There have been a lot of grand standers and personalities on sciforums over the years but there have been very few who have been known to use 'performance art' on the forums as a means of getting their message across. Controversial Members like Satyr or Dr. Lou who would rudely enter into a thread insult various members deconstruct, disrupt and derail a thread only to then get banned could have been seen as ‘performance artists’ except they were not. One of Dr Lou’s finest moments was when he entered a thread titled ‘rape survivors’. Tiassa said he had started the thread to ‘sensitize‘ other members on the seriousness of rape. Various members came and told their stories when Dr. Lou suddenly showed up and inserted a comic, an altered image from the Perry Bible Fellowship, of young boy being bent over his father’s knee while his father fondled him. One can say that Lou was being insensitive or one can say that Lou was reacting to the tacky suggestion that there should be a thread where members are asked to relate their personal stories of abuse on an open science board like teary eyed victims on the Oprah Winfrey Show. How one reads Lou's act is dependent on what you see him as doing through his behaviour which was consistently irreverent. Dr. Lou was banned for posting pornography even though there was very little sexually explicit content in the comic picture but the context of its placement required action. It was enough to suggest child sexual abuse but to do so in a thread where people are legitimately relating their stories of abuse is what made everyone upset. James wrote at the time: "I like to think we're reasonably relaxed about this rule most of the time, but sometimes posters just push things too far. Lou Natic, of course, knew exactly what he was doing and what the probable consequences would be. He can't excuse himself on the grounds of stupidity. His stupidity is willful." Recently over the past few weeks Sam has become another controversial member who’s posting style is being described in a number of ways and one of them being put forth by Tiassa is that it is ‘performance art’. Performance art no matter how obscene or violent does not aim at being destructive. Performance art is a form of theater and its function is to challenge ideas by forcing the audience to experience a kind of forced deconstruction through confrontation with events, either in a theater setting or staged randomly in the street. Deconstruction is not a destructive act but a means of restructuring something, if an act is performed and the audience is left with nothing but an act of destruction then the performance was a failure. To know exactly what one is doing, which is what enraged James with Dr. Lou, makes an action an act of rudeness meant to insult, destroy and incite OR it could be seen as performance art. So what's the difference? How does the viewer know the difference? The difference is in the relief that breaks up a performance that leads the viewer to a reference. Art is dependent on form and context or it fails to be ‘art’. The form and context are merely vehicles for the content, message or reference. If there is no reference no message gets across. I used to live on the lower east side of Manhattan where performance art was a part of how certain neighborhood activists expressed themselves, people like Karen Finley were part of that community. So what exactly is performance art? Performance art is a staged event and not a spontaneous reaction to events though viewer reaction will invariably be spontaneous. Performance art is planned behaviour designed to bring about reaction...any reaction from the audience will work from apathy to outrage but outrage works best for the reputation of a performance artists. Karen Finley for example smeared chocolate all over her naked body as a signature parody of the Tawana Brawley incident. Brawley was the sixteen year old girl who accused six white men of raping her, smearing her in feces and placing her in a garbage bag. It was later deemed in court that she had lied and had staged the event for other motives. It is the reference after the surprise of Finley smearing chocolate over herself as she delivers her dialogue on the Brawley incident that gives the act substance and it is there that lies Finley’s message otherwise she would simply be seen as an exhibitionist and not a performer. Performer’s know when an act is finished and the work is done, if they do not then it is not an act but a display of who they are. I have experienced performance art first hand outside of the theater on the streets of NY. One afternoon while working on St. Marks Place I took a lunch break at a local diner named ‘Stingy Lu Lu’s’. I sat in a booth, ordered from menu and left for the ladies room. When I returned there was a well dressed woman sitting at my booth with a Gucci shopping bag on the table and she was eating. I was confused and thought that maybe I was mistaken but no it was my booth and she was eating the food I had ordered. I sat at the opposite side of her and asked her what she was doing, she said she was eating. I told her she was eating my food, and so she pushed the plate towards me, I told her I didn’t want it and pushed it back in her direction. She then got up took the shopping bag and began to walk away, which is when I noticed that although she was sporting a very nice hairdo, jewelry and silken shirt presenting herself as a run of the mill upper middle class manhattanite woman, from the bottom down she sported fish net stockings, cut off jean shorts and tacky bright pink ‘I’m a ho’ stilettos. She turned before she walked out the door and very loudly quoted something from George Grosz on the lives of the petty bourgeois. That’s performance art. If she had looked like a ‘ho’ or a bum my