‘In the decade between 1978 and 1988, over ten new nightclub-performance venues opened in the twelve square blocks comprising New York City’s East Village, providing nightly entertainment for and by a community of young artists. Attempting to convey the flurry of artistic activity, critics mythologized downtown as the “Elysian fields,” the scene as “phenomenal,” spoke of its “aura” and “mystical vitality,” but eschewed any nuanced understanding of the political, economic, and social forces at play in its construction. Even with the benefit of hindsight, little critical headway has been made in assessing why such a scene developed and the type of performances that resulted, beyond citing record numbers of art school graduates and cheap rents. Most art historical attention on downtown art in the 1980s has focused on neo-expressionist painting, graffiti art, and alternative spaces, but there has been scant analysis of performance’s central role in the development of the scene and its market, let alone of the works themselves.
‘By the late 1970s, however, it became increasingly evident that performance was the connective glue of the downtown community. Nightclub performances were crucial in the construction of this community, creating a marketplace for the production and consumption of new cultural content. The work was characteristically entertaining (prop-filled, bizarre, and hilarious) and developed in tandem with a downtown performance community built on shared (and pleasurable) social, symbolic, and economic exchanges between performer and audience. In search of growth through wider audiences, this new style of campy and flamboyant performance art begun in nightclubs, and its market continued to expand with performers moving into large concert hall venues like the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and eventually onto cable television.
‘Exposing the long-ignored economics of performance art, this dissertation argues that between the emergence of punk and the art market boom of the 1980s, performance found a way to create and profit from a market economy, despite the medium’s ephemerality. This goes against the two dominant and polarized interpretations of this work.On the one hand is the claim that the work is unabashedly complicit with big capital and therefore with the gentrification of downtown. On the other hand is the belief that downtown performances parodied the market, accruing symbolic capital within a ‘restricted field,’ which by the mid-1980s was usurped by real capital (as evidenced by the rise of the art market and ‘crossover’ acts like Laurie Anderson, Ann Magnuson, and Eric Bogosian). Certainly, these performers accrued symbolic capital; however, I contend that they were never operating within a ‘restricted’ field, but rather consciously maneuvering to create an unprecedented market for performance. Thus, the growth of performance in the 1980s owes its success to neither ‘selling out’ nor subversion, but rather to the entrepreneurial creation of what I call a ‘market-community,’ a community constituted by shared practices of production and consumption, and emblematic of the larger economic shift towards affective and immaterial labor in our post-Fordist service economy. Indeed, one can neither sell-out in nor subvert the market one produces, sells, and consumes.’ — Meredith Mowder
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Selected venues
The Kitchen
Performance Space 122
Franklin Furnace
Dixon Place
Danspace
Dance Theater Workshop
The Performing Garage
La MaMa Experimental Theatre
8BC
The Pyramid
Club 57
King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut
Chandalier
Darinka
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10 DPAs who became very famous
Steve Buscemi
Whoopie Goldberg
Willem Dafoe
Blue Man Group
Jill Clayburgh
Spaulding Gray
They Might Be Giants
Laurie Anderson
Eric Bogosian
Frances McDormand
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Further reading
* C. Carr On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century (Wesleyan, 1993)
* Roselee Goldberg Performance: Live Art Since 1960 (Harry N. Abrams, 1998)
* Brandon Stosuy Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992 (NYU Press, 2006)
* Marvin Taylor The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984 (Princeton University Press, 2005)
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Dancenoise
‘The Dancenoise performance art duo of Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton pull viewers into a world of nightmare dreams and hilarious apocalyptic visions through which the two women travel with friendly, deadpan objectivity. A good deal of the fun lies in the agonizingly slow vaudevillian buildups to fleeting jokes and barbs. The topics include women’s reproductive rights and the Persian Gulf war. The jokes are surprisingly fresh and devastating, and the gentler moments of affection as touching. A good deal of Dancenoise’s impact comes from the scrappily imaginative, sometimes beautiful set elements they work with.’ — Jennifer Dunning, NYT, 1991
Dancenoise at The Pyramid Club’s 7th Birthday Party
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John Kelly
‘John Kelly is a performance and visual artist has created over 30 performance works which have been performed at many performance and alternative venues, including The Tate Modern, The Kitchen, PS 1, The Warhol Museum, the Whitney Biennial, Dance Theater Workshop, The Sundance Theatre Lab, The Drawing Center, LaMaMa ETC, Creative Time, Performance Space 122, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. His performance works have consistently focused on the character of creative genius, and have ranged from the autobiographical to historic figures such as the Viennese Expressionist artist Egon Schiele, Caravaggio, Antonin Artaud, Joni Mitchell, and Jean Cocteau, as well as cultural phenomenon such as the Berlin Wall, the Troubadours, the AIDS epidemic, and Expressionistic Film.’ — John Kelly Website
“The Dagmar Onassis Story” (excerpt)
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David Leslie
‘I have been creating public spectacle as an artist / daredevil in the cultural arena of performance art in NYC art houses and club venues since the mid eighties. My addiction for art and adrenaline drove me to my first stunt in SOHO, when I attempted to fly a small single seat rocket over a mountain over watermelons. That night I almost broke my neck and was nearly burned alive in the flaming wreckage. I loved it. Throughout the mid to late eighties I offered up many outrageous acts and actions mostly in admiration, imitation and respect for of the men and women who inspired me. My over the top outrageous acts were in simpatico with a temperament that was pervasive in the East Village at that time. My over the top outrageous act were a in simpatico with a temperament that was pervasive then in that East Village. My fans and followers of my work named me “The Impact Addict”. I was given that name after doing a show that I had titled “impact addict”. In that show I jumped off a 3 story building onto a sheet of steel while wrapped in bubble wrap and christmas lights .. and the name stuck.’ — David Leslie
MTV News Story: David ‘The Impact Addict’ Leslie
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Yoshiko Chuma
