Fire.[17]

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Film

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).[18][19] John Boskovich's 2001 film North features Indiana reading from the Céline novel of the same name.[20]

Indiana's novel Gone Tomorrow reflects his experiences on set, particularly his time working on Cold in Columbia.[21]

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."[22]

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.[23][24]

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.[25]

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).[26][27]

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Bibliography

Fiction

  • (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

Critical studies and essays on Indiana's work

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References

External links

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