15 Los Angeles Performance Artists of the 80s and early 90s, part 2

 

‘In performance art, usually one or more people perform in front of an audience. Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways about theater and performing, break conventions of traditional performing arts, and break down conventional ideas about “what art is,” a preoccupation of modernist experimental theater and of postmodernism. Thus, even though in most cases the performance is in front of an audience, in some cases, notably in the later works of Allan Kaprow, the audience members become the performers.

‘The performance may be scripted, unscripted, or improvisational. It may incorporate music, dance, song, or complete silence. Art-world performance has often been an intimate set of gestures or actions, lasting from a few minutes to many hours, and may rely on props or avoid them completely. Performance may occur in transient spaces or in galleries, room, theaters or auditoriums.

‘Despite the fact that many performances are held within the circle of a small art-world group, RoseLee Goldberg notes, in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present that “performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely, public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stemmed from an apparent desire of that public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct community, and to be surprised by the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that the artists devise.”’ — John Stockwell

 

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Select Venues

LACE
Llhasa Club
The Woman’s Building
Highways
Human Resources Los Angeles
Anti-Club
LAICA
Beyond Baroque
Los Angeles Theater Center
SPARC

 

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High Performance Magazine

High Performance was a quarterly arts magazine based out of Los Angeles founded in 1978 and published until 1997. Its editorial mission was to provide support and a critical context for new, innovative and unrecognized work in the arts.

High Performance started out covering exclusively performance art and gradually grew to include video, sound, and public art. It dealt with viewing the arts in the larger context of contemporary life, examining how the arts contribute in addressing social and cultural concerns, and also how those concerns impact the arts. In 1994, High Performance received the Alternative Press Award for Cultural Coverage from the Utne Reader, and was nominated three other times for the same award.

Linda Frye Burnham served as the magazine’s founding editor from 1978 to 1985. Steven Durland was the editor from 1986 until its end in 1997. From 1983 to 1995, High Performance was published by Astro Artz (renamed 18th Street Arts Center in 1988). In July 1995, High Performance was acquired by Art in the Public Interest (API), a new organization formed by Burnham and Durland to research and develop information about artists collaborating with their communities. After a brief hiatus, the magazine renewed publication in early 1996 and published five more issues, but rising costs and an inability to garner needed stabilization funding forced API to cease publication in 1997. In 1999, Burnham and Durland initiated the Community Arts Network on the Web. Much of the content from High Performance is available on that site.

High Performance Magazine Complete Issues

 

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Extras

The Lhasa Club Tapes – Hollywood 1985

A Hole in Space LA-NY, 1980

Historic Places in L.A.: The Woman’s Building

 

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15

John Duncan

‘I wanted to punish myself as thoroughly as I could. I’d decided to have a vasectomy, but that wasn’t enough: I wanted my last potent seed to be spent in a dead body. I made arrangements to have sex with a cadaver. I was bodily thrown out of several sex shops before meeting a man who set me up with a mortician’s assistant in a Mexican border town…’

‘BLIND DATE was performed in order to torture myself, physically and psychically. The sound recording of the session in Mexico was made public to respond to what I saw as a general situation created by social conditions, and to render any further self-torture of this kind, especially psychic self-torture, unnecessary for anyone to perform as a creative act.

‘These experiences — the acts themselves, the shame that inspired them, isolation in Japan soon afterward, suddenly in a completely alien culture unable to read, understand or communicate with anyone — all taught me far more than I could possibly have anticipated. As a result, my perception of all existence, including my own, has permanently and fundamentally changed.

‘These experiences have shown life in all forms to be an incredibly rich, timeless, continuous cycle, with death and corporeal existence interwoven as part of the process. I’ve come to see myself as a microscopic and insignificant part of that process, while at the same time the very embodiment and center of it. I’ve come to understand the act and experience of learning as sensual, as a form of beauty.

‘Since BLIND DATE, all forms of my work are created to raise questions, to find out everything I can about who I am without fear or judgement, and to encourage you to do the same.’ — John Duncan

(more)

‘Blind Date (audio)’ (1980)

 

 

 

Rachel Rosenthal

‘Rachel Rosenthal, a performance artist whose work — fierce, funny, earthy and cantankerous — bemoaned the political and ecological fate of the planet, died on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 88.