‘The School of Hard Knocks, more fully titled “Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks,” was founded in 1982 and is located in New York. Described in 2007 by Bloomberg as “a fixture on New York’s downtown scene for over a quarter- century”, her work spans from early “absurdist gaiety” to more recent serious reflection, which nevertheless represents the “maverick imagination and crazy-quilt multimedia work” for which the artist is known. Dance commentators have found her work difficult to classify; in a 2006 profile, Dance Magazine speculated that “One might call her a postmodern choreographer, a movement designer, or a visual artist whose primary medium is human beings–dancers, musicians, pedestrians”.’ — Wikipedia
Excerpts from ‘Dead End Falling – Secret Journey’
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John Sex
‘After early work as a gay stripper, John Sex became an alternative performance artist, creating a character based on an exaggerated, cheesy Las Vegas lounge singer/MC. Sex developed a persona that simultaniously masked and amplified his polymorphous self, elaborating a mythinc yet parodic rock-star figure of mercurial presence”. His “Acts of Live Art” series brought performance art into the club context. He was able to further refine the combination of performance art, drag act, gay go-go dancer, cabaret singer, lounge MC, etc. as a performance art dancer who performed at such legendary New York clubs as Club 57, the Pyramid Club, Danceteria, The Palladium, Paradise Garage and Andy Warhol’s Underground. Mr. Sex’s trademark was his long, blond hair which stood straight up, and which he claimed was kept erect by a combination of Dippity-do, Aqua Net, egg whites, beer, and semen. He also dressed in flamboyant costumes. He owned a python named Delilah that was often included in his cabaret act, and was a friend of artist Andy Warhol. Sometimes he would leave the python on stage and come down into the audience and wrestle with patrons of the club. He died from AIDS-related complications.’ — Steven Hager
“Rock Your Body”
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Robert Whitman
‘Robert Whitman is best known for his seminal theater pieces combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making. Since the late 1960s he has worked with new technologies, and his most recent work incorporates cellphones. He has collaborated with engineers on installations and works that incorporate new technology: laser sculptures, including Solid Red Line, in which a red line draws itself around the walls of a room and then erases itself. In 2003, Dia Art Foundation, New York presented, Playback, a large-scale retrospective exhibition of Whitman’s works. The exhibition traveled to Porto, Portugal, and opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in September 2005. A major book, Playback, a comprehensive study of his work, accompanies this exhibition.’ — The Pace Gallery
from ‘Inside Out’
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Tom Murrin
‘Tom Murrin began performing under the name “Tom Trash” in the late 70s, doing street shows, but also getting gigs in rock clubs, opening for the bands. The punk scene was just starting at that time in New York, and his brand of theater was considered “punk”. In 1979, he changed his name to The Alien Comic. During the early ’80’s, Murrin also did shows at the off-off Broadway theaters, like La Mama and Theater for the New City, and opened for many bands, including X, Pere Ubu, the Stranglers, and James Brown. In the early ’80’s Murrin met a group of women dancers who had recently graduated from Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, who were then living in Manhattan. They were Jo Andres, Mimi Goese, Lucy Sexton and Annie Iobst, and they were interested in performing. Murrin taught Sexton and Iobst what he had learned along the way, and the two women became DANCENOISE. The five became The Full Moon Crew, and with the production help of Bill Schaffner, they put on many Full Moon Shows at P.S. 122. In May, 2008, Murrin was honored by P.S. 122, along with his friend, producer/stage technician Lori E. Seid, at their annual Spring Gala and Benefit at Angel Orensanz Foundation.’ — Alien Comic Website
Tom Murrin (Alien Comic)
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Ann Magnuson
‘In 1978, Ann Magnuson moved to New York City, New York and was a DJ and performer at Club 57 and the Mudd Club in Manhattan circa 1979 through the early 1980s, while pursuing a performance career on varied fronts. She created such characters as “Anoushka”, a Soviet lounge singer, wearing a wig backwards and singing mock-Russian lyrics to pop music standards, and separately sang in an all-girl percussion group, Pulsallama, whose 1982 single “The Devil Lives In My Husband’s Body” was a housewife’s lament of a spouse who appears to be possessed. Later, in the 1990s, Magnuson fronted the satirical faux-heavy metal band Vulcan Death Grip. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Magnuson ran Club 57, in New York City’s East Village. The club was located in the basement of the Polish National church. It became a center of a world that included Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and many others from New York’s budding graffiti and downtown scenes.’ — Art in America
from ‘Made for TV’
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John Jesurun
‘John Jesurun, a winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1996, is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost innovators of avant-garde theater, creating virtuoso works that overlap media and language in surprising and unpredictable ways. His works play with various media forms, pop-cultural constructs and entertainment genres. The construction is as important as the text. It is converged by the influence of film, television and radio rather than by theatrical convention. Scenes begin and end abruptly, as if cut and spliced together. Camera effects are replicated: actors are frequently suspended on platforms in various configurations to suggest overhead shots, long shots, and shots from below. Stagings have included helicopter rescues, sailboat races, a floating saxophone, car crashes and chases.’ — MacArthur Foundation
SUNSPOT(1989)
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Karen Finley
‘Karen Finley is an innovative and controversial New York based performance artist/literary figure/visual artist. She has created countless installations, drawings, performances, and public sculptures all over the world. Many of her works deal with the issues of violence against women, emotional despair, a sense of loss, and abuse. During her performances she often goes into a trancelike voice and verbally juggles different characters and voices. At the end of her shows, she often takes off her clothes and smears herself with chocolate or other substances. Finely gained much notoriety for her show,”We Keep Our Victims Ready.” “The show made her run afoul of Senator Jessie Helms who used her performances as a focal point for a movement to eliminate the NEA. When her NEA grant application was rejected for inappropriate content she challenged the ruling. She took the case all the way to the Supreme Court along with fellow artists, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller. The artists lost the case.’ — Vittorio Carli, artinterviews
“I’m An Ass Man” performed at Limelight NYC
