File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1995/avant-garde_Apr.95, message 47


Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 03:33:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: two avant gardes



I think only by proxy at best is it a negation of the social order. I 
remember hearing a black woman talking a long time ago about how ironic 
it is/was that whites are questioning and attacking the nuclear family, 
while the disintegration of the same within the black community was 
precisely the problem. 

I think of older Laurie Anderson performances, in a sense, as 
"comfortable" - I remember her talking about the need to cultivate the 
audience, to entertain them, to give them something worth the time she 
would be taking up. This at the time (1974+) was a completely different 
way of thinking about performance, which, at the time, was dominated by 
people like Acconci (who was also highly supportive of Laurie) - the 
latter's work depending on a "tough" stance, abject, intense, and nega- 
tive in innumerable ways. The fact that performance could actually create 
a sense of communality seemed incredibly exciting and risky. I remember 
that after Laurie's early performances in her loft, after all of them, 
there would be a standing ovation and smiles - and a feeling of 
community. This literally hadn't occurred in Soho performance before, as 
best we could remember.

Alan


On Tue, 18 Apr 1995, Malgosia Askanas wrote:

> Alan wrote:
> 
> > Why should art not be comfortable? Why should it not be community-
> > building? Why should we contribute to the disintegration of the social
> > order (quote) while minority artists are trying to build up their own
> > communities? 
> 
> But is not the building of communities by minority artists a
> form of negation of the social order within which they have the status
> of "minority artists"?  It seems to me that you are taking
> "disintegration"/"negation" and "building"/"healing" as being some
> kind of absolutes, eternally at war.  But something that builds within one
> sphere might at the same time be disintegrative within another. 
> 
> If one does want to influence the social order, providing comfort might
> not be a good way to do it -- it depends on the kind of comfort, I guess. 
> "Comfort" does not seem to be a state that spurs one towards action;
> rather it suggests a drowsiness and a forgetfulness.  But this is
> probably not what you mean.
> 
> 
> - malgosia 
> 
> 
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> 


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