Displaced conversations A genealogy of feminist performance

Title

Identifier

d_2009_2013:304df23b2ac0:11405

identifier

11417

Creator

Zaytoun, Constance,

Contributor

David Savran

Date

2011

Language

English

Publisher

City University of New York.

Subject

Abstract

A few months before he died, Jackson Pollock attended three performances of the Broadway premiere of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Unable to watch the play in its entirety, Pollock rushed out early each time, grief-stricken. Why did Pollock find it unbearable to witness Godot ? And what can be understood by examining this (missed) encounter between two of the greatest postwar artists---one a painter and one a playwright? If I exchange the genders of Pollock and Beckett for women artists, these questions form the basis of the twin investigations of my project: 1) why does the act of witnessing feminist performance sometimes go awry at the intersection of performer and spectator; and 2) how may a genealogy of feminist performance reveal itself---specifically, how does performance art emerge from Pollock's action paintings and Beckett's Godot (and the encounter between the two), and how does feminist performance art develop as a response to postwar abstract art in its hyper-masculinized form?;In following the trajectory of feminist performance art, I find conversations taking place among the works of painter Deborah Kass, performance artist Deb Margolin, and sculptor Hannah Wilke, similar to the conversation between Beckett and Pollock. The term "conversation" is not meant literally, since Beckett and Pollock never actually exchanged words and neither have the other artists who are "conversing" in this dissertation. Nonetheless, the works of these women speak to each other, and a significant exchange takes place that concerns common themes and practices indicative of feminist performance art and illuminates their work and their contributions to the feminist movement within U.S. culture. I identify this phenomenon as a "displaced conversation." A displaced conversation reverberates in the gap of a missed encounter between artists who share common artistic influences and who could, potentially, meet physically; that is, they run in distinct, but similar, artistic circles that allow for the possibility of common social, political, and aesthetic influences.;What I find most compelling about listening in on the displaced conversations taking place among these artists is that it reveals a new interdisciplinary narrative of feminist performance art. Although many scholars discuss a history of performance art as following a visual arts trajectory, and others suggest one following from avant-garde theatre practices, I construct a radical trajectory of feminist performance that examines both perspectives simultaneously. Through these various conversations, I discover that a loose genealogy of feminist performance art begins to emerge like a family tree with many branches.;Moreover, each of these feminist artists engages in the exchange between artist and spectator, and the performative nature of her work provides agency for intervention and witnessing the Other. Witnessing their bodies and work places us into conversation within the exchange of performance, too, but the act of witnessing frequently goes awry. In the chapters of my dissertation, I draw on a rigorous theoretical understanding of the codes of parody, nostalgia, and the psychology of witnessing, and apply these theories in novel ways to examine why the act of witnessing these artists' work is sometimes traumatic. In particular, in regards to the work of Kass, I develop a theoretical foundation for a form of feminist nostalgia called queer nostalgia. Finally, in the epilogue, I tie together the displaced conversations among Kass, Margolin, and Wilke and observe how the current political climate affects the state of feminist performance art today. Visual artist Patricia Cronin enters the on-going conversation, specifically through her moturary sculpture, Memorial to a Marriage, 2002. Cronin's grave site sculpture inscribes a "future nostalgia" to suggest that only time can make the burden of witnessing easier. I hope that, by reading the pieced-together fabric of a feminist genealogy woven by the works of these women artists, as well as witnessing their radical bodies in performance, we begin to see something new about performative identities in U.S. culture. Throughout this dissertation, I demonstrate how feminist performance investigates the intersection of the inner space of the artist with individual audience members; the conviction is that through this experience of intersubjectivity and bearing witness to those who suffer, feminist performance transforms each of us through empathy and an acceptance of difference.

Type

dissertation

Source

2009_2013.csv

degree

Ph.D.

Program

Theatre

Item