Alone, the valley of the Saskatchewan,
according to scientific computation,
is capable of sustaining 800,000,000 souls."
-Edmund Collins, address
to
The Canadian Club, New York,
"The Future of the Dominion of Canada", 1887. |
Live Acts
I live in Saskatoon. I don't go out much.
But the other night, I went to hear a Toronto band play at a local bar.
Over the past few years this group had gained a relatively large national
following by intensively touring Canadian cities. After the show, I spoke
to one of the musicians about how the band had built their audience. She
said, "I used to just stay in hotel rooms when we toured. Now I like
to go out and meet people. It informs our work. In the Prairies, it's always
a matter of numbers. You're not going to get a huge audience for your act
when you are dealing with a small population."
Of course popular music - supported by a commercial industry
- operates on a different scale than contemporary performance art. But
to witness either requires the act of stepping outside my little house
on the prairie. And, because I live within expansive fields of virtual
and electronic realities, I konw that there is nothing as alive and radically
electric as real-time exchange with other bodies.
Sentient Bodies on the Prairies
Every time I leave my house, it is what I am looking for.
In some form or another. Looking for what speaks to me:
art, everyday life, animal, vegetable, mineral or
the entertainment industry.
Looking to have a conversation.
A daily exchange.
I am tired of hearing and
I am sick of hearing myself say
"There is nothing going on here."
And I am tired of feeling
I have to leave here
to experience
the real action.
After saying this, what I imagine or see next is
a long horizon line - a field of summer fallow - or one of wheat, dotted
with a few tiny figures.
The wind blows.
What the figures say
could get lost
over the distance.
|
Organized by Neutral Ground, In
the belly of the prairies was a performance art series, presented
in Regina during the spring and summer of 1995. Each of the four works
in the series, produced by emerging and established Prairie-based artists,
presented critical aspects of Queer and feminist identities. The stories
told by these artists have a history of being publicly unimaginable, unspeakable.
Parts of the performances seemed familiar; parts were challenging. Like
most contemporary performance art, the works sought to invent new spaces
or experiences. Though their narrative lines were frequently engaging,
their structures were not always familiar to a general audience. |
Aside
Is their such a thing as a general audience?
This essay wants to respond with empathy, intelligence and wit to the belly
of work it has digested. It doesn't want to second-guess its reader's interest
in live contemporary art. It expects mutual conversational commitment to
the feminist and Queer issues it's gnawing on. It knows that we are all
members of the "Public" and we pay taxes too.
It also knows the way a work is presented, more than what is actually said,
can leave an audience with questions. Can get them wondering what they
are participating in.
Because this essay wants to respond with empathy, intelligence, wit and
respect to the belly of work it has digested, this essay wants to be illegitimate
yet legible.
This essay wishes we could give ourselves permission to read. |
1.
It begins with a dress. A dress on a woman. An attractive woman standing
alone. On a stage ready to be eaten. And the dress seems to fit. Until
she opens her mouth. The stuff coming out of her mouth starts to crack
something open. She continues. Because her voice is amplified, what she
is saying not only smashes the static image she has initially presented
- but tears through the fabric of many women's oppression: historical and
contemporary, high fashion and low. And we're only two minutes into the
piece. |
The central concern of performance
collaborators Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan is examining how Western
women are both defined and alienated by their bodies. They are best known
for their performance/film We're
Talking Vulva, which features an anatomically correct 5'6"
foam vulva, who raps about the functions and joys of her anatomy. But most
of their early live performance work involved representing, from feminist
and lesbian perspectives, the lives of women in Greek and Christian mythology.
They have a special talent for locating overlooked historical female icons
and imbuing them with narratives of contemporary emancipatory possibility.
Like themselves as artists evolving, the personae they create are women
making their own self-definitions. The narrative style recalls that of
a stand-up comic or a theatrical monologue, but one wouldn't call it acting
or theatre, because they have co-written the lines and really mean what
they say. The boundaries between artists-as-themselves and the artists-as-characters
are blurred.