assumptions would have led me straight to the manager where I would have complained and the performance couldn’t take place. But seeing the Gucci bag and her appearance from the waist up I couldn’t reconcile the image of woman of means eating someone else’s food in a restaurant and so confronted her, after all it could have been a mistake. This woman went on to be locally famous for pulling lots of stunts like this throughout the neighborhood as it was being re-gentrified from a working class neighborhood, haven for young artists, punks and activists to a more bourgeois environment with fashionable boutiques and bars etc. In order for performance art to work the aggravated audience has to be relieved of the facade presented in order to catch the deconstructed message. If this doesn’t happen then it simply doesn’t work. If the woman hadn’t given her speech placing her actions in context she would have simply been an unwelcome vagrant. There are few if any examples of performance art in a medium such as sciforums and if they do occur in Dadaist fashion it would certainly turn in on itself as the performance would be wholly dependent on words and images that would invariably lead to the performer ‘outing’ themselves as it would have to be explained. To coin Sam’s posting style as ‘performance art’ sets a precedence for future acts of blasphemy and fun as it now places the onus on the viewer to glean intent. Its an offshoot if you will of the idea of ‘good faith’ posting. An act of performance art is not an act of ‘good faith’, it cannot be, as there needs to be a suspension of belief if only for a moment before the performance mask is dropped; A real doozy for the mods and members who are trying to deal with text at fact value. If a poster is excused of bad behaviour by placing it under the banner of ‘performance art’ then the poster should be obligated to show the method of the performance, just as viewers are given the relief of intent when they witness performance art. Its an unspoken understanding between viewer and performer that the performer give reference to their actions. I was called by one of the mods a ‘generic hater’ for opposing Sam’s style. I was told that the problem must be with ‘my life’ and that I had ‘sunk low’ for opposing what I deem destructive and divisive behaviour not conducive to the health of the site if it continues in the volume it is presenting itself with right now. It is in short no more productive than Dr. Lou’s slightly amusing but unproductive comic that could only be seen as an attempt to insult and not an act of insight. I believe that there needs to be more direct communication between members on this particular issue or the site will leave itself open to destruction in the name of activism, destruction in the name of bitterness ,resentment and hubris and very little of the elevated form of ‘art’ that Tiassa has recently coined such acts.
pardon is this the the thread where lucy outs herself as a simpleton? of the highest order? or did i make a wrong turn?
Wrong turns I don't know about your wrong turn, but I think at the point we start equating rhetorical form with child pornography, well, there's definitely a wrong turn involved. I should note, for the record, the cartoon didn't just involve "fondling". Specifically, it depicted a father with fingers inserted into his son's rectum. The original PBF is titled "Cave Explorer"; the last two frames were cut, and a new third frame devised. Thankfully, it's a poorly-drawn cartoon.
lets observe this impeccable critic of performance art at work Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! i mean sam can be dumbklutz sometimes but lucy definitely takes the prize here look how eager she is. the crazed bloodlust serves the nutjob right for having me on ignore /hahahaha 1586 words in the op i shall rape each and every one of them girdle up, dearest lucy
Frankly, Gustav, you couldn't rape your way out of a brothel in a slow week. Sciforums has just lost two more and will no doubt count it a win. In exchange, you will have advertising. Congratulations, Gustav. You have gained exactly what you wished for.
This and that Oh, you noticed that one, did you? You know ... this is probably not the time for that ... uh ... metaphor. People are a bit sensitive right now. • • • Uh ... recently? Okay, so sixteen months isn't exactly that long ago, but that's only the point at which I went so far as to make a thread about it. Recently?
LOL, it wasn't performance art when my picture of the Iraqi babe was deleted. Apparently, celebrating the beauty of human flesh is unacceptable performance art... but celebrating the destruction of human flesh is perfectly okay. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Here's the image of the Iraqi babe, for those curious. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think one of the great mysteries of guys like Boyd Rice is whether or not to take him seriously. On the one hand, you can kinda see possible cracks in his facade (like the fact that he plays the angle of being a racist and satan worshiper.......but the LOL part is the fact that the whole racist culture is hardcore Christian). If he were honestly trying to provoke thought through challenge of conventional ideals, that would make him interesting. I would keep copies of his works in my collection, and possibly go to see a live performance. Does Satyr/Dr Lou equate to Boyd Rice however.......er...no. Dr Lou is just kinda "here". He just says all that crap for as long as he can get away with it (that's the impression I get). Satyr/Wanderer was at least clever. All I ever thought about him was that it was such a shame he hadn't grasped some sort of higher level of misanthropy (seemed fixated on pushing a bigoted agenda - which is extremely uninteresting).