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Ethyl Eichelberger
‘Ethyl Eichelberger often performed solo works in free verse based on the lives of the grand dames of history, including Lucrezia Borgia, Jocasta, Medea, Lola Montez, Nefertiti, Clytemnestra, and Carlotta, Empress of Mexico. “I wanted to play the great roles but who would cast me as Medea?”, he mused late in life in Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century. His 1984 play Leer distilled Shakespears’s King Lear into 3 characters, all played by Eichelberger. Such works are rarely revived, as they require a solo performer capable of accompanying himself on the accordion, eating fire, turning cartwheels, and doing splits and other acrobatic feats. He was diagnosed with AIDS and was unable to tolerate the available medications. Only after his suicide did it become widely known that he was ill.’ — Joe E. Jeffreys
from ‘Minnie the Maid’
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Jeff Weiss
‘Anyone who has visited Good Medicine & Company on East 10th Street over the last fifteen years knows something about theater that many people are just now discovering. Sometimes, before a show, there might be instant shopping expeditions to neighboring bodegas. Always there was red wine, fruit. Often you found yourself on stage, pinpointed, a part of the energy of the evening. All this at close quarters. In that small space audiences experienced a total immersion in their own darker consciousness through the vehicle of Jeff Weiss and Carlos Ricardo Martinez. Suddenly, total darkness, then a candle, a flashlight, or a bare light bulb and then—total theater.’ — Bill Rice, Bomb, 1984
Portrait of the Artist: Jeff Weiss
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The Wooster Group
‘The Wooster Group evolved from a small group of people in 1975 who made the trilogy, THREE PLACES IN RHODE ISLAND, around the autobiographical impulses of Spalding Gray. That group included Gray, Elizabeth LeCompte, and Jim Clayburgh. Ron Vawter began performing with the company in RUMSTICK ROAD and Willem Dafoe joined during the making of NAYATT SCHOOL. Kate Valk began working with the Group during POINT JUDITH and Peyton Smith joined for ROUTE 1 & 9. The Group has sustained a full-time, ongoing ensemble since this beginning. The company is constantly evolving, and with its many artistic associates has created and performed nineteen pieces for theater, eight film/video pieces, and five dance pieces. The company members are at the center of the work. Elizabeth LeCompte has directed all of the pieces and members who have “moved on” periodically return to remount repertory pieces and make new work. ‘ — Thewoostergroup.org
from ‘LSD’
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Eiko & Koma
‘Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake, generally known as Eiko & Koma, are a Japanese performance duo. Since 1972, Eiko & Koma have worked as co-artistic directors, choreographers, and performers, creating a unique theater of movement out of stillness, shape, light, sound, and time. For most of their multi-disciplinary works, Eiko & Koma also create their own sets and costumes, and they are usually the sole performers in their work. Neither of them studied traditional Japanese dance or theater forms and prefer to choreograph and perform only their own works. They do not bill their work as Butoh though Eiko & Koma cite Kazuo Ohno (a Butoh pioneer) as their main inspiration.’ — Village Voice
‘River’
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Joey Arias
‘Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Joey Arias moved to New York City as a teenager and eventually got a job at the Fiorucci designer clothing store. While working at the store he became friends with alternative icon Klaus Nomi, singing backup and designing Nomi’s sets and costumes. Arias gradually became involved in the burgeoning 1980s New York performance art scene, appearing regularly at Club 57 and other downtown venues. During these years he also began crafting a successful career in cabaret, based on his talent for channeling the vocal style and mannerisms of the legendary Billie Holiday. His most recent work was performing in Arias with a Twist, a collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist, and before that as the Mistress of Seduction in the Las Vegas show Zumanity, an “adult-themed” Cirque du Soleil show running at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino.’ — Wikipedia
1988 TV interview & video clip
Joey Arias & Dean Johnson in the dressing room at Limelight
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Tim Miller
‘Since moving to New York at the age of 19 to pursue his interests in art and performance, Miller has not only been presenting his own work but also facilitating the development and presentation of other artists’ work. At 21, he became part of the small group that founded one of New York’s most important alternative performance spaces, PS122. Later, when he moved back to his home state of California in the early 1990s, he helped found yet another alternative space in Los Angeles, Highways.’ — Hyperallergic
My Queer Body (1992)
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Ishmael Houston-Jones
‘Ishmael Houston-Jones started dancing in the abandoned NYC Public School 122 in 1979; using the newly formed weekly Open Movement nights to meet collaborators, dancers, friends, and lovers. Ishmael and a band of like-minded art rebels that included Yvonne Meier, Stephanie Skura, Stephanie Doba, Frank Conversano, Fred Holland, Jennifer Miller, Robin Epstein, Mark Russell, John Bernd (RIP) as well as directors Charles Dennis, Tim Miller, Peter Rose and Moulton formed the early informal core of what became Performance Space 122. As a choreographer and performer Ishmael Houston-Jones’ early work used movement and text to address issues of race, sexuality, and the AIDS crisis. Houston-Jones and Fred Holland shared a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie Award” for their Cowboys, Dreams and Ladders. Works Houston-Jones premiered at Performance Space 122 include: THEM and Knife/Tape/Rope, both of which were collaborations with novelist Dennis Cooper. He also appeared at Performance Space 122 in the work of Holland, Meier, Bernd, Cathy Weis, DD Dorvillier, Terry Fox, Rotozaza and DANCENOISE. As a teacher at the American Dance Festival, The Eugene Lang College at the New School, the Center for New Dance Development in Holland, and many other schools and festivals, Houston Jones has nurtured continuing generations of radical dance makers.’ — Broadway World
Fred Holland & Ishmael Houston-Jones, 1983
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Penny Arcade
‘Penny Arcade Aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected performance artist, writer , poet and experimental theatre maker known for her magnetic stage presence, her take no prisoners wit and her content rich plays and one liners. She is the author of ten scripted performance plays and hundreds of performance art pieces. Her work has always focused on the other and the outsider, giving voice to those marginalized by society. Her willingness to speak truth to power at the expense of career concerns has made her an international icon of artistic resistance. Her decades long focus on the creation of community and inclusion as the goals of performance and her efforts to use performance as a transformative act mark her as a true original in American theatre and performance.’ — pa.tv