In the piece Piercing The
Thin Skin of Normal (1993), Shawna is dressed in a sheath of Saran
Wrap, bristling with three-inch nails. Again, she initially appears as
a static figure, a spectacle to be consumed. Again, she speaks and this
time she is a debutante on a critical rampage against post-feminism, pop
psychology and the New Age. She describes her outfit as, "Agressively
feminine...and versatile, too. Wipe and wear, at the beach, on the job
site, as a prophylactic device. And quickly dispels the myth that we're
no fun. I get my friends together to play ring toss, tenderize beef, aerate
a golf course." When she ironically pronounces, "People act like
equality is a feminist fetish...a bit of aproblem in social situations.
'Equality's a drag man, you can't dance to it.' Well, we've never really
tried," she is making the speech I fantasize about delivering to Camille
Paglia. |
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan performed
Growing Up Suite, Growing Up II - The Teen Years,
Piercing The Thin Skin of Normal, and Flaming
Feminist on March 10. 1995 at the Regina Performing Arts Centre.
Co-produced by the Regina Womens' Community Network. |
Dempsey and Millan's more recent
work is about the lesbian body: a site of both pleasure and victimization.
In Growing Up Suite (1994) and Growing
Up II - The Teen Years (1994), Shawna, dressed in a short Holly
Hobby nightie, tells stories of: a preteen lesbian's lust over the womens'
underwear section of the Eaton's winter catalogue, trauma at high school
dances structured around heterosexist socialization, and a visit to the
Toronto Womens' Bookstore to research the erotic life of Virginia Woolf
for a high-school English class. In these pieces, the mythologies are closer
to the experiences of many Canadian women - especially those who grew up
in the 1960's.
Through their outspoken performance characters, Dempsey and Millan repeatedly
carve out a space for women. I believe that the more frequently we hear
accounts (even fictional ones) of women breaking free of society's constraints
and expectations, the more rapidly women's lives can actually be transformed.
Their work is a practise of feminist triage, providing 1) release through
laughter 2) affirmation through recognition 3) take-home narratives that
heal and empower 4) useful fashion tips. |
2.
In the printed material promoting + = - ..? - = +
(positive equals negative so then does negative equal positive?),
Glenn Hubich writes that the work was created in response to his experience
of living (HIV-) with a partner who is HIV+. The title of the piece asks
a question - not a rhetorical one - about the nature of "care"
and "contamination" within a relationship. |
It is clearly with this information
in mind that one enters the work. Installed in the gallery are materials
referring to domestic architecture - unfinished rooms, two-by-four framework,
studs without drywall. Altered found objects, embodying memories of past
ownership, give clues to the details of narrative. There is an excess of
matter. Mens' white cotton underwear hangs on a clothesline. Empty medication
bottles fill a toilet bowl. Open dresser drawers are crammed with red and
black plastic clothes hangers. The red and black color theme is repeated
among other objects - a reference to the positive/negative charges of electricity.
Every "room" is connected through a network of electrical cables,
which lead to speakers, lights and control boards, situated at various
places in the gallery. This installation, this set, has been in the gallery
for a week previous to the performance. The space is filled with objects,
yet haunted by a sense of absence.
The evening of the performance, the gallery has again been transformed.
Dry ice fog fills the dimly-lit space, blurring the boundaries of what
is performance and what is audience. The sound of a thunderstorm crashes
over the sound system. When the lights come up, a figure has appeared.
He stands beside a table covered with hundreds of plastic drinking glasses.
What he wears resembles a wet-suit: half red and half black in color, half
fetishistic and half protective in function. A loud familiar voice booms
over the sound system. It is the voice of William Burroughs, offering "...words
of advice for young people..." To the rhythm of this monologue, the
performer begins methodically pouring water from a pitcher into the plastic
glasses. The pouring soon becomes reckless - water flows over the table,
onto the floor. Next, again in time to the repetition of Burroughs' drone,
he moves towards a heavy, black, velvet curtain that is hanging from the
ceiling. He grabs the curtain and shakes it vigorously, several times.