‘Ms. Rosenthal’s work melded dance, theater, dramatic monologues, improvisation and visual art to illuminate her abiding concerns: feminism, environmentalism and animal rights. Internationally renowned — she performed at Lincoln Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and elsewhere — she was for decades part of the cadre of Los Angeles conceptual artists that included Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden.

‘With her shaved head, resonant voice, teeming jewelry and take-no-prisoners approach to a great many things, Ms. Rosenthal cut a captivating figure. “The doyenne of performance art,” the news media often called her, an appellation she deplored.’ — NYTimes

(more)

KabbaLAmobile by Rachel Rosenthal (1984)

 

 

 

Goddess Bunny

‘For three generations, young gay mall punks have praised the Goddess the way other gay men wallow in the tabloid tragedies of Judy Garland. I was one such mall punk. In high school, my goth friends and I obsessed over the Goddess’s story. She contracted polio and underwent several botched surgeries as an infant. The combination stunted her growth, deformed her hands, and left her legs bone-thin and crooked. When she began presenting as a woman—at different times, she has said she was born with both a penis and a vagina and identified as trans—in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she used makeup, wigs, dresses, and, most of all, extreme self-confidence to see the beauty in her disability. She made performance art, modeled for Rick Owens, posed nude with swans for acclaimed photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, appeared as a puppet in Dr. Dre’s “Puppet Master” music video, became the breakout star of Marilyn Manson’s “The Dope Show,” acted opposite Carrie Fisher in the 1986 cult movie Hollywood Vice Squad, and played a female mobster and a number of Tennessee Williams heroines in a series of films directed by the filmmaker and archivist John Aes-Nihil.’ — Vice

(more)

Tap Dancing (1984)

 

 

 

Keith Antar Mason

‘Keith Antar Mason is a poet, playwright and performer whose stage and literary works have been presented extensively throughout the United States and Britain for over two decades. He writes, directs, and sometimes performs with the Hittite Empire, for which he is the Artistic Director and a co-founding member. Awards and honors include the Brody Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace, Art Matters, Harvard Book Award, the Barbara Mandingo KellyPeace Award and the Midwest Black Playwrights Award.’ — the ridge

(more)

‘For Black Boys Who Have Considered Homicide When The Streets Were Too Much’

 

 

 

Barbara T. Smith

‘Smith’s interest in performance and interdisciplinary work was cemented when she attended an experimental theater workshop led by Judson Church dancer Alex Hay. Hay’s workshop pushed Smith to realize that the curious actions forming in her mind were valid. Emboldened, Smith created the environmental sculpture Field Piece (1968–72), part of which was presented at F-Space in 1971, before the full installation was shown at Cirrus Gallery. The work comprised 180 semi-flexible, fiberglass, nine-and-a-half-foot tall columns in translucent colors—clear, orange, pink, yellow, and violet—that glowed via an internal light source, forming a dense, delicately industrial forest. Each column also contained a speaker, activated by sensors underneath a foam floor by the audience (also linked to the light) to emit a vibrating drone sound, making the viewer an integral part of its network.

‘A move into live performance shortly thereafter found Smith exploring the boundaries of audience-performer power dynamics with Feed Me (1973), staged at San Francisco’s Museum of Conceptual Art as part of the event “All Night Sculptures.” For one evening only, Smith sat nude inside the woman’s bathroom, which she outfitted with books, a mattress, pillows, and things the audience could “feed” her with: food, wine, marijuana, and massage oil. (An accompanying tape loop simply intoned “feed me, feed me.”)