excerpt from Penny Arcade’s “True Stories”
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Tehching Hsieh
‘The performance artist Tehching Hsieh has isolated himself in a barren, caged room, making no contact with the outside world; lived and slept on the streets of New York, avoiding any form of shelter; and tied himself to fellow artist Linda Montano with a rope—each piece lasting for an entire year. (“Life is a life sentence; life is passing time, life is free thinking,” he has said, suggesting the stoic philosophy that guided these radical, time-based performances and others of the late 1970s through the ’90s.) Yet, despite having undergone these extraordinary performative endurance tests, Hsieh is often excluded from major texts on conceptual and performance art and, strangely, remained relatively unknown until he quit making art altogether.’ — artsy.net
Outside Again is a short documentary on Tehching Hsieh’s performances
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Carmelita Tropicana
‘Carmelita Tropicana has been performing in New York’s downtown arts scene since the 1980s, straddling the worlds of performance art and theater in the U.S., Latin America and Europe with her irreverent humor, subversive fantasy and bilingual puns. She received an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance (1999) and is a recipient of the Performance and Activism Award from the Women in Theater Program / American Theater in Higher Education (2015). Notable and recent works include: Schwanze-Beast (2015), a performance commissioned by Vermont Performance Lab; Recycling Atlantis (2014), a performance installation at 80WSE Gallery; Post Plastica (2012), an installation/video and performance presented at El Museo del Barrio; and the highly anthologized Milk of Amnesia (1994). Her publications include the book, co-edited with Holly Hughes, Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café (University of Michigan Press, 2015). Tropicana has taught at numerous universities and sits on the Board of Directors at Performance Space 122 and NYFA.’ — ct.com
Carmelita Tropicana Sample
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Pat Oleszko
‘Performance artist Pat Oleszko makes a spectacle of herself—and doesn’t mind if you laugh. With elaborate handmade costumes and props, she utilizes the body as armature for ideas in an array of lampoons that call her audience to action. From the personal to the political, her performances and installations ceremoniously exorcize through humor. Hoisting an enormous burning bra on the exterior of the Women’s Studies Research Center, the exhibition Fool for Thought highlights costumes and performances from a wild variety of events including Hello Folly: The Floes & Cons of Arctic Drilling, Oldilocks and the Bewares, Stalking Walking Topiary and The Pat and the Hats. Oleszko, self-identified as the Fool in question and the questioning Fool, fans the flames with rousing absurdity and maintains that she who laughs, lasts.’ — brandeis.edu
Four/Shortened Works
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Hapi Phace
What ever happened to Hapi Phace? The drag queen from the 80s – yes, in NYC. Anyone know? Is s/he till in NYC? I used to think Hapi Phace was hilarious. Lives with a doctor on an old farmhouse in Sharon Springs now. Hapi Phace moved to Boston a few years ago. Well, if anyone knows him…tell him someone in NY misses him!
Hapi Phace does her Comedy Monologue at The Pyramid Club
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Eric Bogosian
‘Bogosian is an author and actor known for his plays Talk Radio and subUrbia as well as numerous one-man shows. Between 1980 and 2000, six major solos written and performed by Eric Bogosian were produced Off-Broadway, garnering him three Obie Awards as well as the Drama Desk award. His first two solos, Men Inside and funHouse were presented at the New York Shakespeare Festival. His third, Drinking in America, was produced by American Place Theater. Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee were all produced commercially Off-Broadway by Frederick Zollo. In addition to Bogosian’s touring the United States and Europe, the solos have been produced featuring other actors in Argentina, Brazil, Italy and Poland.’ — collaged
Eric Bogosian “Medicine” (1994)
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Spalding Gray
‘Spalding Gray detailed the minutiae of his neuroses, fears, experiences, and desires through his cutting and dry self-deprecating humor. An actor, playwright, and novelist, Gray came into his own with the 1987 film adaptation of his monologue Swimming to Cambodia. The spare set included Gray sitting at a table with a pitcher of water and a drinking glass with a map of Cambodia behind him while he detailed parts of his personal history with a history of the Khmer Rouge and its impact on the people of Cambodia. Author Francine Prose described the power of Gray’s monologues to Bruce Weber of the New York Times, “He transformed darkness into dark comedy.”‘ — EoWB
Terrors of Pleasure (1988)
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Alexis del Lago
‘A short documentary, directed by Craig Calman and alternately called He Made Herself a Star, is a marvelous peek into the bygone world of a quietly fading goddess. The ever-alluring drag legend Alexis Del Lago has been beguiling clubgoers for decades. I remember meeting her in the ’80s and even then she seemed a dazzling relic from an earlier age. Here she talks (in a sadly faltering voice) about Warhol and Mapplethorpe (whom she found “tacky”) and shows us the pictures of an incredible life lived to the fullest, on the furthest edges of society. This is our LGBT history,people, and Alexis is a living monument to our culture.’ — WOW
The Exotic Queen Alexis del Lago at the Pyramid Club NYC 1980s
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John Bernd
‘In the early 80s, the yet to be named AIDS epidemic was decimating the New York and San Francisco’s large gay male populations. The dance and theater worlds in were particularly hard hit and for the next decade untold numbers of artists were lost until the effective anti-viral medications became widely available in the mid-90s. Among them choreographer John Bernd, who died in 1988 at age 35. Bernd had worked with such dance luminaries as Merce Cunningham and Twyla Tharp, as well as collaborating with other legendary artists from other fields. Bernd founded the improvisational collective Open Movement in Performance Space 122. He received a Bessie Award in 1978 and in 1986, two years before his death, prestigious New York Dance and Performance Award. He was at the height of his creative powers, as a dancer, choreographer, composer and interdisciplinary visual artist.’ — The Dance Journal
TELL ME MOVING (1985)
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Holly Hughes