Through this series of slightly absurd and highly stylized choreographies,
you sense that he is definitely describing an experience that exceeds language.
It's as if he's trying to "sound" the room, or "air"
the events that had permeated this replicated domestic
interior. The lights fade to black. |
His speech is not explication, not
confession, but song. In a rich baritone he sings Elvis Presley's I
Can't Help Falling In Love, poignantly followed by When
I am laid in earth from Purcell's Dido and
Aeneas. The libretto goes. "Remember me, but ah! Forget my
fate." He does not appear to be singing these songs to the audiences,
but to memory. He enacts a keening, to mark an absence. If the first part
of the performance presented the humility of labour and care-taking, the
eloquence and emotionality of the songs are the release. A kind of gentle
and healing catharsis that necessary ritual provides.
Glenn Hubich's installation /performance + = - ..?
- = + (positive equals negative so then does negative equal positive?)
took place from June 16 - 24, 1995 at Neutral Ground. |
When they come up again, he
has moved to another part of the set - the "living room" where
he watches a hockey game on a tiny television set. He removes his wet-suit,
never once taking his eyes from the screen. Now he has stripped down to
a pair of white briefs. He is staying close to his body, touching his skin,
taking care - though his actions are often unreadable and always unpredictable.
Silent but engaged and present, he is re-inhabiting past architecture to
tell us where he's been. The performance continues, for another 15 minutes,
through a series of domestic tableaux and ritualistic actions.
The negotiation of boundaries pervades the performance. The performance
(Hubich, himself) moves through the space, beginning each scene with a
change of costume, or rather, a stripping off of layers. Most of his choreography
of stylized vernacular activities/faux sign language is performed over
a background of pop music, which grounds it in popular cultural time and
space. His actions are imagistic: a new language of memory and care, of
describing processes of negotiation for relationships we were never taught
an adequate language for.
In the final tableaux, clad in a tutu, he performs a pantomime with a condom.
After filling it with his breath, he cradles it, as if it were a baby.
Then it becomes transformed into something very heavy, weighing his body
to the ground. When he recovers, he speaks. |
3.
For Fag Rap: a reading, Michael Toppings wrote
a series of 20 poems and prose works. The kind of traditional poetry that
rhymes - with those "a-b-a-b" line structures many of us learned
in grade school. The kind of prose that has a beginning, middle,climax,
dénoement and ending - although I don't recall grade school literature
being so immediate, so transgressive, so funny. |
With Fag
Rap: a reading Toppings presented texts as a series of stylistically
and conceptually diverse spoken-word vignettes. As much as the performance
parodied the structure of a traditional poetry reading, it functioned as
an amenable platform with which to present a diversity of gay realities
and politics.
Staged in an empty art gallery, the set was spare: one red spotlight illuminated
a small wooden platform. A double row of tiny white Christmas-tree lights
led from this platform or "stage", in a direct line to the backstage
exit. The readers entered, serially, to present the 20 texts, as numbered
in the accompanying program.
Toppings has always been interested in having a range of people - performers
and non-performers - present his work. In this case, he invited friends
and acquaintances (citizens of the local Queer community) to read and interpret
the work with him. For example, in "Some Like
it Hot", a campy and loving ode to a drag queen, he invited
Brian Gladwell(not known in "everyday life" as a performer or
a drag queen) to read the text, dressed in a blonde bouffant wig and dangly
earrings. Toppings text served as a kind of Queer karaoke, creating a safe,
yet political space in which the community could play.
