LINDA TALKS WITH LINDA: REAL PERFORMANCE
LINDA MARY MONTANO: Hi Linda, thanks for your comments about my DAD ART proposal. Im glad that you agree that I should show the film/performance again. I made it after dad died and it became a way to remember him and heal . Now it is time for me to share it with others . Seven years ago I premiered it at Ohio State University at the invitation of Jennie Klein but couldn't bring it out since then because it is so deeply personal and complicated. But when I hear the good inner voices that advise me to do this or that with my work, I obey, so here it is again and it is ready to be seen and performed!
LINDA WEINTRAUB: I'm so pleased you are promoting DAD ART, since it is such a timely and loving and candid work of art and is so true to your vision. Remember, I visited you and your father while you took care of him and was moved by that experience.
LMM: The trailer for it is on You Tube and is titled: DAD ART in case you know of anyone wanting to have me come and share the video and performance.
LINDA MARY MONTANO: Hi Linda, thanks for your comments about my DAD ART proposal. Im glad that you agree that I should show the film/performance again. I made it after dad died and it became a way to remember him and heal . Now it is time for me to share it with others . Seven years ago I premiered it at Ohio State University at the invitation of Jennie Klein but couldn't bring it out since then because it is so deeply personal and complicated. But when I hear the good inner voices that advise me to do this or that with my work, I obey, so here it is again and it is ready to be seen and performed!
LINDA WEINTRAUB: I'm so pleased you are promoting DAD ART, since it is such a timely and loving and candid work of art and is so true to your vision. Remember, I visited you and your father while you took care of him and was moved by that experience.
LMM: The trailer for it is on You Tube and is titled: DAD ART in case you know of anyone wanting to have me come and share the video and performance.
But there is something else I need to tell you, I have some news! I have "nominated" Carolee Schneeman as my favorite performance artist!
LW: Why is that?
LMM: Her current ability to be visible, her vision of the body as the vessel of art making, her once pulling the scroll from her vagina, and now pulling the scroll from her fleshed fragility is totally blowing my mind! I'm not saying that she is performing but listen as she reports about her 2014 practice: "As for myself, I am not working on issues of age or aging as such, I'm simply proceeding with the demands of production which currently are focused on kinetic sculpture and video projections. None of my current work is concerned explicitly with the body, at all. For the past 20 years, I have been insisting on my history as a painter and on installations and kinetic materials, rather than the embodied works of the 1960s and 1970s." C.S.
LW: Why is that?
LMM: Her current ability to be visible, her vision of the body as the vessel of art making, her once pulling the scroll from her vagina, and now pulling the scroll from her fleshed fragility is totally blowing my mind! I'm not saying that she is performing but listen as she reports about her 2014 practice: "As for myself, I am not working on issues of age or aging as such, I'm simply proceeding with the demands of production which currently are focused on kinetic sculpture and video projections. None of my current work is concerned explicitly with the body, at all. For the past 20 years, I have been insisting on my history as a painter and on installations and kinetic materials, rather than the embodied works of the 1960s and 1970s." C.S.
She is appearing in the art world/scene having just had major surgery and I'm actually "mentoring" with her, that is, as you know I have a neurological Parkinsonian-like condition called Dystonia and I shake and twist and my head turns and I spasm in pain and it is totally embarrassing until I do my 3087 spiritual and art practices of EXPOSING MY BODY-FLESH AS ART-LIFE by calling every moment of every day ART as Carolee is doing.
She is now my TEACHER...teaching me not to hide my visibly compromised (health) LIFE because everything is ART anyway. That's what I've always said but often I'm embarrassed by my "condition" and get caught in non-ART/LIFE. I need to practice what I preach and Carolee is showing me how to do it so gracefully and matter of factly, not as her performance artist persona but as a creative"lifeist" a term I use to differentiate intentionality.
It is funny because she and I have joked over the years that if she has a job and then leaves, I get the job...for example, UT AUSTIN and BARD..... She taught both places then left and I then taught in her spot. So now as she "performs" the aging body by accompanying her work at openings, the body that most people hide, the body that the culture stiches up, the body that the "patient" becomes agoraphobic over, I step up to her plate and learn how to appear publically with my body and it's performative betrayals of my once youthful presentation of my fabulous self. What she is doing is REAL PERFORMANCE, the real thing, the real risk. It is exciting, shocking and is raising consciousness.
Honestly Linda, I am applauding Carolee, just as I applaud Pope John Paul who appeared on the balcony of St Peters in his declined body. I am energized by the theological truths they both have discovered.
So I send a message to Carolee: Carolee, I applaud you. Keep teaching and demonstrating for us how to live all of our art-life, right up to the last bow....beyond the title artist, beyond the title lifeist... simply accepting that we are all vulnerable, impermanent HUMAN BE-INGS.
LW: I applaud both you and Carolee! Is there a way you can write about this? It is real important!
LMM: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, maybe.
It is funny because she and I have joked over the years that if she has a job and then leaves, I get the job...for example, UT AUSTIN and BARD..... She taught both places then left and I then taught in her spot. So now as she "performs" the aging body by accompanying her work at openings, the body that most people hide, the body that the culture stiches up, the body that the "patient" becomes agoraphobic over, I step up to her plate and learn how to appear publically with my body and it's performative betrayals of my once youthful presentation of my fabulous self. What she is doing is REAL PERFORMANCE, the real thing, the real risk. It is exciting, shocking and is raising consciousness.
Honestly Linda, I am applauding Carolee, just as I applaud Pope John Paul who appeared on the balcony of St Peters in his declined body. I am energized by the theological truths they both have discovered.
So I send a message to Carolee: Carolee, I applaud you. Keep teaching and demonstrating for us how to live all of our art-life, right up to the last bow....beyond the title artist, beyond the title lifeist... simply accepting that we are all vulnerable, impermanent HUMAN BE-INGS.
LW: I applaud both you and Carolee! Is there a way you can write about this? It is real important!
LMM: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, maybe.
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