‘Holly Hughes is an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose work maps the troubled fault lines of identity. Her combination of poetic imagery and political satire has earned her wide attention and placed her work at the center of America’s culture wars. Hughes was among the first students to attend The New York Feminist Art Institute, an experiment in progressive pedagogy launched by members of the Heresies Collective. While there, she worked with feminist artists such as Miriam Schapiro and Mary Beth Edelson and participated in performance work at A.I.R. gallery. In the early ’80s, Hughes became part of the Women’s One World Café, also known as the WOW Café, an arts cooperative in the East Village established by an international group of women artists. As the Village gradually became a magnet for the avant-garde art world, WOW served as an incubator for a generation of artists.’ — STAMPS
The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony)
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Ralph Lemon
‘Much of Lemon’s success is attributed to his unique ability to express dramatic and emotional content through movement using new art forms. Ralph Lemon is currently the artistic director of Cross Performance Inc. in New York. Lemon strives to invent and be innovative with each performance he creates by conveying different concepts and using different media. The core of Ralph Lemon’s style in his earlier works was atmospherically showcased with strong costumes and props to visually help the audience understand the narrative. By the early 1990s he strayed away from a theatrical style to a more movement oriented style by focusing on the body. Ralph Lemon uses both his art and anthropology backgrounds to influence his choreography, but he refrains from distorting the cultural importance of dance within traditions.’ — collaged
Talking Dance (1997)
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Frank Maya
‘Maya was part of John Jesurun’s legendary serial theater piece, Chang in a Void Moon, when it premiered at the Pyramid Club in 1982. His music performances had always verged on theater with interludes of acerbic monologues he called rants. In the mid- 1980s, he began focusing more on his rants, joining a growing cadre of solo performers such as Spalding Grey, Eric Bogosian, and Karen Finley, who were similarly examining American society through a personal lens. He created three hour- long solo performances that tackled pop culture, gender issues, and the mundanity of existence. Thirty years before the current outcry over the lack of minorities in mainstream media, Maya was commenting, “There’s a few movies like Cotton Club where they take all the black actors who’ve been out of work for ten years and put them in the same film… People say, ‘See we’re making progress.’” His acclaimed shows were performed at P.S. 122, La Mama, Dixon Place, the Kitchen, and Lincoln Center’s Serious Fun series. He also toured the mid-Atlantic states and performed in Germany.’ — Vaudevisuals
Recorded at La Mama Theatre on April 20, 1987
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Mabou Mines
‘The company began as a resident company at Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village. In 1986, the company won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence for its theatrical contributions to the Off-Broadway community. As the company stated in a 1990 press kit, “The artistic purpose of Mabou Mines has been and remains the creation of new theatre pieces from original texts and the theatrical use of existing texts staged from a specific point of view. Each member is encouraged to pursue his or her artistic vision by initiating and collaborating on a wide range of projects of varying styles, developing them from initial concept to final performance. This process is intense and often lengthy. While the director of a Mabou Mines work is responsible for its concept and its basic structure, the ultimate production reflects the concerns and the artistic input of all its collaborators.”‘ — collaged
an excerpt of Mabou Mine’s “Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day”
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Lady Bunny
‘A fixture of New York night life since the early 1980s, when she moved from Atlanta with her pal RuPaul, Lady Bunny is arguably the city’s reigning drag queen, less a mother hen than a queen bee with plenty of sting. Her signature look — big curves, bigger hair — has endured, as has her act: scowling, spiky comedy, laced with political jabs and honeyed with Southern-fried gregariousness. And while much has changed in L.G.B.T. life over the past 17 years (gay marriage, PrEP, Caitlyn Jenner and “RuPaul’s Drag Race”), Lady Bunny retains the rude and crude spirit that has eroded over the decades, both from downtown Manhattan and from drag itself, now that “Drag Race” has minted a new crop of camera-ready stars.’ — NY Times
Werq the World
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p.s. Hey. ** James, True. And true again. I agree with almost everything you wrote, and your enthusiasm for the post would be highly infectious if I wasn’t already enthusiastic. An A! And a scraped A! There’s at least one Swedish regular on this blog, so you’ve at least rubbed texts with one. Mozzarella sticks are so good they’re almost sentient. I’ve never been called a faggot. I feel kind of sad about that. I hope you really enjoyed that shave. ** jay, Leve also loved the great Joe Brainard and kind of kick started a Brainard cult over here. Excellent question about that online site. It’d be so nice to put the fear of god into the crystals believing set. So your boyfriend has at least a bit of an edge, at least in theory. My weekend didn’t storm at all. It just dripped occasionally. ** PL, Hi. I haven’t had the chance to delve into your portfolio yet, but I look forward to it. ** Steeqhen, Hey. One of Zac’s and my future plans to make a film with this great sound artist Aki Onda who records and repurposes real life sounds. We want to make a film with him on set the whole time recording the sound of us making the film which we would use as the film’s score. The Dalek, right, I know that term. They seem kind of steampunk but without all the ick that comes with steampunk. When do you think you’ll hear back about the submissions? I guess you probably don’t know. Luck galore, naturally. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Well, if you’re ambitious, ‘Life, A User’s Manual’ is kind of his masterpiece, but it’s a biggie. If you want a short, fun one, ‘An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris’ is great, for instance. I had to look love’s last karaoke up, but, of course, Placebo! Yeah deep in the night, I’m lost in love, Yeah deep in the night, I’m lost in love, A thousand lights, Look at you, I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost, yeah, I’m lost, Lost, lost, lost, Ooh, Ooh, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, no, the day has come! PT enters its eternity as a legacy act! You did great, maestro! I’ll go listen and sniffle. Everyone, Ben Robinson’s gift from god in the form of a musical podcast Play Therapy v2.0 has just launched its final ever episode. A sad day, but your ears and probably booty will celebrate if you’re wise enough to hear it out here. Take my word for it. Hugs and hurrah, B! ** Lucas, I’m okay, I think, and you foraged through the crappiness perfectly well, so we’re kind of twinsies, I guess. Well, posts can be pretty long. I mean today’s post is pretty long. Don’t worry about it, iow. I’m thrilled that you’re enjoying making it. Are you/did you read in the group reading? This week is visa material gathering and making the teaser trailer for