madison moore is an artist-scholar, DJ, and Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. He holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University and has previously held positions at the University of Southern California, Virginia Commonwealth University, The New School, the University of Richmond and King’s College London, and has also been a visiting guest artist at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. They are broadly invested in the aesthetic, sonic and spatial strategies queer and trans people of color use to both survive and thrive in the face of rolling catastrophe. His first book Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), offers a cultural analysis of fabulousness as a practice of resistance. Other articles have been published in venues including The Atlantic, Theater, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, the Journal of Popular Music Studies and We Can Do Better Than This: 35 Voices on the Future of LGBTQ Rights (Penguin UK), edited by Amelia Abraham, with exhibition catalog essays each on the Rosie Perez in Do the Right Thing, the Black queer fashion designer Patrick Kelly, the fabulous costume designer Machine Dazzle, and impact of Lil Nas X.
As part of the 2019 Camp: Notes on Fashion exhibition at The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, madison held a public conversation with Billy Porter.
Expanding beyond his academic work, madison has also performed internationally at a broad range of art institutions, nightclubs and parties, including MOCA, SFMOMA, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Perth Festival, Performance Space Sydney, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, American Realness, Somerset House Studios London, Tate Britain, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and warehouses deep in Brooklyn and North/East London. In 2022, madison held a nightlife residency at The Kitchen in New York in concert with Sadie Barnette’s installation The New Eagle Creek Saloon, an ode to the first Black owned gay bar in San Francisco. As part of the six week Kitchen residency, madison curated a series of public programs with DJs, artists, scholars and queer nightlife performers intended to animate and amplify Barnette’s installation. He also gave a performance lecture about queer nightlife titled there’s always energy for dancing.
madison is currently working on HOW TO GET YOUR NIGHTLIFE, a book about queer club culture under contract at Yale University Press. Accompanying the book will be a fashion film about queer nightlife. In Summer 2022, madison was the inaugural scholar-in-residence at the Fire Island Artist Residency, and in summer 2023 madison will be scholar-in-residence at The Church, Sag Harbor.
“Fabulous lives up to its title. Who knew there was such riveting social drama behind those velvet ropes? ”
“This joyful cultural analysis looks at fabulousness as a queer aesthetic and political statement.”
“Fabulous does not simply track new club worlds, it takes us to them. The book does not just tell us about fashion and clubs, it is immersed in the scenes it conjures. This is engaging, relevant, and glamorous.”
tottenham, london, august 2019
opulence 8, July 2019
noorderling, amsterdam, august 4 2018
unter x pornceptual, NYC halloween 2018
for public lectures, interviews and fried chicken recipes, please use the contact form or send an email to studio@madisonmooreonline.com
for dj bookings, please contact bookings@fuckunter.com