‘Smith remained in control, as the participants—only one allowed in at a time—were instructed to negotiate her permission before taking action. Various accounts, by Smith and others, relay what occurred, from discussion and massage to consensual sexual intercourse with several men. Smith described the work as an act to create a positive, affirmative situation—using “feed me” to have her needs met, instead of enacting the stereotype of the nurturing woman. The performance was made in opposition to the male dominance she experienced in heterosexual relationships.’ — artsy

(more)

Barbara Smith in ‘Transmission’ (1985)

 

 

 

Dan Kwong

‘Dan Kwong is an American performance artist, writer, teacher and visual artist. He has been presenting his solo performances since 1989, often drawing upon his own life experiences to explore personal, historical and social issues. He is of Chinese American and Japanese American descent. His works intertwine storytelling, multimedia, dynamic physical movement, poetry, martial arts and music. Kwong is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been an Artist with the multicultural performing arts organization Great Leap since 1990 and assumed the position of Associate Artistic Director in 2011, and a Resident Artist at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, California since 1992.’ — Wiki

(more)

“How’s Camp?” (1989)

 

 

 

Allan Kaprow

‘With the invention of ‘Happenings’ and ‘Environments’, Allan Kaprow embarked upon a career of intellectually rigorous, site-specific, and timed works that defied commoditization and ultimately gave birth to performance and installation art. His seminal work, ‘18 Happenings in 6 parts’, an evening of seemingly random but carefully choreographed activities, required the participation of both the audience and the performers to complete the piece. ‘Life is much more interesting than art,’ Kaprow wrote. ‘The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.’

‘Central to Kaprow’s work was his concept of reinventions. As Kaprow explained, ‘I say reinventions, rather than reconstructions, because the works … differ markedly from their originals. Intentionally so. As I wrote in notes to one of them, they were planned to change each time they were remade. This decision, made in the late 50s, was the polar opposite of the traditional belief that the physical art object – the painting, photo, music composition, etc. – should be fixed in a permanent form.’’ — Hauser & Wirth

(more)

’18 Happenings in 6 Parts’ (1988)

 

 

 

Diviana X. Ingravallo

Ingrvallo is a performance artist, playwright, director and actress best known for her starring roles in the films “Steal America” and “Things We Said Today”. She is based in Los Angeles, and has been performing there since the late 1980s.’ — collaged

(more)

‘Succubus’ (w/ Leon Mostovoy) (1991)

 

 

 

John Fleck

‘John Fleck is an American actor and performance artist. He is also one of the NEA Four. In 1990 he and three of his fellow artist became embroiled in a lawsuit against the government’s National Endowment for the Arts program. John Frohnmayer, one of the chairman of the NEA vetoed funding his project on the basis of content and was accused of implementing a partisan political agenda. The government’s case was ultimately upheld at the US Supreme Court and the vaguely worded “decency” clause remains part of the NEA’s regulations. The NEA subsequently stopped funding all individual artists as a result of this case.

‘Fleck has won numerous grants and awards, among them 2 NEA’s, a Getty Fellowship, Durfee Funding, a Franklin Furnace & Jerome Foundation Fellowship, a Rockefeller/NEA- Interarts grant and LA Cultural Affairs funding. He has won 3 LA Critics Circle Awards, 8 DramaLogue, 6 LA Weekly and 2 Backstage West awards, all for outstanding performance. His television roles include Silik on the series Star Trek: Enterprise, several characters on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and the pilot to Babylon 5, The Gathering (1993). He starred as Gecko on the television show Carnivàle, and as Louis on Murder One. He also appears in Waterworld among other films.’ — Kevin Duffy

(more)

‘Blessed are the Little Fishes’ (excerpt, 1990)

 

 

 

Simone Forti

‘Simone Forti began dancing in 1955 with Anna Halprin, who was doing pioneering work in the teaching and performing of dance improvisation After four years of workshop study and performance apprenticeship at Halprin’s outdoor studio in the San Francisco Bay area, Simone moved to New York City. There she studied composition at the Merce Cunningham studio with musicologist /dance educator Robert Dunn, who was introducing dancers to the scores of John Cage. Thus she began her association with the Judson Dance Theater Group which revolutionized dance in New York in the 1960s.