our film and no doubt a bunch of other as yet undetermined things. Thanks, buddy. ** Steve, Hey. No, I wouldn’t write for Spin. I swore off writing non-fiction/ journalism/ reviews quite a while ago. An exception would be being able to interview someone that seemed exciting to talk with. I hope they bite on your proposal. I’ll try to find ‘GTH’ for sure. Interesting: the Wiseman retro is just wrapping up here, so on to the next. I assume he’ll go over for that? It’s pretty impressive how energised and completely mentally with it he is at his age. He lives here in the same artists residency complex I lived in for seven years. ** Diesel Clementine, Hospital porter, that’s interesting. And intense. Mm, I’d have to guess, but, if I guess, I would guess the Gamecube game I was probably raving about is ‘Eternal Darkness’, although I’m not 100% sure it’s a Gamecube game. Probably. Oh, wow, how was FKA Twigs? She’s playing here soon, and I was wondering if I should go, or I was until I saw it’s sold out, of course. We didn’t have any storming here. Just the usual Paris moist dreariness. Glad you’re on the other side of all of that. ** HaRpEr, And the poem revision is truly more exciting. How interesting. I mean, the original wasn’t shabby either. Everybody is talking about the new FKA Twigs, but I haven’t checked in on it yet, though almost certainly today. I like her work, yeah, of course. ‘Celine and Julie …’, yeah, so wonderful. My weekend: I saw my visiting UK friend Adem. He and his ex-bf are starting a literary press, so we talked a lot about that. I worked fitfully on things. I had my bi-weekly Zoom film/book club and we watched/ talked about Errol Morris’s great documentary about pet cemeteries, ‘Gates of Heaven’, and that was excellent. I’m okay, in other words, thanks! I’m going to read ‘A Burning Stint’ once I publish this and when I’m not in p.s. mindset. Thank you! Exciting! ** Darbz, Apologies about my blog’s or your server’s stinginess. Oh, you talked that comment. That’s interesting. I wonder if other people do that. I never talk/type. I think it would be really a mess if I did. I don’t talk that good. ‘Black Sunlight’ is great, highly recommended again. Nice: snow. We’re still utterly bereft here on that front. You live where ‘Blue Velvet’ was filmed? Wow. I’ll watch it again and imagine you scurrying around in the frames. No, the novel I lost I just totally wiped out of my mind and started over. Hopefully it was shitty. Good to find out if drag is your thing or not, although if it’s just blah, usual drag, don’t dismiss the genre. For instance, there are a few great drag artists in the post today. I don’t know ‘Labyrinth Ear’, so thank you. I’ll hear it out once I’m out of the p.s. because my brain won’t be so concentrated on paying close attention to verbiage and then outputting verbiage. Thank you! May your week begin like amazing opening credits. ** Right. Today the blog presents the opportunity for you to go back in time and and experience a really exciting period when downtown NYC was bursting with wildly amazing performance artists of all different kinds. There’s some really great stuff up there. Have a look and listen. And see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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All of this seems like a really crazy utopian path to follow when creating art, with no market for expensive art objects to have to worry about. Much the better for it, I say. Of the cities I have resided in, all had a vibrant performance art scene at some point.
Formerly a Dundee-based actor, the mighty Brian Cox will be returning to his home city to take part in a play about the 2008 financial crash. Make It Happen will show at the Dundee Rep and I’m excited to see how it goes down. The guy was always a supporter of Scottish Independence too.
Hi!!
If I could, I would move into this post and never leave.
Thank you for the Georges Perec tips! I do feel ambitious, so I might go for “Life, a User’s Manual” first, but “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris” sounds intriguing too. Actually, I’m sure we’ve talked about the latter once before – probably in connection with another post.
Ahhh, yes! Another one where I could hear the music while I read the lyrics. Your picks are always excellent. And you think love is to pray, but I’m sorry, I don’t pray that way, Od.
Dennis, You’re right. Perspective is key. We’ll find a way. And Alex is starting new hours at his job because he just got promoted to assistant general manager. We’ll figure it out.
My mom got her ciggies at $6.25 a pack. Mine are about $7 a pack. Much better than the $12 to $14 here in MD.
Hope your weekend was swell. Mine was all right. Had some good food, watched some football, hung out with Alex, etc.
Dennis hi! Oh I luv this list of faves! freaking Tehching Hsieh wins for greatest commitment to his art. He also did that extended performance where he was tied to another performer for an extended period. Who was that artist again? I reported to both Madison Murray and Victoria Brooks about their books. There is currntly a hummingbird outside my window. Good omen. Great to see u!!!
Yr friend John Cage
I like They Might Be Giants – Ana Ng’s video visually resembles Wes Anderson’s Fox, Your Racist Friend has a great guitar solo, and most like Birdhouse in Your Soul and Istanbul. To be a self-professed daredevil is admirable, I have such respect for batshit insane stunt people. I am sniffing in amusement at John Sex, and entertaining the prospect of seeing gay go-go dancing in person before I croak. Jesurun is onto something with floating saxophones, the world needs more of those. Having a rope tied to another person for a year sounds like it could get funny and uncomfortable. No idea what’ going on in that Mabou Mines photo with the lady popping out of the box but the dresses are pretty.
Hullo. To be agreed with is often nice, but differences in opinion make the world the interesting place it is. Enthusiasm is a little trickier to sustain by the point of a Monday afternoon. Almost evening already. I’m guilty of defining my self-worth in relation to my grades, but I’m trying to not be so silly in that sense.
Oo, goodie. Hello, Swedish text neighbour(s)! I hope it’s nice over there.
Sentient mozzarella sticks would freak me the fuck out. Now I’ve remembered these videos that would end up in my feed from time to time of someone taking food products and making them appear sentient. Absolutely revolting. Like, seeing a banana writhe like a worm, or a burger breathing, ugh. Yuck, shivers.
You’re not missing out much, on being called a faggot. It loses its sting and you become inured to it. I am sure you could find a way to be called a faggot, if it would make you less sad about that.
It was a pretty solid shave, I look SIGNIFICANTLY less hairy on my face, which pleases me, and I imagine makes me less of an eyesore to others.
Hm, what happened today. I woke up late and had to speedrun my morning routine in 10 minutes but I DID IT, damn it, and after explaining my history teacher said she would in fact NOT deprive me of 20 marks after my silly little question number fuck up, so the grade that doesn’t matter will be a little better, hopefully, than what I expected. We’ll see. Going to try and crack an email response or two, but I don’t know if I’ll have the time. See you tomorrow – Tuesday, yippee!
