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 > > > --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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