An equally engaging act was created during "Mighty
fine man". The men in the cast paraded out as if on a catwalk
- to the beat of rap group Salt n' Pepa's song, "Mighty
Fine Man". Dressed in outfits ranging from leather bondage
gear to a kilt, they interpreted a song intended for straight men as background
music for a gay fashion show, celebrating homo beauty and style. |
Considering the sincerity, freshness
and humor with which he writes, one might consider Michael Toppings the
Stompin' Tom Connors of gay literature. But his work is also a sophisticated
assemblage of texts, employing a range of literary styles, to delight and
to disturb as they account the state of being gay in Saskatchewan in the
90s. These are texts to be learned by heart and passed down through generations,
the way one preserves the history and culture of a nation.
Michael Toppings, Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, Glenn Hubich, Kelly Foth, Carla-marie
powers, Wilf Dubé, and Brian Gladwell performed Fag
Rap: a reading July 7, 1995 at Neutral Ground. |
Elements of camp are still
a mainstay of much gay culture and Toppings has a special talent for creating
"bad" writing. In the poem, "My Jesus...",
he wrote:
"My Jesus has a face - and it's got Bette Davis eyes.
My Jesus has a face - propped to the heavens on Schwarzeneggar thighs.
My Jesus has a face - skin the colour of the human race, with not one pore
that's gender-based.
My Jesus has a face - with cheeks stained the colour of passion, and lips
painted in a cover girl fashion.
My Jesus has a face - stalked and hunted by the paparazzi.
My Jesus has a face - Oh my God! It's Liberace!"
Toppings read this piece himself, in a dead-pan, slightly awkward tone,
playing down the sensationalism, the fabulousness of the text. Like a traditional
folk artist, Toppings embraced the supposedly "trivial" nature
of gay desire and culture, heightening fag hagiography.
As well as being "good" at "bad" writing, he also presented
cutting satire and sobering prose describing several less happy aspects
of contemporary gay life. In "Apology",
reader Kelly Foth introduced himself as Tom Hanks and asked the audience
to forgive him for taking the role he did in the film Philadelphia - a
potential role for one of the many real gay actors living in homophobic
Hollywood. The inclusion of three true and detailed accounts of gay bashing
("Bedtime Story") read, in non-emotional
tones, by Glenn Hubich, Kelly Foth and Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, shifted
the mood of the performance to one of heavy sadness. |
4.
"SIGHTING DEVICES ESSENTIAL -bring binoculars, telescopes, etc."stated
the invitation card for Rae Staseson's performance, Sight.
An audience of about fifty people gathered at the Wascana Marina the night
of the event, unsure of what to expect. They waited and chatted, wondering
which way to look.
Gif animation (590 k)
based on the "Sight"
section
(no sound)
of the video
"Ms. Fortune Television
Presents
The Comfort Suite:
A Video in Four Parts"
by Rae Staseson
9:40 min., 1996 |
Then one person in the crowd saw
it - across the lake. They all looked. There was a tiny figure on a large
concrete plinth. "A bridge," someone said, "used to span
the lake, between us and that concrete thing." Then they saw something
yellow unfurl over the concrete. The letter "E" was printed on
it. A few moments later a second yellow scroll opened with another "E"
- this time on its side. Then another appeared, and another, until there
were 5. They didn't know what to expect next. They watched the ducks swim
in the lake. They talked some more. Ten minutes passed. When the artist
appeared beside them, they concluded it was "over".
As suggested by the title, this performance had to do with choosing a particular
location, as much as it had to do with raising questions about the way
we view the land. Though Sight could be read in the context of the weighty
tradition of landscape painting in Saskatchewan, it is rooted more immediately
within Situationist "actions" or environmental sculpture (ie.
Daniel Buren or Christo). It is the kind of performance where the social
situation (the audience conversing about the work as it occurs) is as important
as the action of the work itself. Staseson is interested in encountering
a "non-art" audience. She considers the conversations she had
with passers-by, while she was installing the work, to be an integral part
of her process.
In reading the work, a number of references or associations come to mind.
