Performance Art
The Time It Takes:Third Time
Performance Art, 2006 – ongoing
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I’m Only Going To Say This Once
Installation Performance Art, 2003
For one week I wrote on the gallery walls with black felt-tip markers the same sentence and numbered each. The sentence was “I’m only going to say this once.” During the week, I draped sheer material in front of the walls and wrote the sentence onto the material as well. A fan blew gently to create variety of readings and shifting visual elements. The repetitive gestures made by the hand’s subtle movement in writing, the prescribed constrictions of grammatical sentences, drawing as meditative practice, the fear of forgetting and the drive to remember — all and more played a part in this work.
(the cleanup afterwards)
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WORDSMAYBEMUSIC
Performance, Mixed Media, Writing, Dance
I curated and performed in this Chicago event of 15 artists/writers. My performance, I Really Want To Sing To You, consisted of applying makeup without the aid of a mirror, then inviting the audience to cut my hair as short as possible while a female British lecturer talked about Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus”. After my hair was cut, I performed a drill marching routine and then a rousing dance while a tape played Mahalia Jackson singing “In The Upper Room With Jesus”. I did not re-cut my hair for three months after the performance.
WORDSMAYBEMUSIC, Chicago
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Taboo Tattoo
My son, Abram Nelson, and I collaborated on a performance event. Without telling each other what we were going to tattoo, we tattooed each other. He is a professional tattoo artist. I had never tattooed anyone before, neither did I have a tattoo. He tattooed a self-portrait at age 2, blowing you a kiss. I tattooed on him my signature, and “First Edition, copyright, 1974. (He is my oldest, born 1974.)
Taboo Tattoo
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The Bathroom Show
In the Oregon State University Art Department, I had a solo photography exhibit, displaying eight black and white prints, 18″x16″, on the walls and in the stalls of both the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Directly across from the Department Offices, these bathrooms had signs outside both doors inviting people to come in and see the show. Part of my goal was to create a viewing dilemma that required spectators to break a social taboo and enter the bathroom of the opposite sex in order to see the complete exhibition. People wrote their comments on the paper towels. One interesting comment read: “Here you go…I think that the showing of pictures in the bathroom is great. However, some of the pictures are nasty. (You asked.) Change the pics and it would be art.”
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I’m Sorry for the Mistake I Made
I was in the gallery daily for a week, writing on lined notebook paper the same sentence and numbering it. The sentence was: “I’m Sorry For The Mistake I Made.” Once a page was filled on one side, I taped it to the wall of the gallery. This performance linked two actions I performed privately the week before. The first: shaving my head for the first time. The second: celebrating my birthday by sprinkling glitter on campus. (I nearly got arrested not knowing that sprinkling glitter constituted defacement of public property.)
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Nine to Five, Monday Through Friday
Installation Performance Art, 2003
A performance was done over the course of 7 weeks. I spent daytime hours, 9am to 5pm, in the glass display case of Oregon State University’s Memorial Union Hall. I began in the space with packages of index cards and pens. I began writing on the lined side of the index cards the same sentence, one per line, numbering each, until all the lines were filled. As I would finish one, I would pin it to the wall behind me and start another card. Each day I brought various props to perform different activities which involved transforming the space, but most of my time was spent writing on the index cards. One of the activities I performed was writing the sentences in red lipstick onto both sides of a portion of the glass. Then I placed a large mirror in the space and wrote the sentences in lipstick onto its surface as well. Standing outside the case, the viewer saw “through” five layers of these sentences ( two on each side of the glass, then those two reflected in the mirror, and finally the ones on the surface of the mirror). Instead of just reading left to right, the viewer’s eye slipped through the space until it reached their own inescapable reflection underneath the layers of sentences. On the final day, I came with boxes of instant chocolate pudding and water, mixed the pudding, spread it onto the inside of the glass, then licked it off in the shape of letters, 3 to 4 feet high, that read when finished: “the word is FALLIBLE”.
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La Vie En Rose 2002 In 2001 I was the recipient of the Sponenburg Travel Award from the Art Department at Oregon State University. I used the money to travel to Paris to conduct research on performance art at L’espace Nouveaux Médias at Centre Pompidou.. While there, alone in my hotel room, I witnessed the September 11th terrorist attacks on Twin Towers on a hotel television set. It is required of all recipients of this award to give a talk with a slide presentation to the art department faculty. The focus of the presentation is to show how the money was used to further their education. Still stunned, as everyone was, by the 9/11 attacks, I wrote a performance from my journal entries. The performance involved sitting at a table with my notes, a white candle, and a book of matches. Behind me the projection screen was positioned so the candle cast a shadow from the projector’s light, turned on at the beginning of my talk. At designated intervals, I stood up, struck a match, to lit the candle, returned to my seat. Then after reading for awhile, I’d again stand up, walk to the candle, and blow it out. This ritual of lighting the candle then blowing it out was repeated seven times throughout the reading. With every extinguishing of the candle, a trail of smoke would slowly float upwards, while it’s shadow doubled it onto the projection screen lit by the spotlight the projector supplied.
The paper consisted of fragments from my journal about walking the streets of Paris alone, visiting the Louvre, and being astonished by the splendor of the Nike statue. I read excerpts of my notes collected from many hours spent studying at L’espace Nouveaux Médias. The paper mentions people I spoke with and a book I was reading by Gerhard Richter. In contrast, it also contained my most immediate reactions to the 9/11 attacks. At the end of the reading, I blow the candle out one more time, and a full tray of slides begin to be projected onto the screen while Patricia Kaas sang La Vie En Rose. This song was chosen on impulse the night before the performance. I based my decision solely on its mournful melody which I thought was an appropriate match to the slides. The slides were all the same image: a body in midair falling from one of the towers. After the performance, I found out the song I’d chosen was an old French song sung by Edith Piaff whom never heard of before. I translated the words to the song, to discover it wasn’t about loss as I thought but about newly found love. The discovery intrigued me since I had been thinking about how romantic love involves joy and terror, peace and threat, opposite potentials existing in the human experience of love. I was reading in Gerhard Richter’s book the day before the attacks where he states that he believes the most dangerous thing in the world is faith, and points to the beautiful youths of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang. They fell in love with their cause and it abused their innocence. The fanatic’s religious love parallels that of personal love.This moving performance attempts to compress these ideas into an hour solo performance that I’ve performed 8 times between Oregon and Chicago. The visual documentation of the piece was stolen.
