Zoe Leonard
artist, feminist, queer activist
Leonard wrote “I want a president” in 1992 (reprinted on p. 114 in Queer, ed. David J. Getsy). This is the year that Bill Clinton ran against George H.W. Bush, Ross Perot, and Eileen Myles. ACT-UP was acting up and thousands of queer loves were already dead.
The essay never made it into the queer magazine it was intended for because the magazine dissolved before publication. But “I want a president” circulated among queers, hung on refrigerators, found its way into zines. The process of it becoming an iconic text, an archive of a moment, was tactile, and sometimes ephemeral. How did those queers preserve their own copies when they moved? When they cleaned an apartment of another queer lost?
Here is an image of the original, a copy of one copy. I want to know, who scratched out “with an attitude” and “that nasty”? When and why?
From October 11-November 17, Friends of the High Line and The Standard hotel sponsored a wheat-paste installation of “I want a president” (20x30').
On November 6, 2016, over 100 people attended a rally at the High Line — they listened to performances and readings, responses to Leonard’s “I want a president.” This was a collective moment, a period of time two days before the popular vote said “I want Hillary Clinton” for president, two days before we would learn that, nevertheless, Donald Trump would be the president. This was art meant to be heard, to be experienced in that suspended time before, but here’s another archive — full of feeling.
