-->
Most so-called art performance is
predictable, tedious and, worse yet, pretentious. There are few surprises,
delights - or shocks to the ossified artworld system – left in the squalid old
genre. Most art performance is a case of hitting shopworn, pre-set, marks (hip ‘stations
of the cross’) inside a black box or clean well lit space … complete with an
audience of hushed, uncritical, and reverent hipsters.
Hipsters and performers alike, genuflecting
at a series of pre-dated, hip, signifiers and arbitrated social agreements,
around what is or what isn't art-performance ( Robert Wilson’s staged
productions, Marina Abramovic’s institutionally embalmed late works, and Rachel
Rosenthal’s metaphysical mish-mashes typify the genre's permanently mummified
status).
Whenever someone comes along carrying real
fire (Karen Finley, Vito Acconci, Gina Pane, early Ulay & Abramovic, The
Kippers, some of the Vienna Aktionists, Mike Smith & Doug Skinner) and the audience shows up, half-asleep, expecting the
usual lukewarm 'avante-garde' leftovers, it is a sight to behold.
I was fortunate enough to catch The Kippers
at The Kitchen, Karen Finley (somewhere way downtown), and Doug Skinner and
Micahel Smith at Dixon Place (a real NYC firetrap) and their audience-delighting, crowd-terrifying, performances are intact in memory.
Oddly enough Finley and the Kippers toured
Europe together, and I reckon the continent is still talking about it.
Considering Finley and The Kipper’s economy of means it is still,
hypothetically possible to make galvanizing performance – for young folk still
inclined. Pray do, children. Pray do.
