zach blas
I attended the first meeting of Human Resource‘s Feminist Seminar on Politics and Performance last Sunday, led by Jennifer Doyle. It was a wonderful experience with many great artists and thinkers. We began with a reading and discussion of Yvonne Rainer’s No Manifesto. If you’re in Los Angeles, consider attending the next two sessions.
A Free & Open Seminar on Performance: Three Sundays (Jan 8, 15, 22)
This is a feminist conversation about politics and practice in performance, for artists & allies (programmers, hosts, writers, friends, lovers, spectators, crew, the band!) – This seminar is inspired by the city’s history of feminist art pedagogy and is part of Human Resource’s contributions to Pacific Standard Time.
January 8th, 15th and 22nd: 1pm-4pm
at Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St in Chinatown, 90012
Join us for an exploration of the questions raised in contemporary performance – while our agenda will be set collectively, the impetus for organizing this seminar was sparked by the intensity of the conversations that grew up around Yvonne Rainer’s critique of Marina Abramovic’s work with MOCA’s 2011 gala fundraiser.
Those conversations have taken up the nature of feminist performance; the relationship of live art and performance to museum culture; the relationship of Los Angeles performance to independent spaces like HR; sexuality in performance; risk – as programmers or curators understand that and as artists understand that; survival – economic and emotional; race, class and “the art world” (what does that phrase mean); the “recovery” of Chican@ and African American art by that “art world” (e.g. exhibits across PST).
This is an interesting moment for performance artists – on the one hand, financial support for the genre is as dire and as politicized as ever – but the genre also has a lot of visibility and new forms of institutional currency. What does it mean to stage a feminist exporation about the politics and practice of performance? Contemporary feminist politics resists looking at sex/gender questions in isolation: race, class, ethnicity, the legacies of settler colonialism, the long shadow of the prison industrial complex – how and where to these issues factor into performance politics and practice? Add to this the way that new media forms make “old media” practices increasingly problematic – who owns their image in an age whose those images circulate widely and freely via the internet? How do artists differently confront the politics of their practices? What stake do queer/feminist artists have in those debates about appropriation and image rights?
These seminars will give artists & allies a chance to talk about the shifting sands upon which we work – this is a chance to examine the present but also to learn about the past (the NEA wars, the roots of performance as an anti-capitalist practice, the full range of feminist work in performance, queer performance [again, what does that mean?], the roots of performance in the political, interventionist strategies of artists of color).
The above thematics are provocations – our discussions should evolve in collaboration. Come to our first meeting and help set the agenda for the next two!
Jennifer Doyle will moderate (at least the first) discussion, and will be on hand at all three meetings to offer her expertise by sharing reading, offering some historical perspective and recommending specific works as points of reference. She has taught at UC Riverside since 1999, and is the author of Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire. She specializes in gender and performance studies. For an introduction to her writing: this is a two part essay on performance art and television inspired by Nao Bustamante’s appearances on Work of Art and James Franco and Kalup Linzy’s appearances on General Hospital: Guest Stars Part 1 and Part 2 – the latter includes some discussion of performance art and museum culture.
