Comments for Culturebot

Comment on Visual Art Performance vs. Contemporary Performance by Adam Dugas

Adam Dugas — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:43:53 +0000

I just keep saying "amen" to so many things I've read on this page – as a viewer and creator. Don't feel in any diminished by not having some master's degree as your clear writing is refreshingly intelligent and erudite without the post-theory garble that academic writing is too often cursed with.

Comment on Funding The Arts in America, Michael Kaiser and the 1% by aaronandersen

aaronandersen — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:27:56 +0000

Great piece!

Have you had a chance to expand more on the first part? That if an arts org is receiving funding, it is quite likely benefiting indirectly from financial markets? This is also true of big government worker pension funds (e.g., state teacher pension funds), by the way. We are increasingly interdependent with people we often rant against.

We're even interdependent upon people like Kaiser, perish the thought, if the Kennedy Center and Broadway remain primary avenues of entry to performing arts for a large number of Americans.

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Pro by rachelkb

rachelkb — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:47:00 +0000

I love that description of the Lady Rizo act: "I am pleasuring you and destroying you." Brilliant, and very apt.

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Con by Erin Markey

Erin Markey — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:51:49 +0000

Hey, listen. Check it out. I'm a queer woman with functional reproductive organs who lives off of little boys who wear barrettes to school, and i would be awfully hungry if they were not allowed to do so. So surely you can reason that it would not be in my best interest for those groups to be denied basic human rights.

I was actually referring to the imbalance of words to gesture in the ongoing feminist conversation. There's more than one way to communicate something. In this instance, the silence was an exhilarating way to give me a kind of total authorship over my experience. It was the feeling of watching it that i liked. And it made me think about that feeling a little more. I like that feeling. I've felt it often before and I want to feel it often again. The freedom and space for everyone–including your nephew, gay people, and women who live in pro-life states–to feel a sense of authentic authorship over their lives and choices is why I'm aligned with the goals of feminism in the first place.

i didn't think the piece was perfect. (i'm the kind of girl who would have a hard time thinking that about any show.) But i sure did like the silence as a formal boundary.

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Con by Ryan Tracy

Ryan Tracy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:30:15 +0000

Generally? Like, I don't know, young women who can't get abortions in their states should just shut up? Gay people who lack equal rights in this country should shut up? My three year-old nephew who wore a barrette in his hair to school today only to have his teacher force him to remove it? He should shut up? I'd love an answer.

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Con by sarah m

sarah m — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:24:49 +0000

It was hilarious – uneven – but very funny. I'd call it a piss take. Maybe stop taking it and yourself so seriously.

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Con by Erin Markey

Erin Markey — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:19:42 +0000

I liked that it was silent. I think generally people need to shut up and let their bodies walk the walk when it comes to their values.

Comment on Visual Art Performance vs. Contemporary Performance by ApollinaireS

ApollinaireS — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:44:39 +0000

Andy! I'm coming late to this, but this is a fantastic, nuanced essay. I've been railing on this topic in print and in person for some time, but never with such nuance or patience for the "time-based" visual art that has just stumbled on, say, time for the first time (music is "time-based" too, btw ). I love your care.

Here is a my own, more rushed and polemical post and FT review that compare Maria Hassabi and Robert Steijn's performance art with the Abramovic and Sehgal installed and well-remunerated up the street. http://www.artsjournal.com/foot/2010/04/move_over…

Comments here that you are being "divisive" smack of any group with power/money saying to a group without it, "why can't we all just get along"? As James Baldwin said, there's nothing innocent in white ignorance. Nor in the art world's taking on performance without any sense of–respect for– whole worlds devoted to it.

Anyway, mainly wanted to say, write me: I know a grant you should apply for.

~Apollinaire

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Con by Ryan Tracy

Ryan Tracy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:59:35 +0000

The smokescreen here is that the piece is not about gender at all. It's precisely about feminism. And what is says about feminism (and this is largely informed by Young Jean Lee's comments during the talkback after the show I saw) it does so inadvertently. It says that feminism is too complicated to deal with, so we don't deal with it. We don't talk about it. And if we do, it's difficult and makes audiences angry. Nobody knows exactly what feminism is. And, apparently, nobody is interested in taking the risk to figure it out. At least this show wasn't. There are so many entry points into feminism that this show just misses. And we need feminism today. We need to figure out what the feminist body is. What it needs. What it can do for the world. And most importantly, what it has to say. We need the feminist body to speak. But this show–drumroll please–was silent.

Comment on Young Jean Lee’s “Untitled Feminist Show”: The Con by Belinda

Belinda — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:01:43 +0000

You're not missing anything, and you're not wrong…sometimes, sadly, the emperor has no clothes on….

Also check out: http://theperformanceclub.org/2012/01/all-the-nak…