Sunday Reads

Sunday Reads: Going Out

Sunday Reads: Going Out

Last bits of summer, let’s go out. From Berlin squats in the ’90s to New York’s gay flyer culture, from UK dancefloors to today’s art-world vulgarities, the club is where life gets turned up and turned out. This week’s reads all orbit the dancefloor: some literally, others more like the after-party where you’re talking at length and depth with a stranger at 7am. Going out has always been about more than just dancing, it’s an experiment in risk, a stage for fashion, sex, politics and poor judgement.

A Catalogue of Risk – Alisha Mascarenhas

Published in early 2025 by Wendy’s Subway, A Catalogue of Risk is the debut collection of Brooklyn-based poet Alisha Mascarenhas. The book is haunted by Anne Dufourmantelle’s Éloge du risque (2011), a philosophical text that asks what it means to live through risk rather than avoid it. Mascarenhas brings this question into a poetic register, where risk becomes not only danger but intimacy, exposure, and possibility. The writing is fragmentary, sometimes slippery, but always deliberate. It reads like the thinking you do on the way home from a party.

Getting In: NYC Club Flyers from the Gay 1990s – David Kennerley

This coffee-table treasure trove is a visual rave, with 230+ bold, Xeroxed neon flyers capturing the hushed rebellion and flamboyant chaos of 1990s queer New York party scene. Designed to be handed out, stuffed in pockets, and discarded, these flyers were part of the visual identity of nightlife. The book situates them within the larger cultural context of a post-AIDS-crisis generation reclaiming joy and visibility. Commentary from figures such as Lady Bunny, Michael Musto, and Larry Tee reminds us that nightlife was not just about dancing but about survival, creativity, and community building.

LINDEN ARCHIVES – Stuart Linden Rhodes

Stuart Linden Rhodes photographed the LGBTQ+ club and pub scene in Britain throughout the 1990s, when dancefloors were still one of the few safe public spaces for queer expression. Linden Archives brings together images from Leeds, Manchester, Brighton, Newcastle, as well as excursions to Berlin and Gran Canaria. The book is large-format, limited in print, and comes with a foreword by Russell Tovey. What makes it striking is the lack of polish. It’s a record of joy, affection, and social life as it unfolded outside mainstream media.

ANFANG / BEGINNING: Berlin 1994–99 – Christian Stemmler

Christian Stemmler moved to Berlin in the early 1990s and began documenting the emerging club landscape. His photographs from 1994 to 1999 show a city still marked by the Wall’s collapse: industrial ruins turned into dance spaces, crowded basements, makeshift stages. Published in a run of 750 copies, the book presents 192 pages of black-and-white film images, complete with gatefolds. The book captures Berlin at the moment before its club culture became a global brand, when everything was still improvised and provisional.

Spike Art Magazine Issue 84: “Vulgarity”

Spike’s summer 2025 issue dives headfirst into vulgarity. Essays by Dean Kissick, Quinn Slobodian, Jack Self, Bruce LaBruce, and others explore vulgarity as aesthetic, political strategy, and social performance. Topics range from AI folk art to Rob Pruitt’s infamousCocaine Buffet. The issue is not about nightlife, but we all know that there something vulgar about certain aspects of clubbing.