‘From her early minimalist dance/constructions through her animal studies, news animations and land portraits, Forti has worked with an eye towards creating idioms for exploring natural forms and behaviors. Over the past fifteen years Forti has been developing Logomotion, an improvisational dance/narrative form wherein movement and words spring spontaneously from a common source.’ — Movement Research

(more)

‘Illlummminnnatttionnnssss !!!!’ (w/ Charlemagne Palestine) (1961/1984/2014)

 

 

 

Kim Jones

‘Jones volunteered for the Marine Corps in 1966 and eventually spent 13 months in Vietnam. After he returned home to Southern California and completed his service, he went back to art school. Jones soon began shocking people with the images that poured out of him. He created the sculptural alter ego Mudman by smearing his beautifully formed and muscled body with mud, covering his head with pantyhose, strapping a bulky contraption of sticks to his back and venturing out into society. He looked like the kind of alien he felt himself to be. “I was an outsider, a spiky thing, walking through the main artery of the city. Molecules fit in, but if something’s spiky it doesn’t fit in,” Jones has said.

‘To categorize Jones’ appearances as performance art is misleading. They were metaphorical actions, four-dimensional sculptures (with time as the added dimension): a psyche turned inside out. The retrospective includes photographs of Jones as Mudman, as well as related stick sculptures, drawings, assemblage and collage work.’ — Seattle Times

(more)

Kim Jones Artist Talk at The Vermont Studio Center

 

 

 

Luis Alfaro

‘Luis Alfaro grew up in the Pico Union district near Downtown Los Angeles, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in East Los Angeles. His plays and fiction are set in Los Angeles’s Chicano barrios, including the Pico Union district, and often feature gay and lesbian and working-class themes. Many of Alfaro’s plays also deal with the AIDS pandemic in Latino communities. Noted plays include “Bitter Homes and Gardens,” “Pico Union,” “Downtown,” “Cuerpo Politizado,” “Straight as a Line,” “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner,” “No Holds Barrio,” and “Black Butterfly.” Many of these plays have also been published as stories or poetry. He is currently the Playwright-in-Residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and an Associate Professor in the School of Dramatic Arts at the University of Southern California.’ — Wiki

(more)

“Orphan of Azatlan” (1995)

 

 

 

Paul Reubens

‘Paul Reubens joined the Los Angeles troupe The Groundlings in the 1970s and started his career as an improvisational comedian and stage actor. In 1982, Reubens put up a show about a character he had been developing for years. The show was called The Pee-wee Herman Show and it ran for five sold-out months with HBO producing a successful special about it. Pee-wee became an instant cult figure and for the next decade, Reubens would be completely committed to his character, doing all of his public appearances and interviews as Pee-wee. In 1985 Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, directed by the then-unknown Tim Burton, was a financial and critical success, and soon developed into a cult film. Big Top Pee-wee, 1988’s sequel, was less successful than its predecessor. Between 1986 and 1990, Reubens starred as Pee-wee in the CBS Saturday-morning children’s program Pee-wee’s Playhouse.’ — Wiki

(more)

The Pee-Wee Herman Show: Live Roxy Theatre 1981

 

 

 

Elia Arce

‘Elia Arce is an internationally known artist and cultural activist working in a wide variety of media including performance, experimental theater, film/video, writing, spoken word and installation. She is the recipient of the J. Paul Getty Individual Artist Award, The Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Durfee Foundation and a 1999 nominee for the Herb Alpert/CalArts Award in Theater.

‘Since 1986, she has been creating, writing and directing experimental theatre works-in collaboration with HIV positive immigrants in Houston, breast cancer workers in Washington DC, house-keeping staff in Banff, Canada and the homeless of L.A.’s Skid Row. In 1993 she created her first full-length solo performance: “I Have So Many Stitches That Sometimes I Dream That I’m Sick”.’ — eliaarce.com

(more)

Short Retrospective

 

 

 

Nervous Gender

‘Nervous Gender is an American punk rock band and performance art unit founded in Los Angeles, California in 1978 by Gerardo Velazquez, Edward Stapleton, Phranc and Michael Ochoa. Their use of heavily distorted keyboards and synthesizers made them, along with The Screamers, one of the original innovators of what is today called “electropunk”, although they could equally be considered an early industrial group. The group was confrontational and experimental.

‘Phranc’s androgynous appearance was the embodiment of the group’s name, garnered the band much press in zines such as Slash and, later, proving inspirational to founders of the Queercore movement. Despite their somewhat high profile, the groups’ habit of provoking the audience, obscene material and harsh erotics guaranteed they would never gain commercial acceptance. In 1979, Don Bolles of the Germs joined as drummer. The next year Phranc left the band and Paul Roessler of the Screamers joined.