The most obvious comparisons are to either a public sculpture unveiling
ceremony or to the opening of a new building. But because the site (the
remains of the bridge) is not easily read as architecturally important,
the unveiling gesture seems absurd. Absurd or suggestive of less monumental
ways of reading the everyday, the insignifigant or the banal. |
Unlike the other
work in the performance series, Sight rejects
the idea of storytelling based on the subjectivity of the author - a strategy
with its roots in the 1970s and 80s. But can a deliberate move away from
"political", "identity-based" work be seen as radically
different than a return to the supposedly apolitical "neutrality"
of 1950s modernism?
Rae Staseson performed Sight, July 22, 1995,
at the Wascana Marina. |
Asking the audience to read
between the lines, in this way, brings to mind the subject of language
within the work. The viewer has to work to read: they are not cued as to
where the sentence begins or ends. Questions arise: Does one read this
textual gesture from left to right? How does one pronounce an upside-down
"E"? Are the "E's" silent? Though we know "E"
is an important letter - the most frequently used in the English alphabet
- we are left for ourselves to decide how to read or view it. The kind
of text commonly found in the landscape, as created and read by humans,
is usually clear and functional: existing in the form of road signs or
billboard advertisments.
The text, as reflected on the water, creates a doubling or mirroring within
the landscape, evoking a memory of the bridge that had previously spanned
the lake. In Sight, Staseson has created a
textual fiction within real space and time, forever marking our experience
and memory of the land.
Though there are many associations and relationships between landscape
and reading, Sight is also, obviously about
the act of looking, the act of framing experience. As a feminist performance
artist, Staseson does not want her own presence staged within her work
iconically, as women have historically (on stage and off) been framed and
consumed as actors or performers. She wishes to shift the viewer's attention
to the immediacy of everyday gestures or encounters. Staseson places equal
value on all parts of her work process: from choosing the site itself,
to conversing with her audience. She recognizes the fact that expending
her energy - over however "trivial" a task - can produce a transformation.
By shifting patriarchally-inscribed figure/ground relationships, she makes
the ordinary extraordinary. |
Critical Mass: Speaking Communities
|
| We start by knowing
that there is already a small audience in a place. Even if it is just one
person, or the members of an Artist-Run Centre and their friends. The Prairie
region is about sustainable audience as much as it is about sustainable
agriculture. Some years are drought years. Though Saskatchewan and Manitoba
have two of the better arts granting programs in Canada, we still cannot
apply for "Performance art Insurance." Performance art appears
as a fragile presence within the histories of Canadian art. We experience
it for a few moments and then it disappears, the way one notices landmarks
when moving through a Prairie landscape. |
When performance art appeared
in North America and Europe in the 1960s (at that time it was identified
primarily as Happenings, actions or interventions), it acted as a response
to the commodification of the art object. Performances were live protests
by which to shake ourselves out of the sleepwalk of capitalism, to move
towards a more vital culture. The medium was also developed by feminists,
and others silenced within traditional art media. By the 1980s, performance
artists such as Laurie Anderson had gathered large audiences by appealing
to listeners of alternative popular music - structuring monologues and
visual material along pop song/music video formats.
In the 1990s there are many performance artists in the world, developing
various kinds of work. A performance series, like In the belly of the prairies
proves there are a number of local practitioners developing the language
of the discipline. There is a chain of continuity in the field, like a
highway or a railway track. Events such as Winnipeg's Festival du Voyeur,
which combined performance with visual art and Queer activism attest to
this, though it would be difficult to say there is an essential Prairie
performance culture. We are as influenced by popular media as artists working
in any medium in Canada. Most of the work that makes up In the belly of
the prairies could be performed and understood anywhere in (English-speaking)
Canada. Pop cultural references facilitate this.
Performance art continues to be a word-of-mouth culture rather than a broadcast
or anonymous one like television. It's not that the artists in In the belly
of the prairies shun the idea of reaching larger, less clearly identified
auiences. It's just that they're most immediately passionate about building
their performative languages from the local and the specific, acting out
first for those participants and witnesses who gather beside them. |
Joanne Bristol is an artist who used to live on the outskirts of Saskatoon. |
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