What's Underground about Marshmallows?: Texts by and about Jack Smith

By: Smith, Jack

For John Waters, Jack Smith was the only true underground filmmaker. Richard Foreman called him "the hidden source of practically everything thats of any interest in the so-called experimental American theater". Jack Smith inspired Laurie Anderson, Anohni, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Carmelita Tropicana and Robert Wilson. He collaborated with musicians such as Tony Conrad and John Zorn and was a key figure in the development of New York's queer and drag underground performance scenes from the 1960s to the 1980s. In West Germany Smith's aesthetics and politics captivated such artists as Birgit and Wilhelm Hein, Katharina Sieverding and Klaus Mettig. His life and performance aesthetic have become an important reference point for critical writings on queer art and culture, including the phenomena of camp and disidentification, from Susan Sontag and Jose Esteban Munoz to Diedrich Diederichsen and Juliane Rebentisch. A selection of his fascinating, disturbing and hilarious writings, which include performance texts, essays on film and art, sexual fantasies, manifestos, letters and press releases, is published here in German for the first time. What's Underground About Marshmallows? features a selection of writings by Jack Smith along with contributions by Bertolt Brecht's son Stefan Brecht, J. Hoberman, Sylvere Lotringer, Jonas Mekas and Susan Sontag. The book is accompanied by photos and documents chronicling Smith's work in Cologne in the 1970s and Hamburg in the early 1980s. It opens with an introductory essay by editor Marc Siegel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3895816221
• ISBN13: 9783895816222
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Alexander Verlag Berlin
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.