Interesting post today Dennis!
John Sex seemed like someone I would’ve bene obsessed with if I was around at the time; I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a gogo dancer, I feel like if I practiced I’d be great at getting lost into it, fully just thinking in my head whilst on display. AIDs was such tragedy. So many talented individuals lost. Whilst I tend to associate AIDs with larger cities like London and New York, in a sense I lost someone close to me from it, by way of my mother losing someone. He was one of her best friends growing up, and he moved away from working class Ireland to London, with his family trying to hide his cause of death. Sometimes I like to imagine that maybe I’m some reincarnation of him and that explains why I’m so close with my mom.
I went to bed with a headache and felt exhausted, woke up even worse. I have a lot of work I need to get done today (plus commitments throughout the week), but all I wanna do is crawl into bed and sleep. I have no proof, but I’ve been convincing myself that there’s mould between my carpeting and the floorboards, or painted over by previous tenants. Like I said, I have no proof. In fact, I think my exhaustion is coming from the fact I’m barely eating, but that’s due to my shared kitchen being a mess from bintrucks being lit on fire a month ago and causing a backlog in waste. I’ve decided to be what I call an “at home vegetarian”, as I don’t want to even bother with cooking meat and the rot and disease it can bring. I still will eat meat, eating some mince right now at the college canteen. But I remember saying when you were shopping that I’ve grown up eating so much food that was either meat free, gluten free, dairy free, that the only thing stopping me from being an “-an” is the commitment. I plan to cook some pasta with mushrooms onions and chickpeas tonight, so hopefully I can push through my mental blockage. This whole ramble feels a bit frivolous, but I guess it’s just entirely what’s been on my mind the past 48 hours; I’ve been writing a lot about the return of heroin chic and my own relationship with eating, but it’s maybe a bit too personal, instead I might just focus on some poetry or prose before I make a whole article speaking about my neurotic food aversions when I was a child.
Love that film idea, great minds think alike!! I remember reading something in an interview with you about how you enjoyed listening to people speaking French and not understanding; I feel the same way whenever I’m outside of Ireland. I’ve been meaning to practice Irish more as it’s a bit of a fun Irish thing to speak to family and friends abroad as Gaeilge in public so you can experience that public secrecy. I do love listening to people’s conversations though, I once was at a cafe and wrote down everything I was hearing around me, it made an interesting story to be honest. Especially since it was mainly two girls talking about an ex and how he’s completely changed for the new girl, while we were waiting for a gig to start.
I’ve been slowly watching a 12 hour video called “a brief history of Doctor Who”. The Daleks were such a vital part of Doctor Who’s success, had that story not happened, the show would not have made it past the first season. They were modeled after the Nazis, especially their repetition of “exterminate”, and their plunger arm that was always out straight. The og 1963 serial makes them sympathetic in a pathetic way, creatures reduced to living in a metal casing in these cities due to a nuclear war they caused with the other species on their planet Scaro. They’re slightly overused — there was a theory that the new show had to use them in some capacity once a year, which has been denied — but they’re popular for a reason. Some of my favourite stories with them involve Dalek on Dalek crime; when they fight over which Daleks are more “Dalek”. The other main baddie is the Cybermen: cyborgs from Earth’s twin planet Mondas, knocked out of orbit and slowly drifting away into space. The Cybermen became what they are as a way to survive their environment and to speed up the evolution process. Though they tend to get relegated to “standard robot”, the few stories that focus on that post-humanism aspect are some of the best in the show. I’ve always wanted to write a story about humans who had been half converted into cybermen during some invasion/story, and who see themselves as/are still human.
Not sure when I’ll find out about the submissions, hopefully in the next month or so as I really liked the story I wrote and would like to get it out. I know one or two people on the society that run it, so perhaps I can sneak in a good word and find out earlier! I’m on a different literary journal as an editor, and it’s mainly comprised of dissertation from the year prior (as I stated back a year, I recognize most of the names). I’m gunning to try and have a chapter of my dissertation included in the next year’s issue, and perhaps I could try and get the full dissertation included in some literary journal after college, though I don’t know the logistics of that.
I saw someone mentioned the new FKA Twigs; I remember discovering the cover for LP1 in 2014 and being in awe of it. I really love her, despite how pretentious she can be sometimes. This new album was rated incredibly by critics, though most people I know are hating it. I’m in the middle, I love the first half, and then the second half is a bit of a grower perhaps. There’s a lot of Bjork and 90s Madonna influence (one song sounds so similar to Bedtime Story) and some Massive Attack triphop influences; I’ve been listening to Mezzanine on repeat since Sunday. She did a song with North West (Kim & Kanyes daughter) which I found at first a bit pathetic. I listened to it though and I enjoyed it, it’s light and I find popstars randomly doing a Japanese inspired song like Madonna or Gwen Stefani fun. I think the fact she’s signed with a major label put some spanners in the works, plus the trial she has with Shia LaBouf is coming up soon. I’m expecting a fabricated smear campaign against her to start in the next few months, with the usual “her vibes are off” “she’s not a girls girl” tiktok bullshit being spread by self-proclaimed leftists, and that North West song will probably be used (people fear mongering and crying p€dophilia for having a child on an album called Eusexua, which has already happened).
Sorry for this whole spam, I’ve been so lethargic today and writing this gave me a boost of energy/motivation. Hopefully it can continue for the remainder of today!!
Love the documentation treasure trove of this golden era, Dennis. Those pre-web days were so isolating, I only saw a handful of these folks live or on video. I think I still have some Live from Off Center on VHS somewhere, should look them up on YouTube.
Funny coincidences: I finished the Nate Lippens book, which mentions some of them. Was just reading about Ira Sachs’ new movie “Peter Hujar’s Day”. I have mixed feelings about Sachs’ work, but PHD stars Ben Whishaw, so I’m keen to see it.
The new piece is giving me a lot of trouble. But there’s some time before the submission deadline, so we’ll see.