‘During the mid-1980s, the band was on the verge of breaking up when members of Wall of Voodoo Bruce Moreland, Marc Moreland and Chas Grey, who were fans, stepped in and offered to collaborate with them. It was at this point that a guitar-driven version of Nervous Gender emerged. During this time Dinah Cancer of 45 Grave was a frequent guest performer with them, and they played shows with bands such as Christian Death, Super Heroines, Kommunity FK and Gobsheit (a side project of Stapleton’s with Patrice Repose) at venues such as the Anti Club. In 1988, Edward Stapleton played his last show with the band.

‘In early 1990, original members Gerardo Velasquez and Michael Ochoa along with Joe Zinnato (a long time Ochoa collaborator) revived Nervous Gender as a trio. This formation did a series of 8 performances, and were working on what would have been the final Nervous Gender album (working title “American Regime”) with producer Paul B. Cutler (of 45 Grave). The final performance of Nervous Gender was on August 26, 1991 at Club A.S.S. in Silverlake, CA. Gerardo Velasquez died on March 28, 1992, at age 33.’ — collaged

Nervous Gender – Live At The Target (1983)

 

15 Los Angeles Performance Artists of the 80s and early 90s, part 1

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Armando, Hi. Interesting, the birds phobia. I can imagine how if one started to really think about birds in relationship to humans, that could happen. Blanchot is my favorite writer/ writing-based thinker, so yes. Mm, I don’t remember ‘Players’. I’ll have to check back and remember if I read it or not. I have ‘Warp And Woof’ on my hard drive, and I will be listening to it for the first time later today. And, yes, it would be a ‘hell freezes over’ occasion if I don’t love it. Good weekend. ** _Black_Acrylic, That Schütte thing is nice. I remember hearing about it. What is “intelligent putty” in a nutshell? I guess I mean how is it intelligent relative to regular old putty? ** Corey Heiferman, Hi. Yay for birds! I did a Tesla Day here ages ago. I’ll go see if enough of it is still alive enough to restore. Let me pass on your query … Everyone, Listen up. Corey Heiferman has a proposal. Corey: ‘I’d like to pitch a story on Eurovision to anybody here who runs a publication or knows somebody who does. I live here in Tel Aviv where the contest will take place May 14th-18th, speak Hebrew, and am happy to cover it from any angle.’ Thanks about Art Basel. I’ve never been to any of its incarnations either, and I don’t think I’ll get to this one since a personal invitation to me doesn’t seem to be part of the bargain. So far. It’d be fun. Art fairs are kind of horrible, i.e. art as wealthy people’s playthings, but being in one as an ‘artist’ might give being at one some pizzazz or interesting added horror. I’ll def. listen to that Hebrew metal bandcamp thing, thanks. Nice cover. Great weekend to you, and I hope the coffee is like benevolent meth. ** David Ehrenstein, I did forget that! What was I not thinking? Thanks. ** h, Thank you very much! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Me too. You, me, and the birds. I understand both jet lag and allergies, so you get a hall pass festooned with a gold star.  Hey Thomas Moronic, Bill had some Berlin tips for you in yesterday’s comments in case you missed them. Thanks for helping the bro out, buddy. ** Misanthrope, Hi. I actually know that Suede song, and it’s a cool one, I agree. Glad to hear you’ve passed through the back- and phone-mini-disasters in one, albeit sore, piece. Oh, but now it’s your throat being a bastard. Sorry. Get thee behind George, Satanic throat! LPS’s mom, wow, it’s been a while since she was a character in your commenting narrative. Sounds like she’s narratively consistent. Well, hoping for whatever the best possible outcome would be for the Board of Education taxing and newly girlfriend-less lad. Lord. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Yes, the progress/growth in plain sight in his work is very interesting to observe and follow. So, was Singer agreeable to the idea that the film was imperfect, etc.? High five on the Sunn0))), obvs. ** Okay. This weekend you get the second part of my 80s-90s LA Performance Artists round-up post, and I hope it’s replete with interesting stuff. See you on Monday.