07-05-04, tiassa tells me off Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 07-08-03, tiassa probably telling others off i believe the only subject tiassa hasnt touched upon in his 10 years in sci is.......... wait for it.....wait.....wait..... The Mathematical falsification of Newton's Shell Theorem go for it buddy better late than never
You're a very small man, Gustav. You've never quite grasped the idea that any authority you have is derived not from yourself but from your environment. On further reflection, it was rather presumptuous to expect you'd ever become anything more than what you were when you began. Leave the wasteland to the hollow men? .... Aye. As you wish. /mocking exeunt.
SAM is not an 'artist' but a hate machine. And a liar, and well, I could go on, but I can't stand the thought of being patronised by the blowhard Tiassa and being told I don't 'get it'. We do get it. The message is hate.
Life is performance art Let s/he who is without sin cast the first stone: Who among us is entirely open with their life? Who has not a single secret to keep from even the closest of friends? In other words, who's going to lie, either to themselves or us? We're people. We're human. We are only truly ourselves when we are alone. And then sometimes only with our eyes closed so that we don't risk looking upon ourselves and recognizing what is truly there. This isn't mysticism. It's very basic psychological reality. The complicated way of saying it is that neurosis is a product of the civilizing influence competing with primal desire. The simple way of saying it is that other people complicate things. We wear masks. Some are thick and wooden, some no more than the shifting of shadow and shade. But we are always in costume; we are always onstage. Some people recognize this either implicitly or explicitly, and decide to go about their performances deliberately. Others just wander faceless through the world. Explicit awareness is a curious thing. You cannot help but calculate in some things. Once Shakespeare's famous rendering becomes something visceral instead of merely abstract, it is not so much temptation to meddle as the natural inclination to calculate, to adjust and optimize, to somehow make a point. What we show each other, in a Freudian context, is a projected mix of idyll subject to realistic boundaries. While defining the Freudian slip is far too specific an exercise for our purposes here, the calculations of maintaining any given projection require a certain expenditure of psyche. We are almost always in this mode, except when we are absolutely alone and thus in a natural state. "We are unutterably alone," says Rilke's second letter to Kappus, "essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important." It is only in quiet harmony with this loneliness that we are at peace with ourselves. It is only then that the calculations cease. All else, life is performance art.
You don't understand performance art. When Shakespeare wrote for the character Jaques 'all the worlds a stage and men and women merely players' it had a context meant to express the 'realness' of life, that all action counts and makes the life. Jaques spoke these words as a malcontent, a depressed man who could not act and merely philosophized his melancholy brooding as all the other characters went for their love and lived their lives. Jaques relegated himself as a mere observer of events and so goes on the melancholy rant as every moment of happiness escaped him just as 'life' had escaped him. Perhaps this is why Jaques declined to stay in the forest and opted for the religious life so he could brood in private as Jaques didn't see any inherent meaning in life or rather he missed its meaning as he missed every opportunity to live it. All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. A very apropos quote to emphasis Jaques position in life would be 'How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.' You see every line in a work of art has a context and to remove it from its context renders the lines, no matter how witty, without its essential meaning as every artist has an intent and doesn't create lines in a vacuum . Shakespeare was in fact aware of the difference between 'life' and 'art' and this difference is further emphasized in the existentialist play written by Tom Stoppard 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'. Life has no author but the stage most certainly does. A character speaks the same lines over and over and cannot change the course of their fate nor their essential character as they have no freedom save the restricted action allotted them by the author and this is something that does not hold true for an individual life. When Marcel Duchamp had the idea to place a urinal on exhibit people didn't take the opportunity to go and piss in it. Why? Because the toilet was referential. Duchamp said he wanted to take the focus away from craft and place it on intellectual interpretation, yet with awareness he gave context for that interpretation. The context is the museum itself, it forces one to think of what art is by confronting what art is not. The irreverence of placing such an object in a museum is what lead to the anti rational, anti art movement but his attempt to deconstruct art was not meant to destroy all of what we call art but to remove the deified fashion in which people viewed it and thereby reconstruct art. This is why even to this day we call Duchamp an 'artist' and