Bill
EUSEXUA is excellent. FKA twigs is a lot more successful at moving towards a poppier sound than she was on her 2022 CAPRISONGS. I agree with the ’90s Madonna comparisons, but there’s a touch of IDM as well. One of the only comforts of this horrible year has been the music.
MUBI’s releasing GRAND THEFT HAMLET, so it should be available to stream soon.
Last night, I spoke with a friend who’s been in a mental hospital for the last four years. I hadn’t talked with him since 2022. It was pretty bleak. He sounded too drugged to concentrate enough to hold down a conversation. It was hard to figure out what to talk about with someone in that condition. Very sad.
Hii, twinsies indeed. I didn’t read in the group reading today, a friend overtook that. We read a few pages of a book about fascism outlining its relationship to mysticism / i.e how mysticism and irrationalism served as a pretext for the rise of fascism in Europe. Very interesting. Lots of quotes from Nietzsche and his übermensch stuff. Have you ever read anything by him? I can’t say I’m super charmed by the impression that I got from him but he did say a lot of different stuff. Seems worth checking out maybe. We also talked about the sudden trend of Christianity and Catholicism in right-wing/fascist groups especially in the US, which seems harder to pin down. Ooh, nice, teaser trailer for the film. When do you think that it’ll be out for us to see?
I guess not ‘harder to pin down’ per se, the connection between Christianity and fascism has always been a close one, but this sort of current comeback seems to not hit Europe or at least Germany very hard: for example east germany is predominantly more right wing and populated by a lot more fascist groups than the west while simultaneously being the most atheist part of the country.
I love performance artist, and New York seems to hold a lot of good ones. Although he’s not a NY performance artist, I am intrigued by Pyotr Pavlinsky.
Did you give that song a listen? I kind of hate the intro of the song, I should’ve mentioned that in case you do as well, but the buildup is worth it. When I listen to the song I imagine I cant hear anything but her singing “Invisible” and “walk away” because it’s better that way. Words can ruin songs sometime.
I was hoping for a more eccentric drag show and this one was…kindve… I don’t know? I enjoyed the intervals of techno music played between performances. I talked to a few of the performers before the show and danced with some, they were really nice, it makes me feel even more bad about not really enjoying it. I wasnt uncomfortable, the only part that made me wince was when a drag king performed to “Let it go.” Everyone was really into that, andthey were all so sweet and fun, yet in my head i’m like “How is this Disney song so emotional? Am I missing something?”I guess the highlight was when a drag king injected testosterone at the end of their performance, which I don’t know if thats a common thing at drag shows. For the most part it was enjoyable, dont think I was disgusted , or that I think drag is cringe, it’s just not my thing. Oh, also, someone did poetry before their performance but it was really shitty poetry.
I guess its easy for me to make friends. I have all the traits; a good listener, nice, recognizing mistakes, seeing the good in people, I suppose i’m an interesting person, but I just dont feel close and prefer spending days alone.
Did you know Louis Wain could paint cats with both hands at the same time? Do you think you could write two sentences at the same time? Today I spent the day indoors (besides picking up my prescriptions) painting a picture of David Lynch while listening to Alice In Chains MTV unplugged performance. I didn’t feel lonely, and honestly, I could go the rest of the week doing this and not feel lonely. I guess thats the good part of social media, you can connect with your friends without even seeing them. But I dont even use that, haha, if I used social media i’d be dead.
Im taking a break the rest of the week for I fear this very long comment will exhaust you.
Dude I just walked around our apartment block, beneath the upper patios and collected, like fucking 12 barely smoked cigarettes. Sucks that it was raining so much of them may or may not be obsolete. Im going to find out, because when you have braindead smokers wasting sticks like this, whats the point in buying them.
OK peace out ♪┏(°.°)┛
Hi. Great post! The La Mama experimental theatre looked like the place to be. There are some great stories about that. One of my favourites is about ‘Glamour, Glory, and Gold’ where Ondine was giving the opening monologue to the play but was on so much speed that he said it four times. And there’s that story about Jackie Curtis robbing the apartment of an old lady in their building who died in order to get her clothes. Yeah, they would just put on plays with a regular household light, simply turned off and on, and a torch for the spotlight.
Drag is certainly not a form to be overlooked. It’s kind of the Rupaulification of it all that makes a lot of queens these days go into drag with the end goal of being on the show more than anything else. It’s also unfortunately streamlined drag so that it’s confined to a small selection of things a queen can do. The performance art aspect has been reduced to just the performance. There are obviously also queens who are against the show and label people who go on it ‘Ru queens’. That said, I actually do like the show and think it has given some opportunities to cool people. But yes, there’s no Leigh Bowery types having someone jump out of their outfit in a staged pregnancy.
I remember when I was sixteen I convinced myself I was going to be a drag queen but nothing ever came of it. I think I was just projecting something about my gender identity and not wanting to be perceived as a man. It was a weird time. I already wanted to be a writer but suddenly had this false epiphany and started spending all my money on wigs and stuff. That’s kind of why I ended up going to university to study filmmaking, because I sort of wanted to do something experimental with drag. Weird how I never think about that. Don’t look back, eh.
Side note: did you ever go to Squeezebox? It was a punk rock drag club in New York in the 90s that a lot of interesting people performed at.
Oh, ‘Gates of Heaven’, I’ve been meaning to see that. Funnily enough I have seen the film ‘Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe’ that is in response to ‘GOH’ which is a wonderful short.
I will have to look up those that I don’t know yet. I recently watched that Pranks TV documentary on Ubu and Karen Finley was the most entertaining of the people interviewed. I already knew who she was but it made me go out and listen to the albums she made.
Personally, I think fried curds are better than mozzarella sticks.
Hey, Dennis! I can only imagine how alive the scene/city must have felt during what should have been its halcyon days, only to be haunted/shadowed by the specter of AIDS. The fear, loss, and alienation are unfathomable. And yet, great art persisted and was born in defiance. I’m not sure if your intention was to provide some comfort in knowing that even in dark, uncertain times, life (hopefully) carries on and beautiful, inspired things are created, but that was my takeaway. xoxo p.s. I’m so excited for the forthcoming ‘RT’ trailer!!!