refer to his work as 'art' and Dadaism as an 'art movement'. If this was not so he would simply be remembered as a defamer or an anarchist. If there is no difference between life and art then there would be no reason for the act of creation outside of living ones life. A life might have no intention other than life itself but art always has an intent. A viewer consciously enters into an installation or poem or novel aware even if not at first, that the work is meant to lead elsewhere in the imagination which makes him or her a co-producer. When the incident in Stingy Lu Lu's took place the act itself would have meant nothing if she did not make everyone in the diner AWARE that they were just subject to a performance. It was her skill to create a circumstance that drew everyones attention to the change that was taking place in the community that made her an 'artist'. It was her skill of executing something within a given time frame, delivering her message and dropping the 'role', that kept her from being arrested or worse attacked and embroiled in hostile response. Yet the lack of those elements did not make her any less controversial. Only the inept relies on hostility and violence to get their point across. We all understood what she was doing as she always made motive and intent clear by making the distinction between a random act and performance. Art without a reference and context is not art and anyone who cannot pass on their message has failed in their attempt to 'make art'. Life is not a performance. As Burroughs once said the problem with modern youth is that they're all tv babies and no longer know what is real. Only those without discernment are unable to distinguish the difference between 'this' and 'that'. As far as the thread you posted 16 months ago I defy you to find a post of mine past seven months ago. In short I was not present.
Just in case you need a 'footnote' to justify a critique: For Jaques is, in effect, the opposite of everything Rosalind stands for. He is a moody cynic, who likes to look at life and draw from it poetical contemplations at the generally unsatisfactory nature of the world. He is, in a sense, an initial Hamlet-like figure (the comparison is frequently made), someone without any motivating erotic joy, who compensates for his inadequacy by trying to drag everything down to the level of his empty emotions and by verbalizing at length in poetical images. He takes some pride in what he calls his very own brand of melancholy which can suck the joy out of life as a weasel sucks the protein out of an egg (an interesting image of the destruction of new living potential), and he spends his time wallowing in it. His own social desire seems to be to find someone else to wallow in the same emotional mud as he does. But the spirits of the other characters, especially of Rosalind and Orlando, are too vital and creative to respond favourably to Jaques's attempts to cut life down to fit his limited moods. That judgment no doubt sounds quite harsh. And perhaps it is, for Jaques is a relatively harmless person, who deceives no one (nor does he try to), and his poetical reflections, like Hamlet's, are often seductive. But we should not let the fame of some of his utterances (particularly the famous "Seven Ages of Man" speech in 2.7, a frequently anthologized piece of so-called Shakespearean "wisdom") conceal the fact that his approach to life is thoroughly negative. He sees no value in anything other than calling attention to the world's deficiencies. He does not recognize in the fellowship, music, and love all around him any countervailing virtues. . . . Jacques' motive is, in the last analysis "observation," the gratifying of a self regarding curiosity based on a kind of personal impotence, an inability to participate fully and naturally in the processes of life; and, since his attitude is one which implies throughout an incapacity for genuine giving, for the positive acceptance of an order, at once natural and distinctively human, beyond the isolated self--the acceptance by which, in love or otherwise, the self is at last justified--he remains a mere marginal presence in the process by which that order is finally . . . consummated. (An Approach to Shakespeare, Vol. 1, p. 328) Always useful for those who never take the time to actually read Shakespeare.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! He did after all write full plays and not aphorisms. Funny how you can take a quote and then completely miss its wisdom by virtue of taking it out of its context. So go ahead, think of life as a stage.
lucysnow pompously drops names and imagines herself as a critic of some note. how easy it is to guess at other peoples motivations and intent and conclude it to have been some master plan my dog shakespeare my bitch finley it is so very safe, cosy even, to do so. after all how would one really and truly know? "that is not what he meant" "this is what he meant" the rest of us vomit in disgust and so their stage has been set. with a sense of bloated self importance and arrogance, they presume to speak for others. this depraved remnant of the pseudo art clique that once roamed sci she will never know as long as she refuses to examine her own life, content to see only what others do, she will not understand life a multitude of options a variety of possible outcomes choose perform act!
yup and this is how she falls flat on her face the strength of her convictions "think what you want!" /spits
